A couple of times over the past week, I’ve been talking with friends about how we taught our kids to say “thank you.” I shared that when my children were babies and toddlers, I would model it for them. Whenever I handed them something, I would say “Here you go!” When they took it (before they could talk), I would say “Thank you!” Pretty soon, especially once they became talkers, it was an automatic response. Before I go on too much longer letting you think I’m patting myself on the back for my excellent parenting, please know that the habit of saying thank you really only stuck with one of the two kids. And neither of them is polite in all areas of life, or on some days in any of them. 

This mildly amusing story, however, illustrates something we know to be true: gratitude can be complicated. In a week when as Americans we celebrate Thanksgiving, when all of our reasons for being thankful are front and center, it can feel somewhat sacrilegious to acknowledge this, but here we are. I know this is certainly true for me this year, with things both personal and communal weighing heavily on me - the gratitude is there, but it doesn’t come as easily as I might like.

Each year as we read the Torah over again, we take it in as our current selves. The lens through which we see the text is the lens of whatever we’re experiencing in our individual worlds. And so, I see shades of this kind of complicated gratitude in Parashat Toldot as well. 
​
In the opening scene of the parashah, we are reminded of the circumstances of Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah. As we read in last week’s parashah, it was his marriage that brought him comfort after the death of his mother. The joy and gratitude of a new relationship existed side by side with grief and a sense of loss. 

As the text continues here, Rebekah and Isaac struggled to conceive; they knew the pain of infertility. Isaac prayed on behalf of his wife and she conceived. This surely was a moment overflowing with gratitude. Their prayers had been answered and they would become parents. Yet Rebekah’s pregnancy was not an easy one; she was in pain and cried out to God, “If so, why do I exist?” (Genesis 25:22)

A midrash from Bereishit Rabbah creates a fuller picture of Rebekah’s pain in this moment. “Rabbi Yitzḥak said: It teaches that our matriarch Rebecca was circulating around the entrances of women’s houses and saying to them: ‘In your days, did you experience this suffering? If this is the suffering that comes with children; had I only not conceived.’” (Bereishit Rabbah 63:6) Here we see the gratitude mixed with, perhaps even replaced by, fear, pain, and regret.

What do we do, then, when our gratitude is difficult to access, laced with less comfortable emotions, or overshadowed by difficulty? It’s not easy, and I’m not always that good at it, but I believe what we do is we let ourselves feel all of our feelings. When we look at this up close, we see that there can be hints of joy in times of sadness or the opposite. Contradictory emotions can coexist - our hearts can hold more than one thing at a time. When we zoom out a little, we find that over the course of a period of time, even over the course of one particular experience, we feel a wide range of emotions. Nothing is all one way or another. And when we look back on those experiences, all of those emotions can be part of how we tell the story of those parts of our lives. 

Our ability to experience life in this deeply feeling way is something for which I am truly grateful.

I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and Shabbat Shalom.

​In my 8th grade Bible class, we study the Avraham narratives in depth. From the first moment of Avraham’s connection with the Divine, we notice God’s promises of land, offspring, and a great name. As we continue studying the story of our first patriarch, we evaluate how each of those promises is coming to fruition. For example, first there’s a famine in the land and he’s forced to go to Egypt; then he’s able to go back and settle more permanently, with God promising an expansive portion of territory. 

There are ups and downs, dramatic moments when it seems like one or another of the promises is in grave danger of never being fulfilled, and moments when they finally seem to be firmly established. By the time we reach the end of Parashat Vayera, last week’s Torah reading, which contains the bulk of the Avraham narratives, we take it for granted that all of the promises have been fulfilled and are staying that way. He is living in Be’er Sheva, in the land of Canaan. He has raised two sons, one of whom is chosen by God to be his heir. And he is well-known throughout the land. 
But at the beginning of Parashat Ḥayyei Sarah, which we read this week, it seems that it’s not necessarily so cut and dried. Sarah just having died, Avraham purchases the field of Makhpelah, burying his wife in the cave there. So of the vast swath of land that God promised him, he now firmly possesses: one field. His chosen son, Yitzḥak, who is to be the next in his line, the father of the multitudes that he is supposed to give rise to, is nowhere to be found. A close look at the text reveals that after the incident of the Akedah, Avraham and his son never speak again. Yitzḥak is absent from Avraham’s life, but Avraham is mostly concerned that he remains unmarried with no children. We don’t hear much to challenge Avraham’s great name, but he must have been concerned about its staying power, given all of the challenges he faced.

God’s promises don’t seem all that secure anymore. It therefore stands out when, at the beginning of Chapter 24, we read: “Abraham was now old, advanced in years, and the LORD had blessed Avraham in all things.” (Genesis 24:1)  Avraham has just buried Sarah - while we often encourage ourselves and others to find points of gratitude in hard times, it seems incongruous to note this in the wake of Sarah’s death. This moment, when Avraham is grieving his wife and feeling uncertainty about his legacy, seems an odd one to speak of all that he has; his awareness is focused much more on what he is lacking. 
 
The text says that God blessed him “in all things.” The phrase “in all things,” בכל in Hebrew, is unhelpfully vague, and sparks many midrashic interpretations. One that I came across felt particularly meaningful to me this week. Bereishit Rabbah 59:7 teaches: “Rabbi Levi said several interpretations: “In all things” means that he granted him control over his evil inclination…“In all things” means that his food storehouse lacked nothing. Rabbi Levi said in the name of Rabbi Ḥama: “In all things” means that God did not test him again.”
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Rather than understanding Avraham’s blessings as beyond measure, as a number of other midrashim do, this understanding of “in all things” takes a more realistic approach. At a time of his life when he was feeling loss, he was still able to recognize that he was in possession of himself, he had his physical needs met, and he had security in knowing that God would no longer subject him to the tests that had been a constant in his earlier years. It may not have literally been all things, but it was everything. 

Shabbat shalom.

In our triennial cycle of reading the Torah, we encounter the Akedah, the story of the binding of Isaac, only once every three years. Closing out the Abraham narratives in Genesis, it is one of our most challenging texts, the story of a father attempting to sacrifice his child and being seemingly rewarded for it. Especially with everything going on in our world today, the themes of broken relationships, offering up our children, and a capricious God are ones we might prefer not to face. Once in three yearIn our triennial cycle of reading the Torah, we encounter the Akedah, the story of the binding of Isaac, only once every three years. Closing out the Abraham narratives in Genesis, it is one of our most challenging texts, the story of a father attempting to sacrifice his child and being seemingly rewarded for it. s seems more than enough. But this is our year for the Akedah, so face it we must.

This week, I saw a post on social media from Sarah Tuttle-Singer, an American/Israeli author and blogger whom I follow. She attributed the post to a mutual friend; the original words seem to have been written by Marion McNaughton, a Quaker who lives in England and is involved in, among other things, interfaith work. I reposted her words, feeling that they gave voice to many of the feelings that arise for me when I read the Akedah: the frustration, the resignation. I want to share some of them with us here now:

And with a heavy heart Abraham went to his wife Sarah and said, "God has told me to take our son Isaac, whom we love, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering." 

[...]

And Sarah threw up her hands in despair and said, "Abraham, you are a bone-headed fool. What kind of a God do you think you are dealing with? What kind of a god would want you to kill your own son to prove how religious you are?...She's trying to teach you something; that you must challenge even the highest authority on questions of right and wrong. Argue with Her, wrestle with Her!" But Sarah's words smacked to Abraham of blasphemy, and he went into the mountains with his son Isaac. 

And Sarah said to God, "You are playing with fire. He is too stupid to understand what you are up to. He won't…challenge you; if you don't stop him, he will kill our precious son…" 

And God said, "Sarah, they have a long journey to the mountains; I'm hoping one of them will see sense." 

And Sarah said, "Like father, like son. You'll have to send an angel." 

And it came to pass as Sarah foretold, and the angel of the Lord spoke to Abraham…and told him not to kill his son. And Abraham sacrificed a ram as a burnt offering. And the angel of the Lord spoke to Abraham a second time and told him his offspring would be as numerous as stars in the heaven... And the angel of the Lord spoke to Abraham a third time and said, "Because you were ready to kill your own son in the name of your God you will be known as a great patriarch and millions will follow your example. And they will believe that He is indeed a jealous and a demanding God, and they will willingly sacrifice their sons in His name and to His glory. And there will be bloodshed and slaughter in all the corners of the earth." 

And Abraham returned to his wife Sarah and said, "God is well pleased with me for I am to be a mighty patriarch." 

And Sarah said nothing. But she took the garments of Abraham and Isaac that were stained with the blood of the ram, and she carried them to the river to be washed. And the river ran red with the blood of generations to come, and Sarah wept bitterly. 

And God came to Sarah at the water's edge and said, "Sarah, do not weep. You were right. It will take time. Meanwhile hold firm to what you know of me and speak it boldly. I am as you know me to be. Many generations will pass and a new understanding will come to the children of Abraham, but before then I shall be misheard and misrepresented except by a few. You must keep my truth alive." 

And Sarah dried her eyes and said, "As if I didn't have enough to do." 

It’s the last line that does it for me. I feel Sarah’s indignation, her sense of overwhelm at being tasked with one. more. thing. when she already bears the weight of so much responsibility on her shoulders, when she already did everything she could to try and stop the train from running off the rails. She saw it coming; she tried to stop it; now she has to deal with the aftermath. 

But Sarah in this piece is also strong, resolute. She dries her eyes and does not reject what she’s being asked to do. She has a massive, but sacred, responsibility. Knowing that God’s presence in the world is best felt not through might, but through justice, she must carry that truth and ignite it in others. May we find the fortitude to follow her lead. 

Shabbat shalom.

​

​Last week, I wrote about how we sometimes need to leave our safe spaces, to step out into the world, in order to be productive and take on the tasks that face us. This week feels like a very different sort of week, a week when we need our safe spaces, the comfort that comes from connection with each other, the sense of security and hope that many of us feel ebbing away in the wake of the election results. For many of us, the prospect of going out into the world seems impossible right now. We need to recenter ourselves, find our way back to solid ground. 
 
Tefillah, prayer, has always been a meaningful part of my spiritual life. In particular, the recitation of Psalms, both in the context of the siddur and as a standalone practice, has helped me find comfort and balance. Sometimes, a certain verse surprises me, hitting me in a new and penetrating way and then becoming a focus for me in my davening for a time. Sometimes it is the act of reciting, repeating the familiar words, that calms me. Sometimes it’s a powerful melody that gives the words new resonance, and listening or singing helps restore my equilibrium.
 
A good number of years ago, I was going through an extremely difficult time in my personal life. The situation was causing me a great deal of anxiety, and I regularly felt hopeless and powerless. Therapy helped, as did time with friends, but those supports weren’t available to me at all of the times when I felt myself being pulled out to sea. 
 
A friend of mine who lives in the Hasidic community knew about my struggles and shared with me a practice she had learned about using psalms, specifically Psalm 119, to seek God’s help. Full disclosure: the theology of this practice didn’t work for me then and doesn’t work for me now. And the practice seems motivated by not a little magical thinking. 
 
Here’s how it worked: Psalm 119 is an alphabetical acrostic, with 8 verses for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. I was to use the verses of the psalm to spell out the person’s name for whom I wanted God’s help, followed by the verses that began with the letters קרע שטן, meaning “tear up Satan.” By reciting these verses, I was calling on God to destroy the evil forces that were negatively affecting the person whose name I spelled out with the verses. God would be moved by my use of the biblical text in this way and would intervene in my situation. 
 
At the time, the magical thinking aspect of it resonated with me. Although I didn’t believe that such divine intervention was within the realm of possibility, I was feeling desperate. I figured that it couldn’t hurt. And it actually helped. 
 
As I would read through the appropriate verses of the psalm, the words would become like a meditation. My breathing would slow, my heartbeat becoming more regulated. It also took a long time to complete the ritual, leaving me feeling at the end like I had accomplished something. My difficult situation had remained the same, but I was changed by doing this. 
 
I’ve heard from so many people over these last couple of days that we’re feeling despair, fear for our children, uncertainty about our collective future. With that in mind, I want to offer as a prayer some of the words of Psalm 119, sending out an intention that the anxiety we’re feeling will soon abate, that we’ll be ready to step back into our lives, prepared for all that faces us. 
 
I call with all my heart;
answer me, O LORD…
I rise before dawn and cry for help;
I hope for Your word.
Hear my voice as befits Your steadfast love;
O LORD, preserve me, as is Your rule.
You, O LORD, are near,
and all Your commandments are true.
See my affliction and rescue me,
for I have not neglected Your teaching.
Your mercies are great, O LORD;
as is Your rule, preserve me.
Truth is the essence of Your word;
Your just rules are eternal.
I have done what is just and right;
do not abandon me to those who would wrong me.
My eyes pine away for Your deliverance,
for Your promise of victory.
I am Your servant;
give me understanding,
that I might know Your decrees.
I hate and abhor falsehood;
I love Your teaching.
Those who love Your teaching enjoy well-being;
they encounter no adversity.
I hope for Your deliverance, O LORD.
Teach me good sense and knowledge,
for I have put my trust in Your commandments.
It was good for me that I was humbled,
so that I might learn Your laws.
I prefer the teaching You proclaimed
to thousands of gold and silver pieces.
Your word is a lamp to my feet,
a light for my path.
 
Shabbat shalom.

The melody that we heard just a bit ago for Kol Nidrei, that we all know so well, is described in the world of Jewish liturgical music as a “MiSinai Melody,” a tune that goes all the way back to Sinai. Not literally of course. MiSinai tunes trace back to between the 11th and 15th centuries in the Rhineland, the heart of medieval Ashkenaz. These melodies, which appear throughout the High Holiday liturgy, became codified in the Ashkenazi tradition and are tightly woven into the way we conduct services on these Yamim Noraim. They speak to our hearts and are embedded in our souls. When we call them MiSinai, we are saying that they are as much a piece of who we are as the experience of standing at Sinai. They are part of our collective memory.

Collective memory is the term we use to describe how groups remember their past and assimilate it into their shared identity. It is the communal pool of memories, knowledge, and information that forms the backbone of a social, cultural, or religious group’s understanding of who they are. 

As Jews, collective memory is our thing.

Our most basic collective memory is having left Egypt. We instill the idea that we were enslaved in Egypt and rescued by God’s strong hand and outstretched arm every chance we get. It’s written into our daily prayers. All of our major festivals - not just the one on which we reenact it extensively - have a connection to the Exodus from Egypt. We sing songs about it and read our children stories about it. A significant part of being Jewish is being able to say, “I was enslaved and now I am free.”

We often hear the idea that all Jewish souls were present at the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Each and every one of us, somewhere deep down inside, knows what it is to stand before God and enter into a relationship with Torah. 

There’s the experience of living in exile, following the destruction of the second Temple in the year 70. For nearly 2,000  years – until this very moment – we outside of Israel refer to where we live as the Diaspora, even though most of us have never made our home anywhere else. 

The piece of us that fears wearing our Judaism too outwardly remembers the Spanish Inquisition and the expulsion from Spain more than 500 years ago. The Chmielnicki pogroms of 17th century Ukraine and the ghettos and death camps of Nazi Europe in the 20th century are also parts of who we are, whether we know victims and survivors from our families or as students of history. 

The founding of the State of Israel in 1948 is another, more recent, piece of our collective memory. I personally never knew a world without an internationally recognized Jewish homeland. Still, I feel the power of that moment in my kishkes every time I watch a recording of the UN partition plan vote or hear Ben Gurion read Megillat HaAtzmaut, the Declaration of Independence. 

Collective memory generally becomes embroidered into a group’s identity in a number of specific ways. It is passed down through storytelling, through ceremonies, rituals, festivals and holidays. Looking back at the list of Jewish collective memories I just shared, we can see how these ways of transmitting collective memory are very much operative in Jewish culture and practice. Collective memory is also imparted through art and literature, the ways we envision and talk about important events of our past. Particularly for traumatic past events, monuments and commemorations are an essential part of ensuring that collective memory gets passed to the next generation. It’s why we build Holocaust memorials, record survivor testimony, and hold Yom HaShoah ceremonies. 

We are currently living through what will very clearly be the next chapter in our book of Jewish collective memory: the attacks of October 7, 2023 and their aftermath. Over the past year, we have grappled with how to respond, what to feel, what to do. Just about a week after October 7, researchers from the USC Shoah Foundation arrived in Israel to interview survivors and eyewitnesses. They have recorded 400 testimonies to date. Religious leaders have written prayers of hope and prayers of mourning. We sing Acheinu during services and at community events. We leave empty places at our Shabbat and holiday tables. The names, faces, and stories of the hostages have been published and shared, printed on posters and discussed in television interviews. All of this begins to transform October 7 from a terrible date in our history to a piece in the fabric of our collective memory. 

It seems obvious that the events of October 7 and what has followed will remain as a permanent part of our Jewish identity, of how we see our past refracted through ourselves. And it should be equally obvious that we don’t know exactly what that will ultimately look like. Part of that is because we’re still living through it. Collective memory is about looking back, but we’re not yet on the other side of whatever this is and whatever it will become.

Moreover, we don’t quite know what meaning to make of October 7 with the specter and experience of rising antisemitism that has accompanied it. In 2013 the Anti-Defamation League recorded 751 antisemitic incidents in the United States. In 2023 they counted 8,873, an increase of more than 1,000 percent. And most of the massive bump in 2023 took place in the months following October 7. Whereas we once felt that we were safe, an essential part of the societies in which we live, we are now discovering how close to the surface ancient stereotypes and prejudices have remained. To write October 7 into our collective memory, we need to understand its significance. We know it was a horrifying pogrom against the people of the State of Israel. Is it also the beginning of the end of feeling secure as a global Jewish community?

We experienced pain, uncertainty, and a sense of impotence following October 7. We don’t yet know how to think about or talk about the significance of October 7 in a way that is truly collective, in a way that makes room for all of the diverse voices that comprise our community. This is another  important piece of why we’re not yet ready to let October 7 become part of our collective memory. Over Rosh Hashanah, I explained that I’d be talking about some difficult conversations we’ve been having and need to have as a community. This is one of them. 

We, like Jews around the world, were emotionally eviscerated by the events of October 7. In those first moments of confusion and grief, we were stripped down to our most primary feelings, among them fear, anger, and contempt. We simply couldn’t hear each other, couldn’t open our hearts to each other’s experiences. When we heard opinions that didn’t gel with our own, we resorted to those primary emotions, blaming each other and drawing lines in the sand about what values did and didn’t belong in our community. Let me be clear - this wasn’t something that only happened at Chevrei Tzedek, but it regrettably was a part of our community’s experience of those first few weeks this past fall after it all started. 
Let me be clear about something else: Believing that I knew the best path forward and that I, as spiritual leader of our congregation, had the responsibility to guide us in the right direction, I sought to cut off debate and quiet the voices of dissent when they became too acrimonious. I did so in order to make more room for the voices advocating for what I believed we should do. I spoke more than I listened. And while I don’t regret the choices we made -- particularly about how to celebrate Shabbat with Rabbi Deborah Sacks Mintz and how to define whom we can partner with as a community -- I know that the outcome was hurtful to many. Some members chose to leave our shul over what they saw as a breach with values they hold dear. Others felt censored, unable to share their real opinions for fear of not passing an unspoken litmus test. Still others felt misunderstood, judged by those they otherwise called friends. 

The term collective memory gives the impression that we, the collective, are all the same, that we all experience things in the same way, that we all have the same opinion about what to do in response to what we’ve experienced. As we well know, this is simply not true. Being part of our collective, part of the variegated and diverse tapestry that is the Jewish community, we know that we, like everyone else in the world (but maybe a little bit more so…), each have our own perspectives and points of view. Our sense of unity as a collective comes from shared identity, not from uniformity. We experience the same events in our own unique ways. This, of course, also holds true for how each of us is experiencing this moment in history. 

There are as many responses to October 7 as there are people in this room -- and definitely so many more than that. I’ll name a few here, drawing on conversations I’ve had with members of our community as well as friends, family, and colleagues over the past year. 

• We may never get over the shock of the brazen attacks and the seemingly indiscriminate violence of what took place. Those red-haired babies…
  
• We are constantly worried about, but also proud of, our children and family members serving in the IDF.
  
• We are devastated for Gaza, for the tremendous loss of life, for the ways in which some of Israel’s leaders seem to have less-than-pure motives.
  
• We are fearful for the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations and for the possibility of a lasting peace that feels like it is slipping away.
  
• We are angry at how the war seems to be overshadowing the ongoing plight of the hostages, and we are worried that no one on either side really wants or is willing to make a deal for their freedom.
  
• We are saddened that members of the younger generation, even in our own families, don’t value and support Israel as we raised them to do.
  
• We feel betrayed by social and political causes and groups that we’ve always aligned with, which now feel unfriendly and even unsafe.
  
• We feel lonely and bereft that our Jewish communal spaces do not seem to tolerate concern for Palestinians. 
  
• We long for the days when being a Progressive Zionist felt possible, and for the Israel of our dreams.
  

So many varied and even contradictory perspectives -- it’s no wonder that we haven’t yet figured out how to talk to each other about October 7 or Israel overall. And in the wake of the discord and hurt that resulted from our previous attempts to have these conversations, many of us have stopped trying to talk to each other about October 7 and Israel overall. 

Learning to talk to each other across our differences is integral to making sense of the past year. Learning to talk to each other across our differences is also integral to healing and to emerging from this past year buoyed by the presence of our community. Speaking about our obligation to remain united despite our differences, New York Times columnist Bret Stephens recently wrote: “To be a Jew obliges us to many things, particularly our duty to be our brother’s, and sister’s, keeper. That means never to forsake one another, much less to join in the vilification of our own people.” So we need to have the hard conversations, and we need to learn to do it better than we have been. 

Fortunately, we don’t need to figure this out on our own. There are people who study this stuff and organizations dedicated to teaching folks to create constructive dialogue around our potentially contentious differences. This is sacred work, and I’m hopeful that we will be able to engage in this kind of dialogue as a community at multiple points over the course of this next year and beyond, both about our perspectives on Israel and about other important issues facing our community. 

In thinking about this topic and beginning to prepare for the kinds of conversations I hope we will have, I have been reading books, scouring websites, talking with colleagues, and consulting experts in the area of creating dialogue across differences. Based on what I’ve learned, I want to share with us some of my key takeaways, so that we can all begin this journey on the same page.

Strong disagreement raises strong feelings. When learning how to have these kinds of conversations, it’s helpful to acknowledge the ways in which strong disagreement can push us out of our comfort zone and into our panic zone, engaging our fight/flight/freeze response. For constructive dialogue to work, we need to become attuned to when we’re heading toward panic and we need to redirect ourselves away from that place. 

It’s important to plan ahead. To help us walk calmly through difficult conversations, we should first talk about how we want to talk about things, articulating our hopes for our conversation as well as what worries us about discussing a topic about which there is so much disagreement. We can and should set norms for our conversation, agreeing to listen without interrupting, and to keep the conversation just between the people having it. 

We must remember why we’re doing this. Having conversations about high-conflict topics can put us on the defensive, or worse, on the offensive. To keep us on the right track for when (not if) this happens, we can start with a collaborative goal, shifting our focus from winning a debate to understanding another’s point of view. Our collaborative goal might be “I want to maintain a good relationship with this person.” Or, “I want to understand this person and have them understand me.” 

Get curious! Particularly when we hear something that we disagree with, we respond by asking questions to help us understand the other person’s perspective. Questions must be non-judgmental and we must truly be open to hearing the answers. The best kinds of questions to ask are ones that invite the other person to tell their story. What personal experiences have informed their way of thinking? How does their opinion support their most cherished values? Once we allow others to feel heard, they’re much more likely to hear us out in return. When we share our stories with each other, rather than triggering panic, we can inspire and experience empathy. We may never come to agree with one other, but that’s not the point. Having difficult conversations is about fostering respect for diverse viewpoints, knowing each other more deeply, and nurturing the fullness of our community. 

October 7 and the current war will eventually become part of our collective memory. How these events become woven into our collective memory will be our legacy as people living through this time. Learning to hear each other’s stories, to acknowledge and even welcome different perspectives, even ones with which we disagree or that cause us pain, learning to have the difficult conversations is of utmost importance. We can help shape how people 50 years from now will be talking about October 7. We can repair how members of the Jewish community talk with each other about Israel. We can learn to understand one another and honor how each of our stories and perspectives contributes to the multifaceted whole of our people. 

As hard as it is to think about such things, much less contemplate talking about them with each other, this moment of Kol Nidrei is the perfect time to start considering how we will have these conversations. Tonight is a night of unlimited potential. We come to Yom Kippur having begun to think about the changes we want to make in our lives. Tonight we begin to find the fortitude, the will within ourselves, to enact those changes so that they last. In the coming weeks and months, we will be planning opportunities for our congregation to engage in dialogue about some issues that have in the past divided us. We will be working together to develop the skills to do so in a way that is constructive and honors the diversity of our community. I hope that you will join in, sharing your voice and opening yourself up to hear the voices of others.

As the maḥzor reads, כי הנה כחומר ביד היוצר, we are like clay in the hands of the sculptor. We can reshape ourselves, strengthening our ability to listen to and engage with each other. We can reshape our community, transforming our response to this current moment into what future generations will remember and hold in their hearts. It’s a big job, and tonight is just the beginning. 

כתיבה וחתימה טובה - May we, families, our community, and the Jewish people be blessed with a year of life, peace, and growing together.

​

This past Shabbat afternoon, my closest friend’s son celebrated becoming a bar mitzvah. I named this child at his brit milah and was honored both to teach him for this occasion and to call him up to the Torah. There was much kvelling to be sure. In his thoughtful d’var Torah on Parashat Ki Teitzei, he spoke about the importance of rules, reflecting on the massive number of rules that make up this week’s Torah reading. 

Rules challenge us, he explained, because as human beings with our own desires and needs, we want to have more agency in making choices about how we behave. We chafe against the rigidity of needing to adhere to rules. At the same time, rules provide structure to our lives, accountability for our actions, and predictability in our interactions with others. It was a great d’var - perfect for a bar mitzvah child contemplating his relationship with the Jewish tradition and totally authentic to his personality. 

While many of the rules of Parashat Ki Teitzei do exactly what my friend’s son said, providing a framework for our lives and helping us create safe and caring communities, other rules in this week’s Torah reading perplex us - not because of how much they constrain our free choice, but because their underlying values do not mesh with our own. One example of such a rule is the case of the stubborn and rebellious son, ben sorer u’moreh (Deuteronomy 21:18-21). 

According to this passage, a family that has a stubborn, wayward son, a gluttonous drunkard who does not listen to his parents, should bring him to the elders of the town. His parents should accuse their son before the council of elders and he will be stoned to death. 

The horror of this scenario led the Sages of the Talmud in the eighth chapter of Masekhet Sanhedrin to limit the application of this ruling to the point that the punishment essentially can never be imposed. After this feat of legal gymnastics, the Talmud concludes: “There has never been a stubborn and rebellious son and there will never be one in the future. And why, then, was it written in the Torah? So that you may expound upon it and receive reward for your learning.” (BT Sanhedrin 71a)

Problem solved, so it would seem. The Torah’s rule for stubborn and rebellious children is now understood as purely academic, a textual conundrum meant to spark debate and in-depth interpretation. What would be an ethical challenge becomes an intellectual one instead. 

There are some benefits to this approach. Reading the case of the ben sorer u’moreh as basically a metaphor solves the moral and emotional problems of the text. We no longer need to wonder about the troubling family dynamics, the disproportionate punishments, or the messages this text sends about the acceptability of violence. 

At the same time, making this text into a thought experiment and excising it from the realm of applicable law opens the door to doing so with any other rules in our Torah that we find problematic. When we take a piece of our tradition and say that the Torah never really meant for it to be enacted, we weaken our system of sacred rules. Religious practices can become entirely subjective and we lose the cohesiveness of being part of a community in pursuit of holiness. 

The Talmud, I would argue, had a similar problem with the case of the stubborn and rebellious child being understood in this way. Immediately after the Talmud declares ben sorer u’moreh to be merely an intellectual exercise, Rabbi Yonatan speaks up and says: “I saw him and I sat on his grave.” (BT Sanhedrin 71a) For Rabbi Yonatan, the rules of the Torah, even the ones that horrify us or challenge our ethical values, must be applicable. Nothing in the Torah can exist merely for the sake of argument. 

This approach may preserve the enforceability of the Torah’s rules, but it is not without its own problems. Upholding a practice with such obviously negative moral ramifications goes against the essence of what it is to live a life of religious meaning. 

I find it helpful here to look back at what my friend’s son said on the bimah this past weekend. The rules and laws of our tradition are there to provide structure for our lives, to help us nurture safe and caring communities. When the rules stand in the way of those aims, when they challenge us as ben sorer u’moreh does, we first must sit with the discomfort of that challenge, acknowledging the parts of our tradition that reflect values and worldviews we cannot condone. And then we turn to the rules and practices that do move us toward those aims. By prioritizing them, we bend the arc of our tradition toward justice, fairness, and holiness.

Shabbat shalom.

​

​I woke up this morning, I imagine like many of us, with a heavy heart. The Whatsapp messages from my friends in Israel, sharing images of Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s funeral procession, the Facebook posts, the innumerable articles detailing the unthinkable killing of six hostages (one of whom, Carmel Gat, I spoke about from our bimah on Shavuot). This is a painful, heartbreaking loss for us as part of the global a Jewish community. 
And I also woke up this morning looking forward to attending the bat mitzvah of the daughter of dear friends. Toward the beginning of the service, we opened to the passages of Torah study that accompany the first parts of birkhot hashaḥar, the earliest part of the service. I was listening along as the rabbi read the text from the bimah and recognized the passage immediately. 
We learn in the Talmud, Sotah 14a, that we are to model our lives after God’s attributes. As God clothed the naked, so should we. As God visited the sick, we should also visit the sick. As the rabbi read on in the text, I knew what was coming next, but I wasn’t prepared to hear it out loud. As God comforted the mourners, we too must comfort those who mourn. “The Holy One buried the dead,” she read, her voice catching, “you should bury the dead.” 
Over the course of these few days, we are indeed burying the dead. We are burying six innocent people who spent the last almost 11 months in unimaginable conditions, six people whom we hoped and prayed to bring safely back to their families. 
At Hersh’s funeral today, his mother, Rachel, whose voice has been steadfast and persistent in seeking a path to have all of the hostages released, said the following: “At this time, I ask your forgiveness. If ever I was impatient or insensitive to you during your life, or neglected you in some way, I deeply and sincerely request your forgiveness, Hersh. If there was something we could have done to save you, and we didn’t think of it, I beg your forgiveness. We tried so very hard, so deeply and desperately. I’m sorry.”
The Torah study portion of our morning service ends with this prayer: “May we be disciples of Aaron, the kohen, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving our fellow people and drawing them near to the Torah." 
In the wake of this devastating weekend, may our pursuit of peace grow stronger. May our love for our fellow people, not least among them those who remain held as hostages, motivate us and those in power to seek their immediate release. Kein yehi ratzon - so may it be God’s will.​
May the memories of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi be an eternal blessing. 


With wishes for healing and peace,
Rabbi Jacobs