Standing the Face of God

Lot's wife standing in perpetual prayer in the Judean Desert.

Dear friends,

The Merriam Webster dictionary gives thirteen different meanings for the word “stand” as an intransitive verb, 7 as a transitive verb, and 3 of what they term the essential meaning of the verb. Each of them is true to how we use the word in English. None touch upon how the rabbis understand the word. 

אין עמידה אלא תפילה the Talmud declares, “there is no standing that is not praying.” Standing is praying say the sages. Prayer is an embodied practice that happens in relation to the world around us. It is an action rather than an introspection. The rabbis trace this Jewish practice back to this week’s parashah, where after Sodom and Gemorrah are destroyed and Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt we find the following verse: 

וַיַּשְׁכֵּ֥ם אַבְרָהָ֖ם בַּבֹּ֑קֶר אֶ֨ל־הַמָּק֔וֹם אֲשֶׁר־עָ֥מַד שָׁ֖ם אֶת־פְּנֵ֥י יְהֹוָֽה׃ 

Early the next morning Abraham got up and returned to the place where he had stood before the Lord. 

Truth be told, the Hebrew is more complex and interesting than this (and any other translation I found) expresses. Yes, Abraham woke up early the next morning, those are the first three words וַיַּשְׁכֵּ֥ם אַבְרָהָ֖ם בַּבֹּ֑קֶר. The next two, אֶ֨ל־הַמָּק֔וֹם mean “to the place.” So he woke up early to the place, which most interpreters agree means he went there quickly or went straight there.  The next couplet אֲשֶׁר־עָ֥מַד means “in which he stood.” All of this the translation captures decently. But the final piece of the verse אֶת־פְּנֵ֥י יְהֹוָֽה׃ is untranslateable. The Hebrew word “et” from our phrase “Amad et peney Adonai” denotes a direct object. Literally this would be translated: “Where he stood the face of Adonai.” Standing is not a verb that takes a direct object. We stand on, before, up, to. Then what is the meaning of “standing the face of God?” 

The commentators are silent on this phrase. They seem to see it as a type of phrasing that may have been prevalent during the time when Genesis was written, and that is comprehensible enough to us. It goes along with phrases like את האלוהים התהלך נח, Noah walked God, normally translated Noah walked with God.  

In my view, however this line is too central to the way we pray today to ignore, and might hold some key to understanding what we mean when we use the word “prayer.” In the Talmud this verse is the proof text for the fact that Abraham created the practice of the morning prayer. When the Talmud uses the word Tefilah, prayer it is referring to the Amidah prayer – literally the Standing prayer, which is our central prayer in the morning, afternoon and evening service. 

In a sense, whenever we pray the Amidah we are leaning on this instant in our collective imagination when Abraham “stood the face of Adonai.” What was the nature of his prayer? The clearest thing about it was that it was a dialogue. God says he’s going to destroy Sodom, and Abraham answers. They go back and forth, conversing with one another. The other clear thing about it is that Abraham does not stand God’s decision to destroy an entire city. “Abraham came forward and said, “Will You sweep away the righteous along with the wicked?” Abraham demands of God to act according to God’s job description; the righteous judge. “Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” What follows is the well-known haggling over how many righteous people Abraham must find in order to spare the city. 

Whenever we pray the Amidah we hearken back to challenging the ultimate authority, we stand up for what’s right, we demand goodness. In so doing we embody the face of God that we invoke when we speak the words of the priestly blessing: יאר יהוה פניו אליך, “May Adonai shine Her face toward you.” 

It’s hard to stand up for something. When we do we often buckle under the pressure, or revert back to other things. But to stand in Hebrew also means to stop, as in the verse: “And the sea stood from its fury” (Jonah 1:15). Three times a day we are taught to cease what we are doing, to quit participating in the flaws of the world, the pressures of the particular ideology and culture of our time and place, and the fantastical rushing of our minds, to stand firm like a tree planted firmly in the middle of a gushing river.  "Even if a snake is wrapped around your heel you should not interrupt your Amidah," says the Talmud. Remain standing, firm like a tree.

Prayer is stopping. Prayer is refusing to accept wrong. Prayer is reminding God and people and ourselves what we are all supposed to be.   

Wishing you a peaceful Shabbat filled with sitting and lying down, and some standing as well. 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Action as Beginning

Dear friends,

Beginnings are important. How you set out will likely color the rest of your journey. In this week’s parashah the Jews begin, or rather the Hebrews, out of which the Jews will emerge. If we judge this beginning from the first few words, it’s a marvelous one: 

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

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

The actor is able to hear the primordial voice calling on him to begin a life that is his own. “The land,” the kabbalists tell us, is not physical. It’s a form of wisdom that will be cracked open and revealed to Abraham as his life unfolds. Our first ancestors had the ability to hear, to listen, and to set out in search of their unique path. This bodes well. 

Quickly, though the journey sours. 

Abraham, worried that his wife’s good looks will get him killed, convinces Sarah to be presented to the Pharaoh of Egypt as his sister, not his wife. The Pharaoh takes her in and sleeps with her (or is about to according to some of the commentators), and as a result gets a disease. Incredulous at Abraham’s lie he sends them away. 

Shortly after Abraham complains to God that he has no child, and as such all of God’s promises of a nation that will sprout from him seem bogus. The rabbis point out that his prayer, while logical, is selfish. He could be praying for Sarah, or for the two of them. He could at least acknowledge her existence. Instead he lets his self-pity drive him and complains at God:  

וְאָנֹכִ֖י הוֹלֵ֣ךְ עֲרִירִ֑י 

I walk alone. 

This is the line that leads right into the ugliest chapter in this beginning, the story of the birth of Abraham’s first child, Ishmael.  

And Sarai said to Abram, “Look, YHVH has kept me from bearing. Consort with my maid; perhaps I shall have a son through her.” And Abram heeded Sarai’s request.  So Sarai, Abram’s wife, took her maid, Hagar the Egyptian—after Abram had dwelt in the land of Canaan ten years—and gave her to her husband Abram as concubine. He cohabited with Hagar and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was lowered in her esteem. And Sarai said to Abram, “The wrong done me is your fault! I myself put my maid in your bosom; now that she sees that she is pregnant, I am lowered in her esteem. YHVH decide between you and me!”  

Abram said to Sarai, “Your maid is in your hands. Deal with her as you think right.” Then Sarai tormented her, and she ran away from her. 

God then steps in and protects Hagar, and makes big promises regarding her son to be. But I am more interested in the human behavior displayed, and so are several of the rabbis. Nachmanides writes:

“Our mother (Sarah) did indeed sin by this affliction, and Abraham also by his permitting her to do so.”

This is a courageous move from a major rabbinic voice. In most cases the commentators see it as their role to explain, defend and exult the actions of the ancestors. It takes the type of originality and guts that Abraham displayed in the beginning of the parashah for Nachmanides to speak out plainly in this fashion.  

The medieval rabbi cannot ignore the reality around him. He sees Jews oppressed by their Muslim rulers all over the world. He sees strife between the seed of Isaac and the seed of Ishmael. So he continues: 

“And so, G-d heard Hagar’s affliction and gave her a son who would be a wild-ass of a man (as God tells Hagar), to afflict the seed of Abraham and Sarah with all kinds of affliction.” 

It’s a complex statement. On the one hand it paints Muslims as wild asses. And on the other it places the blame for the strife between Jews and Muslims squarely on the Jews. In any case we see a powerful attitude toward beginnings, rife with warning and possibility; How something begins is how it will continue.

Each of our actions is a beginning, and carries with it the weight of that which will come out of it. After all, we each have our own unique journey, hear our unique voices, make our unique mistakes and have the capacity to begin a unique tribe. We will all be shown the land that we must come to. On our way there let’s try to make our all of our beginnings openings to the unfolding of goodness. 

I am feeling under the weather so unfortunately we will not be holding our Kabbalat Shabbat in person this evening. I hope you will meet me on Zoom instead.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

This is Torah Study

Dear friends,

Hebrew school kicked off this week and it reminded me how fun it is to have conversations with young people about questions of spirituality and tradition. We sat in a circle and spoke the words of the Ashrei: we will praise you forever. I asked the kids about the notion of praising God and whether it makes sense to them. Answers differed as you might expect, but there was a general sense in the room that there is certainly something strange about praising God. I shared with them that when I was their age I didn’t understand why God would need my praise, or the praise of any human being, but that eventually I started seeing it differently, realizing that the praise we say is not for God but for us.

After learning a niggun we turned to the Torah. Naomi unwrapped it and Aliyah held The Yad in her hand, the pointer. When you introduce kids to a Torah scroll you sometimes realize what a crazy thing is. The scroll we were reading from was over 100 years old, and had survived the Holocaust in Romania, traveled to Israel in the 60s and then flew to Brooklyn at some point after that. It is identical or almost identical to almost every other Torah scroll in the world, including those that are written today. I watched as the kids touched the parchment and told me it felt like leather or paper or animal skin. Their eyes grew big when they were taught the labor went into this scroll, and goes into every one of these scrolls.

Finally we all chanted the blessing before the reading together and then Yoni chanted the first day of creation. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. and the earth was formless an empty and darkness hovered over the surface of the deep.”

This is one of my favorite lines to teach. You can pause on pretty much any phrase and ask all kinds of questions. In the beginning. Of what I ask. What is this beginning? Is it a prolonged period or a moment? And what are our beginnings, as we start this new year? The question that came up with the kids this week was about that second verse. What does it mean that the earth was formless and empty? Did it exist or did it not exist ? is emptiness really empty and is formlessness not there? Aliyah said it’s a blob. June said it’s potential. Jacob said in any case it exists.When one goes slow she can scratch at what’s underneath these words. This is Torah study.

Then We chanted the blessing after the Torah together.

Later that week I met with Rami who has his bar mitzvah coming up in a month. As we were discussing his Torah portion suddenly he felt the need to share with me something: I don’t believe in God. Great, I said, but you know you’re going to have to speak to God at your bar mitzvah. When you say Baruch Atah Adonai, Blessed are you Adonai, what is it that you are going to be saying do you think? How can you construe those words to make sense for you? This is a question I often ask students who struggle with their belief in God, but really it’s a great question for theists to ask themselves as well. How can you re-construe ancient words to mean something for you? And specifically the recurring phrase Blessed are You Adonai. What might that mean to you today, and why actually are you saying it? For Ramy it had more to do with tradition, with his parents, but he also suggested something incredible: I’ll be saying goodbye to God. We ploughed that statement, imagined his future speakings of the same phrase, and wallowed in time for a moment. This is Torah study.

In our conversation about praise Daniel suggested that praise is easier once you’ve come out as a difficult situation. I shared with him that earlier that day I conducted a funeral, in which the family and I paused to consider the words we say when we hear of a loved one who has passed: Baruch Dayan Emet, Blessed is the Judge of truth. An amazing woman had lived an amazing life that she filled with beautiful creativity, questions, answers, movement and richness. Surrounding her casket where her seven grandchildren, walking her on her last way, And then singing her praises. That is also Torah study.

I very much look forward to seeing you at our first in person Kabbalat Shabbat next Friday at 630 on the roof of the 14th Street Y, or on Zoom if you can’t make it in person.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

A Beauty We Can Take Part In

Dear friends,

By the time we reached Neilah something had been transformed. One could sense the minds in the space were somehow softer, less busy, the bodies somehow lighter and the hearts sitting a touch closer to their original spot. I had experienced something like this toward the end of the day of Kippur before, but there was something special about this year. The density of fear, anxiety and instability all around us had something to do with it. The time we allowed ourselves to find where we are in the present moment also. The music, the ancient words, the coming together in person despite all the fears, and online despite screen-fatigue, the positivity and desire of each of us to create something together that comes out of our souls or kishkes or yearning or memories or hopes; these were the ingredients of our very special High Holidays services this year. On a personal note, these holidays were a far deeper experience for me in large part because I now know so many of you, whereas last year I was really just beginning to get to know you all. Thank you for being there with me, and for making these holidays so unique.

There were too many wonderful moments to recount, but to me the heart what happened this year were expressed by the two Torah readings, on the morning services of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. On Rosh Hashanah evening, in a Syrian piyyut we invoked God by the name Chai, meaning Life or Living, or Alive. This was the attempt in these experiential Torah readings, to make the experience of a Torah reading a living, breathing organism. My teacher, Rabbi Dovid Neiburg once likened the Torah to Adam’s lifeless body before God, in Genesis 2 blows the air of life into him:

וַיִּפַּ֥ח בְּאַפָּ֖יו נִשְׁמַ֣ת חַיִּ֑ים וַֽיְהִ֥י הָֽאָדָ֖ם לְנֶ֥פֶשׁ חַיָּֽה

G-d breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and Adam became a living being.

The Torah is dead without us. It is a piece of dead animal skin with incomprehensible letters. Our job is to breathe the breath of life into it. We play God every time we read it.

Many of you expressed your appreciation of the way we read Torah this year. How Amy chanted the Hebrew, Chanan sang the translation and Frank blew his horn to express the sensuality of the words and the emotions expressed. Some told me they heard it as if for the first time, much like the ancient Israelites in front of the Gate of Water in Jerusalem in 445 BC. I think we all felt that this was different, new, of the moment.

It strikes me as very much what The New Shul tries to do in general. An ancient tradition that can be so stale and remote can become fresh and exciting when we blow some of our breath into it.

It’s a similar process, I think with forgiveness. When we come to examine our actions, our patterns of behavior, our failures with the judgement of our idea of what should be, with rigid notions of right and wrong, we get lost in what is no longer alive. When, and this happened to me this Yom Kippur over the course of the day, we manage to extricate ourselves from the clutches of dead ideas and bring ourselves into what simply is, we know the complexity of each of our mistakes, the forces beyond us that lead us to make them, with some of them we even know they weren’t mistakes after all, but the unfolding of our lives. This softer type of judgement is the lounge of forgiveness.

Reaching this space is what allows for Sukkot to emerge. The holiday of joy, of nature, of gratitude for what has been harvested, of the beauty of the transitory. My grandmother, Deana z”l, who died on the eve of Sukkot almost a decade ago, taught me that this is the holiday on which we read the Book of Ecclesiastes.

אִם־יִמָּלְא֨וּ הֶעָבִ֥ים גֶּ֙שֶׁם֙ עַל־הָאָ֣רֶץ יָרִ֔יקוּ וְאִם־יִפּ֥וֹל עֵ֛ץ בַּדָּר֖וֹם וְאִ֣ם בַּצָּפ֑וֹן מְק֛וֹם שֶׁיִּפּ֥וֹל הָעֵ֖ץ שָׁ֥ם יְהֽוּא׃

When clouds fill with water 
 they empty themselves onto the earth. 
And when a tree collapses down south or up north, 
 in the place where it falls, there it will lie.

We are a part of these cycles of life, filling and emptying like the clouds, arriving and departing in the spots that are ours. That is a beauty we can accept. That is a beauty we can take part in. That is a beauty we can love.

I look forward to celebrating Sukkot with you in an easy meditation walk in Prospect Park on Tuesday evening. If you’ve never done one before, it’s a chill, pleasant experience.

Chag sameach!

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Assignment Recap

Dear friends,

It was beautiful kicking off the year with you. Many of you asked for a reminder of the assignment I gave to complete between now and Yom Kippur. This note will focus primarily on that. 

A week or so ago, when I was consulting with Holly about this very assignment she reminded me of that week of good will, that Et Ratzon that followed the September 11th terrorist attack. We recalled together how the entire city was washed over with positivity and warmth in the face of the disaster. We remembered the impossibly long lines to donate blood, the people helping one another on the streets, strangers sitting together on stoops; an active community of millions. During that horrific moment we found a way to act, for one another, for goodness. That is the action that Hannah Arendt defines as freedom, and what I am suggesting we search for this week. 

The question at the heart of the assignment is what can we do with what we’ve learned? What can we do in this world that is so cracked, despite our limited capacity? 

This past year we’ve all learned things about how to better live our lives. Think back and reconstruct those lessons. They could be lessons you’ve learned about your own life, your family unit’s, your city or society at large.  They could be lessons you learned because you had a different angle or more space to think, or they could be lessons thrust upon you by the trying circumstances you were in. However you reached these understandings, see if you can find a small way to realize one of these lessons, to pass it forward.  

On Monday night I conjured Hannah Arendt and her idea of action, which must involve other people, and cannot be solitudinous. So you want to look for a way to actualize what you’ve learned that isn’t only for yourself.  

One way to think about it that might be helpful would be to ask yourself what helped you this past year, and then to pass that outward. If, for example, a friend’s phone calls helped keep you happy you might think of a person that would perhaps be lifted by a phone call, and call them. Maybe a physical activity like sports or yoga helped you, and there’s someone you know who might get a boost from some yoga classes or a session with a personal trainer or whatever activity it is. Maybe you learned that music is important to you, and you can send some people a song or two, or invite them to listen to some music together, or send them to a concert. Maybe a random kind act that someone did for you stayed with you and you want to make a meal for a homeless person, or volunteer somewhere. Many of us sensed a major change in our internal landscape after the elections. Maybe there’s an election you can make calls toward, or text out the vote or volunteer on some particular issue. Maybe you discovered Shabbat this year and want to invite someone over for dinner on a Friday night soon.  

It doesn’t have to be a big action. My hope is that it will help us define one of the lessons we’ve learned, and that it will allow us to step beyond our doubts and to do a small deed of goodness, as a way to express our gratitude for what we have learned. Maybe it will move us one step toward knowing that God is good, that the world is good, that we are good, that despite all the difficulties, goodness abounds. 

I look forward to hearing about your thoughts and actions on Yom Kippur during the morning service. 

I also want to remind you to bring cloths of any kind to weave into our collective standing loom, which Suzanne Tick so beautifully described on Monday. This will be an opportunity to literally weave our community’s intentions and prayers for the new year together in the way this Shul knows best: through art. You can cut them up into strips, or just bring them in as they are for whichever service you can attend on Yom Kippur, and we will have scissors and markers there in case you’d like to write a word or a prayer onto the cloth. 

May this shabbat bring us the peace that will move us to action.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

New Year New City New Shul

The morning after Ida on the subway.

Dear friends,

I arrive at this new year wet, slightly ragged, but infused with new ideas and horizons I’ve picked up at our chevrutahs this last month. I come with a real feeling that I need to see you people, that we all need these holidays, that being together in whatever way each of us is able will give us the boost we need to dive into this year.  

Yesterday morning on the subway platform I saw a woman singing I Will Survive to the tiny number of people who braved the post Ida MTA. She reminded me that I love this city. Strange and beautiful acts of resilience and resistance happen here. Unusual and interesting entities like The New Shul mushroom out of the fertile asphalt. Moments of beauty are less rare here and pop up when you’re not expecting them.  

Rosh Hashanah last year, in a farm in Queens produced that feeling too. I was just finishing the Amidah when Liat showed me a headline on her phone. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg is dead.” When we got to the mourners Kaddish people yelled out her name. We gasped. Some cried. The musicians played their music. And then community members shared their cooked pieces of glory that represented what we needed in that moment. Ghiora explained the details of his saffron honey cake, a complex kabbalistic creation with specific numbers of nuts to reflect the zeitgeist. Others shared their fun brilliance in the form of cooked goods. And the moment was transformed. We were still sad, but we were in community, and it was nice. The bitter shock had softened a touch. 

Theater for the New City, where we will meet on Monday evening is a historic place. Early Sam Shepard plays, Living Theatre performances that changed the definition of what a play is, the wildest Halloween costume party in the city for years on end, Street plays to protest Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bread and Puppet Theater performances protesting the ills of capitalism and hailing the indestructible power of Mother Earth, Grammy and Emmy and Pulitzer prize winners work performed before anyone knew who they were. Fifty years of New York strange, New York protest, New York art - and now we step into the fold, and try to cook up some New York Shul action.  

The chevrutah learning pods over the last month proved to me yet again what a unique group of people this Shul is made of. The type of discussions that went down in the Erich Gutkind chevrutah, a strange and marvelous combination of philosophy, rebellion and mysticism, were something I hadn’t experienced in a long time. In the Death and Dying chevrutah, deeply personal reflections on loved ones was shared in a way I had never quite witnessed, combining intellectual digging into text with the quiet awe of knowing there is an end. In the Karma chevrutah there were discussions of past lives. In Nehemiah history and economics morphed into the present political moment and Kabbalah. In the Meditation and Niggunim chevrutahs gates were opened, hearts relaxed, people shared moments of peace.  

Despite what we may or not be feeling, we are ready to bring in a new year together. 

See you Monday evening at Theater for the New City, and Tuesday morning at Brooklyn Bridge Park. (If you haven't already please register!)

Let’s use these last few days to prepare. Our season of return begins. 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Our High Holidays Plans

Dear friends,

We have been in touch with many of you about the specifics of our High Holiday plans with regard to Covid. Some of you have reached out with questions or concerns, others we have contacted to consult with or ask how you and yours are feeling about in person gatherings, especially indoors. Susan, the Va'ad and I have been deep in these questions for at least several weeks. And I wanted to share with you all where we have landed and why. I can’t think of a more important communication at this moment.

Last Yom Kippur we read the following words from Deuteronomy: “I have given you today life and goodness, death and evil. Choose life.” That’s what we are working on. What does choosing life mean for us this year? Our highest priority is our health, first physical and then mental. People need in person services more than ever. But not all of us feel comfortable attending them at this stage of the Delta’s spread. The vast majority of adults in our community are vaccinated. But all our kids under 12 are not. They and their parents are pretty tired of getting tested every two minutes. And we all understand what’s at stake, and are accustomed to the sacrifices we each have to make for each other these days.

We think we have come up with a plan that maximizes everyone’s ability to participate with joy and ease this year. It’s not perfect, or full proof, but health experts we’ve spoken to have backed us up and we believe we will be all be able, in one way or another to feel the unique New Shul jig moving through us.

Besides all services being streamed live on Zoom with a top notch team of video and sound crew, we have moved some of our services outdoors. On Rosh Hashanah two of our three services will be by the water, morning service on Tuesday at Brooklyn Bridge Park and afternoon Tashlich on Wednesday. We hope this will make it possible for some  who aren’t comfortable coming indoors to join and to make it more family friendly (both outdoor services will be shorter, more experiential and near a playground for jumpy ones). We are considering moving one of the Yom Kippur services outdoors as well.

The indoor services will take place in a huge theater (Theater for the New City on 1st Avenue and 10th Street), with very high ceilings, two windows, and an air filtration system recently revamped to Equity’s high standard. We will be capping capacity at 50%, but expect closer to 20% for all services except Kol Nidrei. Entrance will require proof of vaccination for those 12 and up, and a negative PCR test for those under 12. We will be wearing masks and maintaining social distance. For many months no one has been allowed into the theater without proof of vaccine or a negative test due to their strict policies.

A week ago our incredible team of designers and tech crew met at the theater. The meeting got us all excited. Not only did the artistic vibe of TNS display itself in exciting ideas, but the team was so impressed with the theaters safety protocol that some who weren’t planning on coming in person decided to come after all.

None of this is a guarantee of any sort. We go into these high holidays with awe and unknowing. But the Va'ad and the leadership team feel confident that we will be safe - as medical consultants have told us - that our plan answers as many of our community’s needs as we possibly can at the moment - that this is our way this year to choose life.

If you have questions about any of the particulars of our Covid plans, please reach out to Susan at Susan@newshul.org. If you would like to come but are unsure, and feel like talking it over would be helpful, please call me at 9172020882. I will happily listen and certainly won’t pressure anyone one way or another. We all need to speak through our feelings every now and then. I am here to talk over this or other joys and sorrows. Elul is a heavy month always. Lots of us are struggling these days, and these holidays can help us work on ourselves. We want to use these opportunities in the way that makes most sense for each of us.

If you haven’t already, please let us know your plans for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Wherever you join us from, it’s going to be an awesome ride.

This Shabbat, stop and remind yourself that the holidays are coming. A new type of Beginning is returning to our city and our hearts.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Return Return Return

Dear friends,

Every day we pray for return. We remind ourselves that God wants us to improve, that we want to be better, that the self we have grown alienated from is calling us back. In the prayers of this season, which culminate in Yom Kippur, we keep repeating the mantra:

Adonai Adonai, el rahum vechanun, erekh apayim verav chesed ve’emet, noseh chesed la’alafim noseh avon vafesha vechata’ah venakeh.

“Adonai! Adonai! God, Compassionate and Gracious, Slow to anger and Abundant in Kindness and Truth, Preserver of kindness for thousands of generations, Forgiver of iniquity, willful sin, and error, Cleanser of all.”

The mantra works as a reminder that we, like God, are capable of compassion, of forgiveness, of return. It reminds us that return is always available to us. It is, as philosopher Erich Gutkind suggested, “a perpetual possibility.” After all, Gutkind wrote, the state we wish to return to, that of “a clairvoyant perception of truth,” is a human faculty that each of us possess, “like eyes and heart.”

But how does one begin the process of teshuvah, return? We are clouded by our circumstances, our suffering, our patterns of behavior, our ideas of what we want and need. Reaching that clear perception of truth is hard. Where might we start?

In our meditation chevrutah this week two answers were offered. The first avenue was the senses. We sat and noticed what we hear, smell and see. Without judgement or even thought if we can, we simply observed. Over and over we returned from our wandering panting minds to the simple reality we are in. In the next exercise we worked on the breath. Return to the breath. “Return, return, return,” Michael guided us. If we are able to create small islands of presence, with them may come the islands of peace that will help us step out of our spirals and anxieties, and come back to ourselves. When I listened to the sounds, I heard the cicada’s for the first time this summer. At that moment I knew for a minute that I am in and a part of the cycle of nature, that everything is in its right place, including me. I became aware of the greater reality I live in. I returned home to the world.

That kind of awareness can be painful. When Nehemiah receives a report from his brother about the ruinous state of affairs in Jerusalem, his and our spiritual home, “the city where my ancestors are buried,” as he names it, he breaks down. For days he fasts, prays and self-examines. He works hard to admit his wrongs, to pull himself back to a place where he might be able to do something about the situation that is breaking his heart.

“Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.”

A few weeks ago we learned that mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition is infused with memory. And indeed a crucial piece of his return has to do with memory.

“Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘if you return to me then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.’”

He is speaking to God, or to himself. He is gathering courage to believe in the possibility of a better world, a stronger self, a rebuilt Zion, a home that isn’t broken.

He manages to act with tremendous courage and insight. He convinces the king of Persia to send him to Jerusalem to rebuild its walls. But this process of listening, coming in touch with the greater reality, especially the brokenness, and out of it springing into action against the odds, will repeat itself over and over again on his journey. Return, return, return, he hears.

We hear it too. Return to the reality of the Taliban’s war against women. Return to the reality of global warming. Return to the reality of poverty and homelessness in our city. Return to the reality of two thirds of the world’s population that has not been vaccinated, primarily in the least wealthy countries. Return to the reality of a stalled return:

And all the while, again and again hear the call of our infinite compassion, of our ability to contain the difficulty and the beauty, to work on ourselves and the world, to return home:

Adonai Adonai, el rahum vechanun, erekh apayim verav chesed ve’emet, noseh chesed la’alafim noseh avon vafesha vechata’ah venakeh.

Now begin.

(P.S — to join one of our chevrutah learning pods, three of which inspired this piece, Meditation, Erich Gutkind the Forgotten Jewish Philosopher and Nehemiah’s Return, Click HERE)

(Link to share this letter here.)

Wishing you a shabbat of peace and gentleness.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Despite Everything

Dear friends,

Believe it or not, Rosh Hashanah is just three weeks away. At The Shul we are putting in place the strict Covid protocols that will allow us to come together safely these High Holidays. And we are preparing what promises to be a unique, musical and artistic experience of communal return. 

The Hebrew month of Elul is in full swing. Early every morning, and sometimes in the middle of the night Jews come together to prepare for the High Holidays by singing Slichot, prayers of apology and repentance.

One early morning this week, as I was wandering the streets of Brooklyn with Manu we were urged into the local Uzbeki synagogue to complete their minyan. When we came out I discussed the concept with little Manu. He’s knows about saying Todah, thank you, to God. Most mornings I’ll ask him what he wants to thank Elohim for today, and he’ll answer with one of his recent superhero acquisitions. He also knows about praise to God. After gratitude I ask him what he wants to say "wow" about, and he will look around and pick a tree or a cloud or a building to marvel over. He also knows about requesting things from God. After thanks and wow, I’ll ask him what he wants to ask of God today, and he will ask for some superhero toy, and for a toy for one of his friends or family members. Gratitude, praise, request, those are the pillars of Jewish prayer and the kid knows them well. But apologizing to God, we hadn’t touched upon that yet. 

I explained to Manu that these prayers we did were slichot, from the Hebrew word slicha, meaning apology. “We were saying sorry to God,” I said. “Why do you think we say sorry to God?” Combining four-year-old simplicity with deep instincts about the imagination of the divine Manu answered: “Sometimes we hurt God’s feelings.”  

In the Jewish imagination, God is a vulnerable, emotional partner who is continuously hurt by our lack of attention, our meanness, our betrayals. We sadden God all the time by forgetting Him, by breaking our vows, by not being the love-partner She thought we would be to Her.  

The final ceremony of vows between us and God in the bible takes place in the eighth chapter of the Book of Nehemiah. At this point, the Jews that returned to Zion had been there for some decades. It was a choppy return, with painful setbacks and difficulties, far from the easy, happy return they imagined once the Babylonian empire that had destroyed their lives was vanquished by the Persians. Like our bumpy return, theirs was clunky.  

The covenant begins with the words: ובכל זאת, “and despite everything.” Despite the fact that things feel out of whack, that it’s been far longer than we imagined in this pandemic, that the numbers are rising again, that half of our country sees the other as lunatics or worse, that we are stuck with each other and with our deep, deep problems, that we know we brought these problems on ourselves, despite it all we come together to sign a covenant with God, to recommit ourselves to the values that we know to be true, to love, to goodness, to community: to Torah. 

On Yom Kippur we will read the description of this moment in Nehemiah. We will hear how the poets, the thinkers and the musicians together told the story of how of our people up until that moment. We will feel the gnawing sense that both us and those who came before us screwed up big time, lived without gratitude, respect, appreciation, abandoned God in the form of love and justice. And yet we will see that the covenant that was signed by leaders of every family in Jerusalem was not an apology. There were many types of sacrifices offered in the Temple but none were called Korban Slicha, an apology sacrifice. Instead we rededicate ourselves to maintaining our relationship with God through upholding the community, seeking truth and justice and doing our very best to avoid the mistakes that our parents and us have done to bring us to where we are.  

Despite everything, we return. And in our return we wipe away whatever hurt we caused our emotional love-partner, God. 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Studying Torah

Dear friends,

The Talmud tells us of a few actions for which a person gets blessed not only in this world but also beyond: “Honoring one’s father and mother; The performance of righteous deeds; And the making of peace between a person and his friend;”

There is one action, though that is equivalent to all of them put together: “studying Torah.” For us at TNS Torah is a broad category. It includes literature, philosophy, music, theology, art and working for justice. Our Chevrutah offerings this year give a taste of both the breadth and depth of what we mean by Torah study at TNS. These are opportunities for introspection and exploration led by some of the great minds of our community, each one shedding a different light on the idea of mindful return. Some of them are in person and others via Zoom. I hope you can join us for some of these exciting study groups.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

What is Mindfulness?

Dear friends,

We have called our theme this year the Year of Mindful Return, in hopes that we will be able to together form the right frame of mind to rejoin the world after this strange pandemic time. While many of us have a sense of what mindfulness is, we are influenced in our thinking about by new-agey notions of this originally Buddhist term. I thought it is important to take a moment to look at what mindfulness is in the Buddhist tradition, so that we can then look for the similarities and differences with similar Jewish notions, and contemporary ideas. Luckily, my brother, Tari (Eviatar) is the incoming Chair of the Department of Religions at Hebrew University, and a scholar of Buddhist philosophy who has written and thought about mindfulness for a couple decades. We sat down in the kitchen of my temporary abode in Tel Aviv to study Nehemiah and talk mindfulness, and taped some of our conversation for you all.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Don't Fast, Eat Sweets

The Mukhtar of the Beduin village Dir A-Tin and Rabbi Arik Ascherman on Tisha B'Av

Dear friends,

The great disaster has finally passed. The people can gather once again. New leaders have emerged, new thinkers, new poets, new attitudes. They come together in the streets to see what the ancient wisdom has to offer. The language of the ancestors is chanted. Those who understand the words explain them to those who don’t. The dancers move their bodies to express the secrets hidden in the depths of the words. The musicians blow their horns and strum their lyres, grasping at the truths conveyed. The priests speak the people’s language, uncovering the layers of the ever-present past.

A feeling of gratitude overwhelms the crowd. We survived. Tears begin to well. They hear the words of the Torah and all they can do is cry. Despite everything, there is love. After all, we are loved.

The emotions are strong, for this love feels unwarranted, free, a love-gift in lieu of punishment. The poet speaks:

We deserve
what has befallen us
and worse.

Our ancestors lived lives of privilege.
Gifts came their way and they
Wolfed them up
Like pigs.
When they brought suffering on themselves they
Cried, repented, and
Repeated their offenses.
As soon as they were comfortable
They returned
To entitled ways.

And we are sad reflections of them.

She points to one eye:
עיני, My eye,
She points the other:
עיני, My eye,
She touches her tears:
ירדה מים, Drips water.

We pause our description of the 5th century BC scene in Jerusalem described by the biblical leader, Nehemiah to imagine a different brokenness. It was Tisha B’Av this past Sunday, the day we mourn the destruction of Jerusalem, and the temple. I spent the day with Rabbi Arik Ascherman and his flock moving from one spot of destruction to another. Taybe, Dir A Tin, Humsa, places where simple people are being forced out of already desolate places in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason other than some bizarrely cruel instinct of domination. It was at Dir A-Tin, a tiny Beduin outpost in the Jordan valley where Rav Arik invited me to chant the second chapter of the Book of Lamentations, where we read these verses:

עיני עיני ירדה מים אין לי מנחם

My eye
My eye
Drips water
There is no one
to comfort me.

שִׁפְכִ֤י כַמַּ֙יִם֙ לִבֵּ֔ךְ נֹ֖כַח פְּנֵ֣י אֲדֹנָ֑י

Pour your heart out
Like water
In front of the
Vacant face of 
Your broken
God.

Over and over during the course of the day I heard the same message: we are inflicting brokenness upon ourselves. We returned to Zion after a disaster, just like Nehemiah, and are allowing our comfort to consume our sense of gratitude.

In the evening the fast ended, and I was with my family by the Mediterranean as the sun set on beautiful Tel Aviv, new Zion that it is, the first Hebrew city to be built in millennia. There I could hear Nehemiah’s answer to the tears, the self-criticism, the brokenness of his flock.

He stops the poet and speaks to the weepers:

Don’t mourn.
No more tears today.
Instead go
Eat some sweets
Drink something delicious
Send a meal to those have none -
For today is a day that belongs to our God of hope.
So release your sadness.
Let the care of your friend,
Your God
Be your fortress of peace,
and love.
(Nehemiah 8)

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

On the Richness of Complexity

Dear friends,

“I was lying there in the coffin with Ben Zakai,” Danny opens, “and they drove those swords through the coffin to make sure we were dead.” Danny, whose family built the first streets of Tel Aviv, tells me how after he was smuggled out of Jerusalem in the first century with Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai in a coffin, they came in front of the Roman ruler. “The governor offered him a wish. Ben Zakkai asked for Yavneh, a small town where the Jews could restart their lives after the Romans destroy Jerusalem. I just kept my mouth shut. That’s how the Jews survived.” 

We’re in what’s left of the Palestinian village of Susya, which looks like what Abraham and Sarah’s dwelling must have looked like: a rocky enclave in the desert with sheep pens and hot, vast beauty all around. Five Israeli activists, my father, my son and me are having tea with Azam, who miraculously still lives in his hut with his family and his animals despite two decades of violence, home demolitions and harassment. Matan’s Bar Mitzvah is coming up, so his grandfather is showing him a piece of his life; the landscapes of the South Hebron Hills, the villagers he’s been helping for years, the incredible people who show up in these circles, the work that he says allows him to continue living in this country. 

Between cups of sweet spiced black tea, in the shade of his sukkah, Azam agrees to recite one of his poems. In an Arabic thicker than earth he sings of a white goat with patches of black around her eyes. “I raised her like she was my daughter, fed her milk as if I were her mother.” He pauses to tell us that he improvised this poem while visiting his sick mother, and it’s long because she kept asking for more rhyming couplets. He recites how the goat walked behind him one day and butted her head into his back bringing him to his knees, a betrayal he couldn’t take. “You don’t forgive the betrayer,” his mother had insisted. But Azam is a gentle man, and you can tell that he can’t help but forgive this rebellious she-goat.  

We thank Azam, and he us for the support, and move on to the next village, Rakiz, a few hills to the east. This is a harder story, which Matan heard during the car ride from Jerusalem. The army showed up at the request of the settlers early in the morning of January 1st. They entered the house of one of the impoverished families of Rakiz. After a series of humiliations, they set their eyes on the family’s generator, a prize possession in this part of the West Bank, where only Jewish settlements are connected to the electric grid. The family couldn’t take it, so they tried to stop them, and called the neighbors over to help. Twenty-year-old Haroun and his father came right away. In the ensuing struggle over the generator, he will get shot in the neck by a soldier. The family will have to bust through two military checkpoints to get him to the hospital in time to save his life. Now Haroun, paralyzed and with a tube in his throat, accompanied by his mother, Farsi are in a hospital in Tel Aviv. 

We are in Rakiz for a solidarity visit with Haroun’s father and siblings. When explaining the purpose of the trip to Matan, my dad told him that often he goes out to help the people of South Hebron in more active ways, to protect them, harvest with them. Today we are just going to be with them, and that is incredibly important. “In just coming to be with them, to witness, you are giving them a lot.” 

We are invited into a spacious and cool cave, with mattresses and rugs laid out. The family had moved into the cave after the army demolished their hut that stood above it. Haroun’s blue-eyed siblings serve us tea. His father, Abu Haroun tells Matan in Arabic that they have a horse outside. He offers him a ride. Matan is confused. “Tchaf,” he is asked. “Are you scared?” I translate and Matan accepts the offer.

The three of us exit the cave and go into the animal pens. Abu Haroun picks up my large child with his big arms and places him bare back on the horse. “Tchaf,” he asks again. Matan shakes his head and Abu Haroun lets out a laugh. After the ride the three of us gather in front of the farm-animals' cave. Goats, ducks and donkeys roam. Muhammad, the younger son is in there too, directing little tiny goats to their mother’s teets. “When were they born,” I manage to ask in some form of broken Arabic. “ Usbu’en,” Abu Haroun replies, “two weeks.” “Mabruk,” I wish him. “Hamdulilah,” he smiles. We stand there quietly. “Mut’asef,” I say. “I’m sorry, about your son.” “It’s hard,” he tells me, wiping away a tear. And he speaks of God and what is and what must be. “Ilhamdulilah,” he summarizes, “praise belongs to God.”

In the cave, a Facetime conversation with the hospital. Erela, the activist from a kibbutz in the Negev who organized the visit is speaking with Farsi. They speak daily, often several times a day. When she isn’t in Palestine Erela helps people through crisis situations. As more tea and pita is passed around Erela and I talk religion. She is not what people around here call religious. But she is far more religious than most of them in her attitude toward life.  

“When a person approaches me for help,” she says, “I tell them that they’ve lost the key to the Aron Kodesh, the ark. Now I’m the Shammes, the caretaker of the synagogue. I don’t know where their key is, and I tell them that. But I know where to look, down in the basement, or under the chairs.”  

This land is rich, like Azam’s Arabic. The soil and the air have a similar abundant consistency, as do the experiences you have. 

The other night Matan and me went out to watch the final of the Euro Cup soccer tournament. Several hundred people were gathered outdoors in what during Ottoman times was the central Jerusalem train station to cheer England and Italy on the big screen. We found ourselves standing in a little enclave smushed between England fans with red markings on their faces and Italy fans with loud horns. They looked just like one another these two crowds. But quickly we understood that the Italy fans were Palestinian, and the England fans were Jews. Just a month ago there were violent clashes in the streets. Now here we all were laughing and cheering, nobody hiding their language, their accent, their identity. When Italy finally won in a dramatic penalty shootout, the young Palestinians pulled out their dumbek, stood up on the tables and danced with their horns, as the Jewish café owner blasted the Italian classic “Volare,” and we all sang along. 

Co-existence is happening. In the doctor’s office I went to a few days ago the entire medical staff were Arabs. There is a real culture of living together in this country, even amidst the fanaticism and the fighting. It’s a simple thing, really, an anti-political mode that has emerged out of a place that drives political consciousness deep into every child’s experience before they reach kindergarten. It’s not politics, it’s reality.  

Or one piece of it. When I met some Palestinian friends in East Jerusalem this week, a generation older than the dancing Italy fans, they were not in the co-existence mode. “It’s more complicated now,” they explained, “we are fighting normalization.” They have been abandoned yet again by the Arab world with the Abraham Accords. They’ve been left to their fate during Covid, with their occupier having vaccinated more of its people than any other country but given them almost no vaccines (only Palestinian citizens of Israel have been vaccinated). They are angry with good cause. So to many Palestinians co-existence means accepting an unacceptable reality. 

Abu Haroun walks us up the hill to our cars. He shows us the hut on the opposite side of the mountain where the incident took place. We pass by a small pen where his rabbit lives. Her eyes are shining. I come closer and see that they are blue. “Everyone here has blue eyes,” I say. Abu Haroun smiles. 

As we walk, Danny shares one more story. “The Kotzker Rebbe once told his disciples he’s going to search for the truth. He closed himself in his study and didn’t come out. The disciples would put a plate of food under the door and he’d return it empty. This went on for twenty years. When he finally came out the few disciples that were still waiting for him eagerly asked him what he found. ‘Nothing,’ said the Rebbe, ‘only lies.’ Danny looks at me. “Now that’s a rabbi who could maybe lure me back into a synagogue. Maybe.” 

In the car driving back to Jerusalem through the gorgeous desert landscape my father says to his grandson: “Matani, these mountains, what color are they?” “Brown, yellow,” answers the young man. “You know, in the late afternoon something unusual happens to them. They turn purple. Real purple.” We pick up some purple plums from a farmer on the side of the road, and eat them as we drive home to Jerusalem. 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha 

Dreaming Jerusalem

Dear friends,

It’s after midnight here in Jerusalem. Manu, my four-year-old just fell asleep. Ezzy, 8, just walked out of his room, “Can’t sleep.” Matan, 13 has a few more sudoku puzzles to finish before he can close his eyes. Today he napped five or six times, since last night he didn’t sleep more than an hour. A couple times he stood up from his bed, spoke to me from within his dream, walked to the other room and back to his, lay back down. Last night I walked out into the street with Manu around 2am. I wanted to show him the stars so his body might understand it’s nighttime. The yellow streetlights were too bright. I gave up and made us a snack. Around 4am he closed his eyes. By then Ezzy was up again. Erika walked out of the bedroom. I crashed.  

You might diagnose us all with jet lag. I ascribe it to something else. The psalms put it this way: 

בְּשׁוּב יְהוָה אֶת-שִׁיבַת צִיּוֹן הָיִינו כְּחֹלְמִים 

When YHVH returns us to Zion we become dreamers. 

Sometimes the pshat, the simple meaning of the verse, is deeper than the drash, the expounding.  

That’s how I spent the last 30 hours since we landed. Walking the streets of my childhood and the rooms of my parents’ house unsure if I’m asleep or awake. The dry air of the Jerusalem summer, the smell of dusty pine and cypress trees, the baking sun, the feeling that this city hasn’t changed at all since I was last here, before the pandemic began.  

One extra-sweet dream was a waking one (I think). I stared for long minutes at the yellow-orange light of the early evening sun ricocheting off the leaves of the giant Eucalyptus tree down the street. I hadn’t seen that color in a long time. I was reminded of a stage lighting class I took in undergrad, in which the teacher asked us about a quality of light that we know from a specific place. That color of light, a hazy shade of dark yellow is reserved for the holy city and its trees in the hour when the day wanes.  

"עֲשָׂרָה קַבִּין יֹפִי יָרְדוּ לָעוֹלָם, תִּשְׁעָה נָטְלָה יְרוּשָׁלַיִם וְאֶחָד כָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלּוֹ" 

“Ten measures of beauty were bestowed upon the world,” the Babylonian Talmud teaches. “Nine were taken by Jerusalem and one by the rest of the world.” 

That dream-like color has got to be one of those nine measures. 

The beauty is enhanced by the effort to come. Like every return to Zion throughout the ages, this one felt improbable, unlikely to come through, difficult, trying. Nor does the difficulty end once you get off the plane. Not in places that are in touch with reality like this one. Things here are made of stone. Even love can feel like rock here in the underbelly of the world. 

I hope this letter is not a dream. In case it is, please send it back my way in the morning. In the meantime, I’m going to try and get Ezzy back to sleep. 

Wishing you a shabbat full of dreams and light. 

יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה מִצִּיּוֹן עֹשֵׂה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ 

God sends blessings from Zion. He’s still making the sky and the land. 

Rabbi Misha 

Wrestling with the Sh'ma

Dear friends,

There are six Hebrew words that almost all Jews, no matter how rebellious, ignorant or God-hating know: 
Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheynu Adonai Echad. 
We’ve heard or spoken this line almost every time we’ve been to a synagogue. Some of us have heard our grandmothers instinctively exclaim the first two words of the phrase whenever they hear something scary. Some of us love the ritual of closing or covering our eyes when we speak the words. Lots of us know that it appears in the morning prayer, the evening prayer, the prayer before we go to sleep and other places in the prayer book. Many of us know the translation of the phrase: Hear O Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is one. None of us, however, are attuned to the full range of meanings and associations this phrase offers.

The Jews are a people like all others, which is to say in large part nasty, foolish and shallow. The decision to place this verse as the centerpiece of our prayer-life, however, was the opposite; Generous, wise and deep. I’d like to attempt to convey something of the expansiveness of this verse and a few of the echoes and meanings contained within each of its Hebrew words.

Like any piece of Torah, this verse contains the meaning that the reader gives it. One example of this is the final word in the phrase, echad. The word means “one,” and yet most translations will render the final two words, Adonai Echad: “The Lord alone,” rendering the verse in its entirety as an affirmation of the singularity of God. Our God, the Jewish God, it suggests — is the only true God. A different translation flips the meaning: Adonai echad: God is one. Translating it this way does away with any separation at all, between this god and others, between Jews and gentiles, between us and them, between me and you, and puts us all as part of the same oneness; if God is one then all is one since god is all. I’m presenting it as a translation issue, but it’s not exactly that, but rather a choice that each reader makes as they speak the words.

Let’s back up to the beginning of the phrase.

Sh’ma means “listen” or “hear.” In other places in Torah it means “understand.” Whichever meaning you choose, the first word of the verse demands we pay attention.

Yisrael means Israel. In the first couplet, Sh’ma Yisrael — “Hear O Israel,” we Israelites are called upon to listen, to pay attention. But the word Yisrael has a context that we are reminded of whenever we say it. It is the name given to Jacob by the angel when they are done wrestling. The angel says to Jacob: “Your name will be Israel, for you have wrestled with God and humans, and were not beaten.” Israel means wrestling. Sh’ma Yisrael means “Hear Oh wrestler,” a call which not only shows compassion for each of us — I know you are struggling — but also suggests a way out of the prison of our present struggle — nonetheless I ask you to open your ears. We can speak these words of empathy and encouragement to ourselves as we say them, and know that God, or the universe tells us the same.

The one word that appears twice, Adonai, the third and fifth word, is beyond loaded. The four letters יהוה, YHVH are unpronounceable, strange, beautiful to look at. They are the heart of the phrase, and probably the heart of everything. They are an impossible — as well as an impossibly easy — (mis)conjugation of the Hebrew verb “to be,” which includes in it all three tenses: Hayah means was, Hoveh means is, Yihyeh means will be. All three are visibly and meaningfully present in יהוה. God, here being described or expressed, is being-in-time that is as elastic and timeless as it is sharp and coherent.

When we say Adonai Eloheynu, “YHVH is our god” we are saying that Being, Is-ness, time itself as well as its opposite — that is our god. We are attaching ourselves to the past and the future in the only time available to us, the present moment.

The fourth word, Eloheynu, means “our God.” Elohim, here appearing with the ending nu, meaning ours, is the generic word in Hebrew for god. The interesting thing about it is that although we are all about this notion of the one god, grammatically speaking this word is plural. Any Hebrew noun ending in “im” is plural. God in Hebrew means gods. Eloheynu, despite its grammar is never translated “our gods,” but “our god.” But we mustn’t forget that it carries within it the memory of a multiplicity of gods, all of which are, in this verse at least, ours. They are our gods, which although are too many to count, we count them all in the same category: god.

Now we have made our way back to the final phrase: Adonai echad. “God is one.” We began, as a conversion candidate taught me this week, with a duality: Israel, the wrestler wrestling with the angel, with god, with another person. Next we acknowledged multiplicity in the grammar of eloheynu, our god/s. And now we finally come home to echad. YHVH; this time-essence which allows us to be, which connects us with all that is, which reminds us that we will not be forever in this form of our wrestling selves; YHVH is one. And we are a part of that oneness and will forever be all the way back to the beginning of time. This does not, in my view mean that that duality does not exist, nor that multiplicity is a fabrication. All three mindsets are true. We are wrestlers, all of us, at love and war with another. We are also the children of an endless multiplicity of lights and sounds and experiences and people and universes and gods. And ultimately we come to rest in the One.

I invite you to speak this phrase, or whisper it slowly, to contemplate it, meditate upon it, to examine its contradictions, its meaning for you or lack thereof. To pray it. And I would be very interested to hear what you discover. If you are so inclined, please write to me and share your thoughts on this strange and wondrous verse of poetry.

Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Eloheynu Adonai Echad

Listen O wrestler, Being is our god/s, Being is One.

Shabbat shalom and happy Fourth of July weekend,

Rabbi Misha

Who Needs Some Heschel?

Dear friends,

“Man is the playground for the unpredictable emergence and multiplication of needs.”

These words of Abraham Joshua Heschel echoed as I looked at my pile of laundry this morning and wondered at the tremendous amount of clothes I own. In the bible a set of clothes was one of a person’s most valuable possessions.

“We usually fail to discern between authentic and artificial needs” Heschel continues, “and, misjudging a whim for an aspiration, we are thrown into ugly tensions.”

Reading the Book of Nechemiah this afternoon I found myself wondering about the connection between what we consider our needs, and the emergence of the Pandemic. This Fifth century BC waiter prays to God day and night, confessing “the sins that we, the children of Israel have sinned to You; I sinned, and so did the house of my father.” Even though the destruction of Jerusalem and the exiling of Jews from Judea took place before Nechemiah was born, still he asks what he and his people are doing to perpetuate this disaster. I find this inspiring. A disaster that happened to the Jews because of geo-political events largely beyond their weak, little kingdom’s control, is seen as an opportunity to self-examine. This has something to do with what Heschel calls “needs as spiritual opportunities.”

In this moment, when the pandemic seems to be easing off, maybe we can ask ourselves what we did to move our world into the space in which such a thing took place. Maybe we can contemplate our relationship with needs, which the pandemic called into question.

“We cannot make our judgements, decisions and directions for action dependent upon our needs,” says Heschel. What an incredible, radical and baffling statement! If we can’t make judgements based on what people need, what are we supposed to base those judgments on?! Heschel calls on us to dissociate ourselves from what we consider to be our needs, and instead base our actions on something far deeper and more elusive.

“To understand the problem of needs, we must face the problem of man, the subject of needs.”

We have to understand ourselves in order to distinguish between our authentic and artificial needs. Our perceived needs also help us understand ourselves by producing a variety of human tendencies: anger, anxiety, frustration, distraction.

A few days ago I was visited by a dead man with a message for his needy, anxious and often angry family. He said:

שְׂמַח בָּחוּר בְּיַלְדוּתֶיךָ וִיטִיבְךָ לִבְּךָ בִּימֵי בְחוּרוֹתֶיךָ וְהַלֵּךְ בְּדַרְכֵי לִבְּךָ וּבְמַרְאֵי עֵינֶיךָ וְדָע כִּי עַל־כׇּל־אֵלֶּה יְבִיאֲךָ הָאֱלֹהִים בַּמִּשְׁפָּט׃ וְהָסֵר כַּעַס מִלִּבֶּךָ וְהַעֲבֵר רָעָה מִבְּשָׂרֶךָ כִּי־הַיַּלְדוּת וְהַשַּׁחֲרוּת הָבֶל׃

“Be happy, kid in your childhood,
And your heart will be good to you as you grow older.
Walk in the ways of your heart,
And follow what your eyes show you,
And know that these are the things for which you will be judged.

So remove anger from your heart,
And push nastiness away from your body;
Childhood and adulthood both pass like a breath.”
(Ecclesiastes 11:9–10)

Needs should be examined in a long lens and put in line with our hearts and our experiences in the world. Next time you become conscious of a need, try Heschel’s test. Ask yourself: “Is God in need with me?”

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

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

What We Owe

Dear friends,

A couple weeks ago at his Bar Mitzvah, Henry asked us the following question: Do we owe God anything for passing over the firstborn of our ancestors on the night God killed the firstborn Egyptians. It’s a provocative question, but a curious one. First of all, while some of us take this story to be true, it’s far from a piece of history. The idea that we would owe anyone anything based on a story seems tenuous until you look at the myriad of fictions we base our lives upon. There are borders we agree upon simply because we’ve etched them into our consciousness, things we are allowed and not allowed to do because of laws dating back tens and sometimes hundreds of years. If you’ve ever been to a court of law anywhere in the world you will have seen a high drama of various people playing different roles, all accepting the entirely made-up structures at play, which carry very real consequences. As Jews we also created stories that reach back into time to find a frame for our years, months and days, as well as our sense of identity.

So okay Henry, maybe we could owe something based on a mythical story of ours, real or not.

Secondly though, I wonder about the notion of owing God anything whatsoever. Some of us don’t even believe in God. How could we owe something to an entity we’re not even sure exists?! This one I find easier to answer. Whether God put us here or not, whether God is the one who protected our ancestors ancient and more recent or not, we are here. Gratitude, appreciation, a sense that we have been given this life, these are natural human tendencies. We have certain responsibilities as human beings. We receive and we give back. Call it God or life or what you will, we have a life and have to make something out of it. We owe it to something or someone.

So okay Henry, we do owe God, as you called it, something.

Third comes the complexity of the specific incident Henry defined, the firstborn sons that were spared in Egypt. For me the story lives more in the drash than the pshat, in the expounding than in the simple understanding. It is a metaphor of how my life happens, an echo of moments of fear and salvation in my past and future, a miracle of survival that replays itself over and over in my personal and collective history. In that sense it happened to me, and therefore of course I do owe a debt of gratitude to God for that event.

So okay Henry, for me the answer is yes. But what is it that we owe exactly?

For this the Torah has an answer, which we find in this week’s parasha.

“Every firstborn in Israel, whether human or animal, is mine. When I struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, I set them apart for myself.”

We owe God our firstborn children. Luckily, within months of that deadly night God changed the terms of the deal.

“And I have taken the Levites in place of all the firstborn sons in Israel.”

Instead of the first born of our people (most of whom can be pretty sinful and kvetchy) God took the Levites. The Levites were the temple poets and musicians.

In order to understand what that meant for the Levites back then and what it might mean for us today let’s take a look at a surprisingly poetic verse fragment from the parasha:

כִּי֩ נְתֻנִ֨ים נְתֻנִ֥ים הֵ֙מָּה֙ לִ֔י

“For given given are they to me.”

That’s not a typo. It’s meant to express different ways in which the Levites are given to God. Rashi explains: “Given to carry, given to sing.” These are the two responsibilities of the Levites. They carry the tabernacle from place to place and they sing.

The 15th century Italian commentator Sforno has a different take on it.

“Given by themselves, for they gave themselves of their own volition to My work, and given by the children of Israel who provide the means for the sustenance of the Levites with their offerings, so that My work will be done by all through their participation.”

What God wants in return for saving our firstborns is that we all participate in carrying our temple around, and in song. God wants us to find creative ways to keep this tradition moving from place to place and generation to generation. And just as importantly, God wants art, music, poetry. We owe God art. We owe God poets. We owe God singing. We owe God the sustenance of a small but dedicated group of people who will keep our boat floating along on the sea of song and change.

Please join us this evening at 6pm for a levitical Kabbalat Shabbat with poetry and music.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

The Right Word

Dear friends,

Before I offer some words of Torah as reflections on the last week, I’d like to thank you all for bringing such wonderful energy to the Kumah Festival. It was amazing to see so many of you at the pier last Sunday, and to get your warm responses, your attention and your spirit through the Zoom screens over the last seven weeks. I’m so grateful to all of the many talented participants and curators, to Susan, Maia and Judy who formed this festival with me and gave it life. Of the many incredible moments in the festival, one that stands out is watching people of a huge range of ages attach their prayers of fabric to Suzanne Tick’s vertical loom. Many of you brought family heirlooms cut into strips, cloths that belonged to or were made by grandparents, parents, loved ones. Some brought fabric from happy moments like birthday parties, others wrote onto the fabrics names of people who were killed in the latest round of violence in the holy land, or prayers for the planet and the city. The communal piece of art that Suzanne offered us expresses the heart of what we were getting at in this festival: that our deepest questions, fears and yearnings can be weaved together as a thing of beauty, that we have the capacity to transform our garbage into a worthy offering to God or universe, that art can be the communal action through which we overcome despair. For those of you who couldn’t be with us on Sunday, we are hoping to bring back the loom in the future and offer more opportunities to add prayers of fabric to it.

During these last 11 days of fighting I have found myself turning to the Book of Psalms. I was looking for emotional support, for insight into the nature of humanity, for echoes of the eternal in the current turbulence, for the poetry of justice. The verses that made me stop, reread, wonder, were those dealing with speech and silence, like these from Psalm 38:

וַאֲנִ֣י כְ֭חֵרֵשׁ לֹ֣א אֶשְׁמָ֑ע וּ֝כְאִלֵּ֗ם לֹ֣א יִפְתַּח־פִּֽיו׃
וָאֱהִ֗י כְּ֭אִישׁ אֲשֶׁ֣ר לֹא־שֹׁמֵ֑עַ וְאֵ֥ין בְּ֝פִ֗יו תּוֹכָחֽוֹת׃

I am like the deaf, who cannot hear,
like the mute, who cannot speak;
I have become like one who does not hear,
whose mouth can offer no rebuke.

When David writes these lines he is in a deeply troubled state. All around him he sees wickedness. Emotionally he is broken. Voices are coming at him from all directions to do this and feel that. Instead of standing and acting against the wickedness, of answering the violent challenges, he falls into silence.

כִּֽי־לְךָ֣ יְהוָ֣ה הוֹחָ֑לְתִּי אַתָּ֥ה תַ֝עֲנֶ֗ה אֲדֹנָ֥י אֱלֹהָֽי׃

Adonai, I wait for you; you will answer, Adonai my God.

This is not a typical request from David to God. David relies on God for strength, but he knows he is the actor in the world, not God. But in this case he wants God to speak for him.

How does one speak about the horrors of the world? How does a person choose the right words, the appropriate ideas, the voice that will express the totality of the situation, not just one small piece of it? How can you know the utterances that will be useful toward bringing the terror to an end? ‘It is beyond me, God,’ he says, ‘You do the speaking!’

Despite the pull toward silence I found myself immersed in the desperate noise this week. I spent more time on Facebook than ever before. I posted articles and thoughts, engaged in conversations with people back home and here in the US (including some of you), argued, supported, listened, searched.

Don’t get me wrong, I have had a clear opinion of what this was about the whole time. I expressed some of that to you when this started. And still the strongest pull, the wisest choice usually seemed to be silence. סייג לחכמה שתיקה said our sages, “silence is a fence around wisdom.” But how could we allow ourselves to disengage, to allow wickedness to thrive?

The outside world is a mirror of the internal. War is an expression of our mind. Speaking the right words to others is as hard as speaking the right words to ourselves.

The Sons of Korach, whose poetry also appears in the Psalms had the following to say:

הַרְפּוּ וּדְעוּ כִּי אָנֹכִי אֱלֹהִים

Let go and know that I am God.

The word Harpoo, which I translated as “let go” can be understood in various ways. Many translate it “Be still.” The ceasefire that was thankfully announced yesterday might lead us to translate the word simply as “Stop” or “Cease.” To me there is a letting go that happened yesterday, and a letting go that we’ve been working on all week. A letting go of our certainty, of our narratives, of our frustrations, of our need to win unwinnable arguments or battles through inflicting decisive blows on our adversaries. All week has been a struggle to accept again that our life-long work to improve the world has not changed it in the ways we wanted it to change. Something else, another force, another intelligence is at play, and it goes so far beyond our ability, so far beyond our comprehension, so far beyond our words.

When we let go, in the silence, the no-space of the pause, we can sometimes allow the right word to come to our lips.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

It's All Torah

Dear friends,

Sunday evening we will gather to celebrate Shavuot, the culminating event of our Kumah Festival. The events in Israel/Palestine can be seen as a shadow over the celebration, which they no doubt are, but they can also be seen as an enhancement of our task: to receive the Torah.

Torah is a thing of beauty, a piece of divinity, a crystalized gem of justice. It is also ugly, human and morally wrong. Accepting the Torah is accepting life itself with all its beauty, complexity and horror.

In the Brachot tractate of the Talmud we find the following comic story:

Rav Kahana entered and lay beneath his teacher, Rav’s bed. He heard Rav chatting and laughing with his wife and having relations with her. Rav Kahana said to Rav: Your mouth is like one who has never seen a cooked dish! (meaning your behavior is lustful) Rav said to him: Kahana, you are here? Get out of here! This is no way to behave. Rav Kahana said to him: It is Torah, and I must learn.

A similar story relates Rabbi Akiva following his teacher into the bathroom and observing the intricacies of his defecation practice, and then reporting to his students what he learned from it. When they challenge his impertinence, Akiva gives the same answer: It is Torah, and I must learn.

Torah is life, and life is not always pretty. Receiving the Torah is accepting the gift of life with everything that comes with it. Many Israelis will be doing it in bomb shelters. Palestinians in Gaza marked Eid Al Fitr yesterday in their homes, or in the rubble of what was their home. This is humanity, which points to the enormity of our task.

Our task lies in our ability to enter the truth of human reality, to see it, to know it, and from within that knowledge to transcend it. “Now that my eye has seen you,” says Job to God toward the end of the Book, “I am at ease with the human condition.” He could only accept God once he looked Him squarely in the eye. Then he was able to transcend.

Our gathering by the water on Sunday (6pm at Pier 45) will help us transcend. We will see one another in person after many long months (!). We will hear beautiful live music from three amazing musicians, Mike McGinnis, Frank London and Tripp Dudley. We will watch a dance performance by the incredible Davalois Fearon, who we met earlier in the festival. We will attach our fabric-prayers to Suzanne Tick’s vertical loom, and create our own Wailing Wall of art. And we will undress the Torah and sing with her sing her song of life.

Bring your kids, friends, and strips of fabric - this will be special.

I can’t wait to see you all in person on the pier.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha