Healthy Insanity

Dear friends,

“We have to learn to speak Jewish,” said the activist rabbi.  

We were gathered in an Upper West Side living room to hear from Rabbi Arik Ascherman about the state of human rights work in Israel/Palestine after the elections. Rav Arik, an American born Reform rabbi has been living in Jerusalem and doing the work for several decades. He ran Rabbis for Human Rights for 21 years, and for the last six has been running Torat Tzedek; The Torah of Justice. I’d been to other such events with him before. This time, however, he didn’t spend much time describing his daily work accompanying Palestinian shepherds to their pastures, where they’re routinely attacked by settlers, or other such activities. Instead, his focus was on preparing for this next stage, in which the extreme far right will be in charge of both policy and police. He was talking about the need for lawyers to give a chance for the work on the ground to have an impact, and protect activists.  

What was amazing about his talk was that I could not detect a hint of despair. Imagine spending your whole life in the streets fighting police brutality and racism, getting beaten, arrested, almost killed, and then the head of the Proud Boys gets instated as the Minister of Police. You might think he’d be contemplating a return to the States. Instead he’s diving in deeper. 

What amazed me more was his hopeful suggestion that we might be able to change the tide of a religious right wing that has washed over the country by changing our language. “The language of human rights and democracy doesn’t speak to them. We have to learn to speak Jewish.” He explained how their language revolves around the Jewish texts and traditions, and the times when he’s managed to get through to them have been when he’s quoted Torah, Talmud or Midrash. 

There is of course a lesson for us here in the US, and people all over the world. If we really want to have a chance to reach the religious right, we have to speak in their idiom.  

We got a beautiful taste of how that could look this Tuesday night, when a Black reverend from the south told us that voting is “a prayer for the world we desire,” and that “democracy is the enactment of the idea that we each have within us a spark of the divine.”  

We have been stepping away from our faith-worlds for too long, ceding the space to those who define religion as a conservative, selfish way of being. Warnock and Ascherman point us to a path of illogical faith – the belief that we might be able to have a conversation with people who see the world as the opposite of how we see it. What seems impossible, they tell us, should be attempted.  

Speaking Jewish, in the sense that Ascherman suggests, is an attempt to do the impossible with words. To reach another who seems beyond reach.  

On Monday night in another living room in the financial district we gathered to hear from another faith-hooked realist. Rabbi Or Zohar told us about life in the Galilee, where there are equal numbers of Jews and Arabs living in an escalating landscape of polarization. His organization, Spirit of the Galilee, works to create meaningful local ties between the two communities. They learn each other’s faith languages, through an ongoing inter-faith gathering of religious leaders from the region.  

When the terrible Jewish-Arab riots erupted in other parts of the country last year, the ties forged between these different communities were key in preventing the same type of riots in their area. The trust built through learning each other’s languages allowed for clear communication during a time of crisis. Rabbi Zohar was able to speak to and calm a group of Jews talking about taking the law into their own (armed) hands, while his Christian, Muslim and Druze partners in nearby towns managed to bring an end to the burning tires that kept appearing on the road leading up to his village. 

Rabbi Zohar’s efforts are a type of “speaking Jewish.” It’s hard work. Close to impossible. But with persistence it can create a crack in what often seems like a sealed shut reality.  
These faith leaders continue to work toward the good because that is the work, not necessarily because it will work. It’s a type of insanity that, like John Lewis’ “good trouble” we might call “healthy insanity.” Sometimes, though, God sees these prayers-in-action, the universe responds, and a shift occurs thanks to the dogged work of these perfectly healthy insane people. 

May we all find the faith, courage and drive to speak Jewish. And may we enjoy a shabbat brimming with healthy insanity. 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

The Core of Jazz and Prayer

The Miles Davis Quintet playing All Blues, which we're going to hear this evening to the words of the Friday evening Psalm, "Shiru L'Adonai Shir Chadash."

Dear friends,

On March 2nd, 1959 six musicians converged at a recording studio on 30th Street in Manhattan. The band leader had given the others some sketches of scales and melody lines, no sheet music, little instruction other than to improvise. After briefly going over the music, they began recording what would become what many consider the greatest Jazz album of all time, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. 

Miles was bringing a new sound based less on chords, the bedrock of Jazz until that time, and more on modality. He was looking for greater freedom, for a living sound, for what he called “spontaneity.”  

Paradoxical though it may seem in a tradition that gives us the same words to say every day at the same time (and lots of them), this is what we are taught to strive toward in prayer. In Mishnah Avot we find: 

אַל תַּעַשׂ תְּפִלָּתְךָ קֶבַע, 

Don’t make your prayer fixed. 

Keva can also be translated as stuck in place or in time, automatic, something lifeless that you do without thinking.  

In music like in prayer, we are after the moment in its bright uniqueness. The rabbis talk about the word Kavanah as integral to prayer. Kavanah is normally translated as intention, but if we think about it in Jazz terms it transforms. A musician takes a solo. We can normally tell if they’re feeling it, if they’re going somewhere internal, if they’re listening and attuned to the other musicians. That’s Kavanah. It’s what you’re trying to hit, and in prayer what we’re trying to hit is this amorphous glob of meaning and time we call in English God, or in Hebrew Adonai, YHVH, being itself. If we are lacking Kavanah, we miss the mark.  

Another way to say it is that kavanah means play. When we are playing, we are present, we are beyond ourselves, we are in company. The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott said it this way: 

“It is in playing and only in playing that the individual is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.” 

This, to my understanding is what Miles was working on, and what the rabbis in the Talmud were about when they jammed on the purpose of prayer. It’s what the Kabbalists were doing when they riffed their insanity into a book we now call the Zohar. It’s what we do when we come together as Jews to eat, pray or study. 

The Hebrew word for play is Lesachek. It’s practically the same as the word in Hebrew for laughing, letsachek. The bible actually uses both words interchangeably. Like there’s no laughter without spontaneity, there’s also no play without it, or prayer, nor is there great music. We plan to have all of the above this evening at Voodo Fe’s art gallery in Clinton Hill, The Spot, where, immersed in Voodo’s collection of Miles Davis art and fashion we will bring in Shabbat to the spontaneous sounds of Jazz. 

Hope to see you there!

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Living in the Entrance

Dear friends,

Two years ago, a guest at our Shabbat service from Women for Afghan Women, Nilab Nusrat shared with us memories of how back in Afghanistan, her father used to invite poor people into their home for dinner. Susan Berger, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, echoed Nilab with stories about how her grandfather in Poland used to do the same on Friday evenings, seating the guest at the head of the table. No matter if the guest were smelly, in rags, or anything else, if any of the kids would do anything but show them respect, they would be sent away. 

This was the state of affairs in many Jewish and Muslim communities until not that long ago. There existed a competitive spirit among Jews in the old country who wanted to make sure they fulfill the mitzvah of “hachnasat orchim,” or bringing in guests. 

How far we’ve strayed! When was the last time you invited someone in from the street? Why, I ask myself, does that seem like an impossibility in today’s world?  It’s not like there’s a shortage of homeless people in this city. In fact, the estimates are rising, close to 80,000 people. I walked around midtown yesterday. It’s impossible to ignore. 

The Jewish drive to be hospitable comes in large part from this week’s parashah: 

The Lord appeared to Abraham near the great trees of Mamre while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. 

He said, “If I have found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought, and then you may all wash your feet and rest under this tree.  Let me get you something to eat, so you may feast your hearts and then go on your way—now that you have come to your servant.” 

“Very well,” they answered, “do as you say.” 

Abraham and Sarah spring into action, rushing and running to fix a full meal for the guests.

The opening image already points to a difference between how we live and how our ancestors did. A man sits at the entrance to his tent. Instead of sitting closed up in an air-conditioned apartment with the curtains closed, as we often do, he is facing the world, waiting to interact with it.

The rabbis understand him to be communing with God as he sits, some imagining him in prayer or meditation. Nonetheless, his outward facing position leads him to “raise his eyes” and see the three figures nearby. Although he is in the midst of a divine revelation, he wastes no time, ditches God and runs toward the passerby to invite them in. 

“Receiving guests is greater than receiving the face of God.”
This is the lesson the rabbis learn from this chapter. Even though in their eyes experiencing the face of the Shechinah, the presence of God is the greatest thing that could happen to a person, “the goodness that nothing can beat,” the very purpose of the spiritual life, still greater than that is to be in the world, bringing those in need into your home. 

Nechamah Leibovitz writes: “This receiving of guests is the best example of Ahavat Habriyot, loving other people, of helping others, it is the entire space of the world, the good deeds and acts of kindness between one person and another.” 

That’s why Abraham and Sarah keep running and hurrying throughout this story. There is nothing more important to them. 

If we can’t live like our ancestors there are other things we can do. 

Yesterday I was proud to participate in the inaugural meeting of Tirdof, New York Clergy for Justice. After some opening words and blessings, we joined the meeting of Vocal NY, to hear about their efforts to ease the plight of the homeless and end it altogether in this state. There are a few campaigns they’re working on, including Free to Pee, in which they are demanding the city reopen hundreds of public restrooms. As if the humiliation of being homeless isn’t enough, we live in the city ranked 80th in access to restrooms in the US. They spoke of the tens of thousands of rent stabilized apartments in the city that sit empty, and of the renewed criminalization of homelessness by the current administration. Read more about their campaigns HERE. 

We can live in the entrance to our tents instead of behind the blinds. We can face outward. We can look up and see the state of our city. We can live up to the call of our tradition by supporting the efforts of those on the front lines of homelessness. 

“How great was the influence of these verses on our ancestors during their years in exile,” writes Leibovitz about this week’s Parashah, “that even a poor person among Israel would not want to sit down to their Shabbat dinner table if there were no guest in their house. So much so that even the poorest and most decrepit and isolated Jewish communities of Eastern Europe could pride themselves – unlike fancy capitals on both sides of the Atlantic to this day – on the great words of Job: “No stranger shall sleep outside.” 

Insha’Allah we live to see that one day in our time. 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Meet Ben Gvir

Dear friends,

I try to avoid electoral politics in my writing. I’m not a political authority of any type. But this week’s election in Israel carries both cultural and spiritual messages that are relevant to American Jews, and offer lessons for Americans in general.

You’ve likely heard by now that the winner was Benjamin Netanyahu. Though he will likely manage to escape punishment for his crimes and run the government, he is not the big winner. The person who has become perhaps the most powerful person in the country, upon whom governments will rise and fall, is the head of the party called Jewish Power, Itamar Ben Gvir. This won’t be fun, but I’d like to introduce him to you, since in essence, 70% of Israeli Jews (including those who voted directly for him and others who voted for parties willing to make a coalition with him) voted for a government that he holds tremendous power over.

Some of you will remember the name Baruch Goldstein. He was a doctor from Brooklyn who moved to Hebron, and on Purim day, 1994 entered the mosque inside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and murdered 29 Muslim worshippers. I remember the discussion the following day in my Jerusalem high school, in which most of the class expressed outrage, but in which one kid, Motti, expressed complete support for the killing. That’s the position Ben Gvir took as well. The following year on Purim he dressed up as Goldstein. Until this recent campaign, with his attempts to portray himself as slightly more moderate than he is, Ben Gvir had a poster of Goldstein hanging in his home. There’s a video of him in 2020 standing by that hanging poster in his living room, holding his baby girl and saying to her: “He’s a tzadik, a righteous man, a hero.”

Ben Gvir had a teacher that some of you will have heard of as well. His name was Meir Kahane. Another Brooklynite who became a member of the Israeli Knesset until the court outlawed his party because of its outright racism and hate. That party, Kach, is currently on both the US and Israel’s list of terrorist organizations. Kahane espoused Jewish supremacy. He advocated the forced transfer of all Arabs from Israel. It was in those years that the chant “Mavet La’aravim,” “Death to the Arabs,” became commonplace. Last night some were chanting it when Ben Gvir took the stage to celebrate his victory. Ben Gvir is the first to admit that there are close to no differences between his party and Kahane's.

It’s not just Arabs Ben Gvir dislikes. He was a big supporter of the infamous “Smolanim bogdim” campaign, in which people hung signs that read “Leftists are traitors.” Ben Gvir, an attorney, represented one such person in a lawsuit against them for unfurling such violence-inducing language in public. Recently, Ben Gvir clarified the same thing about Arabs and leftists: not ALL leftists are traitors, nor are ALL Arabs terrorists, he said.

In a similar move, he recently called LGBTQ people his “brothers and sisters.” In 2016, though he said that “they have no place, neither in Jerusalem nor in the State of Israel.” His reasoning is germane: “(the state) must have a Jewish character.”

In this “Jewish character” lies what I perceive to be the deeper lesson we can learn on this side of the world.  According to its website, Jewish Power supports “enacting meaningful reforms to the systems of power in order to strengthen the Jewish character of the State of Israel.” He means to gut the Supreme Court and the entire democratic structure of the state. And has the support of the other parties in the Israeli right. It is this same “Jewish character” that drives his reasoning for banning MK’s who “undermine the state” from serving. There are a few such MK’s on the left who Ben Gvir has already said should be expelled from both the Knesset and the country. Some of them he has called “terrorists.” This is a word he uses for a wide range of people. One of his main election pledges is to instate a “death penalty for terrorists.”

In a way, all of this is noise. He’s the type of character, the likes of which we certainly have here, who invites a lot of bla bla bla in the news. The difference is that Israel is a place in which things are immediate and close. Ben Gvir isn’t David Duke who sits tucked away in his lair making statements. My friends have bumped into him in Hebron, in Sheikh Jerrah, in the South Hebron Hills - all places where real people are being actually kicked out of their homes in large numbers, actually physically attacked, actually killed. This is a place where things get real quickly, where a statement about the Jewish nature of the state is translated into subjugation and suffering. If Ben Gvir becomes the Minister of Internal Security as is expected (despite the fact that he never served in the army because they said he’s too racist!) he will have a very real impact over millions of people’s lives.

What is this “Jewish character” he’s talking about? I hear “Jewish character” and think of Mel Brooks. To Ben Gvir it evokes supremacy over other nations. To me, if a Jewish state has a purpose it’s to be a home for the wanderers, a refuge for “the stranger, the orphan and the widow.” Ben Gvir’s teacher stated it like this: “The purpose of the State of Israel is revenge against the nations. There is no greater or more just attribute than revenge, for it gives life to God.”

This election suggests that “Jewish” means something radically different to the majority of Israeli Jews than it does to us. This last Knesset had a self-defining Reform Jew for the first time, Gilad Kariv. When Kariv walked out on one of his speeches, Ben Gvir said: “I was so happy that the one who represents those who want to destroy all of what’s holy to Jews doesn’t want me in the Knesset.” He’s talking about us!

Yes, there are millions of Jews in Israel who we align with. Yes, the incoming Prime Minister does not believe, like many in his future cabinet that the law is secondary to the Torah. Nonetheless, as Israel embraces Ben Gvir, we are associated with his version of Judaism.

That is why in moments like these I often find myself struggling to pray, study Torah, or do anything Jewish, simply because of the association with the abhorrent face the Jews have put forward. I wonder whether the decline in religiosity in America in general has more to do with changing philosophies, or with the public face of religion. If religion means no right to choose, so I don’t want to be religious. If religion means subjugation of women and LGBTQ people, how could I be religious? If religious means not believing in science, why would I be religious? Though it’s not just a Jewish problem, when I see those who claim to represent me behave distastefully, my instinct is often to disassociate from the Jews altogether.

There’s one Jewish person I know who’s seen it all. His name is Norman Lear and he’s a hundred years old. 10 years ago he said to me: “It’s time to take religion back in this country.” I thought of those words when the election results rolled out Wednesday morning. I knew then that my faith is my own, and that it is connected to the source of being and truth as strongly as anyone else’s. I also knew that my faith world commands me to pray on such a day, and to study Torah, and to not hide who I am.

So eventually I did manage to do some studying that morning. I put on my kipa with a mix of sadness and pride, fatigue and strength, and opened a book of Torah interpretations by one great Israeli, Nechamah Leibovitz z”l. She was expounding upon the episode in this week’s Parashah known as the Brit Ben Habetarim, or the Covenant of Parts. Abraham splits several sacrificial animals into two parts and is told to pass between them. A vulture comes down and tries to get at them, but Abraham shoos it away. The commentators see the vulture as those who try and stop us from performing the sacrifices, from doing what we do as Jews. Leibovitz writes:

“If they succeed in cutting the connection between this nation and her god, and if the Torah will - God forbid - be forgotten from Israel, there will be no existence any longer for this nation.”

We liberal American Jews are such a nation, and must never let the connection with our God, or vision, or truth be cut, lest this beautiful thing that we’ve created be lost. We are not one iota less Jewish than Ben Gvir or any other Jew, even the most supremely extra ultra orthodox.

The Jews who believe in this other version of “Jewish” that has many elements we find distasteful are also a nation. They stand on the other side of the aisle. Between us is poor Abraham, shooing away the vultures like some kind of optimistic Sisyphus.

My rabbi tells me we are one nation, not two. He says that Ben Gvir and Mel Brooks are both inside of us, just like they exist outside of us, and our job, like Abraham’s is to contain both. We are commanded to do what we can to rid ourselves of our inner demons, and our society of the external ones. One of the best ways to do that is to be who we are, no matter who is embarrassing and defaming our public face. Another is to look reality in the face. This was our challenge this past week. And this will be our challenge this coming week. And the week after that.

Yair Asulin wrote in Haaretz yesterday that “the failure of the ‘change block’ (the side that lost the election) was the failure to be able to look reality in the face, to listen to it without judgement, without thinking that we know everything, without imagining that the truth necessarily exists on our side.” He goes on to suggest, like several other left wing thinkers that this moment offers a rare opportunity to create a new, compelling vision for the country. But he offers a warning to go with it:

“Abandoning “god” to the hands of those who abuse it for bad purposes, without understanding how elemental this feeling is in many people’s consciousness, how critical a player it is in any new social story or any new movement that seeks relevance; that abandonment is one of the greatest sins of ‘the change block.’”

In the face of the rise of Ben Gvir and the vengeful faith he espouses, let us not abandon our God of compassion, and stand tall for the Judaism of equality, care and justice that we know and love.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Words, Reeds and Slipping Tongues

Dear friends,

There are those moments in which the words slip out. You didn't mean to say what you said but had every intention of saying it differently.  

There are those moments in which the words don’t come out. You meant to say what needed to be said but it wouldn’t come out. 

What is it that governs the balance of what stays in and what comes out? What makes us falter with too many words, the wrong words, not enough words? What should we do and not do after we make such a mistake? 

One clue our tradition gives us is this: The quill with which a Torah scroll is written must be made from a reed. I’ll get back to that in a bit.  

Last week I was quiet. People would ask me things and I’d look at them silently. This was, as you might imagine, frustrating to them. I wasn’t engaging much with the world at large either. When I checked the news from Israel, I found that a racist Jewish supremacist of the most abominable type was poised to become one of the strongest people in the country in the upcoming elections. I took that information in and kept my silence. I don’t think either of those examples is what the rabbis meant when they said: “Silence is a fence around wisdom.” 

This week I spoke. By Monday evening I had referred to a friend several times in the wrong gender pronoun. I didn’t even notice it until they gently pointed it out. Later in the week, when a complete stranger emailed me with a critique of my educational methods based on a photo they saw online, I sent back two emails with a critique of theirs, based on their email. That might be closer to what the rabbis meant about silence and that fence. 

What was it that made me act so differently these last two weeks? 

I studied such questions in the lead-up to the High Holidays, and on Yom Kippur I presented some of my thoughts on the matter to you all. I was hoping to improve my own relationship with words, and to get us all thinking how we might do that. As I was speaking words about words on Yom Kippur, my tongue slipped. Something I hadn’t intended to say came out.  I felt it happen, with the beginning of what one might call awareness, but didn’t quite catch it in the moment. I’ve since spoken to a few people about it, some caught it and others didn’t, so it certainly was miss-able. But it also certainly hurt a few people and caught the ears of others.  

“Words,” I said, “are what created us.” In explaining this, I described the verbal communication between two people, which leads to new life. “Most of us, maybe all of us wouldn’t be here in this room if it weren’t for those words spoken between our parents. Between our father and our mother.” 

I had intended to make a point about the power of words to create, but the ad-lib in the moment showed how words hold the power to exclude. In front of me were several people who come from a variety of parental situations that don’t include a father and a mother.  

My notes that night didn’t include the words father or mother. They emphasized the fact that this may not be true for everyone in the room. So what was it that made them come out the way they did?  

I remember the moment. I had liberated myself from my notes. I looked around the room. For a split second I considered whether any of the people I was looking at may fall into a different parental category to mine. No one person I happened to look at did, but of course there were many in the room I wasn’t looking at (if you are one of those people and I haven't called you, I apologize). I felt, as one sometimes does, connected to the words I spoke. I had my own parents in mind. And I spoke the words “father and mother” out of my experience. For a second or two, I suppose I lost sight of the people to whom I was speaking and slipped into myself. 

The same thing happened this week when I mis-gendered my friend, as most of us have done many times. We lose sight of the other’s experience and speak from our own. This, I remind myself in moments of guilt, is natural to us humans.  

Emmanuel Levinas describes natural human behavior as a selfishness that is miraculously overcome when we see another’s face. Our natural state of mind is to think about ourselves. Even truth itself is in large part a subjective experience. Speaking from our own experience is often all we can do. This is important to remember, especially when that leads us to hurt people we love. But when we see – really see – another person’s face we are drawn out of our natural selfishness. That is when we can perform the human miracle of stepping out of ourselves and doing for another.  

I should say at this point that there’s a major difference between spewing hatred that is claimed to be a slip of the tongue, and unintentionally losing track of what you’re saying. The recent Anti-Semitic tweets that have caught the public eye are good examples of patterns of hatred, rather than mistakes by well-meaning people. 

So, what are we meant to do when we slip? How can we see the other’s face, even after we’ve failed to do so? Admitting and apologizing is a good start of course. In some cases, there are things we could do to try and avoid slipping again. With gender pronouns, for example I’ve been advised to try the PPP: Pre-Pronoun-Pause.  

The Jewish tradition takes words very seriously, so much so that wrong use of words is in some cases considered worse than murder. And still, once the words have been spoken, we are taught not to dwell on them: act and forgive; forgive yourself if you’re the offender or forgive the offender if you’ve been hurt.  

A Talmudic story goes to the heart of the matter: 

Once Rabbi Elazar was riding along the riverside on his donkey, and was feeling happy and tired because he had studied much Torah. 

There chanced to meet him an exceedingly ugly man, who greeted him, "Peace be upon you, my master!" R. Elazar did not return his salutation but instead said to him, "How ugly this person is! Are all the people of your city as ugly as you?" 

"I do not know," said the man. "But go to the craftsman who made me and say to him: How ugly is the vessel which you have made!" 

Realizing that he had done wrong, R. Elazar dismounted from his donkey, prostrated himself before the man, and said to him, "You are right. Forgive me!" But the man replied, "I will not forgive you until you go to the craftsman who made me and say to him, 'How ugly is the vessel which you have made.'" 

R. Elazar kept on walking after him until he reached his city. The residents of the city came out to greet him, saying, "Peace be upon you, O Teacher! O Master!" Said the man to them, "Whom are you calling 'Master'?" Said they, "The person walking behind you." 

Said he to them: "If this is a 'Master,' may there not be any more like him in Israel." 

"Why?" asked the people. 

Said the man: Such-and-such he has done to me. 

"Nevertheless, forgive him," said they, "for he is a man greatly learned in the Torah." 

"For your sakes I will forgive him," said the man, "but only if he does not act this way anymore." 

Soon after this R. Elazar entered the study hall and taught: "A person should always be flexible as the reed and let them never be hard as the cedar. And for this reason, the reed merited that of it should be made the quill for the writing of the Torah.” 

The holiest words, the ones that should never be broken – those are written with the intention of flexibility. Let us remember that the next time that harsh, hard judgement bubbles up in us over a word uttered in error. Perhaps that might open the door to apologies, forgiveness and improving our relationship with spoken and unspoken words.
Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Good? Good!

Dear friends,

If you were a biblical translator but your Hebrew was hit or miss you might translate the sixth and seventh verses of the Torah as follows: 

God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was %$*!, and God separated the light from the darkness.  

Somehow you never caught the meaning of one of those words, and you couldn’t quite make out from the context what “the light was,” so you left it rather vague. 

A few verses later you might do something similar when that word reappears: 

God called the dry land Earth and called the gathering of waters Seas. And God saw that this was %$*!. 

Still the meaning of this word could go in various directions. Any of these words and many others could logically replace %$*!: excellent, terrible, funny, right, wrong, ugly, beautiful, lacking, perfect. 

The next two appearances don’t give you much indication as to the meaning of the word, so when it appears for a fifth time in verse 21 you again translate: 

God created the great sea monsters, and all the living creatures of every kind that creep, which the waters brought forth in swarms, and all the winged birds of every kind. And God saw that this was $%*!. 

%$*! could again indicate that God is pleased or displeased with these creatures, surprised by them or not, and so on. 

The seventh and final appearance in the first chapter you translate:  

And God saw all that had been made and found it very %$*!. 

When we step back from the translations that have been handed down to us, or from our knowledge of Hebrew, we might get a different understanding of the text. This same Hebrew word, Tov, which appears seven times in the opening chapter can be ripe with mystery. 

Unfortunately for our imaginations and playfulness, all translators agree that the word Tov means “good” in English. Every day of creation other than the second, God pauses to inspect the work at least once, and finds it good. In the end God finds it all “very good.” 

Fortunately, though, this gives us an opportunity to explore what we might mean when we use the word “good.” 

Light, we are told, is good. The earth and the seas, that’s good. Vegetation is good, the planets and the stars are good, sea creatures, birds, land animals, they’re all good (note that the creation of humans is not called good, the jury is still out on that one..) And the totality of it all, we call that very good.  

When expounding on this chapter's "good," the rabbis don’t tend to contrast it with evil. We seem to be in a different category of goodness. We see this later in the parashah, when we are told that Eve saw that the fruit on the tree of knowledge was “good for eating.” We understand from the story that it was, morally speaking, very bad for eating. So, by “good” Eve must mean something closer to edible, physically appropriate for human consumption.  

This is closer to the rabbinic understanding of these verses. When God uses the word Tov, according to Nachmanides, she means “That which God desires its eternal existence.” Or: “that god chose its existence,” in Sforno’s words. What “God wants” and what exists are virtually inseparable in rabbinic thought. In other words, we call something good if it exists in harmony with the rest of existence.  “Good” denotes ontology, existence, “is-ness.” Its opposite in this sense is not bad or evil, though it may seem like it to us, since our instinct is toward life, toward existence, rather than toward ceasing to be. In Maimonides’ words: “darkness and evil are lackings,” meaning they have no positive property but simply denote the lack of light and good.  

Good, the rabbis suggest is the positive content of the world, a piece of the totality. When we feel good, we are at peace with the world as it is, and our small but significant place within it. 

Sitting in the Sukkah last week I felt good. Although many things are out of whack in my life and in the world, the breeze, the rain and the sun made everything cohere. I sensed it all to be as it should. Though my mind was abuzz, my heart was quiet. The words on my lips seemed softer, their edges less sharp, their meaning more mysterious. For a moment I looked around and saw that it was all very good. 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Impermanence and Gratitude

Rock from whose we’ve eaten,

Bless my faith!

We’ve eaten our fill

We’ve given from what we have

As our Rock instructed.

Feeding her world, our shepherd

Our mother

We ate your bread

We drank your wine

Now we thank You

Our mouths sing praise

We answer your kindness:

There’s no holiness like Yours.

With voices filled with gratitude we sing blessings to our source

For the sweetness and the goodness

For the land our ancestors sat on

And the one we sit on today

For the nourishment you fill our souls with:

Your love has overcome us,

Your never-ending truth.

Happy Sukkot!

A Sweet Opening

Dear friends,

It was wonderful to spend these last ten days with you all. Thank you for the beautiful energy, the uplifting singing, the quiet listening and the intentional speaking, both in person and on Zoom. Thank you to all who participated in so many different ways. Susan and I come out of these High Holidays with a sense of renewed energy in the Shul. I would love to hear from you reflections and ideas about the way these holidays went down, and what we might think of toward both the coming year in the Shul, and next year's High Holidays. Personally, I hope we can see each other this year in all kinds of contexts: hang outs, study sessions, plays and museums, protests, meals, meditations and prayer. Sukkot, which starts Sunday evening will provide our first such gathering to eat, drink, chat and shake a lulav in an East Village garden.

I leave you with the full translation of Psalm 27, that some of you requested, and which we sang at Kol Nidrei. This is a translation I worked on with my rabbi, Jim Ponet.

Psalm 27

And so he sings...

You are my light
my ground.
Why do I fear?
You are my homestead
Why do I flee?

When my torturer drew near
to batter and bloody me
I knew he’d stumble.
When an army bombarded me
with canons and rockets
I rested assured.

Only one thing matters
it alone do I seek:
to live with you always
at your place
To gaze upon your gentle face
To awaken at dawn and find you with me.

To know you’ll hide me in your sukkah on a bad day
wrap me in the folds of your tent
lift me like a stone in your palm hold me
high above my enemies where I’ll sing you songs of love.

So listen, my beloved, hear my voice and answer.
Look me in the eye; your gaze is all I lack.
Don’t veil your face in anger, turn your willing slave away
Be my friend; don’t leave me here alone, orphaned.

Show me a way to live open-hearted
In the sight of my enemies
Who scorn and mock me

Let me not be undone!

If I didn’t believe
Beyond all hope
I’d see you again
among the living…
Oh, but I do hope, yes, yes,
I hope.

Much gratitude, happy Sukkot and Shabbat shalom,

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Here I Am! (Who's I again?)

Dear friends,

What a beautiful opening to the new year! It was wonderful gathering with you all with music, food and sky, and searching for new ways to listen. I was especially moved to sing and pray with some of you who couldn’t come in person throughout the pandemic, including our Shul’s founders, Ellen and Holly.  

On Tuesday evening and Wednesday, we will continue our exploration of communication, the search to find the spaces where we can truly connect with one another, hear and be heard. As we move from Rosh Hashanah, the day of hearing the shofar, to Yom Kippur, the day of speaking our deepest truths, we might want to adopt the attitude of the chazzan, the cantor, who opens her mouth on Yom Kippur with the following words: 

Hineni, he’ani mima’as 
Nir’ash v’nifchad, mi mi ani 

הִנְנִי הֶעָנִי מִמַּעַשׂ  
נִרְעָשׁ וְנִפְחַד מִי מִי אֲנִי 

HERE I AM, 
POOR OF DEEDS, 
TREMBLING AND FRIGHTENED – 
WHO, WHO AM I? 

Hineni – Here I am, is always, at any hour of the day, a good use of words.

He'ani mima’as - poor of deeds, is the humble attitude one wears when they know they are standing in front of someone they can learn from. Is there anyone we can’t learn from?

Nir’ash venifchad mi mi ani, Trembling and frightened – who, who am I? The process of the Days of Awe contradicts itself. We both relinquish the self and become more ourselves. It is a scary process, a total letting go and becoming part of the wind. And there, as we fly around with the particles of dust and light, we find ourselves. Any word we utter that asks “who am I,” is a certainly a word well used.  

And speaking of words, I hope you manage to take moment this weekend to work on our community assignment for the Days of Awe. Here’s a recap again: 

Find a line or verse that moves you deeply. This can be poetry, prose, journalism, something someone once told you, ancient, contemporary, anything really. Some line that touches your kishkes. Spend some time with it over a few days, seeing how it plays into your days and nights, staying open to how it might speak to what happens in the internal and external world. Then, share this line with another person. See if you can express to them what is that makes these words so important to you. Finally, bring that line to Shul on Yom Kippur. During the morning service we will have space for sharing the lines, and will build out of these words our new and improved Tower of Babbling Words. 

Let’s take Lizzie’s suggestion to dive openly into these Days of Teshuvah, listening like we don’t know how to listen. 

Looking forward to coming together with you all in a few days.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Music, Art, Goodness!

Rehearsing for Rosh Hashanah with our musical team: Rachid Halihal, Frank London, Dana Herz, Meg Okura and Yonatan Gutfeld.

Dear friends,

The last shabbat of the year gives us an opportunity to imagine the goodness we invite in the new year. This last week has brought to the forefront the sweet, happy-making peace-invoking capabilities of music and art. In our rehearsal with the musicians this week I was transported into a realm of beauty, playfulness and fun. When you're in the presence of such incredible musicians you easily get lost in a sea of real communication. When you're singing and responding to harmony and rhythm you are suddenly among friends.

Earlier this week I was sent a piece of video art by Ghiora Aharoni. Ghiora took the phrase "Days of Awe" ימים נוראים, and blended the Hebrew letters with Hindi letters of the word Navaratri, the name of the ten day Hindu holiday that this year coincides with our ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Ghiora writes:

"The work unfolds against a backdrop of vintage ledger paper to evoke “The Book of Life” that is opened during the Jewish Holidays and creates a metaphorical conjoining of spiritual energy of these two belief systems with the third eye replacing the tagin, the graphic flourish at the top of the Hebrew letters. These two holidays, both of which last 10 days, explore parallel aspects of humanity’s equilibrium. Navaratri, which means “Nine Nights,” commemorates the epic victory of the Goddess Durga over the demon Mahishasura—a metaphor for the power of good to overcome evil. The Jewish High Holidays—known as the “Days of Awe,” a divine, energetic opening that begins with Rosh Hashanah and culminates in Yom Kippur—is a period of intense introspection of the prior year’s transgressions, as well as atonement, and a symbolic return to a pure state of goodness."

Ghiora's offering is one of an enlarged world that goes far beyond our Jewish lens and finds a holiday-friend, whose energy blends with ours.

Earlier still this week, I received a picture of a painting by New Shul member Susan Weinstein. Susan's paintings often involve natural elements in the city landscape. They remind me that just like the trees, the sky, the flowers inhabit this place of concrete and fast dashes we call New York City, so does the feeling of peace and tranquility exist in islands within our urbanite souls. We can go there, like we go to the nearby community garden. Taking a moment to look at the beauty of human creativity as embodied in the act of observing and painting a garden is another way to experience the sweetness of Rosh Hashanah's honey.

May this year bring us music!
May this year bring us art!
May this year bring us together, like we will do Sunday evening, Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon to celebrate all the goodness this new year has in store for us. I hope you can join us!

Shanah tovah and Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Fall creep in garden by Susan Weinstein

A New You

Last Rosh Hashanah

Rachid Halihal, member of our High Holidays musical team, conducting a Shabbat song in Arabic.

Dear friends,

Are you sick of yourself?  

Do you find yourself longing for a different internal conversation? An altered set of familiar emotional responses, anxieties, habits? An unfamiliar way of listening, speaking, sharing, relating, desiring, thinking, seeing? New jokes, fresh stories, unexpected instincts? 

For a limited time, this fall TJT* promises to help you transform into A NEW PERSON. Someone you never were.  

Wear your body in a new way. 

Experience your mind shifting. 

Sing a truly new song. 

*TJT =The Jewish Tradition 

This is the late-night infomercial version of what the great Rabbi Joseph B Soloveitchik called Teshuvah, or repentance. The Days of Awe, or the Ten Days of Teshuvah, for which we are currently in pre-season action, offer us a rare chance to create a new version of ourselves. Soloveitchik writes: 

“Repentance is an act of creation – self-creation. The severing of one’s psychic identity with one’s previous “I,” and the creation of a new “I,” possessor of a new consciousness, a new heart and spirit, different desires, longings, goals – this is the meaning of that repentance compounded of regret over the past and resolve for the future.” 

When we examine our actions critically the process of honest exploration can already lead us to step out of ourselves. When that happens, we open a door that can lead us to act differently, to see things from other perspectives, to new modes of behavior. When we then resolve to improve, we offer ourselves a new path. A new way to experience, receive, and act. 

Maybe we will only get to be someone else for a brief second. Maybe just for Yom Kippur. Maybe we’ll get the whole ten days leading up to it. But maybe, if we put in the work, and find the opening, we will, “through teshuvah,” as Soloveitchik wrote, “create” - each of us for ourselves and all of us together - our “own I.” 

Yesterday I met with Rachid Halihal, the master oud player from Morocco who will make music with us throughout these High Holidays. Rachid described a project he worked on for years, in which he would invite people from different countries, backgrounds and religions to make music together. Some were professional musicians, others had never sung or made music in front of others. There were children, seniors and everyone in between, blind people, seeing people, folks of all types. He would ask them to leave their identities, their politics, their beliefs at the door, and step into the music, where the language is that of the human heart, of sound, of listening and responding, of rhythm and melody. Rachid would work with each group, until they were ready to perform.  

Above is a video of one such performance, of a traditional Mizrachi Shabbat song, Ki Eshmera Shabbat, here sung in translation into Arabic. 

This evening at 6:30, Please join two of our leading musicians and me this evening at First Presbyterian Church (5th Ave and 12th street in Manhattan) for a special Shabbat of slichot, the pre-High Holidays songs and hymns of repentance that are also sung at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. If you’re ready to find that new you, it might be waiting for you there. 

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Open That Window

Last Rosh Hashanah

Dear friends,

Like a switch that’s been clicked, the season of opening windows has arrived in New York. The heat isn’t bouncing off the sidewalks, the AC is relaxing, the sweet disruption of summer abates. This week, in a moment of internal combustion I opened the window for some air. I got more than I bargained for. A car drove by slowly, blasting an Israeli religious pop song (yes, that’s a genre!).

“Even in the hiddenness within the hiddenness the Blessed Holy One exists.
Behind the difficult things you are going through too - I stand.“

Of course the song from back home would jump at me through the open window to the Brooklyn streets.

The following morning I opened up the Tanach, or Old Testament randomly, looking for some guidance. On the page in front of me are the dying words of the prophet Elisha, known for his ability to return the dead back to life:

״פתח חלון לקדם״
“Open the window to Kedem.”

Kedem is a rich word. In ancient times it meant the east. Now means the ancient. And can also be understood as “the time before.” Open a window to the ancient, the prophet urges, to the east, the land of the ancestors, to the rising sun, or here on the east coast, to the ocean.

That’s an apt description of the month of Elul, our time of opening the heart before the new year, which we’re currently in. We can work on opening that window to the ancient on our own, but it’s easier in company. During the next few weeks we have some fun opportunities to do that through our pre-high holidays chevrutahs, or learning groups. You’re all welcome to join them, or even jump in for one night if that’s what you can pull off.

Learning with these beautiful teachers, who each in their own way teeter on the verge of the deep, is a one of a kind experience.

The chevrutah on Martin Buber’s book Meetings will be led by a finely balanced father-son act. Jim Ponet, rabbi, poet, intentional madman will be joined by his philosopher son, Dr. David Ponet who has the impressive talent of clothing the visceral in the language of the mind. Together they will bring us into Buber’s world of I-Thou relationships, and through Buber’s stories help us understand “the secret of the smile that has been lost,” which Buber identified on Theodore Hertzl’s mother’s lips the one time they met.

Michael Posnick, theater director turned Buddhist teacher and preacher of the “eyn sof” will work with us on the ever-elusive task of listening to ourselves. Through a range of texts from different traditions, and meditation exercises, Michael will ask us the simple question: Who is listening?

Our musical leaders, Yonatan Gutfeld and Dana Herz will bring us together to sing some of the songs we will sing these High Holidays. There’s nothing better to combat loneliness and anxiety than singing together. Let yourself sing and you’ll have fun. (They'll also be there to lead music  next Friday evening for Shabbat at First Presbytarian Church.)

Ori Aguila is a death doula, artist and Jeweler who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience from her indigenous roots into a conversation around the life-affirming practice of holding space for death.

Finally, the wonderful Elana Ponet has been mining the bible and midrash’s stories about women, and bringing them into our conversations at the Shul for over two years now. Elana will invite us to hear these feminine voices from within our sadly patriarchal tradition.

All the info for these opportunities can be found HERE.

Let’s crack open that window.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

The Foodie Challenge

Foodie in training

Dear friends,

It’s all about food at the end of the day. All the big concepts, the word of God, four thousand years of history, Holocausts and survival, all of it boils down to what we eat or don’t eat. Matzah, latkes, cheese cake, Hamantaschen, challah, round challah, fish head, fish tail, matzah balls, brisket, apples and honey, dried fruit, first fruits, brisket, salt water, hard boiled egg, peas, chicken wing, chicken soup, orange, leek tart, spinach tart, blintzes, wine, grape juice, jelly donuts, merengue, dates with butter, manicotti, Jachnun, celery, Haroset; these are some of the foods I’ve eaten ritualistically in Jewish settings. Every single one has its time and place, and most carry a specific meaning as well.

Rosh Hashanah (coming up in just 3 weeks!) is that rare holiday that omits the first two parts of “they tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.” It goes straight to the table without pretending to live elsewhere. Everyone is familiar with apples and honey, but the opening of the Jewish year is a culinary celebration of symbols and flavors that goes far beyond honey for a sweet new year. At my grandmother in law, Sheila’s, an Egyptian Jewish household, the feast begins with wine (after the daily sunset Scotch of course), moves on to leek tart, spinach tart, peas, fish head, fish body, pomegranate seeds, and finally apples and honey. And challah (round if possible). And then dinner. Each of the pre dinner foods has its own blessing, related to something we wish upon ourselves this year.

Sheila didn’t make up any of these blessings or foods. They’ve come down the generations as the family moved from Syria to Lebanon to Palestine, Egypt the US and Canada. Each of them has a specific symbolism to match the blessing it is meant to evoke. The pomegranate seeds, for example imply fruitfulness. Each fruit has hundreds of beautiful, red seeds. The head of the fish is for leadership - “may you be like a head, not a tail.” The rest of the fish is because the head is gross, and for fertility. The round challah is for wholeness. The peas, those little green nuggets are for money. And so on and so forth.

Some of you were at the beautiful Queens County Farm two years back for our Rosh Hashanah service during which the news broke about Justice Ginsburg’s - her memory is a blessing - passing. I still remember her name called out during Kaddish, and tears. If you were there you might also remember a certain saffron honey cake concocted by a certain tall, handsome Yemenite, who explained the intricacies of the symbolism of this cake, and why the 108 strands of saffron he used in the cake represent the exact blessing that we need this year. I remember the sweet taste of the cake better than the explanation, but the year that followed indeed carried the elegant, sweet grace of those saffron strands, despite its challenges.

This Rosh Hashanah we are going to kick the year off with food. After our evening service, once we’ve taken in some sweet music and set some intentions for the holiday season, we will flex our community’s creative culinary muscles. I invite you all to the following challenge: Come up with a dish that symbolizes the very blessing we need this year. It could be a brand new concoction, a riff on a traditional dish, or even a traditional family dish that you think embodies our current need. Prepare it. Bring it in on the 25th and share it with the rest of us. If you're game to take on this challenge, let Susan know at susan@newshul.org.

Let’s start the year off just like our ancestors have taught us, as weird spiritual foodies.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Two Musical Greats and a Prophet

A choir in front of Penn Station

Dear friends,

In 1951, the iconic composer John Cage famously visited the anechoic chamber at Harvard University. An anechoic chamber is a room designed in such a way that the walls, ceiling and floor absorb all sounds made in the room, rather than reflecting them as echoes. Such a chamber is also externally sound-proofed. Cage entered the chamber expecting to hear silence, but he wrote later, "I heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation." Cage had gone to a place where he expected total silence, and yet heard sound. "Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death."

Cage realized that there is in fact no such thing as silence.

Elijah the prophet seems to have learned a similar lesson in a visit to a different chamber, the cave on “Horev, the mountain of God.” In the silence of the cave he was able to hear some words:

“Come out, and stand on the mountain before the LORD.”
And lo, the LORD passed by. There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind—an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake.

After the earthquake—fire; but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire—the thin sound of perfect silence.

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his mantle about his face and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then a voice addressed him: “Why are you here, Elijah?”

Silence often asks us that question. That’s what can be so uncomfortable about it. But it can also simply be enough.

Rocker Nick Cave recently expressed that duality like this:

Each day I pray into the silence. I pray to all of them. All of them who are not here. Into this emptiness, I pour all my desire and want and need, and in time this absence becomes potent and alive and activated with a promise. This promise that sits inside the silence is beauty enough. This promise, right now, is amazement enough. This promise, right now, is God enough. This promise, right now, is as much as we can bear.

After his visit to the anechoic chamber Cage composed what he considered to be his most important piece, which came to be known as 4’33”. It’s been performed countless times in arrangements ranging from solo piano to a full orchestra. Each time it sounded eerily alike, but very different.

Listen to one of those performances below.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Before I Came to Be

The primordial view from Mount Champlain, Maine earlier this summer (photo Ezzy Shulman)

Dear friends,

The last weeks of summer are a primordial state of mind. Summer has happened. The year is over, but the next one has yet to begin. We yawn our way through the yawn-like days waiting to be reborn, thrown back into the world. In the meantime, we might catch a minute of sweetness here and there as happy hour keeps getting a few minutes earlier each day. 

In one of those amorphous moments of sweetness this week I got to read a 13th century poem with a few of you, which describes the time before we existed. 

טֶרֶם הֱיוֹתִי חַסְדְּךָ בָאִָני 
הַשָּׂם לְיֵשׁ איִן וְהִמְצִיאָנִי  

She who makes something out of nothing, 
She conceived me 
Her kindness came to me 
Before I came to be. 

It’s tempting to hear in this a poem about a mother. That is probably your humble translator’s fault. Solomon Ibn Gabirol, the Paytan who penned the words was likely thinking about God. The period of time in question is probably not the 9 months of pregnancy, or even the months or years before it, but the unquantifiable, primordial end of the summer of the never-ending cycle of being and dying. “Before I came to be,” we learn, is a time of chesed, enduring love, ever-present kindness.  

The early Kabbalists also tended to talk about primordial, pre-creation moments as sweet, or sublime. In Sefer Yetzira, the most ancient of the Kabbalistic books we find the following description of primordial chochmah, or wisdom: 

“a pure and completely unalloyed light of life, inscribed and sealed in the splendor of the supreme vault, which is called The Naught, devoid of any notion.” 

Before wisdom came to be it was not pieces of thought, ideas floating around with no form. It was a completely thought-free light. This sounds right to me. Most of the meaningful insights about my life come from a place of quiet, rather than from a place of busy internal conversation. Inhabiting such a place of quiet is a rare gift, a moment of chesed, out of which further gifts sometimes come. 

In the 12th century in Provence, the practice of Kabbalah began to take its first baby steps toward becoming. Still close to its primordial time, these early Kabbalists seem to retain a memory or instinct for what that primordiality is about, and how it relates to them. In his commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, the greatest Kabbalist of his generation, known as Isaac the blind wrote:
“All things return to the root of their true being.”
Isaac reflects the time before existence back onto the time after it. If “before I came to be” is a root of who or what we will become, it is the same space we will return to after we cease to be; a space of chesed, loving kindness, of sweet, pure quiet. 

The High Holidays, and Yom Kippur in particular invite us into that type of space. There, grudges, anger, disappointment, self criticism make no sense, while forgiveness becomes a no-brainer. Ibn Gabirol ends his poem going back to the beginning: 

How could I ever conceal my sin from You? 
Even before I came to be 
Your kindness came to me. 

Whether he’s talking to his mother or his god, the primordial intimacy makes holding onto any negativity mute. 

As this summer rolls away from us, let’s try to enjoy the sweet, empty spaces of pre and post-existence it offers us, before we’re swept into another year of being. 

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Remorse Without Shame

Dear friends,

The rabbis in the Talmud are big on accountability. But I'm not sure how they would feel about some of our current societal methods of holding people accountable for their actions. Public shaming, or what they called "taking the color out of another's face in public," is like murder, they hold. Following a nuance in a verse from Leviticus they hold that while we are obligated to reprove our fellow people when they act wrongly, we must do so in such a way that we don't drive them to commit further wrongs. "Make sure to reprove your fellow person, so that you do not carry their sin." (Leviticus 19:17) Not the sin they have already committed, expound the rabbis, but the one you might drive them to by publicly shaming them.

Their instinct recognizes the danger of shame. We all have experienced it. How the understanding that we did something wrong - hurt someone we didn't want to hurt, expressed a position that is offensive to some, let our tongue or body slip in an embarrassing way - spreads through our bodies and drives us to entrench our position and lash out. When we follow the feeling of shame we often end up in violence.

My wife, Erika, who works in the field of Restorative Justice has long been working on the transformation of shame within contexts of harm. Instead of shame, remorse. This week she published a piece on public apologies which analyzes Will Smith's apology to Chris Rock, and the way he spoke about shame. It holds some keys to how we might think about apologizing to those we've harmed, as the season of forgiveness approaches. I thought it apt to share it with you. And thankfully, she agreed! Read her piece HERE.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Perfectly Broken

Ger The Stranger By Ghiora Aharoni as presented on Mount Olives in Jerusalem

Dear friends,

On the night of the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av some decades ago, my parents made their way through the streets of west Jerusalem, entered through the walls of the old city and walked down to the Western Wall. My mother was carrying her ripe, pregnant belly around as they joined the multitudes of Jews who came to sing Kinnot, sad songs of abandonment and despair, and hear the words of the most broken of biblical books, Lamentations. Tisha B’Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple thousands of years ago, as well as multiple more recent horrors that came upon our people, draws many to the only piece of that temple that still stands. Shortly after my parents got back to their apartment in Rechavia, as the legend goes, contractions began, and a few hours later I was in mother’s arms. 

I have always been comfortable with the simultaneous presence of joy and sadness. There are times when I can’t make them apart. Things like breaking the glass at the wedding, or Mourners Kaddish at every prayer service make perfect sense to me.  I sometimes think my parents’ nighttime trip to the Kotel on the night of my birth has to do with that.  Certainly, having a (Hebrew) birthday on a fast day can drive that point home. 

The Israeli reality I grew up in was similarly drenched in both joy and sadness, beauty and ugliness, wonder and fear, idealism and cynicism. West Jerusalem in the eighties was a safe and warm place, where kids played soccer in the street, climbed fruit trees to eat their apricots, figs or mulberries, and rode their bikes on the streets on Yom Kippur. But there were knife attacks by terrorists, my father fighting in wars, soldiers just older than my brother dying regularly. Those deaths held within them the most tremendous pain and a perfect beauty. I remember the gorgeous, sad songs sung at Memorial Day ceremonies every year that would bring me to tears as the alumni of the school stood in uniform looking like beauty itself. That little boy felt the dead and their family’s sacrifice as ultimate love: perfect, unbreakable and entirely demolishing. And he knew that soon his brother would wear that uniform, and shortly after so would he. 

As soon as I completed my military service, I left all that behind. I moved to New York and joined a pacifist theatre company. The idealism from my childhood, that of the quest for peace, the belief in the goodness of the state, or any state for that matter, was gone. Ultimate sacrifice no longer seemed beautiful.  What took its place were the people I knew who were looking at the world soberly, seeing its horrors and brokenness, and diving in to take a stand against them. The greatest example of this for me was always the activists working in the West Bank to try and help poor Palestinians from being kicked off their lands by settlers and the army. While most of the country had gotten tired of caring and stopped looking east, or worse, these few knew exactly what was going on, and despite their miniscule chances of success they doggedly persisted in going out there and doing the right thing. My experiences in places like the South Hebron Hills have been some of the most horrifying and the most gratifying of my life. 

Most days I have a strange double feeling. I feel the goodness of humanity slipping between our fingers like melted ice, and I feel love and friendship constantly exhibiting themselves.  

Tonight the 9th of Av will begin, and it will be that rare occasion when my Hebrew birthday is not marred by wailing and fasting. Shabbat trumps any sad day, and we’re taught to enjoy ourselves and rest. But when the postponed fast will begin tomorrow evening I will take the day to mourn the destruction, the stupidity, the nastiness; I will allow myself to wallow in sadness. I will remember that many of those Palestinian villages I tried to help keep in place have been removed, that Ukraine is burning and millions of refugees walk the earth, that much of what our great feminist teachers have taught us has been unlearned, that this country is broken at the bone. Despair, my father taught me, is its own kind of freedom. 

Jerusalem means “we will see wholeness.”  May we find the strength to look straight at the brokenness and see it for what it is. And may that remind us of all that is whole in us and in the world, and give us the courage to make that wholeness appear in front of our eyes. 

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

The Tree in the Midst

By Susan Weinstein

Dear friends,

You’re coming home from work or from running around town. Your mind is busy. Your heart full of concerns. You unlock the door to your apartment and are about to step in. Your eye catches sight of the Mezuzah on the doorpost. You remember the first word in the scroll inside of it: Shma, Listen! You pause to fulfill the commandment, to change gears before entering a new space, to walk into your house with your mind, not just your body.  

When a friend described this to me yesterday it struck me as a good example of the mental transformation described in Psalm 27. How do we get from the state of mind in verse 2: 

 בִּקְרֹ֤ב עָלַ֨י ׀ מְרֵעִים֮ לֶאֱכֹ֢ל אֶת־בְּשָׂ֫רִ֥י צָרַ֣י וְאֹיְבַ֣י לִ֑י הֵ֖מָּה כָשְׁל֣וּ וְנָפָֽלוּ׃  

When the bad angels 
Crowd close over me 
To eat my flesh 
My constrainers, 
My enemies 
They fail And fall. 

To that in verse 6: 

וְעַתָּ֨ה יָר֪וּם רֹאשִׁ֡י עַ֤ל אֹיְבַ֬י סְֽבִיבוֹתַ֗י וְאֶזְבְּחָ֣ה בְ֭אׇהֳלוֹ זִבְחֵ֣י תְרוּעָ֑ה אָשִׁ֥ירָה וַ֝אֲזַמְּרָ֗ה לַֽיהֹוָֽה׃  

In that moment 
My head will rise 
High above my surrounding enemies 
I will gift Her 
Beautiful sacrifices of sound 
Poetry and song to YHVH 

The 16th century kabbalist Moshe Alsheich illuminates the phrase My constrainers, My enemies: 

צרי ואויבי הם צרי ואויבי הנפש 

My constrainers and my enemies are the constrainers and enemies of the soul. 

The question, then is an internal one: How can I change my inner world from a state of fear and anxiety into one of confidence and peace? 

Two possibilities surface in my search for an answer, one available, immediate and short-lived, and the other demands work and time but can be offer a much longer stay in the state of peace.  

The quick option appears in the following Hassidic teaching: 

"It is written (in Genesis): “The tree in the midst of the garden.” Whenever a person prays, they should think that they are in the garden of paradise, where there is no envy and no lust and no pride, and they will surely be safe from distraction. But how can they think in this way, since they know that they are in this world and among people they are acquainted with? This is how: When a person studies or prays with reverence and devoutness begotten of love, and remembers that nothing is void of God, but that everything is filled with life granted by the Creator, then, in all they see, they see the living power of the Creator and hear Her living voice. That is the meaning of the words: “The tree of life in the midst of the garden.”  

In that moment of pause before entering the house, or any such moment of pause, one can step out of their mind with its temporary anxieties, and step, temporarily into eternity, into sound, into the reality of the natural world. We are certainly still in the world around us, but we become a tree in a garden rather than a lunatic in the city.  

Hard as that may sound, the deeper option is harder. Alsheich writes: 

The constrainers and enemies of the soul are the destroyers that were born out of my faulty acts. “My” denotes that they are mine. And the point is that whoever commits a wrongful act, creates along with it a corrupting force. However, the one who returns from them with love can transform those misdeeds into meritorious gifts, and the prosecutors become defense attorneys and lovers. Then how could they “eat my flesh?” Therefore, the verse continues: “they fail and fall.”  

The more foundational way to shift our state of mind, Alsheich explains, involves the work of transformation and repentance. It’s not just the world that is oppressing us, our oppression is related to the way we behave in the world. Our job is to find those places where we are straying from the path of goodness.  

“Anxiety is engendered by straying from the right course,” wrote Harav Kook. “Through penitence inspired by love even this damage can be turned into a source of good.” 

Ultimately though, the short path to transcendence and the long one are connected. Penitence begins with stopping, witnessing, observing yourself. If we don’t step out of ourselves to take a look, we will never be able to change our behavior. We will be stuck in our minds, seeing the same enemies and constrainers coming to eat our flesh, or treat us unfairly, or take what is ours, and we will never be able to enjoy the feeling of watching them fail, disintegrate or if we’re very, very lucky transform into our defenders and lovers. 

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

MUSIC: Avinu Malkenu

Trumpet: Frank London

Vocals: Jack Klebano

Vocals and guitar: Yonatan Gutfeld

Violin: Marandi Hostatter

Percussions: Aaron Alexsander

Hebrew:

Avinu Malkenu
Avinu Malkenu
Avinu Malkenu, Chaneinu V'aneinu Ki ein banu ma'asim

Ase imanu tzedakah vachesed
Ase imanu tzedakah vachesed vehoshiyeinu.

Avinu Malkenu
Avinu Malkenu
Avinu Malkenu, Chaneinu V'aneinu Ki ein banu ma'asim

Ase imanu tzedakah vachesed
Ase imanu tzedakah vachesed vehoshiyeinu.

English:

Our Father, Our King
Be gracious and answer our prayers For we have little to commend us Deal kindly and gently with us
And save our people. 

Faces and Obsessions

The Ark of the synagogue in Avignon, France, with the verse from Psalm 19:

Dear friends, 

Thank you for all the well wishes for my Covid bout. It was so sweet to get all that love. And it worked!

One thing Covid didn’t cure me of, is my continuing obsession with Psalm 27. In the Kabbalistic poem Yedid Nefesh, which we often sing to welcome Shabbat, there’s talk of a love-sickness that reminds me of this poetic obsession:

Hadur na’eh Ziv ha’olam,
nafshi cholat ahavatach

The world shines
With sparkling beauty:
My soul is sick with Your love.

I try and imagine what the content is of this soul’s love sickness. What do we yearn for so deeply? What might the pain of longing for God manifest as? What exactly is this incurable malady that the poet asks relief from week after week? Is it a form of depression? Alienation? Meaninglessness? Heartbreak with the state of the world? 

A hint might be found in the following line of Yedid Nefesh:

Ana el na refa na la
Behar'ot la noam zivach

Please, god, heal her
Show her it can shine sweet and soft.

To me this request for relief reads false. The real desire is to be in the longing, not to actualize it. With another person actualization might be a worthy goal. With God, however, the actualization lies in the seeking, in the desire, in the obsession. The lovesickness, what the Hassidic rabbis call Dveykus, or cleaving, is the desired state of being for Jews. In that sense, my obsession with Psalm 27 is a great example of my soul’s lovesickness for God.

Over and over I cleave to the questions the verses raise.

Lecha amar libi bakshu panay
Et panecha Adonai avakesh

My heart speaks Your words: Seek My face.
I seek Your face, Adonai.

What does it mean to seek the face of God? What is the heart doing in this process? Is the communication between me and God taking place there, within the realm of the heart, or is there, as the verse seems to suggest, an urging by the wordless heart to communicate with the All through words and actions? We do, after all speak to God in the second person. Atah - You, we say whenever we mouth a blessing or a prayer. There is, that implies, another entity to communicate with, a being of sorts, with something like a face, an energy to be in dialogue with. “Don’t objectify me,” seems to be the cry coming from God to our hearts through the words of the poet: "Seek My face."

it is a real encounter we are after. Don’t content yourself with seeing God from afar, like a bear sighting or a glimpse of a rare bird. No, the face implies a true meeting. On the face of it (sorry!) this sounds impossible. Torah tells us explicitly that only one person ever saw God face to face, and that is Moses. None of the prophets, priests, rabbis, sages, teachers, mystics achieved this. No one other than Moses ever had a face to face with God, and even Moses when he asked to see God’s face was only allowed a glimpse of his behind. So why would we bother to “Seek God’s face?”

Maimonides explains the verse from Exodus: “My face shall not be seen,”ופני לא יֵרָאו" like this:

אמיתת מציאותי כמות שהיא לא תושג

The truth of My presence as it is shall not be reached.

Seeing the face of God according to Maimonides means understanding the full truth of the reality of God. There is an objective reality to God that cannot be understood by a human being.

BUT! That does not, and must not preclude a subjective, partial experiencing of God, universe, transcendent self. A momentary understanding of one aspect of the All is possible. The heart that tells us to find God’s face is not actually sending us on an impossible mission. It is reminding us of our never ending personal mission to remain in the mode of the searching traveler.

The Hebrew word for face, panim is plural. When we are told, seek My face, we are in fact told to seek My faces. Find the one of the infinite faces that you can find today.

We are taught:
There are seventy faces to the Torah.
No matter how wise, knowledgable or transcendent, we can’t get all of them at once. What we can do is flip them around again and again.

הפוך בה והפוך בה
Flip her over and flip her again
We’re told about Torah.
That is the seeking of Her face.

Don’t find God: find your God, the God of this moment in your life, the God of your obsession, of your current confusion, of your momentary need, of your quiet place, of your search.

Your heart desires a face to face meeting. Will you seek out one of Mine?

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha