This past week, I was honored, along with other members of the Baltimore Board of Rabbis, to meet with Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic candidate for Maryland’s open Senate seat. The stated goal of the meeting was for County Executive Alsobrooks to get to know Jewish leaders in the area, to help us get to know her, and to discuss issues that were of importance to us as members of the Jewish community. Our conversation was a lively and meaningful one, with us sharing personal anecdotes and speaking frankly of the concerns that keep us up at night.
One anecdote in particular has stayed with me. County Executive Alsobrooks made frequent mention of her father’s influence on her worldview. With the love and respect she feels for him evident in her words and her demeanor, she shared that he has often said to her: “Do you know what’s wrong with people, Angela? They know more than they understand.” Hearing her share that story around our meeting table, I was immediately struck by the truth that it conveyed. Over the course of the past week, that idea has come up again and again for me, especially when thinking about the difficult and painful events that have marked this time. We also see this truth in Parashat Balak. Balak seeks to engage Bil’am to curse the Israelites because he “know[s] that whomever you bless is blessed indeed, and whomever you curse is cursed.” (Numbers 22:6) Bil’am, for his part, knows that God does not want him to curse the Israelites, placing obstacle upon obstacle in his way. And yet, neither of these two seems to discern the deeper messages in what they see before them. From the Torah’s perspective, this is a very good thing, as these powerful people who were bent on cursing Israel are thwarted. However, their lack of understanding made them dangerous. They were unable to properly assess the situation in which they found themselves, and acted based on their knowledge, rather than any true understanding, attempting over and over to cause grave harm to the Israelites. The horrible events of this past weekend and the constant news updates that have continued unabated since then highlight for me the distinction between knowing and understanding. Inundated as we all are with information and new information and still more new information, we certainly know a lot about the assassination attempt against Donald Trump. And every time we refresh our apps or turn on the television, we know more. Especially when major events like these are unexpected or frightening, it is natural to want to know what’s going on, to have all the details. Knowing things is how we begin to make sense of our experiences. The 24-hour news cycle tells us that it is knowing, being informed, that is the goal. Reconnecting to the story about County Executive Alsobrooks’s father, so many of us know things. But knowing is only the beginning; it is understanding that is the real goal. Personally, I have struggled this week with understanding the state of our nation, of our politics and the hyperbolic rhetoric that accompanies our political discourse. While I know how we got here, I do not understand what holds us here, in a place where violence is seen as a tool of expression. I do not understand the perspectives of those whose viewpoints are diametrically opposed to my own. I cannot fathom the humility, deep listening, and hard work it will take to move us toward a place of healing, which we so desperately need. I do not yet understand. Thankfully, I know that knowing is not enough. Shabbat shalom.
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I’ve been thinking this week about the experience of being alone. I see it in many ways throughout Parashat Hukkat - the dual losses of Miriam and Aaron leaving the people without much of the leadership that grounded their time in the wilderness; the desperation that comes from their lack of water and the sense of being without help; Edom rejecting the Israelites’ request to walk through their land, leaving them alone to figure out the next steps of their journey. We see in the parashah some of the darker shades of being and feeling alone. Even the Haftarah, the story of Yiftah and his terrible vow, demonstrates the tragic side of feeling and acting alone.
Being alone can indeed be a challenging and painful experience. I’ve certainly been feeling some of that this week. With my summer custody schedule - the kids alternating weeks between me and their father - I’ve had to become accustomed to an emptier house than I’m used to. Everything is too quiet and the lack of parenting-related structure to my days has made it hard for me to feel as productive as I usually do. The brutal heat has kept me indoors where it’s air conditioned more than I usually would be. Even when I have been with others, I’ve wanted to keep my distance in order to allow my body to cool off as much as possible. A couple of months ago I heard a story on NPR about the epidemic of loneliness in America. I had turned on my car in the middle of the story, so I didn’t catch everything, but I do remember being intrigued by the idea that was shared about alone-ness and loneliness not necessarily being the same thing. The reporter explained that it is the quality of people’s connections to each other that matters most. One can be surrounded by people and feel deeply lonely. While I agree with the story’s message that forging meaningful relationships with others can have both psychological and physical health benefits, I want to take a moment to flip that idea around and connect to the blessings of being alone. Reflecting on my experience of being alone, especially on “off weeks” like this one, I appreciate the opportunity to focus on myself a little bit more. I’ve been sleeping longer and better, listening to my body’s needs and attending to them, taking a break from my usual hustle and bustle, getting lost in a few different books, even daydreaming a little. The little bit of freedom from some of my typical responsibilities has made room for me to be more mindful and enjoy my solitude. This is a time of year when many of us take breaks from our usual routines and obligations. We go on vacations, take time off from work (and even from shul - I missed us being together last week!). Whether meaning to or not, we retreat from each other. But being alone doesn’t have to be lonely. My wish for us is that our times of aloneness provide us with the break we need to be with ourselves, care for ourselves, and renew ourselves. Enriched in this way, our reunions will be that much sweeter. Shabbat shalom. Synchronicity is the idea that coincidences can have greater significance, not be coincidences at all. Many of us experience these kinds of things - thinking of a person right before they call us, talking about a particular subject and then seeing it come up over and over in multiple other settings, etc. When things happen once and then keep happening, we often seek out deeper meaning.
This past week was a week of synchronicity for me. It started early in the week, when I heard from an old friend, someone I used to teach with. He left our former school to pursue theological studies and is about to be ordained as an Episcopal priest. He sent me a text message inviting me to his ordination ceremony. We hadn’t been in contact in months, but it was delightful to hear from him. The timing of his message was also a lovely coincidence. I’ve been working this summer with another former colleague and mutual friend from the same school who has a personal training business. The message came in right in the middle of a training session. We were both tickled to see it and learn about the upcoming celebration. One of the things I had been discussing with my trainer friend in between circuits was my plans to spend this Shabbat with another former colleague and mutual friend. With my connections and friendships from this former position on the brain, it wasn’t really all that surprising that more and more reminders of those connections kept bubbling up. Later that day, an old friend who lives in Israel messaged me out of the blue to ask about something happening in her former community here in the States. She’s a close friend, someone I’ve known since college, but we don’t have the chance to speak that often, so it was a joyful surprise to hear from her. Our conversation naturally turned toward catching up on our own lives and checking in on other friends from our college circle. Not even 24 hours later, I met someone new to me - or so I thought. This person looked sort of familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him, so we played a game of Jewish geography. We quickly figured out that we had both lived in the Boston area around the same time 15+ years ago and shared a friend in common from that time, which meant that we certainly ran into each other socially and at shul during those years. The common friend - one of the people from my college circle that my Israeli friend and I had been discussing. Synchronicities are all in the eye of the beholder. Certainly they can simply be explained as coincidences, with no causal relationship whatsoever. The meanings we choose to ascribe to them are what give them deeper meaning. What I see in my synchronous experiences from this past week is the inevitability of connections between people. We can never not be in relationship with each other. The threads of our lives are always tied together at some point. I see the same phenomenon when we gather together as a minyan for tefillah. People are sometimes surprised to learn that the rabbinic explanation for why we need a minyan of 10 people derives from this week’s parashah. The Talmud (Megillah 23b) connects the idea of a community (עדה - edah) to the description of the community of 10 spies (also called עדה - edah) who cast aspersions on the Land of Israel and lead the people astray in Parashat Shelah. 10 spies, 10 people for a minyan. A minyan is an edah, a community. Coming together as such connects us to each other and in that connection is power. In our parashah this week, that power was used to sow chaos and discontent. Thankfully, our experience of minyan is quite the opposite. When we gather together in a minyan, we prioritize the way that the threads of our lives are tied together. We utilize those connections to nurture spaces of song and yearning. We hold each other during tender times and lift each other up during moments of celebration. We enable those among us who know grief to say Kaddish, and allow us to teach and hear Torah in the fullest way possible. Over the past few weeks, I have noticed in shul the power of our minyan, of our community. I will miss being with us this Shabbat and look forward to reconnecting when we next gather for services. Shabbat shalom. About a month ago, I wrote about Pesaḥ Sheni, the second chance opportunity to celebrate Pesaḥ set aside for those unable to make their Passover offerings at the proper time. The source for this holiday comes from this week’s Torah reading, Parashat B’ha’alotekha. What I find most interesting about the Torah’s narrative around Pesaḥ Sheni, especially this week, is that it describes a holiday in formation, one whose story is in the process of being created.
In the Torah’s telling (Numbers 9:1-14), those who are unable to make the Passover offering at the appropriate time due to being ritually impure are at first left out of the command to celebrate Pesaḥ in the second year of their journey. They are then given an alternate date for celebrating, complete with specific rules and rituals. They get a Passover do-over, which, through the passage of time, has become a holiday in its own right. This week when we read about a new holiday in the Torah, we also celebrated a newer holiday as Americans - Juneteenth. This day, which marks the day in 1865 when General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas, finally enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation that had become the law of the land two and a half years earlier. Juneteenth was for a long time observed in Texas and spread throughout the country as an important day in the African American community in the years following the Great Migration - although it still wasn’t always widely known or marked. It wasn’t often a part of the American history curriculum taught in schools; people often found out about it as young adults. Most recently, Juneteenth gained national attention as it became an official federal holiday in 2021. It is a day with real significance for the African American community and for our nation as a whole, a day whose celebration and observance are also continuing to evolve. I want to highlight an article I read in Tablet Magazine this week, “Jewish Juneteenth,” by Shoshana McKinney Kirya-Ziraba. Rather than restate and interpret Kirya-Ziraba’s words here, I strongly encourage you to read the article, which I’ve linked above. However, I do want to highlight a couple of points she made that were illuminating for me. She spoke about how Juneteenth is being celebrated in some Jewish communities, inspired by the work of Black Jews to give expression to all aspects of their identity in their sacred spaces. One person featured in the article, Tameika Minor, brought a Juneteenth celebration to her synagogue in New Jersey. Unsurprisingly, she and her fellow planners first promoted the event celebrating African American culture as a summer solstice celebration, due to their uncertainty about how something directly tied to Juneteenth would be received by other members of their synagogue. The success of the event gave them the confidence to celebrate Juneteenth more openly in their Jewish community ever since; however, that story highlights the challenges of building truly open communities. Another person featured in the article, Rabbi Heather Miller, is a direct descendant of people freed on the first Juneteenth - and this connects us back to our parashah this week - and is the author of The Juneteenth Haggadah. The Juneteenth Haggadah, much like the Haggadah for Pesaḥ, tells a story of liberation through ritual, food, and song. It takes the themes of Pesaḥ, freedom from enslavement, a journey toward a promised future, themes that are essential to Jewish identity, and refracts them through the lens of the African American story. It seems a powerful, uniquely current way to give Passover a do-over. Shabbat shalom. This past Sunday, we held our spring community meeting. Each of the agenda items for our meeting connected, on a conceptual level, to this one idea: planning for our future. There was the budget discussion and approval, allowing us both to articulate and achieve our goals and plans for the coming year. There was voting in our new slate of officers, offering gratitude to our outgoing Chair and Vice-Chair and welcoming our new Chair and Vice-Chair. There were our round-robin committee conversations, helping everyone learn more about the incredible work of our committees and bringing new people in to serve on them, enriching them with new energy to keep moving forward. And indeed, this final part of Sunday’s gathering was full of excitement and forward-thinking energy.
The parallels between our community meeting and the events of our parashah as we start the book of B’midbar present themselves readily. The Torah reading begins with a census, the accounting for which matches the accounting from the census back in the book of Shemot, when each person made a donation to support the work of the community. That’s the budget. In counting the people in each of the tribes, the text calls forward the head of each tribe by name. That’s our leadership transition. Later in the parashah, we learn how the different tribes were arranged when encamped and how they marched when the people traveled. It describes the organization of the community and the different roles that each segment performed. That’s our committee round-robin. Both the parashah and our community meeting demonstrate the importance of seemingly mundane details for ensuring the sustainability and vitality of a sacred community. I want to zoom in on one aspect of the census from the Torah reading. B’midbar 2:33 notes: “The Levites, however, were not recorded among the Israelites.” Although the various essential tasks and roles of the Levites are well enumerated in the parashah, the actual Levites are not counted together with their fellow Israelites. They are the leaders of the community in many ways, yet they are also invisible. This detail of our Torah reading speaks to something deeply true about serving in a leadership role. Good leaders - the Levites, our own officers and committee chairs, and many others - do not serve in positions of leadership for accolades or attention. They are motivated by a sense of purpose, obligation to the community, love for the work that they do, among other things. Often they work behind the scenes, making the trains run on time, as it were. Their role in supporting the life of the community is sometimes only noticed when the “trains” are late, which is inevitable. When things are running smoothly, their skilled leadership can remain invisible. But without the Levites, the spiritual core of the nation would be hollow; there would be no one to manage ritual matters or inspire connection to the Divine. Without our officers and committee chairs, so much of what makes our community special would similarly be missing. It is with this in mind that I want to offer my gratitude to all who serve our community. From those who think about our financial future to those who care for us in times of grief, from those who plan programs and events that express our most deeply held values to those who seek out opportunities to engage folks on the margins, from those who bring us stimulating speakers to those who manage our communications (and hock me a tshaynik to get this weekly message in on time!) - I say thank you, and we see you. We count on you, and your tremendous contributions count beyond measure. Shabbat Shalom. As a Torah reader who likes the long ones, I regularly find myself in the rotation to read the tochechah, the litany of curses that appears at the end of the book of Vayikra, which we read from this week. (A longer tochechah section appears toward the end of Devarim, in Parashat Ki Tavo - I frequently read that one too.) As you might expect, reading this section is a troubling pursuit. Reading of the horrifying punishments that will befall the Israelites, and us by extension, if we do not follow God’s ways is bad enough on its own. But to chant those words to the community in my own voice is another proposition altogether.
Recently, I learned that one of my children didn’t understand how the threat of negative consequences was supposed to work. After offering him lots of opportunities to correct a particular behavior, and after him not taking me up on any of them, I would tell him that he would be losing a privilege if he didn’t stop whatever he was doing *now.* I was surprised time and time again that this threat often didn’t get him to stop the offending behavior. Instead, he would break down, becoming extremely upset at the thought of losing the privilege, as if he had no power to stop it. Some good conversations taught me that he believed that the threat of negative consequences wasn’t meant to inspire a change in behavior. He thought it was simply a tool for punishing him, and that there was no turning back from it once it was raised as a possibility. What an amazing insight into the way my kid was thinking! While our conversations have helped significantly in these kinds of situations, the whole matter is really making me think about the value of negative consequences overall, whether they are actually imposed or merely meant to inspire change. As a teacher, I typically stay away from them. Assigning punishments like detention doesn’t really make sense to me and I only give them out in response to the most egregious behavior. Looking at the text of the tochechah, I am always reminded of the times throughout Jewish history when our people have undergone these kinds of devastating experiences and seen them as God meting out punishment. Framing political upheaval, war, famine, and natural disaster as punishment puts our relationship with God in a precarious position. This is not the way I want to relate to God. As a parent, teacher, and person of religious sensibility, logical and natural consequences seem so much more appropriate and can be so much more effective. Using a toy as a weapon? You can’t play with that toy. Neglect to study for your vocabulary quiz? Earn a poor grade. Why then, does the Torah provide us with not one, but two, lengthy examples of curses and punishments that will come if we disobey God’s commands? On a basic historical level, the Torah is often similar to other texts of the time and place. Law treaties of the Ancient Near East ended with hyperbolic lists of curses. This was done so that both parties felt the significance of their agreement as well as the promise of utter destruction if they did not follow through on their part. At the very least, the inclusion of curses and punishments in these treaties sent a strong message about the irrevocable nature of the agreement. This may have been effective at that time, but it strikes a dissonant note for my contemporary ears. Remaining faithful to God’s ways out of fear of unspeakable consequences is not a theology that works for me. The threats are indeed terrible and they don’t support the development of a relationship with the divine that I want for myself or my community. At the same time, I’m not advocating for excising the tochechah from our public readings. Here’s how I make my peace with it: I find meaning in this section in the way we read it. Traditionally, the Torah reader chants each tochechah in an undertone, making their way through the text quickly and quietly. You’ll hear me read it this way on Shabbat if you’re able to be in shul. The tochechah is also bookended on each side by promises of blessing and success. We read these sections at full volume and regular speed, sharpening the contrast between the punishment and the reward. Our way of chanting this section serves as a reminder - to us and perhaps even to God - that our preferred way of being in relationship with each other is not built upon a foundation of threats and curses, but one of blessing and love. Shabbat shalom. Last week, when I wrote about the Yoms, I omitted one special day that takes place during this time of the year. As I write this, we are in the waning hours of Pesaḥ Sheni, which takes place each year on the 14th of Iyar. Differing from the Yoms in several respects - it originates in the Torah, rather than in modern times, is not meant to be celebrated by everyone, and has little practical application today - it is admittedly a minor observance, but one worthy of our continued attention.
First, a bit of background: We read in Chapter 9 of the book of B’midbar of the first “regular” Pesaḥ. Now one year into their journey out of Egypt, it is time for the Israelites to observe their holidays as annual commemorations, rather than as rituals accompanying major historical events. Moses instructs the people to offer the Pesaḥ sacrifice on the anniversary of the first Pesaḥ sacrifice, the 14th of Nisan, reenacting the night of the exodus. This time, however, the Israelites are not in the midst of their dramatic escape from Pharaoh, but in the midst of their everyday lives. Not surprisingly, a number of people, through no fault of their own, are not able to be ritually pure at the appointed time and cannot offer the Pesaḥ sacrifice. They approach Moses and Aaron, concerned about being excluded from this important moment in the ritual life of the people. Moses seeks counsel with God, and Pesaḥ Sheni is born: those who are not fit to celebrate on the 14th of Nisan will get a second chance - they will offer the Pesaḥ sacrifice in the traditional way on the 14th of Iyar instead. I want to zoom in on the details of the interaction between Moses and the people who are unable to celebrate Pesaḥ due to their ritual purity status. Looking at the people who were excluded - we don’t know who they are. They are unnamed and the only detail we learn is that they are not ritually pure. When they hear of this new ruling that excludes them, they immediately go to Moses and Aaron and speak up. This is unsurprising. I often refer to the book of B’midbar as the “Book of Kvetch.” The Israelites spend a great deal of time complaining during this part of the Torah, and this is no exception. The people come to Moses and Aaron to complain about the unfairness of being excluded from celebrating Pesaḥ. As contemporary Jews - and I say this with great love - we also know the very real tendency of our people to complain when a communal decision rubs us the wrong way. Sometimes we do this well, approaching our leaders with curiosity and patience. Sometimes we do this with indignation and accusation. It’s not clear from the text exactly which approach these particular people took and commentators are similarly divided on the issue. A good number of the classical commentaries I looked at as I was studying this section do, however, note that these people were challenging Moses’s authority, either seeking out exceptions to the rules or simply suggesting a solution to their problem. It’s not easy to have your authority as a leader questioned, and Moses’s response here gives us a tremendous model of openhearted leadership. He tells the people to wait for God’s instruction on the matter. His words convey (at least) two important messages. By letting the people know that he was seeking God’s advice on the matter, he validated their experience and their complaint. Their concern was worthy of being heard by no one less than God. Their experience mattered and their problem was a real one. And by turning to God for the answer in this situation, Moses showed his humility and his willingness to be wrong, to learn new things. He didn’t have all the answers, but he was going to find them, and was willing to possibly diminish himself in the eyes of his people in order to do so. Last week we held our state’s primaries. Leadership and new elections are on our minds and all over the news. The story behind Pesaḥ Sheni gives us the opportunity to consider the qualities we want in our political leaders. Moses’s example here seems like a good place to start. Shabbat shalom. We’re now in the period of the Jewish calendar sometimes called “The Yoms.” After the conclusion of Pesaḥ, we have a number of modern commemorations and celebrations that happen in quick succession: Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron, Yom HaAtzmaut, and Yom Yerushalayim. All four of these days mark events in the more recent history of the Jewish people. And all of them feel different this year.
Gil Preuss, the CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, picked up on the complicated nature of these days in a recent piece he published. He wrote: “This year, we will gather a little over seven months after the horrific attacks of October 7th. The war in Gaza continues amid significant loss and suffering. There is a deep sense of instability and insecurity in Israel and Jewish communities around the world. Moreover, the politics dividing Israel, the American Jewish community, and the broader American public are becoming more complicated by the day.” We are weathering a time of heightened sensitivities and intense emotions. It’s only natural that this impacts our observance of these special days. And it has. On Yom HaShoah, our national day of remembrance and mourning for the horrors of the Holocaust, we couldn’t help but notice the parallels between the pogroms of early 20th-century Europe and the pogrom of October 7, 2023, between the rising antisemitism we see in the world today and what we saw as the Nazis were coming to power. Yom HaShoah’s call of Never Again felt more urgent this year. And our ability to heed that call felt somehow less in our control. Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s memorial day for those who fell in battle and in terrorist attacks, memorialized losses far more fresh and painful than in recent memory. With the weight of the current situation being felt so deeply, we needed both to grieve together and to try to find glimmers of hope and solidarity. At the Krieger Schechter memorial ceremony, our students sang Latzeit MeDika’on, by Yagel Oshri, a popular Israeli song that both acknowledges the painful feelings of this time and also expresses hope that good days will yet come. Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel’s independence day, also felt different this year, more subdued, more complicated. Here in our community, we gathered for an erev shirah, an evening of singing together, which allowed us to celebrate our connection to Israel through classic songs, while at the same time giving soulful voice to our current fears and feelings. It was uplifting to be together, in a space where it felt safe to hold the complexity of this moment. It’s not only the Yoms that have been impacted by our current crisis. Our more established holidays, those that originate in the biblical tradition, also felt different this year. We slowed our dancing on Simḥat Torah, paid attention to the existential fear underlying Purim, focused on the elusiveness of freedom during Pesaḥ. Reading of the holidays in Parashat Emor this week, we are reminded, however, that our Torah holidays have set rituals and customs associated with them. On Pesaḥ we eat matzah; on Shavuot we offer our first harvest; on Rosh Hashanah we have the shofar; on Yom Kippur we fast; on Sukkot we dwell in the sukkah and take the lulav and etrog. The text prescribes clear to-dos for each holiday. While the holidays feel different to us each year, particularly when something significant is happening in our world, the specific rituals provide a sense of stability for each holiday, serving as a constant that links our celebrations this year to those of all the years before and all the years to follow. Being newer observances, the Yoms have no biblically ordained ritual or liturgy like the holidays we read about in the Torah this week. I have to acknowledge that, with so much feeling like it’s up in the air right now, it would be comforting to have firmly rooted practices to structure our journey through this time in the Jewish calendar. These days are so filled with uncertainty and pain that it can feel overwhelming to figure out exactly what to do to participate in them meaningfully. At the same time, their status as modern holidays gives us the flexibility to respond authentically to our current situation, to create new rituals and transform older ones, tailoring our observances to match the emotions of this moment. So this year, the Yoms this year are different - as they should be. May next year find us able to mark these days in peace and in unity. Shabbat shalom. For those who struggle with the litany of rituals, rules, and regulations in the book of Vayikra, Parashat Kedoshim often serves as a welcome reprieve. While there’s no compelling narrative to speak of, this week’s Torah reading is packed with the kinds of ethical mitzvot that serve, for many of us, as the backbone of our Jewish worldview.
The parashah opens with God’s command that we be holy, just as God is. It sounds beautiful, to be sure, but this instruction, taken on its own, is wonderfully vague. What exactly does it mean to be holy? What follows in the ensuing chapters of Parashat Kedoshim is not a definition of holiness, but a listing of mitzvot, which (from the Torah’s perspective) would help one fulfill the command to be holy. Even that, though, is not straightforward. Reading through the parashah, we see at least two conceptions of holiness emerge. For Parashat Kedoshim, holiness is separation. And for Parashat Kedoshim, holiness is caring for others. We see separation in the mitzvot that describe boundaries in our relationships with God (don’t make idols, for example) and with each other. We see caring for others in the requirement to leave the corners of our field for the poor, providing them with food and preserving their dignity, and to render impartial judicial decisions. Sometimes, these two approaches to holiness butt up against each other. We are enjoined (Leviticus 20:23-24) not to follow the practices of the nations among whom we dwell, because God has set us apart from other peoples. And we are also told: “The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34) Both commandments I cited acknowledge the reality of living in a blended society, in close proximity to people of different backgrounds and orientations, but they have very different opinions about that reality. The first commandment is suspicious of others, fearful of the corrupting influence of different religious practices and national identities. The second commandment preaches inclusivity and presumes deep and abiding connections between people of diverse national origins. Both of these approaches resonate with our experiences today. As Jews and as compassionate citizens of the world, we strive to be welcoming to visitors to our homes and communities, regardless of their Jewish status or lack thereof. We see massive numbers of people in many parts of the world - including in our own country - displaced from their homes, trying to make their way in a land that is not their own. We respond with love, offering help and support, donating our money, our food, our extra clothing and household goods to be of assistance to those who know what it is to be a stranger. Especially in this time of increased vulnerability as a Jewish community, we also know well the desire to close ranks, to turn toward the safety of the people and institutions we know best, those we call our own. In seeking to protect ourselves and lean into our Jewishness, not just now, we have also at times cast those outside our community as potential threats, minimized their perspectives, distanced ourselves from them. How can we possibly love and demonize the stranger simultaneously? Obviously, we cannot. And while fear and suspicion are often natural outgrowths of our most traumatic experiences, our tradition is one that teaches love and compassion as core values. “Love your neighbor as yourself,” (Leviticus 19:18) our parashah teaches. Rabbi Akiva famously said that this verse is the central tenet of the Torah (Sifra Kedoshim 4:12). With this in mind, I am so grateful that our shul is participating in Refugee Shabbat this week. A program of HIAS, Refugee Shabbat, brings congregations together in solidarity with the global Jewish movement for refugee protection and welcome. Our world is currently one where asylum seekers are turned away around the world. At least 110 million people worldwide have been forcibly displaced from their homes. Refugee Shabbat provides us with the opportunity to build on our tradition’s commitment to caring for those in these kinds of dire situations and reflect on what we can contribute to their cause. Motivated by the message of Parashat Kedoshim, that we can strive to emulate God by being holy, let us do so motivated by the holiness that stems from the compassionate, welcoming care we offer to those among us who need it most. Shabbat shalom. |
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