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On This Week's Death Penalty
by Rabbi Misha
After Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death in 1962, several prominent Jewish intellectuals and artists wrote to President Ben Zvi a letter urging him to commute the sentence.
Dear friends,
After Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death in 1962, several prominent Jewish intellectuals and artists wrote to President Ben Zvi a letter urging him to commute the sentence. Executing him, they argued, would be the not Jewish thing to do, and would put the country on a path of violence and retribution. Ben Gurion convened the cabinet to debate the matter. They decided against it, recommended to the president that the petition be denied, and hours later Eichmann was hanged. I thought of these events this week after the jury's recommendation for the death penalty was announced in the trial of Robert Bowers, who committed the mass murder at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018.
The cases are different, of course. But they are similar in attitudes toward capital punishment. The Knesset made an exception to the law in order to be able to execute Eichmann. Similarly, most American Jews oppose the death penalty on principal, but many are in favor of the death penalty in this case.
The families of the victims are split on the matter. And so, it seems are American Jews in general. Some see the verdict as an important statement against antisemitism at a moment in which it is on the rise. Others experience it as a moral test that we are failing: can we live up to our values even when we are under attack?
In June, Conrad spoke to these questions at his Bar Mitzvah. Looking at both the Torah and our society today, he asked: what is the purpose of punishment? "Shouldn’t we be asking how punishment can change people for the better," he challenged. When he spoke to this incident that followed the Eichmann trial, it was as an example of a case in which punishment cannot change the perpetrator. "When people cannot change, a different attitude is needed." This different attitude has to do with the other people involved: the victims' families, the synagogue community, the Jewish community and society at large.
It's hard to know what people need. But as a society I tend to think that we need less violence, so I felt sad when I read the verdict. Our ancestors in the Talmud expressed it like this:
"A Sanhedrin that executed [more than] one person in a week is called a “murderous” [court]. Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya states: “[More than] one person in 70 years [would be denoted a murderous court].” Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva state: “If we had been members of the Sanhedrin, no defendant would ever have been executed.”
Ultimately, I land somewhere between Rabbi Elazar Ben Azarya and team Rabbi Tarfon/Rabbi Akiva. There was a type of healing that the nation needed in 1962 when EIchmann's ashes were scattered into the Mediterranean. The world is better without him, like it would be better without Robert Bowers. On the other hand, Israel's path of violence that emerged since 62' is impossible to ignore. Perhaps that was the fatal moment in which the scales tilted. Perhaps the test was failed. Perhaps deciding whether another person lives or dies is an act of hubris that goes beyond considerations of benefit and loss, which should remain between a person and their God no matter how horrific their deeds.
I pray for the healing of the victims' families and friends, for the three congregations who lost dear members that day, for the demise of hate in this country, for the rise of softness and the fall of violence. Let us continue the final act of those who lost their lives that day: the act of coming together for prayer.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
This Week in Israel
by Rabbi Misha
A few people have reached out to me with concern and questions over this week's events in Israel. Here's a summary of events, with some reflections.
Dear friends,
A few people have reached out to me with concern and questions over this week's events in Israel. Here's a summary of events, with some reflections.
Tisha B’Av this year began early. On Monday morning, the sixth of Av the extremist Israeli government ignored millions of protesters out in the streets and passed a law designed to give the executive branch unchecked power. You can’t make this stuff up: the law removed the court’s ability to use the “reasonability clause,” which it has used many times to prevent the government from doing something completely unreasonable. The last time it was used was when Netanyahu wanted to appoint Aryeh Deri to Minister of the Interior, only a few years after Deri had been released from prison for corruption and bribery as Israel’ Interior Minister. This seemed unreasonable to the courts, so Netanyahu worked to undo the law in order to reappoint him.
This is the first of a series of laws that would effectively end the separation of powers in Israel, and in the process allow Netanyahu off the hook for the corruption, bribery and breach of trust cases that he is currently fighting in the courts.
But this isn’t just about corruption. It’s about the nature of the State going forward. The day after the law was passed, Ultra Orthodox members of the governing coalition brought forth a Basic Law, the closest thing Israel has to a constitution, that would make Torah study considered national service. This would solidify the current state of affairs for ever: ultra orthodox Jews get paid to study Torah, while all the other Jews go to the army.
Though the law was shelved for now, the direction is clear: a corrupt theocracy. In a country that will be 25% ultra orthodox within twenty five years (33% of the Jewish population), and where the ultra orthodox have long abandoned their non-nationalist leanings in favor of massive financial support this is not surprising.
This is why Israelis are in the streets in such huge numbers (recent polls show 2 in 3 Israelis oppose Monday’s legislation), and why Israelis and Israel lovers everywhere are so broken this week. Tisha B’Av is the day on which Habayit charav, "the home was destroyed." That’s what it felt like on Monday: We are witnessing the dissolution of the Israel that was.
On Wednesday evening there was a special gathering of mostly Israelis to mourn together. We gathered on the roof of Kane Street Synagogue to sing classic songs we all know, speak our pain and anger, and cry as we listened to each other expose our inner fracture – all in Hebrew. On the traditional day of the destruction of our collective home we came home to our beloved language. Say what you will about the injustice embedded into the Zionist project, about the ethnocracy that calls itself a democracy, about the oxymoron called “Jewish and democratic” (all certainly up for debate) no one can take away the revival of the Hebrew language from the Jews of the 19th and 20th centuries. We came home to that greatest accomplishment of our people, and to fret over the possibility of losing the one place where Hebrew lives.
None of us expect it to happen overnight. Practically speaking there are a few possibilities for what happens next with the legal coup. In September the court will discuss the appeal. If it sides with the people and strikes down the law, the government will either accept the court’s decision, which would effectively end the coup, or refuse to accept it. If it refuses, which Netanyahu has already signaled may be the case, the country will be thrown into a constitutional crisis. Then it will come down to who the armed forces will listen to, the government or the court. The head of the Internal Security Services has already told his team that in that case they will side with the court. That’s good news. But the court may choose not to intervene, in which case the government will continue to the next set of laws, likely fire those in positions of power that are in its way and appoint more corrupt cronies, all of which would spiral the country further toward dictatorship.
Vulnerable groups such as LGBTQ, women, leftists and of course non-Jews are scared. Civil war is a real possibility. My friends and family express a strange combination of sadness, anger, despair and determination. I think a lot about my nephew, Inbal these days. In March he's supposed to join the army. He probably saw the huge sign that kids his age unfurled in Tel Aviv: לא נמית ולא נמות בשירות ההתנחלות, "We won't kill and we won't die in service of the settlements." He knows the injustice. He's been hearing about the thousands of reservists refusing to serve a dictatorial government. And he's also just a young dude who wants to do what his friends are doing, to serve like his father and grandfather did.
As the vote took place Monday morning on my computer’s live stream, my sound system was mysteriously playing in repeat Rabbi Nachman’s song: “Even in the hiddenness within the hiddenness the Blessed Holy One exists.” We don’t know where this is all heading. Certainly, the shades have come off of the eyes of the complacent Israeli center. That may end up proving more significant than any law this coalition can push through. And maybe this will all shake up the dilapidated structure of the country into a new, more just one.
The most significantly hopeful thing I learned in that gathering Wednesday night was about traffic. Last week, when tens of thousands of Israelis were trying to get to the mass march up to Jerusalem organized by the protest leaders, people were stuck for hours in a massive traffic jam. I heard reports of people peeing in bottles as they wait, of old men and women climbing mountains by foot to protest. But the most amazing thing was hearing that in this traffic jam people did not honk once, nor did they try to cut the traffic line. This is unnatural behavior for Israelis. And possibly a sign of a deep consciousness shift. Who knows?
For now, the protest leaders in New York are vehemently calling for American Jews to join the protests here. They make a difference. American Jewish voices against the legal coup make this government nervous. Look out for notices about upcoming demos, and join us in making our position clear. Democracy, however flawed, is better than the alternatives.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Living With Disaster
by Rabbi Misha
This message won’t be helpful. I will suggest a positive, even a wonderful outcome of certain disasters.
Dear friends,
This message won’t be helpful. I will suggest a positive, even a wonderful outcome of certain disasters. But that outcome will be experienced down the line, after we’re all gone. Eighteen years ago in a talkback after a play of mine about Israeli Palestinian issues young me insisted that even if it doesn’t happen in our lifetime, there will be a solution, a positive solution to the conflict. One of the activists on the panel, Yigal Bronner took the mic and said: that solution does not interest me. And we all knew he was right. If you decide to keep reading, you’ll have to do it Lishmah, for its own sake, and give up on a temporary reward in feeling or thinking or experience.
Yesterday there was a mini reunion of a big group of high school friends of mine. I video called in to say hi and see the excited old faces laughing, kissing one another, examining one another lovingly with their eyes that see the person that once inhabited the frame. Amidst the smiles there was a clear message: “Save us a spot in Brooklyn. Three bedrooms would be great.” A similar sentiment was expressed in my following phone call by a good friend who had just gotten back from Israel: “It’s finished.” They both meant that the country we grew up was done. Despite the inspiring protests – over six months of massive weekly demonstrations desperately and passionately trying to keep Israel from losing what’s left of its democratic structure – the feeling is that the disaster has already begun.
I’m thinking about disasters this week because Tisha B’Av is this coming Thursday. That’s the day that commemorates the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the beginning of exile, of being strangers and strange lands. From the 17th of Tamuz, just over two weeks ago, which marks the beginning of the Roman siege on Jerusalem, and culminating on Tisha B’Av, I allow myself to acknowledge the bountiful disasters we live in. I mourn and suffer them.
Certainly the current state of affairs in Israel/Palestine is high on my list. There are countless horrors taking place there I could enumerate. But the one that broke my heart most palpably was the story of Eyad El-Hallaq. Eyad was a fellow Jerusalemite with autism who was chased down and shot dead by Israeli police on his way to his special-needs school. On the 17th of Tamuz, July 6th, the Israeli courts completely acquitted the officer who killed Eyad. His mother, who spoke days later at the demonstration to prevent the legal “overhaul,” said that "they killed her son a second time" that day.
I don’t have to tell you that the Israel/Palestine is one tiny corner of the disaster-infested globe. Nor do I have to tell you that we carry these disasters with us and suffer from them every day. You may have noticed, for example, that it’s really hot out...
And yet, we keep living, laughing like my friends back home, walking the narrow bridge. We can’t live in what Jacque Lacan, the French bad-boy Psycho Analyst called “The real,” this abyss where everything we’ve built to keep living is broken, shattered, dissolved. So, we escape into other realms, in Lacan’s language the Imaginary or the Symbolic, and in other terms maybe putting one step in front of the other.
I promised you something positive. I believe I may have even used the wonderful.
Our prime symbol this week for the disaster we live with is the destruction of the Temple. That event really did break down all of the structures we had put in place to make our national life function. But the truth is that the religion that began as soon as the Temple was destroyed is an enormous improvement to what preceded the disaster. Animal sacrifice, for example was replaced with prayer, or in some interpretations with acts of loving kindness. The attachment to land was softened and instead came an emphasis on learning anywhere. The tradition essentially embraced disaster as a central piece of our national psyche. We were wanderers in physical and spiritual realms, thanks to the disaster and the constant awareness to it. When we carry the disaster with us we can be awakened to the contradictory groundlessness of existence; contradictory because we walk the earth, one step in front of the other even as we sense the nothingness we’re stepping on.
In the 17th century a series of disasters brought a spiritual desert into Jewish learning. “Wisdoms that aren’t wisdom,” חכמות שאינן חכמות as Rabbi Nachman might call it, took over yeshivas. They had lost touch with what was beneath the teachings and instead focused on impressive yet empty brain acrobatics known as Pilpul. It was out of this morass that the new Torah of Hassidism emerged, which continues to have a massive influence on our people. One of the central pieces of Hassidism is the value of prayer. In prayer any person of any level of knowledge or observance can walk into the garden of higher experience. The early Hassidim like Rabbi Nachman took the practice of mindless recitation of prayer as an expression of total devotion, and turned it into a living, transcendent experience in which a person can encounter the divine. Had the earlier disasters not taken place, people like you and me would probably not be gathering for Jewish prayer today. On a personal level, I think it’s fair to say that without that shift that took over the Jewish world I would not be a rabbi, and who knows what being Jewish would even mean to me, if anything.
And yet, for the people experiencing those disasters, be it in 17th century Poland, First century Palestine, or any other time period there is, as the Book of Lamentations puts it: “no one to comfort me.” אין לי מנחם״" We who live through disasters cannot escape suffering. We can, however, be edified by pausing our constant distraction of building up the Imaginary and the Symbolic, and turn our attention to the abyss of “the real.” We can stop our walking, not put one foot in front of the other, but sit them both down to be with what is, to know the mysterious cycles, to breathe in and out.
I hope you can join me on Thursday at 10am at THIS Zoom link for our second class on Rabbi Nachman’s notion of The Vacated Space, which inspired much of this letter. You can catch up by reading part 1 of Torah 64 in Likutei Moharan.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Scratched Consciousness and Subversive Scribes
by Rabbi Misha
Several times a day a walk by the Torah scroll in my closet. It took some time to get used to living with it, getting over the fear of something happening to it, of being in the constant presence of such a revered, holy object. Holiness comes with a certain degree of intensity.
Dear friends,
Several times a day a walk by the Torah scroll in my closet. It took some time to get used to living with it, getting over the fear of something happening to it, of being in the constant presence of such a revered, holy object. Holiness comes with a certain degree of intensity.
This particular scroll has a history that makes it even more precious. When I became its caretaker, the scribe showed me a stamp from 1968 of the Israeli Ministry of Religion in Tel Aviv. The stamp acknowledges receipt of the scroll from Romania, where it was found. “It’s around 100 years old,” the scribe told me. “We cannot know exactly when it was written, nor how it survived the war. In 68’ it was brought to Tel Aviv, and in the early 2000’s it was brought to Brooklyn.”
There was one other detail that the scribe gave me: “The very stringent would not necessarily consider it Kosher.” You can see tiny corrections in a couple of places in the scroll. There are a couple tiny holes in the scroll in other places. When I took it to my rabbi before accepting it, he examined it and approved it for use. Since then this scroll has been central to the coming into Mitzvot of hundreds of people of different ages, has been studied and read by hundreds more kids at our school, and walked around in services and holidays with many of you.
I sometimes tell people that the scroll is a survivor. Survivors, be it of the Holocaust or any trauma, carry scars. They are teachers of deep wisdom and truth, who hold their experiences in their bodies. Such is this beloved scroll that I live with. How could it be right for this scroll to be unblemished?
And the truth is that we are all survivors, not in the sense that we physically survived the horror, but in the sense that we live in its shadow. Like this scroll, we live in the world in which that happened, which tells us us that things like it happen today. We live with a scratched consciousness. This Torah is kosher because it is like us. It is the Torah that makes the most sense today, without compromising the string that ties it to eternity.
Last week’s Parashah tells us about Pinchas, an imperfect being filled with rage and jealousy. After he kills someone out of righteous anger God promises Pinchas “my covenant of peace,” את בריתי שלום״”.
But the scribes perform a subversive act of Tikkun, of correction or healing to the text. They take the word Shalom, and leave a tiny chip in it. Every Torah scroll in every generation contains this slight adjustment, in which the letter Vav of the word Shalom; peace or wholeness; is chipped.
This morning, after my friend Ghiora taught me this amazing fact, I opened my Torah scroll and read the verse with the broken wholeness aloud:
הִנְנִ֨י נֹתֵ֥ן ל֛וֹ אֶת־בְּרִיתִ֖י שָׁלֽוֹם
I hereby give him my covenant of wholeness.
May we accept our covenant of chipped wholeness full heartedly, and may our subversive scribes and the scrolls they produce live long, beautiful lives.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
סתירה למישאל / A Contradiction Psalm
by Rabbi Misha
סתירה למישאל / A Contradiction Psalm
Dear friends,
סתירה למישאל / A Contradiction Psalm
Without contradictions we would be lost in a desert of boredom.
Without contradictions there would be no depth.
Without contradictions meaning would be lost.
Without contradictions we would not laugh.
Without contradictions living would be terribly easy.
Without contradictions learning would have an end.
We praise You, oh awesome contradiction at the heart of our lives.
Without contradictions God would be a comprehensible concept.
Without contradictions friendship would dull.
Without contradictions what would I love?
Without contradictions judgement would thrive.
Without contradictions no prayer would rise.
Without contradictions our lives would make very nice sense.
We hate You, oh awesome contradiction at the heart of our lives.
Without contradictions my faith would turn to stone.
Without contradictions the inanimate would have no secret life.
Without contradictions we could know it all.
Without contradictions we would know nothing.
Without contradictions death would lose its mystery.
Without contradictions poetry would die.
We love You, oh awesome contradiction at the heart of our lives.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Nothing
by Rabbi Misha
I’ve been immersed in thinking about nothingness, and then, at a bedtime story to Manu I came upon this. This is my inspiration for Shabbat this week.
Dear friends,
Dear friends,
I’ve been immersed in thinking about nothingness, and then, at a bedtime story to Manu I came upon this. This is my inspiration for Shabbat this week.
“What I like doing best is Nothing”, Said Christopher Robin
“How do you do Nothing” asked Pooh after he had wondered for a long time.
“Well, it’s when people call out at you just as you’re going off to do it, “What are you going to do Christopher Robin?”; and you say, “Oh, Nothing”; and then you go and do it.
It means just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”
“Oh!”; said Pooh.
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Demanding Answers from God
by Rabbi Misha
I’ve learned a tremendous amount from thirteen-year-olds these five weeks.
Dear friends,
Dear friends,
I’ve learned a tremendous amount from thirteen-year-olds these five weeks. Nine Bnai Mitzvah ceremonies of Shul families took place between May 6th and June 19th, and another is coming up tomorrow morning (as well as our three Bnot Adult Bnot Mitzvah on Shavuot.) Each one of these events has been a unique, deep and energizing experience. It’s hard to describe the incredible thing that happens when a young person takes ownership of their faith world and shares what they’ve learned with their community. The musicians and I are simultaneously emotionally exhausted and uplifted by so many moving moments.
Each one of these youngsters: Adeline, Annabelle, Boaz, Dov, Levon, Conrad, Sammy, Athena, August, and Beau (and I’m sure Oscar will be as well tomorrow!) left me with deep insights. Adeline’s gorgeous Torah chanting (which it looks like you’ll all hear these High Holidays) opened up my heart to the verse “each person will return to their home, and to their family.” Annabelle offered the amazing definition: “God is where I am right now.” Boaz brought in his community by asking several loved ones to read his deep Dvar Torah, in a way that made us all feel a part of a whole. Levon found a humble way to say God is me, and having confidence in myself is having confidence in God. Dov spoke personally and meaningfully to each of the four people in his immediate family in a way that few other kids his age would do. Conrad showed us how we, as a society not only have what to learn from the way punishment is treated in the bible, but he brought us in touch with the purpose of punishment in a way that made me question all kinds of behaviors I notice myself adopting. Sammy told his parents the ways in which they have taught him what good leadership looks like. Athena and August took their family on a pilgrimage Speyer, Germany, where their ancestors came from, and which they still carry as their family name, and there, in the place where the oldest synagogue in Europe still stands despite history, they cracked open such Hebrew words as “Tikkun,” or healing.
The last one I had the honor of presiding over, on Juneteenth, was Beau’s. Since it’s a little fresher in my mind I’ll share a little more about it. The Talmud tells us: חנוך לנער על פי דרכו, “Educate each youngster according to their way.” This was an example of the tremendous rewards that come to everyone involved from a true listening to a young person’s way. Many young people struggle with the concept of God. Many struggle with the B Mitzvah and the huge amount of work it requires. Many struggle with religion, with the ancient that seems nonsensical, with the seemingly random particular requirements for this ritual. But few express it, and fewer still act on it. Beau did.
Through continuing conversations between Beau, Aviya his wonderful teacher and me, we landed on a few important changes to the ceremony. Instead of Adonai, with its patriarchal tone (often translated as Lord) we used Havaya, a gender fluid reworking of the four letters of the name of God YHVH, which made more sense to Beau, who goes by the pronoun “they.”
Instead of the V’Ahavta, Beau read a poem, which they followed with an honest explanation of why they chose to make this change. Unconditional obedience is the source of too many terrible human actions, they taught. We need a different formulation of the love at the heart of this prayer, Beau argued.
Finally, after chanting their Torah portion beautifully, Beau proceeded to criticize it with all their heart. “We need to demand answers from God,” they said. That is a wonderful way to summarize what each of these Bnai Mitzvah did. They worked through their feelings about the tradition, about God, about family. They left no stone unturned as they sought to reach a clear understanding of their perspective on their parashah and the Torah in general. They demanded an answer for why they were doing this ritual, and shared some piece of that answer with us.
I can’t wait to experience Oscar’s demands from God tomorrow morning, and to find out what answers he found during his process.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
The Empty Space
by Rabbi Misha
On Wednesday morning I joined the Shul’s Meditation Chevrutah for the weekly meditation.
Dear friends,
On Wednesday morning I joined the Shul’s Meditation Chevrutah for the weekly meditation. I had spent the week studying the Hassidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bretslov, who was deeply interested in meditation, although his meditation practice was likely quite different to the sitting meditation of Buddhist influence that is most common today. Before we began, I offered the group a word about Nachman’s notion of החלל הפנוי, the empty space (not to be confused with Peter Brook's!) This is the space of not knowing, of doubt, sometimes even of depression. It is the space of lack, which is also a pregnant space, except that what will come out of it is not known. It’s the primordial space of pre-creation. And it also seems that this non-space is a desirable destination for meditators.
Emptiness is a tricky concept for Buddhists as well. Like Nachman, they also refuse to make up their minds about whether emptiness is empty or full. My brother, a Buddhism scholar even wrote a book called The Fullness of Emptiness. The Heart Sutra tells us that:
“Whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form.”
In Kabbalah the empty space denotes the place from which God removed herself to allow for creation to take place. But this couldn’t possibly contradict the maxim: אין עוד מלבדו, Besides Him there is nothing. In other words, necessarily that empty space is God too. This contradiction may have something to do with why Nachman tells us that:
אִי אֶפְשָׁר לְהַשִּׂיג כְּלָל בְּחִינַת חָלָל הַפָּנוּי, עַד לֶעָתִיד לָבוֹא.
It is not possible at all to grasp the empty space, until Messiah comes. (or in his words: until the future comes).
But all of this should not deter us from seeking to find that elsuive place of emptiness. The monastic Thanissaru Biku describes emptiness as “a mode of perception in which one neither adds anything to nor takes anything away from what is present, noting simply, "There is this." When we are able to simply hear sound, for example, without judging it or even categorizing it, that is an empty experience in the best sense of the word. In these moments we are able to lose ourselves to a simplicity of being.
This is similar to the Hassidic notion of Bittul, or abnegation, of which Nachman was one of the early messengers. Bittul is the act of losing your self and becoming part of the אין, the nothingness. Nachman writes:
דע שעיקר הביטול שאדם מבטל ישותו ונעשה אין ונכלל באחדות השם יתברך אין זה אלא על ידי התבודדות
Know, that the principle of Bittul (abnegation), in which a person cancels their is-ness and becomes nothingness, and is enveloped in the oneness of the Blessed God, is only accomplished through meditation.
I do have to note that the word I’m translating as “meditation,” Hitbodedoot is normally understood as a kind of self-isolation, in which a person goes out to the forest or some other deserted place alone. But the type of quiet and reflection that I imagine the Hassidic masters must have sought in the forest is exactly the empty space that we were seeking on Wednesday morning with our eyes closed in meditation. When you carve out a special space and time, Rabbi Nachman tells us, “at night when people are asleep, in a spot where people won’t show up, then you can vacate your heart from everything and anything, and you can arrive at the cancelation of all that is. That is when you will be a part of the oneness of the Blessed God.”
May this Shabbat vacate our hearts and minds from everything and anything, and let us feel the peace of being a part of the unity at the heart of existence.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Alive and Wrestling
by Rabbi Misha
I walk into a classroom at the Cobble Hill branch of our Hebrew school and find 9 eleven and twelve year olds singing Hineh Ma Tov.
Dear friends,
I walk into a classroom at the Cobble Hill branch of our Hebrew school and find 9 eleven and twelve year olds singing Hineh Ma Tov. They continue with Shma, VeAhavta, Mi Khamocha, and the Amidah, ending with Oseh Shalom. None of them knew all these prayers a few months back. Several of them began the year with no knowledge of Hebrew, close to no knowledge of prayer, and a slight understanding of what this faith is that they belong to. To see them all, through their jaded pre-teen skepticism sing together, then read Hebrew and chant Torah trop amazes me. When a conversation emerges about whether a non-binary person should wear a kipah or not, I know that the deeper lesson has sunk in: this tradition is theirs to shape. They own it for themselves, and instead of ditching it because of its problematic history they have taken on its reframing in relation to what has been passed down to them.
The fourth-grade class is busy working on a collective mural. This year’s theme was the Year of the Storytellers, in which students were introduced to stories and storytellers from different periods in Jewish history, in an attempt to give them a sense of the freedom with which our people have played with the Torah and the tradition. They learned about different forms of storytelling and different layers of Torah study: the simple meaning, the hinted meaning, the studied meaning and the secret meaning. The Fourth graders have spent much of the year making comics of their own midrashim, their takes on biblical stories. When I walk in they are working on their final project: a comic strip depicting many different options to understand the story of Jacob wrestling the angel.
Their drawings offer answers to several questions: Was he asleep? Was it a dream? Did someone really come, or was it an internal struggle? If someone came – who was it? If it was internal – what was he struggling with? Some of their depictions come from rabbinic sources, others from their own imaginations. There are depictions of Jacob wrestling with himself, with a snake, with Death and with his brother. This is the work of Torah study. Cracking it open with the help of questions, empathy and imagination.
The younger kids faced the story on a simpler level, but their life-sized painting also ended up looking like some nighttime depiction of two people either wrestling or hugging. Our small group of special needs students created a song about how Jacob felt in that moment before he goes to meet his brother Esau, whom he feared still wanted to kill him. Listen to the beautiful song by Yotam Ben-Or, Koby and Jacob HERE.
The sixth and seventh graders took the notion of wrestling to a more personal level. They were tasked with taking photographs that depict their struggles with being Jewish, with the tradition and with the interplay between their secular lives and their faith world. Sol offered a photo of him playing a Christian hymn on the violin. Sebastian took a shot of a Kyrie Irving Jersey. Roni took one of Jewish objects in her home, including menorahs, a Yarzheit candle and a Jewish cookbook. Others shared photos they took during our spring tour of the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
To end our year, we gathered with parents and grandparents on the eve of Shavuot to sing and read Torah. Our guiding question came from a six-year-old: Why do we even need the Torah? Kids of varying ages responded with answers about our history, about the importance of structure and laws, about storytelling and imagination, about connection with our ancestors. Am Yisrael Chai, I thought to myself: The people of Israel live!
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
The End Has Dawned
by Rabbi Misha
Before I say some words about the end times, I'd like to thank all the artists, technicians, designers, curators, activists, prayer leaders, producers and directors of the Kumah Festival.
Dear friends,
Before I say some words about the end times, I'd like to thank all the artists, technicians, designers, curators, activists, prayer leaders, producers and directors of the Kumah Festival. It was a truly special succession of events thanks to you all. Special thanks to Susan and Judy my partners in crime.
And now to the end:
There is no end. And yet there is an end. These contradictory truths are expressed with two Hebrew words, both of which mean “end.” Sof is the type of end that only exists as an idea. "Sof Sof," we say, or "Sof kol sof," the end of all ends, meaning "Finally!" But that only means that our experience of waiting or anticipation is over and we have arrived where we wanted to start from. The truth about Sof is best expressed through one of the great names of God, Eyn Sof, literally “There is no end.”
The other word for end in Hebrew is Ketz. This is closer to the type of end that death offers. Perhaps the best-known phrase using this word is Ketz Hayamim, the end of days. This seems to refer to some imaginary time in the future, but in our lives ketz hayamim is when our days end and we pass on to the next stage.
But even Ketz denotes a beginning. The verb Hikitz, meaning to wake up, is a conjugation of the same root. Hebrew even has the wonderful expression Hikitz Haketz, meaning the end has woken up, or the end has dawned; which could just as well be translated: The end has ended, or the end has come, taken place, materialized, or in a freer translation: It’s over!
This past holiday weekend was the unofficial beginning of Kayitz, the seasonal embodiment of Ketz, known in these parts as summer. We tend to treat it like the end. No more school (Hallelujah!), for most of us a time of a different relationship with work, a kind of nap from our lives, or perhaps an opportunity to wake up to what’s really going on here. The Israeli rocker Shalom Hanoch expressed it as a transition between two states of mind:
“My eyes are open, but I don’t see the sky, don’t see the blue of the sea, the green of the tree,”
עיני פקוחות מבלי לראות את השמיים
מבלי לראות כחול של ים, ירוק של עץ
Which, when the end is in sight can transform into “My eyes are open to see the sky, the blue of the sea, the green of the tree.”
עיני פקוחות בשביל לראות את השמיים
בשביל לראות כחול של ים, ירוק של עץ.
The question is what are we waking up for? What is the purpose of this end?
Psalm 122 offers us the following:
שָׁוְא לָכֶם מַשְׁכִּימֵי קוּם מְאַחֲרֵי שֶׁבֶת אֹכְלֵי לֶחֶם הָעֲצָבִים .
You're wasting you time:
You who wake up early,
Who delay sitting down,
Who eat the bread of anxiousness.
Rashi explains: Wake up early: “to market.” If you’re waking up early to do God’s work, to help the needy, to make beauty, well great. But if you’re up at 5am to make more money you’re wasting your time. And if you delay sitting down to study, to meditate, to calm your body and mind, to have a conversation with a friend, well, you’re wasting your time. And if you are constantly feeding yourself the anxieties of the world, the stress of living, the noise of running around inside and outside your brain, you are wasting your time.
The verse concludes with these words:
כֵּן יִתֵּן לִידִידוֹ שֵׁנָא
You know what She gives Her beloved? Sleep.
God gives Her friends, those who stop to experience Her presence, the gift of rest.
Tomorrow morning, we will meet for a celebration of the end of the busy season and the beginning of sweet, loving, sleepy Kayitz. We’ll be at a community garden in Fort Greene, with a whole group of wonderful musicians who teach at the School for Creative Judaism. We’ll get to see some students lead us in prayer and check out some of their artwork. We’ll eat bagels, chill out, and prepare ourselves for the coming months of end times. Join us to wake up to summer.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
The Politics of Antisemitism
by Rabbi Misha
Last year a 14-year-old student told me how a video that he posted on social media went viral. The reason: he was wearing his Jewish star necklace.
Dear friends,
Last year a 14-year-old student told me how a video that he posted on social media went viral. The reason: he was wearing his Jewish star necklace. The video had nothing to do with Israel, nothing to do with being Jewish. He didn’t even notice he was wearing his necklace when he posted it. But it went viral with comments like “Free Palestine!” The fact that a teenager can’t wear a Jewish star without being thrown into a political firestorm tells us something about the state of antisemitism in this country, and the tremendous confusion around it.
Meanwhile, yesterday was “Yom Yerushalayim,” Jerusalem Day in Israel, when tens of thousands of flag-waving, kippa-wearing Jewish nationalists triumphantly marched through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem singing such Hebrew rhyming couplets as: “A Jew is a soul, an Arab is a son of a whore,” and “May your village burn down.”
If you think those anecdotes are hard to integrate, try this sequence that happened this week.
On Tuesday, Elon Musk tweeted that George Soros “hates humanity,” and compared him to the arch-villain Magneto. The world’s richest man used a classic antisemitic trope against a Jewish Holocaust survivor. That evening, the Israeli Foreign Ministry criticized Musk, noting that his tweet reeked of antisemitism, and that the phrase “the Jews” shot up to the trending list on Twitter. “Musk’s tweet instantly brought a flood of antisemitic conspiracy theories,” the official Ministry Twitter post wrote.
Then, a rather unbelievable thing happened. On Wednesday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs himself, Eli Cohen, a member of Israel’s right-wing government, came out against his own office’s tweet. He accused his staff of protecting Soros and promised that it won’t happen again. And then, in a complete upside down, inside out moment, Israel’s Minister in Charge of Fighting Antisemitism tweeted that Israelis love Musk, and that “Criticism of Soros...is anything but anti-Semitism, quite the opposite!”
Criticism of Israel, on the other hand, is often characterized by the Israeli government as antisemitic.
On Sunday afternoon we are going to delve further into the question of anti-Jewish hatred as it relates to Israel/Palestine. We will be watching the film Boycott, which looks at state laws in the US that prohibit those working with the state from supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, known as BDS. The film takes no position on BDS. Instead, it shows how what appear as laws to protect Jews, are political manipulations that can have a very different effect. There is antisemitism, and then there are the politics of antisemitism.
We know that hatred of Jews is rampant. We heard it from Norman Lear on Friday, when he described stories of American Jew-haters in the Thirties and Forties. We heard it from Letty Cottin Pogrebin on Monday when she described stories from the Seventies and Eighties. I heard about the scary state of affairs now from Rachel Maddow last week on her podcast. The challenge is to understand how to work against it, even as we work through our own complicated feelings about Israel/Palestine. One thing I learned this week is that I can’t assume that those I would assume are protecting Jews are in fact doing that.
After the screening on Sunday, we will have a talkback with the film’s director, Julia Bacha. I hope this will provide an opportunity for healthy discussion to emerge among us, that will put us on track to fight fiercely and intelligently against the plague of antisemitism in our country, and the myriad of hatreds that come with it.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Kumah Festival Begins!
by Rabbi Misha
Join Us for Kumah Festival 2023
Dear friends,
This evening we launch the third Kumah Festival, and all of us in the leadership team are feeling excited. The New Shul was founded on principles of creative engagement with the world and with the tradition, a search for “an old way that is new,” as Rabbi Nachman said. The Kumah Festival works to continue and expand those principles.
In this week’s Parashah we find the phrase: “You shall eat old, old grain, and you shall clear out the old to make room for the new.” This verse seems to contradict itself. Are we enjoying the ancient or clearing it out to make room for the contemporary? Rashi tells us that the “old, old grain” will be of such good quality that it will have staying power for a long time. Like good wine, it will mature. Its maturation process, however, is related to the renewal that comes in each season.
This exchange between the beauty of the ancient with the abundance of new ideas is what lies at the heart of the Kumah Festival. One infuses the other. When we will be celebrating Norman Lear this evening, we will be experiencing a century of creativity that sprung out of centuries of Jewish ideas. When we will be listening to Letty Cottin Pogrebin on Monday, we will be exploring our generation’s tactic toward women’s empowerment in relation to the incredible work of Second Wave Feminism. When we come together to watch the film Boycott we will be exploring a flawed contemporary response to a hatred that has accompanied us forever, and continues to plague us. And on Shavuot night we will celebrate our most important ancient gift, the Torah, in a new way, with ancient Hebrew, modern English, dance, music and wine.
I hope you can join us for our rejuvenating spring festival!
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Pst-Dobbs
by Rabbi Misha
In 1955 in Queens, NY, a small crowd gathered to say Kaddish for recently deceased Cyral Cottin.
Dear friends,
In 1955 in Queens, NY, a small crowd gathered to say Kaddish for recently deceased Cyral Cottin. Her fifteen-year-old daughter, Letty was told that she would not count towards the minyan because she was not a man. Letty’s response was to cut herself off from the public sides of her Jewish faith. For fifteen years, she would not affiliate with any synagogue or Jewish organization. At home, she continued to maintain certain rituals. “I wasn’t going to let my alienation from my father’s religious institutions cut me off from the rituals associated with my mother and the home-based Judaism in which my heritage felt ... most real.”
Within twenty years of her mother’s death, Letty would become an enormously influential figure in the Feminist movement. In the seventies, she joined with Gloria Steinem and other women to found Ms. Magazine. For over fifty years Letty has been at the forefront of the fight for women’s empowerment and safety.
In a way, these days it feels like we’re back at square one when it comes to women’s rights. We’ve stood on the shoulders of women like Letty for so long. We aren’t carrying our weight. How long could we expect them to keep carrying us? And yet, here we are, the protections we’ve taken for granted stripped away. Women’s safety is so foundational that when it is at risk all other marginalized groups suffer too.
In the face of all of this, someone like Letty chooses this moment to tell her bravest story yet: Shanda, the story of her life, her ancestors, and the way that shame and secrecy worked to control and suppress the narrative. Instead of lashing out at our broken world, Letty looks inward, at her own story, at the missteps of those closest to her, and even at her own. She tells her story in a way that makes you want to tell your own. To say more truthful things. To be a little more honest about who you are, and where you come from. I can’t think of anything more urgent right now.
Letty’s incredible story will be on full display on May 15th, when she joins us at our Kumah Festival event. I’m especially excited that Erika, my far better half, will be interviewing Letty. Erika’s work in restorative justice is rooted in untangling shame, secrecy and ancestry, and she’s also no stranger to sharing her own private pain as a way to inspire change.
For those of us who can make it, this will be a privilege to hear from Letty, an important Jewish thinker who continues to change our world for the better. I’m sure that this intergenerational conversation between two strong women will help us understand our role in this post-Dobbs moment.
I hope you'll be able to join us!
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Grief Demands Company
by Rabbi Misha
This past Tuesday was Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. On Monday, The New Shul will join with dozens of other organizations to sponsor the Joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony, and on Tuesday we will celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day.
Dear friends,
This past Tuesday was Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. On Monday, The New Shul will join with dozens of other organizations to sponsor the Joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony, and on Tuesday we will celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Day. I’m excited to mark these special days with you all this evening at our Zoom Kabbalat Shabbat, as well as to share with you some reflections about my recent trip to Israel.
I had the honor of being asked by the organizers of the Joint Ceremony, the largest Israeli-Palestinian peace event in history, to put together some Jewish sources that reflect our tradition’s drive toward such an event. I’m glad to share it with you today.
Grief demands company. A mourner needs another to comfort them, as the Talmud says:
אין חבוש מתיר עצמו מבית האסורים, “A prisoner cannot take himself out of a prison cell.”
The Brachot tractate of the Talmud offers a series of stories about rabbis who help their fellow rabbis out of sickness and grief. They all end with the same phrase: “’Give me your hand.’ He gave him his hand and he stood him up.” The joint Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony is an act of mutual support to help us all stand back up, in order to find the strength to fight for a safer and better life in the Holy Land.
The final story in this Talmudic series involves a father who lost ten of his sons. After the tenth one died, Rabbi Yochanan began going everywhere with one of the bones of his tenth son.
In this story he finds Rabbi Eliezer in bed in a dark room, crying.
א''ל אמאי קא בכית אי משום תורה דלא אפשת שנינו אחד המרבה ואחד הממעיט ובלבד שיכוין לבו לשמים ואי משום מזוני לא כל אדם זוכה לשתי שלחנות ואי משום בני דין גרמא דעשיראה ביר א''ל להאי שופרא דבלי בעפרא קא בכינא א''ל על דא ודאי קא בכית ובכו תרוייהו אדהכי והכי א''ל חביבין עליך יסורין א''ל לא הן ולא שכרן א''ל הב לי ידך יהב ליה ידיה ואוקמיה
Rabbi Yochanan said to him "Why are you crying? Is it because of the Torah that you can't study today? If so, we've learned: 'one does more and one does less, as long as their heart is oriented toward heaven'. Or is it because of your poverty? If so, know that not every person merits both wealth in Torah and material wealth. Or Is it because of your children who have died? If so, this is the bone of my tenth son."
Rabbi Eliezer said, "It’s because of this beauty that will disintegrate into dust that I'm crying."
"For this,” said Rabbi Yochanan, “surely it's worth crying." And they cried together.
Eventually Rabbi Yohanan said, "Are you enjoying your suffering?"
Rabbi Eliezer replied: "Neither the suffering nor its reward."
He said: "Give me your hand."
He gave him his hand and he stood him up.
None of us want to suffer. The joint ceremony offers us all the opportunity to grieve together, and then reject the competing narratives of suffering. But transcending the narratives of fear and division takes courage. Death can bring us together, but more often it tears us apart. The Mishna in Avot asks: “Who is brave?” The hero is not one who excels in battle, but one who is able to subdue his instinct toward revenge and hatred.
איזה הוא גיבור? הכובש את יצרו״”
Who is a hero? One who subdues his inclination.”
This is the work that the Combatants for Peace have been engaged in for many years.
Avot of Rabbi Nathan takes the question one step further.
“Who is the hero of heroes,” the rabbis ask. “The one who turns his enemy into his lover.”
"איזהו גיבור שבגיבורים – מי שעושה שונאו לאוהבו”
This is the work that the Bereaved Parents Circle has been engaged in for decades. These two organizations have invited us to take part in this brave work for the sake of our future.
The Jewish tradition teaches that in the future separation between one group and another will be erased. Most people know the Talmudic maxim: “Whoever saves one soul in Israel, it is as if they saved the entire world.” But Maimonides brought down a different, more universal phrasing. Israeli supreme court justice Mishael Cheshin chose to quote Maimonides in his 1991 decision, convicting a Jewish man of the murder of 7 Palestinians.
אדם - כל אדם - הוא עולם לעצמו. אדם - כל אדם - הוא אחד, יחיד ומיוחד. ואין אדם כאדם. מי שהיה לא עוד יהיה ומי שהלך לא ישוב. וכבר לימדנו הרמב"ם על ייחודו של האדם (ספר שופטים, הילכות סנהדרין, יב, ג): "נברא אדם יחידי בעולם, ללמד: שכל המאבד נפש אחת מן העולם - מעלין עליו כאילו איבד עולם מלא, וכל המקיים נפש אחת בעולם - מעלין עליו כאילו קיים עולם מלא". הרי כל-באי עולם בצורת אדם הראשון הם נבראים ואין פני כל-אחד מהם דומין לפני חברו. לפיכך כל-אחד ואחד יכול לומר: בשבילי נברא העולם.
“A person – any person - is a world unto its own. A person – any person – is singular, unique and special. And there is no person like another. Whoever was will not be again, and whoever has gone will not return. And Maimonides has already taught us about the uniqueness of each person (Book of Judges, Rules of Sanhedrin, 12, 3): “Adam was born alone in the world to teach us that whoever destroys one soul in the world it is as if he destroyed the entire world, and whoever saves one soul in the world it is as if they saved the entire world.” Each of those who came to this world in the form of Adam, is a created being. One’s face is always different than another. Therefore, each and every person may say: for me this world was created.”
Psalm 19 offers us the phrase ״צדקו יחדיו״ “Together, they were just.” The justice that we see separately, the psalmist suggests, is less complete than that which we can find together. This Yom Hazikaron, let us join together to grieve, stand each other up, and support one another in the fight for a viable future in the Holy Land, a future of care and justice for all.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Prayers From Rikers
by Rabbi Misha
“My son plays soccer right over there,” Shira told us as she drove us into the parking lot on route to Rikers Island. She parked the car, and our small delegation of rabbis and activists picked up our passes that will allow us to drive over the bridge and enter the jail.
Dear friends,
“My son plays soccer right over there,” Shira told us as she drove us into the parking lot on route to Rikers Island. She parked the car, and our small delegation of rabbis and activists picked up our passes that will allow us to drive over the bridge and enter the jail. The four of us, Shira, Rabbi Margo and Rabbi Becky from Truah and me had come, one week before Passover, to join the prayer services and teach Torah to the Jews who find themselves there. Back in the car we show our passes at the entrance to the bridge that goes over the water from Queens. As we drive across, I’m struck by the massive infrastructure that was built and maintained to create this jail. Across the bridge we’re stopped at a few other checkpoints to see our passes and finally allowed in.
It’s a sprawling place with a number of different facilities. We are going to the Anna M. Cross center, which houses approximately 2000 people. Pretty much everywhere you look on the island you see barbed wire, so much of it that in certain places it almost looks like an art exhibit. We find Rabbi Gabe and the rabbinical intern sitting at a small picnic table, and the four of us guests gather around. Gabe has been one of the three Jewish chaplains on the island for five years. The two of them give us some information about how things work there, describe the living conditions of the people incarcerated there. Most of them live in giant rooms with 50 other people. Those with acute mental conditions stay in a different part of the center in smaller rooms, and as soon as they show any sign of improvement, are sent back to the main dorms.
When we enter the Center we show our passes and our IDs, surrender our phones for safekeeping, go through an airport style metal detector and walk-through. Someone remarks that it feels like a high school other than the bars here and there. Rabbi Gabe describes the quarter mile long hallway that goes towards the dorms. He tells us that there are a few hundred incarcerated people on the island who identify as Jewish, but he doesn’t expect more than ten people at the prayer service, in part because there isn’t enough staff to escort people from the dorms over to the chapel. They used to be allowed to walk on their own sometimes, but that practice was ended during Covid and doesn’t seem like it will be restored. Staffing has been a serious problem there, which became impossible during Covid. This has resulted, in addition to certain limitations, in close to one preventable death in the jail every two weeks in the last few years.
We enter the chapel through the back door, near the small bookshelf they call the library. We marvel as Rabbi Gabe pushes the Jewish part of the ceiling-height three-part stage of sorts into place. The room changes from a church to a synagogue. Within a few minutes, the pews are filling up by around 10 people who came to pray.
Rabbi Gabe had mentioned that the center houses a lot of people with mental health issues, and indeed, this is quite clear about several of them the moment they sit down. We sit among them and say hello. A few of them had grown up in religious Jewish settings, some seem to have begun identifying themselves as Jews in Rikers, and others years earlier. They’re all there to pray, most with yarmulkes on their heads. I am struck by the openness with which they speak about their situation, sharing personal details, some even including their mental diagnoses. I am beginning to understand how important this one weekly prayerful gathering is for these people, who seem starved for meaningful conversation and connection.
As Rabbi Gabe begins the prayers, One of the more orthodox Jews, a sweet, young man named Chaim, parks himself in one of the corners, and begins to put on Tefilin. He invites anyone else who’d like to join him, offering to help them wrap them on. One does, and I watch Chaim lovingly take his friend through the ritual.
Rabbi Gabe leads us through the prayers. Ashrei, Shma, V’ahavta. He then pauses the traditional prayers, and invites people’s personal prayers. A couple hands of hands go up. A young African-American man, who had been talking to himself from the moment he sat down, speaks first. He delivers a heartfelt, straightforward and moving prayer. He asks for a more compassionate justice system. He prays for a particular procedure called Exam 930 to happen much, much earlier in the process. We will learn later that this is a procedure in which a person can be deemed mentally unfit to serve in jail or prison. “This should happen in the first interview,” he says. “For most people it doesn’t take more than a minute to see what their mental condition is like.”
John speaks next. “I was abused my whole life,” he opens. He shares that he suffers from ADD, ADHD, and severe depression. Rabbi Gabe gently offers a sentence or two to each one who speaks, saying things like “we don’t know the reason why we suffer, but I wish you that God spreads the shelter of peace over you.“ Avi tells us he was homeless before he was arrested. He speaks about being on the island for over five months and having trouble making friends, in part due to depression. Rabbi, Gabe tells him that he prays for him to find companionship and friendship. Drake speaks about meditation, and how he meditates often, during all kinds of situations, sometimes, as he walks through the hallways he is meditating. “You can meditate anywhere,” he offers.
We speak The words of Psalm 121. “I raise my eyes to the mountains, from where will my help come? My help comes from Adonai maker of sky and earth.” Then the Rabbi invites me to lead the teaching I had prepared. “There’s a line in the Haggadah, in which we are told that God heard us,” I tell them, and ask: “What does would it mean to be heard by God?” A lively discussion ensues about the different verbs used in the Haggadah: God hears the cry, God sees the suffering, God knows.
“God seeing me is like when I look at myself from the outside. God knowing me is more intimate, from the inside.” Drake has a different take: “God knows the totality, everything, and my minuscule place within it. God sees is a seeing of my particular situation.”
For half an hour we discuss, debate, listen and read until I invite them to close the discussion by reading together the blessing from the Amidah: “Blessed are you, Adonai, who hears our prayers.” Barukh Atah Adonai Shomea Tefilah.”
The guards announce that it’s time to go, and we say a warm goodbye to our study partners, who are genuinely appreciative of the fact that we came, of what we offered, of the time we shared together.
As we walk out, Rabbi Gabe flips the stage back towards the Christian side, and we walk back out to the hallway. We are passed by more groups of people in drab, brown outfits and officers in blue escorting them around. We receive our phones and IDs back and walk out, back to that same little picnic table on the grass under the barbed wire. We grapple together with questions of complicity, with the tremendous desire for change, with the question what victory might look like. Closing Rikers would be a good start, but those who work there know that even if and when that day will come, the carceral system will continue to act in painfully cruel ways to uphold the injustice present in our society at large. We speak about how clergy that work in these kinds of spaces need support, and what that support might possibly look like. Finally, we say goodbye, get back in Shira‘s car and drive over the bridge back to Queens. Looking at the airplanes taking off from LaGuardia. Just a short 10 minute swim from Rikers, I feel like that’s an especially mean touch, to place that jail right in front of the airport.
I walk out of this day with appreciation for those who work daily to offer support to the people living on the island. I feel the camaraderie of the many in the struggle who work against the odds to create a more caring world. I leave with some conclusions of the political and social type: Another way to work with people with mental problems exists. The mayor’s criminalization of mental health issues, and the many such people living on the streets is wrong. We do not have to be this cruel. But more importantly for me, I leave feeling like I have a lot to learn about prayer from people like John and Drake and Avi, and the rest of those beautiful, troubled people we met at Rikers. The sadness I felt as I heard their stories might be the beginning of a different kind of prayer, a real prayer, and it may even be the only kind of prayer that God can hear.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
24 Hours on the Streets of Jerusalem
by Rabbi Misha
24 Hours on the Streets of Jerusalem
Dear friends,
A couple of hours after arriving in Jerusalem I went out for an evening stroll with my mother and my son. We’d walked half a block when we found a group of men waiting on the street for two more people to show up to complete a minyan. Certain street corners of west Jerusalem become synagogues these days for half an hour twice a day. We stopped to pray the evening prayer, enjoying the quiet ancient murmurings with them, and continued on our way. We expected a quiet evening.
We walked over to to Aza Street and sat down in a sidewalk cafe for a drink. As we’re chatting, a crowd began to gather across the street. More and more people with Israeli flags coming in from all directions. “He fired the Defense Secretary,” we hear, “It’s a spontaneous protest.” The young crowd gets the protest started with chants they have been leading for weeks. “Democracy or rebellion!” Within minutes the crowd has grown to hundreds and the intersection has been shut down. Jews of all types and ages are singing together: “If there will be no equality we will overthrow the government – you’re messing with the wrong generation!”
The energy is infectious. People are focused, determined, and most surprising to me, happy. As am I, swept out of my despair and cynicism into this sudden demand for sanity.
My skepticism is real. I chant “De-moc-rat-ya” with the full knowledge that this country has never in its history been a true democracy for all its citizens. Until 1970 all its Arab citizens lived under military rule. Three years before that ended, the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began, a brutal military occupation lording over millions of stateless, rights-deprived Palestinians, most of them refugees, many of whom have been forced out a second time even from their places of refuge. It is in large part for the Palestiniansp, now in their 58th year of occupation that I join these protests. They are the ones who will suffer most if the separation of powers in Israel is demolished, as these laws the ultra-right is working to pass are designed to do.
Another endangered population here, which would certainly suffer as well are those known as “smolanim,” or “leftists.” Right wing assailants have brutally attacked protesters, a continuation of many years of vilification (despite the fact that many of the protesters are right wing.) Driving back from the airport a few hours before this protest my father told me he doesn’t want to end his life in prison. “And that’s not a remote possibility.”
At the protest, I’m happy to see several protesters holding signs saying “There is no democracy with occupation.” This tells me two things: on a personal level, I can bring my full self to this protest. I can use the word “equality” as a prayer for full human equality - as I understand the Torah to demand - and not just the compromised equality that has accompanied the state up til now, as I think many of the protesters understand it. On a public level this tells me that the anti-occupation bloc has been accepted as a legitimate part of this protest; that the understanding that the protests and the occupation are inextricably linked is sinking in.
It’s 10:45pm and the protest has grown tremendously. My son, Matan and my mother have returned home but I couldn’t leave. Now I am marching through the streets of my childhood with thousands of people. I’m walking next to two young poets, who chant a rhyming couplet they make up on the spot, and we all repeat it:
צאו מהמרפסת – המדינה קורסת!
Get off that balcony – the country’s falling apart!
צאו מהסלון – מנעו את האסון!
Get out of your living room – prevent the disaster!
צאו מהמטבח – המדינה בפח!
Get out of your kitchen – the country’s in the garbage!
צאו מהאמבטיה – הצילו ת-דמוקרטיה
!Get out of the bathtub – save democracy!
There are Israeli flags everywhere, torches, chanting, and now we’re in front of the Prime Minister’s house shouting “Shame! Shame! Shame!” More and more people join this nighttime rebellion. We hear that the Ayalon highway in Tel Aviv is also closed down, as well as the main thoroughfare in Haifa. Eventually, I give in to my jetlag and make my way home. My parents breathe a sigh of relief as I walk in the door, since they heard that protesters broke down the barriers to the PM’s home, and there were arrests and injuries.
The following morning the papers are reporting that Netanyahu is about to capitulate. The entire country will be on strike. The main workers union, the airport, universities, high school students council, the banks, reserve soldiers, everyone is on strike until this plan is called off. But Netanyahu is held hostage by his openly racist coalition partner. We walk over toward the Knesset, where protesters from around the country are heading. All roads lead there today, as is obvious from the blue and white flags bobbling in that direction wherever we go.
Not everyone agrees with us though.
“Take that kipa off your head,” a cab driver yells at me, “you leftist sons of ——-!” Someone offers us a flag. I demure, but Matan takes it and we walk by the national library and are soon engulfed in an incredible multitude in front of the supreme court. The energy is that same infectious celebration from the previous night. There is an enormous amount of people, probably in the hundreds of thousands, each with their own signage or t shirt. Somehow, we find my brother, two of his kids and my father. I’m standing next to my nephew’s wheelchair taking in the sounds, when his care taker, Yaron says: “Radical aliveness.”
Among this huge multitude are smaller groups with their own agenda within the agenda. I pass by the socialist gathering with their red flags, the LGBTQ group with their pink and rainbow flags, the military group with their black and blue flags, and stop in front of the largest of these mini-groups, the anti-occupation gathering. Here there are Palestinian flags, and big white banners in Hebrew and Arabic. Some people are holding signs that read: “From the river to the sea all the people must be free!” These are the best organized of all the protest groups, since many of them have been gathering in Sheikh Jerrah every Friday for the last decade to try to protect the Palestinian residents there from the takeover of Jewish supremacists. They are organized in a big circle with twenty to thirty drummers. In the sea of blue and white flags I finally feel truly at home in the embrace of a richer, less compromised form of justice. “From Sheikh Jerrah to Bil’in Hura Hura Falestin!” (Arabic for: Freedom Freedom for Palestine!)
There is one Israeli group sadly absent from this protest, and that is the Palestinian citizens of Israel. The sea of Jewish stars, the stomping down in the early protests against the Palestinian flags, the requests from the protest organizers that Arab leaders not come so as not to alienate the center and right wing protesters, have all done their work.
As I see it, the only chance for lasting democracy here is a meaningful partnership between Jews and Arabs. If Israel truly is what its Declaration of Independence says it is, a place of equality for all that retains a Jewish character, then, amazingly, it is the Palestinian citizens of Israel who hold the key. Without their support the demographics of the country are such that a Jewish theocracy is more likely, or an even more unequal ethnocracy. They are another reason I join these protests. The suggested laws could easily lead to outlawing non-Jewish political parties, and it’s not unlikely that the next step would be revoking their right to vote.
It’s hard to move in this mass of happy protesters, but we somehow make our way down toward the Knesset, where we hear some speeches. On the way I bump into old friends, and into one of my commanding officers from the army, Yair Golan. When he was deputy chief of the IDF he warned that processes taking place in Israel are reminiscent of 1930’s Germany. Now he is a leader on the left. He shakes my hand warmly, his smile full, this strange complex happiness we are engulfed in shining out of him.
I’m wearing on my shirt the word שויון, “Equality” in Hebrew. Shivyon is a modern word that hearkens back to a word from a verse in the Psalms: שויתי יהוה לנגדי תמיד “I place YHVH before me always.” The idea is that no matter what you’re doing, it’s as if you are constantly cognizant of God as your guiding purpose, seeing God in front of your eyes. The word Shiviti, “I place,” or “I imagine” is where the Hebrew word shivyon comes from. Shiviti is like placing all those created in God’s image in my sight, as a constant reminder of our humanity, and our responsibility. A country of people who do that would be my kind of Jewish State.
The speaker is talking about this governments war on women: “In the three months since the government formed, nine women have been murdered: More than the number of women in the Knesset,” she says. The government has shut down laws meant to protect battered women, and this proposed legal revolution is certain to further reinforce the patriarchy. “The only time the government cares about women who get murdered,” she says, “is when it is an Arab killing a Jewish woman.”
Eventually we make our way out of the protest. In the streets of nearby Bet Hakerem most of the people walking by are protesters. The falafel stand is packed with them. Even the trains and buses from around the country are filled with people singing chants of revolt.
That evening at my brother’s place outside of Jerusalem, as we gather in front of the television to watch Netanyahu’s speech, my sister in law tells her kids: “This is a liar.” Like much of the country, this time has brought her to the streets, even though she normally isn’t especially active politically. My seven year old nephew says: “He’s like Pharaoh.” As soon the PM utters his opening words, “Three thousand years ago,” my sister in law asks whether we could turn it off. This is the level of tolerance in much of the country for the man who’s been Prime Minister for most of the last decade.
He starts by comparing “both sides” of the country to the mothers who came in front of King Solomon, each claiming the baby is their own. He denigrates the protesters against him and smiles when he speaks of his pride in those who came out in his favor, holding such signs as “Leftist traitors,” and “Stop the dictatorship of the Supreme Court.” The PM’s clear implication tonight is that his side is making the sacrifice of postponing the laws, because they are the true mothers of this baby called Israel, so they won’t let this country fall apart. The wise King Benjamin sees the truth.
Despite this temporary victory, the happiness of the protest, and the hope it brought are dissipating. Nobody trusts the PM, not even the members of his cabinet. The future looks dire. He kept his coalition from collapsing by promising to start an extra governmental militia led by the most violent and extreme cabinet member. One of the chants at the protest was “We are not afraid.” That may be true while we’re there, but the truth is that most of the protesters came precisely because they are seriously fearful for their future. This is another reason why I protest. Israel, built with huge sacrifices of blood, sweat and tears to offer a necessary safe-haven for Jews is on the verge of unravelling. It is not the idealistic vision I was sold as a kid, nor is it a beacon of Jewish ingenuity. It is a nation state, as vicious as any other, which is the beautiful place where my family and many close friends live. Right now the only hope for preventing it from devouring itself are these protests.
I come out of these historic 24 hours, and the few strangely quiet days that followed them with a distinct faith in the capacity of people in this country to activate. The government still plans to pass these laws. The demonstrations continue. But the majority has, for now prevailed, and that is no small achievement for any protest movement.
One of my favorite biblical words is Kumah, rise up. Moments such as these are Kumah moments. They carry the breathtaking ecstasy of freedom. This Shabbat Hagadol, the great Shabbat before Passover, we will raise the Torah and sing:
קוּמָה יְהוָה וְיָפֻצוּ אֹיְבֶיךָ וְיָנֻסוּ מְשַׂנְאֶיךָ מִפָּנֶיךָ
כִּ֤י מִצִּיּוֹן֙ תֵּצֵ֣א תוֹרָ֔ה וּדְבַר־יְהֹוָ֖ה מִירוּשָׁלָֽ͏ִם׃
Rise up YHVH and scatter your enemies,
Let the haters flee from before you
For Torah comes out of Zion,
and the word of YHVH from Jerusalem
Let the word of radical aliveness rise up from Jerusalem and bring safety and joy to all who share and love this land.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Women's Torah
by Rabbi Misha
Some words from our Resident Scholar, Dr. Lizzie Berne DeGear.
Dear friends,
As promised, some words from Dr. Lizzie Berne Degear, our scholar in residence this year. Lizzie and I will be leading a special interfaith Shabbat service this evening at First Pres with some amazing guests from other faiths. I hope you can make it.
Rabbi Misha.
Happy Women’s History Month from Lizzie Berne DeGear, our esteemed Scholar in Residence!
I’m about half way through my year as scholar-in-residence with the New Shul, and I’ve been loving it. Engaging with many of you at services, celebrations, and chevrutahs has been enriching and downright enjoyable. I hope to see you at our interfaith liberation Shabbat this evening at First Presbyterian Church at 6:30pm. Some women friends of mine will be joining us to share their powerful experiences of liberation within various faith traditions, including Catholic, Muslim, Hindu and Aboriginal.
Today, as a self-described feminist of faith, I’m thrilled to be engaging you here as I reflect on the importance of Women’s History Month.
“Women’s history” is not just about highlighting women in history, it’s about bringing women’s focus to our histories and revealing truths that have been obscured. This March can be a time to wake up to all the ways that “his-story” has shaped our limited understanding of our world. It’s an opportunity to expand our lens to include her story… and her story… and her story.
I’m particularly fascinated by the impact of these expanded lenses on scholarship. From archaeology to zoology, there is a paradigm shift underway. Over the past decades, as more and more women have had access to higher education in their chosen fields, slowly but surely women have been able to mentor the next generation of scholars. Women have been working together as colleagues, and women’s ways of knowing are beginning to shape each discipline. The patriarchal assumptions that have had a grip on virtually every form of academic study are slowly (oh, so slowly) dissolving into new ways to understand and interpret our past and the world around us today.
I get a thrill every time I come across these new ways of telling the stories that constitute scholarship. I’m thinking of the work of archaeologist Elizabeth Wayland Barber, author of Women’s Work: the first 20,000 years. On excavation sites in the 1970’s, she was the only one among her archaeology colleagues who had experience in weaving and sewing. She saw clear links between patterns that appeared on Bronze Age Mediterranean pottery and familiar weaving patterns. After she was told that there was no way the technology for weaving could have existed that early, she spent the next seventeen years researching and making sense of data that had been ignored. Thanks to her we now have a window onto the extensive technologies of prehistoric textile manufacturing.
I’m thinking of the radical theoretical work of physicist Karen Barad, author of Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. As a feminist thinker, Barad has introduced an approach to physics that is a game-changer, upending assumptions baked into Western scientific theory.
So, here at the New Shul, how can we celebrate Women’s History Month? Well, for starters, we can revisit any of our favorite subjects and ask ourselves: How are feminists and womanists looking at this subject these days? We can follow that curiosity and see what new vistas open up when we revisit a favorite subject, prod it a little, and take a closer look.
And, of course, we can bring this new lens to the subject of our Jewish history. We can honor that there is a major stumbling block inherent in our Jewish authoritative texts. Most of our Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and our torah (all of the written teachings and laws that hold a place of authority in Judaism) consist of men in our past writing about what men in their past wrote about. It can be a very limited lens on our vast Jewish story.
Grammatical fact: the rarest verb form in the Hebrew Bible is the third person feminine plural. This is because the men who wrote those texts were not focusing on the wisdom that emerged from the female collective. And, quite frankly, they didn’t have access to that wisdom. But that doesn’t mean such wisdom didn’t emerge and thrive during every moment in our Jewish history. It did! It does! Women’s collective experience and wisdom are absolutely part of our Jewish story, dating all the way back to its beginnings. Discovering this wisdom and experience, listening to our female ancestors, and receiving the bounty they still hunger to share with us has become a passion that drives much of my scholarship. There is so much there to discover! I take seriously the admonition that opens the book of Proverbs: “Forsake not the torah of your mother” (Proverbs 1:8).
As we approach Passover, I have been taking a closer look at Miriam. Following the clues, I am beginning to discern a whole branch of ancient Jewish knowledge that invoked her leadership, bringing focus to plant medicine and healing. More than a sister with a tambourine, was Miriam our earliest Jewish doctor?
As Judy Minor, the head of our New Shul va’ad, puts it: Every week of Torah study is an opportunity to tap into our Jewish herstory. As we study, and as we are tasked with the responsibility to pass along our stories to future generations, how might we broaden our understanding so that we may give future generations the gift of a more complete picture?
Women’s History Month is a reminder to probe deeper, an incentive not to take anyone’s account of history at face value. March might be coming to an end, but we can let it launch us into a year-round adventure of discovery.
Shabbat shalom,
Lizzie Berne Degear
Reclaiming Hidden Voices
by Rabbi Misha
"In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out—until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the Israelites during all their travels."
Dear friends,
"In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out—until the day it lifted. So the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night, in the sight of all the Israelites during all their travels."
Thus ends the Book of Exodus, with words that seem relevant to me this week since we moved out of our place a couple days ago. At Torah Byte yesterday we calculated approximately how many Israelites there were in the desert, and got to something like 2,000,000 including children. Moving a group that big seems even harder than moving a family in Brooklyn. Which is to say that this won't be the longest or deepest letter I've ever written. But I did want to highlight some historical women who showed up in my studies and thoughts this week, it being Women's History Month.
One of the great prophets who foresaw a massive move of the nation from Israel to Babylon was a woman named Chuldah. Today, she doesn't have the same name recognition as her contemporary Jeremaiah, but he knew she was the greatest prophet around during the early days of his prophecy when she was still alive. When Josiah, king of Judea asked her whether his religious reforms will save the nation from being exiled she flatly says no. It's too late. That great forced move is upon us. Josiah looks for another prophet who will provide a better answer, but the tone of Jeremaiah's prophecy changed from hope to doom. He knew that out of everyone, she's the most connected to the truth. A few decades later her prophecy came true.
This week's parashah also mentions some women, though not by name. They are women of wise hearts (חכמת לב) who volunteer their skills to build the tabernacle, that moving holy space we kept in the desert. Last Shavuot, Dr. Lizzie Berne Degear taught us about the women's weaver guilds of ancient times, who it seems have penned some important biblical passages. The wise-hearted women in this week's parashah are described as weavers and sowers who volunteer in great numbers, without whom it seems the tabernacle could not have been constructed.
Next week I'm excited for you all to read some of Lizzie's words about her scholarly work. Perhaps the main focus of Lizzie's work is the reclaiming of women's voices from ancient times. She shines a light on the tremendous influence wise-hearted women had on our tradition, and the ways in which these voices were buried by the patriarchy. She can help us migrate away from the male-dominated view of our tradition.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Polyamory, Poligamy and other Forms of Insanity
by Rabbi Misha
Whenever I hear stories from my polyamorist friends I feel a combination of admiration, jealousy and gratitude.
Dear friends,
Whenever I hear stories from my polyamorist friends I feel a combination of admiration, jealousy and gratitude. I find myself admiring their ability to overcome norms we’ve been fed for so long, and step outside of the gloriously, completely insane project of monogamy. I find myself jealous of their freedom, of the explorations they are conducting, both physically and emotionally. And I find myself grateful for the path I’ve chosen, and its innumerable gifts. From the safety of my rich monogamy I ask myself: could I do that?
This week’s parashah is not about polygamy. It’s about two lovers who are obsessed with one another. It’s about cheating, jealousy, rage and commitment. It’s about what happens when a desperate lover feels abandoned and strays toward another.
“Set me as a seal upon thy heart,” they say to one another, “As a seal upon thine arm; For love is strong as death, Jealousy is cruel as the grave; Its flashes are sparks of fire, the burning flame of Yah.”
This is the fiery love affair still going on between the people of Israel and our God. This week’s Parashah describes one of the most tumultuous moments in this relationship, the sin of the Golden Calf, where the people love another form of divinity.
“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that fellow Moses—the man who brought us from the land of Egypt—we do not know what has happened to him.”
Yesterday, walking around the Museum of Jewish Heritage with 30 students and parents, I found myself wondering about this love affair between Israel and God. These eleven and twelve year old kids looked at objects of Jewish life in Europe before the war. A ketubah, an etrog holder, a grand Sukkah painting; The physicalization of this age-old love story. Then they saw evidence of a thousand years of persecution, Nazi stereotypes of Jews, photos from Germany, Poland, Ukraine. They passed by a Torah scroll saved from a synagogue on Kristallnacht, a photo of Jews making matzah in the ghetto, a pair of tefillin that a survivor of Sobibor said kept him alive. Even through that darkest of nights, the love affair continued, for some.
Most of us, however, who live in the shadow of the Holocaust, live with a very serious abandonment syndrome. Our lover stranded us, and now we walk alone, with only one other to love. Is it a wonder, therefore, that we live in this age of Golden Calves? “Calves everywhere,” my brother described it to me on the phone this morning.
And yet, despite my brain, my heart stubbornly loves. A sickness I long to feel, and when I do I know all is as it should be, even as I have no idea where I might find my beloved.
"Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you— if you find my beloved, what will you tell him? Tell him I am sick with love."
Some people can have multiple lovers at the same time. This Misha who’s writing these words has loved Lord Siva and Ganesh, Jesus, Allah, the sun and the moon, and countless other divinities. Nowadays he bows down before this one intense and crazy lover, the God – or lack thereof – of Israel.
PS
Many of you have asked me for the recording of the conversation about what's going on in Israel we held on Tuesday. It is available, so feel free reach out and I will share the link.
For those of you asking how you can help:
This Sunday at noon at Washington Square Park there will be a protest demanding a democratic Israel. Bring flags and signs or just show up. In addition, The New Israel Fund has created an emergency fund raiser, to which you can get more information and donate HERE.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha
Beautiful Demons
by Rabbi Misha
Purim conjures the best and worst memories. Ridiculous feasts, family gatherings, insane Jerusalem karaoke parties, drunken laughter, silly costume duos with friends, moments of the deepest honesty and most liberated dancing.
Dear friends,
Purim conjures the best and worst memories. Ridiculous feasts, family gatherings, insane Jerusalem karaoke parties, drunken laughter, silly costume duos with friends, moments of the deepest honesty and most liberated dancing. And also times when that loosening unraveled horror, bad drunken behavior, nastiness, parties gone wrong, and most prominently February 25th, 1994 when Baruch Goldstein, Yimakh Shmo (may his name be blotted out) murdered dozens of Muslim worshippers in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.
This year I’m feeling both extremities, and we’re going to try to go in both directions at once at the Shul. Sunday we will party in person, and Tuesday night we will Zoom through what’s happening in Israel/Palestine.
As Purim of 5783 approaches, I find myself oscillating between the improvisational ease of the jester and the deep sadness of the prophets. My homeland, where I grew up and where my parents, brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews and many of my best friends live, has morally and structurally collapsed. At the same time it has also woken up, stood on its feet, risen into collective song. I read the news and scratch my eyes: the Jews have performed a full-fledged pogrom. The Israeli Minister of Defense says the Palestinian village that was attacked should be “wiped out by the state.”
Hundreds of Jews, including my father went to that village today to show solidarity. Their buses were stopped by the army, forbidden to show empathy. So they walked instead. Tear gas followed, people beaten. My father made it through and sent pictures of a serene mountain village. My friend, Avital’s father didn’t fare as well. Her father, Avraham Burg, is the former Chairman of the Knesset and director of the Jewish Agency. This is the person who used to be the lead representative of Zionism in the world – today there were videos of him pushed to the ground by Israeli policemen, preventing him from reaching Hawara.
It’s hard for me to think of anything more upside down than that.
And then there are the incredible protests that everyone I know there has been a part of. This Wednesday the country was shut down by Israelis who know that if this isn’t stopped the country as we understand it is finished. Streets blocked all over the country, protests in front of elected officials homes, an array of hopeful, forward looking activity, the likes of which I have never seen in Israel or the US. It’s a celebration of political expression, imperfect though it may be.
So the upside down is itself upside down. Mirrors and masks and costumes galore.
Our job seems to be to celebrate the groundless upside earth we stand on, and that’s what we will do this Sunday. The artist Uncutt will paint dancer Dorian Cervantes after leading us through his exhibit of Protect Yo Heart – art based on the verse from Proverbs. Fabio Tavares will unravel himself in movement. Wine and food and DJ and music and VR goggles and ancient stories and a rejoicing over this fragile insanity we live.
And then our upside-down job is to understand what’s going on so we can stand with sanity. Tuesday evening Rabbi Amichai and me will try and give you our perspective, answer and ask questions, and help us all find some solid ground on which to stand together on our heads.
Purim is there to release our demons. Let’s make sure they are beautiful demons of liberation, not ugly demons of destruction.
Hope to see you at both events!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha