Kol HaOlam Kulo, Gesher Tzar Meod…

There’s a story told of Reb Yisrael who loved to study Torah but earned his livelihood as a sandal-maker. One day, a crass and disgruntled customer challenge Reb Yisrael: “Tell me the nature of heaven and hell,” he taunted. “If you’re so learned you must know something about them!” Reb Yisrael mustered scorn that did not come easily to him and responded forcefully: “Get out, take your business elsewhere! I’ve no time to waste with you and your condescending questions!” The customer became apoplectic, flew into a rage, grabbed a sharp implement and cried out that he could kill him for his words.

“Ah,” said Reb Yisrael, “that is hell.”

The customer grew flustered. He immediately realized what he had done. After a few moments, he calmed down and gently replaced the tool. “Thank you for teaching me.”

“And that,” said Reb Yisrael, “that is heaven.”

Tonight, we enter into a New Year. There is so much to celebrate, and tomorrow I’ll have the chance to talk to you about Hamakom and my excitement about our beginning this journey together. Today, however, is not just any date on the calendar. Yes, it’s the first of Tishrei, but as you know it’s also September 11^th, 25 years to the day since the worst terrorist attack on American soil. Only the Battle of Antietam saw more people killed in a single day, and of course the victims of 9/11 were not Union or Confederate soldiers— they were 2,977 non-combatants. They were as old as 85, as young as 2. They were women and men. They were citizens of more than 90 countries. They were regular Americans, government employees who simply went to work. They were passengers on their way to family, long anticipated vacations, or home. To ignore this history, on this day, would feel to me like an abrogation of my duties as your Rabbi.

The good news is that we Jews are adept at the art of navigating forces of good and bad alike. We understand the tension between heaven and hell. Leaving eschatology aside for a moment, we know both of these can exist here, on earth. 25 years ago today, a group of men, guided by a nefarious leader and a malevolent worldview determined to make a hell in New York City, in Washington DC, in the United States of America. The question for us on this Rosh Hashanah, the question I would invite us to consider on this day, is not why did this happen? That’s an important question. I hope to be with you for a long time. Some other time we’ll tackle questions of theodicy, why bad things happen to good people.

Today, I’m more interested in the question of how best to live in such a world. There’s our individual process of teshuvah, of striving to recognize, in ourselves, the choices we must avoid. To choose heaven over the living hell of unbridled rage. To be better than those who did the very worst to us on this day.

But 9/11 was also a collective attack, on our nation and on our way of life. It shook us to our core, and I think to this day, we Americans haven’t fully recovered from that trauma.

What technology does our tradition offer? How are we to move forward in such a world? The answer, I would suggest, is all about balance. This coming February, the Ahmanson will present Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish. Our family saw it on Broadway a few years back, and it’s wonderful, so try to see it if you can! The image of a fiddler on a roof is poignant because we Jews understand well Tevye’s words from the opening monologue: “here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck.”

The image derives from Marc Chagall’s famous 1912 painting, but Rebbe Nachman of Bretzlov, the early 19^th century Hassidic master, taught something similar: “Kol haOlam kulo, gesher tzar me’od, all the word is a very narrow bridge. V’haklal, v’haikar lo lefached klal, the general principle, the essential thing, is not to give in to fear.”

Kol HaOlam…

When Colum McCann wrote his 2009 novel Let the Great World Spin, he did so with his father-in-law’s shoes sitting in a box nearby. The shoes, covered with dust from the implosion of the World Trade Center, accompanied the man as he hastily made his way down from the fifty-ninth floor of the north tower. The book, however, is McCann’s stirring fictionalized account of Manhattan in 1974, the day on which funambulist Philippe Petit walked a tightrope wire between the newly built twin towers. In the novel’s afterword, the author writes: “One thing that has always struck me is how tenderly my father-in-law thinks of the young firefighters who were climbing the stairs of the towers while he was given the chance to come down.”

McCann’s book captures a moment in time when the twin towers were new, and an act of daring captivated the city. But I think there is some of the tightrope walker in all of us, isn’t there? We are all trying to balance, like a fiddler on the roof, “trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking our necks.”

I don’t know about you, but since September 11, 2001 it does feel to me like we’ve been off balance. I’ve been alive 50 years now. During my first 25, the very worst national event my generation dealt with was probably the Challenger Explosion. But the second 25? The world in which my kids have been raised feels like walking a narrow bridge or a tightrope between the twin towers, 100 mile-an-hour winds whipping about and pushing us back and forth, over and over. The success of the tightrope walker depends on her being able to remain upright through micro-adjustments. We cannot forever endure radical swings from one extreme to the next.

In a certain conception, heaven is up and hell, as it were, is down. But that’s not the message of Reb Yisrael. Hell is rage, paralyzing fear, despair. Heaven is growth, compassion, and hope. “Thank you for teaching me,” said the customer. Heaven is having the self-awareness to be better than someone caught us being just a minute before.

To balance over the abyss is hard, it takes practice and self-awareness, but our creation narrative itself suggests it is also in our nature to do such things. In the beginning, the world is created through words, God speaking “light” into being. But before that moment of creation what do we read? “V’ha’aretz haytah tohu vavohu, the earth was unformed and void. V’choshech al p’nai tehom, with darkness over the surface of the deep, v’ruach Elohim m’rachefet al p’nai hamayim, and the spirit of God hovering over the water” (Gen. 1:2). God floats above the waters, suspended over the tehom as if balancing on the highwire or standing on a narrow bridge. If we are to fulfill our calling as those created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s likeness, and lelechet bidrachav, to be humans striving to walk in divine ways, we must discover what it means to find balance in a world where chaos and darkness also exist.

The Holy One, our inherited tradition, our Jewish community, these are the pole that offers us balance, the fiddle we play, the music we make to cast light and joy into the dark corners. These past 25 years have been scary. But a refusal to give in to fear of it, that’s the difference between heaven and hell. That’s the real secret. Hell isn’t below while heaven is above. Heaven and Hell are ever-present on the bridge. The difference between them is knowing how to walk, finding balance. Hell is flying planes with hundreds of people into buildings filled with thousands. It’s rage and hate. Heaven is the firefighters who passed Collum McCann’s father-in-law on the stairs, who ran up those towers 25 years ago today searching for lives to save.

Kol HaOlam…

One last thing: I learned this melody in late October 2023. In Jerusalem. I was on a solidarity trip to Israel just weeks after the bloodshed of Oct 7. We arrived on Monday and departed Wednesday night. Just before heading to the airport, we sat by candlelight on the floor of the Moreshet Yisrael Conservative synagogue on Rechov Agron. More than 100 strong, our voices filled the sanctuary. Over and over, we chanted this haunting tune, the Berdichever Niggun, Rebbe Nachman’s words about a bridge-world and the courage we must summon to walk above the swirling waters. In the aftermath of yet another devastating Islamist attack, we were angry and terrified, our collective grief was overwhelming. But this song, it rescued us for a time, it buoyed us. Staring into the abyss, we touched the possibilities of heaven.

As we enter this New Year, on this date which lives in infamy, may we stand together. May we sing. May we grow and learn and live our lives in service of something holy. May we shine light into the darkness. May sweetness linger on our tongues, and courage guide our steps. May we find our balance once more.

Sept. 12, 2026

Raise your hand if you’ve seen the Monty Python film The Life of Brian? One of my favorite scenes is when the crowd of disciples have gathered outside Brian’s window and Brian leans out and says:

Look, you’ve got it all wrong! You don’t need to follow ME, You don’t NEED to follow ANYBODY! You’ve got to think for yourselves! You’re ALL individuals! And the Crowd responds in unison: Yes! We’re all individuals! And Brian says: You’re all different! And the Crowd replies: Yes! We are all different!

Since becoming Senior Rabbi of Hamakom, I’ve been thinking a lot about our community, about oneness and the extent to which it should mean sameness. What inspires me about this place; among the chief things that made me want to work here, is that Hamakom is a rare example of a diverse, pluralistic Jewish community. Frankly, that surprised me a bit as someone who spent the first half of his career living and working in racially and socio-economically diverse urban settings.

But we are, in fact, incredibly diverse. We are women and men, young and old, working and not. Many of us are parents. And grandparents. Some are not. All of us are children and grandchildren. We have different backgrounds, different observance levels, different ethnicities. Some of us are wealthy. Others are scraping by. Some of us grew up proud Conservative Jews. Some of us could care less about denominations. We are Democrats, Republicans, Independents. Most of us have some deep concerns about the state of this country, though we may have differing views about how to change things for the better. Hopefully all of us love Israel deeply; we are proud Zionists. Most of us are also worried about Israel, but not necessarily for the same reasons. Some of us love people who don’t love Israel. Or are questioning their love. They may be our children or grandchildren or lifelong friends. Some of us carry shame about this. If that’s you, call me. I’ll listen. And I’m betting there are others here who will too.

When our people fled slavery, the Torah tells us וְגַם־עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב עָלָ֣ה אִתָּ֑ם, we went up from Egypt with an erev rav, a mixed multitude. Rashi says there were converts from various nations. Ibn Ezra says many Egyptians joined us. Suffice it to say, our very origin story is of a diverse people on a grand adventure. That’s Hamakom. We are a diverse community on a grand adventure. We are Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Persian, Mizrahi. We are Jews by birth and Jews by choice. Our skin tones and racial identities are varied. A significant majority of us are straight. Some of us are Queer or love people who are. Some of us are not Jews but love Jews and are raising Jewish children in a Jewish household.

Oh, and did I mention, until three years ago, every single person in this room who was a synagogue member, was a member of a different synagogue than this one. Most of us, but not all of us, came from one of two storied congregations. One was called Temple Aliyah. One was Shomrei Torah Synagogue. They were both wonderful shuls. And very different. You and their leaders, including our wonderful emeritus rabbis, have worked assiduously these past three years to build a new congregation on the foundation of those two and the congregations that came before them. As your Senior Rabbi, I have inherited the multivocality, the range of practices those legacy congregations wrought. Which means, I get to give this sermon twice. On the same day. Here and there.

And while it’s challenging to be just one rabbi in two concurrent services, for now I’m enjoying the challenge. Because here’s what I want to say to us today, on this New Year, as we begin this grand adventure together—And I’m going to speak plainly because I have the advantage of an outsider’s perspective. And because when you’re new, you get a few freebies—All these differences are not a liability; they are our greatest asset. Our task, yours and mine, is to leverage that diversity—of practice and perspective, culture and conviction—to add wisdom and joy to our lives and light to a darkening world.

Today, I want to suggest a methodology for doing this. A way to harness the power of difference to achieve not unanimity but cohesion, to evolve from a congregation which has made great strides but is still struggling with coexistence into a community that wears our pluralism as a badge of honor. This, Hevre, is not easy. Human brains are wired through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution to create what social scientists call in-group, out-group distinctions. We root for our families, our sports teams, my university over yours. There are social benefits and sound safety reasons for this. And sometimes, too often, these distinctions go beyond friendly rivalries or reasonable security measures. I don’t have to tell you about humanity’s capacity to marginalize, degrade, dehumanize. We Jews know well that story of bigotry and its lethal consequences.

I spoke last night about the 25^th anniversary of 9/11, a murderous attack on a free society by radical Islamists. But this past week also marked a quarter century since the UN’s Durban conference, a gathering in South Africa to ostensibly fight racism which was hijacked by Iran and other bad actors in order to spread hate of Israel and Jews while popularizing grotesque and enduring antisemitic slogans and imagery. The first principle [of the antisemite], writes Holocaust historian David Patterson, “is not that all Jews are evil but that all evil is Jewish.”

So, you might think after countless generations of being blamed for pretty much every rotten thing in pretty much every society in which we’ve lived, we Jews would have cornered the market on uniformity. By all rights, we should be like that crowd from The Life of Brian, mindlessly reciting (in unison) platitudes about individuality and view-point diversity. But our Jewish tradition didn’t go that way, did it? Why do we laugh with pride when we say, “two Jews, three opinions?” Or keep telling that tired joke about the guy on the dessert island who builds a synagogue just so he could never set foot in it? Why is the beit midrash so noisy with debate about ideas big and small? Because our differences, both between you and me and between us and them have always been about the intrinsic value of you and me and us and them. That’s why the Mishnah (San 4:5) teaches that God is like a coin maker who mints billions of coins from Adam, the same original mold, and yet each of those coins is unique. Torah and our rabbinic sources, again and again, provide resources for navigating the space between the self and the other, the particular and the universal.

“Judaism is about the dignity of difference,” writes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. “Throughout history Jews were the only people who consistently refused to assimilate to the dominant culture or convert to the majority faith. Jews were often a minority to teach the world that God cares about the rights of minorities. And to teach all of us that the majority is not always right, nor is the conventional wisdom always wise.”

We hear a lot about the virtue of a big tent. But the erev rav, our mixed multitude didn’t leave Egypt, nor dwell in the wilderness within one tent. We received our instructions at the foot of a mountain, and then we built a machaneh, an encampment, thousands of tents pitched side-by-side. Within that camp, at the center of it in fact, was a very special tent, the ohel moed, the tent of meeting through which our people worshiped God. But the camp was filled with tribes, families, even factions at times.

This, I think, is a powerful model for us here at 7353 Valley Circle Blvd. I wish for Hamakom to be a place where we celebrate, learn, volunteer, laugh, play and pray together—joyfully. And also, where we can interrogate our sources and debate ideas, the big questions that keep us up at night. When we disagree, I expect us to engage in mahloket l’shem shamayim, sacred arguing, arguments mindful of that metaphorical ohel moed, God’s presence within our camp. To be clear, I’m not asking you to do anything I’m not willing to do myself. I believe wholeheartedly that Torah must address both what is eternal and what is timely. As your guide, I will strive to speak in a way that I can be heard. And I will listen. I am not interested in creating controversy. I am very interested in encouraging dialogue from a place of curiosity. I make this commitment to you today: I will not say everything I think, but I will never say anything I don’t believe. And I will treat you as one who respects your ability to handle lessons that challenge us or torah that invites us to question assumptions. The value proposition of Hamakom, [In Neshama: what I think makes this place “awesome!”], is our capacity to create a vibrant space of meaning-making, an encampment on a grand adventure, moving inexorably toward the Promised Land.

I know this is a room of mostly Dodger fans, but if you’ll indulge a native Chicagoan for a moment, the great Ernie Banks, Mr. Cub, used to call Wrigley Field the “friendly confines.” I think most of us feel that way when we’re here on Hamakom’s campus. These are friendly confines. But I’ve also been listening to you, at meet-and-greets, Shabbat tables, in hallway conversations. There’s more we can do, more we must do, for Hamakom to feel like home for all of us. Some of these things are already in motion. We’re signing up and training volunteer greeters from our Board and Jewish Life Committee to better receive our members and guests when they walk through our doors. On Oct. 10, we’ll begin to offer weekly morning childcare so that parents of young children have more options on Shabbat mornings. In the coming months we’re reviving some beloved programs from our community’s past, including Guys and Gals night out and Jewish Life Coaching to build connections and increase Jewish literacy. Beginning Wednesday evening Oct. 14, I’m teaching an 8-session course on Zionism where we will wrestle with how best to understand and apply ancient and contemporary sources to our love of and support for Israel in this post Oct. 7 reality. And under the banner of our theme Shiru L’Adonai Shir Hadash, we’ll sing “new tunes” to advance and refresh our wonderful programming in the Nook, the Spot, the JLC, The Spark, Men’s Club, Sisterhood, and so much more!

Now, you might be asking, what can I do? What is my role as a Hamakomer in harnessing this power of difference to achieve greater cohesion in my community? Repeat after me: Less than I can. All that I should. It’s a mantra of sorts, a methodology for effective community building from the world of halacha. Here’s an example. Deuteronomy 15 (v. 4) says: “כִּ֛י לֹ֥א יִֽהְיֶה־בְּךָ֖ אֶבְי֑וֹן, there shall be no poor with you.” Our Sages interpret this “b’cha—in or with you” to mean that in taking care of the poor, we should take care not to impoverish ourselves. But Rashi encourages us, nevertheless, to prioritize the needs of the poor. “Even though the Torah does not place [the obligation to a poor person first] upon him,” he says, “a person should go lifnim m’shurat hadin.” And Maimonides says that a leader [Torah scholar] who does not go lifnim m’shurat hadin runs the risk of desecrating God’s very name. (Hil. Yesodei Torah 5:11).

What does this phrase mean, Lifnim m’shurat hadin? It’s often mistranslated “beyond the letter of the law,” but that’s not at all what it means. Many of you know Hebrew reasonably well. Listen carefully to the words: “lifnim m’shurat hadin.” din is justice or judgment. What is shurah? Have you heard that term before? How about at a graveside? A “shurah,” in a funeral context, is a receiving line. Shurah literally means “line.” In our case, it’s a line around a point—a circle. It’s the line of the law, the boundaries, the parameters of justice. Halacha envisions us collectively within an imaginary circle, our circle of justice.

That’s true for our shul (which I’ll come back to), but also for any society. That line is what we are due, what we are fully entitled to under our shared norms. When I drive my car, by law I may go 65 miles an hour on the freeway. I don’t have to, but I may. If I go 55, though, I know (because I’m from Illinois, not California) that I should drive in the right lane so that those who exercise their right to drive faster, can pass me on the left. We all exist within that circle called a speed limit, and each of us chooses how much of that space we claim, how close to that line we come. Now listen carefully: “beyond the letter (or line) of the law” would be speeding. To go beyond the letter of the law is to violate it. We have a word for that in Hebrew too; it’s one we use a lot during these High Holy Days: averah, to literally “cross over” [the line].

So, shurat hadin is the line or circle of justice. What’s lifnim? Like its modern equivalent bifnim, lifnim means not beyond or above but “within.” Lifnim m’shurat hadin, means within the line of justice, within the circle of what we’re due, what we’re entitled to. When Rashi says it’s uncouth to claim your own lost property at the expense of a poor person, he’s saying what you’re entitled to do is not the same as what you ought to do.

Christine Hayes, the Yale Jewish studies professor who is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Hartman Institute, illustrates the point with the following scenario: You’re standing in line at the airport. You’re desperately late for your flight so you go up to the person at the front of the line and say “excuse me, I’m so sorry to bother you, but I’m late for my flight. Could I please go ahead of you? And the person at the front of the line says, perhaps politely, “well, I’m really sorry, but you see, I was here first.” And you say, ‘I know you were here first, but I see from the ticket in your hand your flight isn’t for an hour, and mine is in 17 minutes!” And the person in line says, “Then perhaps you should have arrived sooner?”

Is the jerk at the front of the line correct? Technically, yes. He was there first. But if he were to take less than he’s entitled to, he would allow you to make your flight. He is within his line of the law, the boundaries of strict justice, to refuses, but I hope you and I behave differently when given such opportunities. Less than you can. What are the stakes for a society where people regularly behave like that guy in the airport? The Gemarra tells us (Bava Metzia 30b): “Jerusalem was destroyed because people…insisted on din haTorah, the line of Torah, rather than lifnim m’shurat hadin, stopping short of it.” The Talmud makes the audacious claim that Jerusalem lay in ruin because too many decided to claim all they could instead of contracting just a bit to make space for others.

Sometimes we take less, but that can go too far, right? Existing within the shared circle of any community means we also have to assert our needs, with firmness and patience. Pluralism is not about making ourselves small but showing up in our fullness while also making space for others. Healthy relationships are not made up of mind readers. That’s couples therapy 101. Being assertive is a gift. In the dance of the interpersonal, sometimes I step forward and you step back. Sometimes the reverse. The Musar instructor Alan Morinis (Everyday Holiness) teaches that the middah of anavah/humility has two equally valid components: “no more than my space, no less than my place.” Or as I like to put it: to live lifnim m’shurat hadin is to claim less than you can, but all that you should.

Which brings us to our community here at Hamakom. On Yom Kippur, I’ll further explore that second piece, “all that you should,” particularly as Jews in a world that wants us to contract ourselves, maybe disappear ourselves, within that circle of justice. Today, though, my concern is how we take an asset-based approach to our wonderfully pluralistic congregation. My invitation, my charge to us this New Year, is to consider all those ways you carry your particularness, your unique story, history, identity, experiences. Now think deeply about oneness and sameness. Where and when should you claim all that you should because our community benefits from experiencing you in your fullness? And where might you create some space for others, for other voices and perspectives?

The possibilities of this shared project are enormous, but only if we can agree that Hamakom exists not as a place of necessity but opportunity. How do we maximize our machaneh, the diversity within our camp, the mixed multitude within the line we’ve established here in West Hills? Less than you can; all that you should. I don’t know about you, but I’m bored of silos, echo-chambers, uniformity posing as virtue. On this Rosh Hashanah, what our mahzor calls Yom Hadin, let’s go lifnim m’shurat hadin, let’s find space for ourselves and one another within the circle of our sacred community.

Yom Kippur is but 10 days from today. How might we inscribe ourselves in Hamakom’s Book of Life? “

Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, the High Priest, says he once entered the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, and saw the kisei ram v’nisa, the high and exalted throne, and heard a voice say, ‘b’ni barcheini, bless Me my son.’ God, to be clear, in this wild text from the Talmud (Berachot 7a), is asking the Priest for a blessing! So, the Cohen Gadol, on Yom Kippur, says to the Kadosh Baruch Hu: “[May you judge Your children] lifnim m’shurat hadin,” within the line of the law.

Less than you can; all that you should. If this is our wish for the Holy One, can we ask anything less of ourselves?

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Rabbi Buchdahl was referring to the violent attack in her congregation last Friday night during which an intruder interrupted Shabbat services, struck a 63-year-old woman in the face, spat on and head-butted a security guard, and knocked over a set of candlesticks.

Late last month, on Tisha B’Av, another man stabbed two men in broad daylight on the Upper West Side shouting Allahu Akbar!

Here in LA, back in April, in Pico-Robertson where I lived for 5 years, a Jewish father of three was assaulted on his way home from shul. A man jumped out of a car, threw him to the ground, and said, “Free Palestine.”

None of these incidents would have been in any way justifiable if the victims had been carrying Israel flags or singing Hatikva, but they weren’t doing these things. They were doing just one thing: being Jews.

That’s what my friend Janis Coulter was doing 24-years-ago last month. Janis and I met in the summer of 1996, on Kibbutz Ein Hashofet in the Galil, as I arrived in Israel for Ulpan and a year of study at Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus. We had a brief romantic relationship, but all year long during our year abroad, and for many years after, remained friends. In June of ‘02, Janis joined Miriam and me at our wedding in Ann Arbor. In July, she was back on Mt. Scopus escorting foreign exchange students as part of her job at Hebrew University. Dining in the crowded Frank Sinatra Cafeteria, a bomb planted by Hamas operatives tore into her and 84 other people, seriously injuring 14 and killing 9, including my friend Janis. She was 36-years-old.

Jewish tradition holds that there are essentially three cardinal sins: idolatry, weaponizing sex, and murder. But I want to suggest to you there is a fourth sin which is also seen as deeply reprehensible. That sin is terror. At times terrorism takes the form of murder and other violence. Other times, it’s about intimidation, fearmongering.

I surely won’t stand here and claim the sin of planting a bomb in a crowded university cafeteria is equivalent to targeting and intimidating Jewish college students on Yik Yak, broadcasting conspiracy theories, or pushing a man with a yarmulke to the ground. We all know verbal and physical attacks against us have skyrocketed of late.

I also won’t claim that terrorizing people is uniquely done to Jews by those who hate us. There are acts of terror being conducted far too frequently these days by Jews on Palestinians in the West Bank. And last weekend saw not only an attack on a shul in New York but the vandalization of a wonderful synagogue Kol Neshama in Jerusalem, in that case apparently by Israeli Jews seeking to terrorize a community supportive of LGBTQ inclusion.

Finally, I’m not here to define terrorism per se. There are legal definitions of that term, here, in Israel, and around the world. I’m not a lawyer nor a politician. Those definitions matter, but I’m not talking about those legal definitions. What I am talking about, the throughline for us as students of Torah, is violence, words, or other methods, which seek to diminish, dehumanize, or intimidate others simply because of who they are or what they might believe.

This is that fourth sin, and it features as a powerful subtext in this week’s parasha. Parashat Ki Tetze is famous for being the sedra with more halachot, more laws, than any other. At first blush, they are a random assortment of mitzvot: don’t leave an executed person’s body rotting in public, care for your neighbor’s animals, their property, build a parapet on your roof, avoid mixtures of linen and wool, abhor cult prostitution, don’t be a predatory lender, don’t abuse a day laborer or withhold their wages, don’t torture beasts of burden by muzzling them while they are working. 74 of the 613 mitzvot appear in today’s parasha.

While it would be hard to claim they are all of a kind, there is a predominant theme claims Rabbi Harold Kushner z”l in his “Drash” commentary from our Etz Hayim Chumash. That theme, he says, is “the irreducible dignity and worth of a human being. Even the most marginal members of society, such as the criminal or the female war captive, are fashioned in the image of God and are to be treated accordingly.”

I would add that this theme is underscored by the parasha’s first and final verses. Bracketing this lengthy legal portion, are two descriptions of warfare. The first, at the very beginning of Ki Tetze, demonstrates how we are meant to behave. The second, at the very conclusion, shows how we must not.

I’m going to read a bit more, but keep in mind these instructions, to our modern ear, are not only insufficient, they’re likely offensive. Treating women as such would not and should not be acceptable in our day. And it’s also important to understand the historical context of our Torah, in which ancient women were often viewed as chattel and where men could far too often do with them what they wished, including enslave them or leave them financially destitute. It’s in response to those backward mores that our parasha says the following:

When you go out against your enemies, and the LORD your God delivers them into your power and you take some of them captive, and you see among the captives a beautiful woman and you desire her and would take her to wife, you shall bring her into your house, and she shall trim her hair, pare her nails, and discard her captive’s garb. She shall spend a month’s time in your house lamenting her father and mother; after that you may come to her and possess her, and she shall be your wife. Then, should you no longer want her, you must release her outright. You must not sell her for money: since you had your will of her, you must not enslave her (Deu 21:10-14).

So, the beginning of Ki Tetze says even a human being viewed as subordinate, either because she is formerly an enemy or because of her gender, is due certain basic rights. She is to be given time to mourn her family and respected as a daughter. She must be treated as a wife and not a concubine, or worse. She may not be enslaved. In other words, there are rules to ensure her safety and security. She is to be made aware of these rules. She is not to live in terror.

What about the second bookend? The end of our parasha also describes warfare, and this time not the accepted practices of the Israelites against their enemies but a description of the worst of our enemies, the archetypal nemesis of the Jewish people, the name we summon to mind when confronting the most severe Jew-hatred: Haman, the Holocaust, Oct. 7.

What is so reprehensible about Amalek? Why are the Amalekites, more than the Egyptians, Hittites, even the Philistines, regarded as our greatest enemy? The Malbim, Rabbi Meir Leibush Weisser, the 19^th Century Eastern European sage, suggests that Amalek’s great sin is that he doesn’t abide by any acceptable rules of warfare. The Malbim takes our passage point by point and names five specific ways Amalek violates these norms:

1. Nations sometimes make war on a land in order to conquer it and to expand their borders. But this was בַּדֶּ֗רֶךְ “on the march” and not once [The Israelites] were settled in their land.

2. Nations will draw near to the border of [enemy] land because they wish [to defend their borders]. But this was בְּצֵאתְכֶ֥ם מִמִּצְרָֽיִם “after you left Egypt.”

3. People make war [with a prior enemy] in order to provoke them. But [the Amalekites] “surprised you,” depicting a chance encounter. There was no prior quarrel between these parties.

4. In order to demonstrate strength and might, nations make war face to face. But he “cut down כׇּל־הַנֶּחֱשָׁלִ֣ים אַֽחֲרֶ֔יךָ all the stragglers in your rear.”

5. Nations sometimes make holy wars. because they think they will find favor in the eyes of their gods…. But Amalek was לֹ֥א יָרֵ֖א אֱלֹהִֽים “undeterred by fear of God.” The central reason for this war was heresy against God…. and he [Amalek] wanted to demonstrate to all [the Israelites] that God could not save them.

The upshot of Malbim’s stunning interpretation is that Amalek is an agent of chaos. Much like the Joker in Batman, he seeks to inflict pain and instill fear. He is a terrorist, without any discernable moral compass, and with no intended outcome but victory at all costs. He likes to keep his victims off balance. He sees no problem attacking the weak. His immorality is a product of his amorality. To borrow a line from journalist Adam Serwer, “the cruelty is the point.”

It is especially hard to battle enemies like this: people whose inclination is wanton cruelty, the marginalization or sacrifice of the other on the altar of base assumptions. The reductive justifications of the bigot. A fuller analysis of our best response to such an enemy is probably a sermon for another day.

On this day, I’ll invite us briefly into the wisdom of our maftir Aliyah:

The response to cruelty and caprice begins with a paradox. We must remember and we must blot out memory. Because if we only remember, we run the risk of becoming obsessed with the forces that tormented my kids and maybe your kids, or assaulted shul goers on Shabbat, or took the life of my friend Janis. We dare not become consumed by our rage at these things. Our tradition forbids it. But we also dare not forget, those whose lives were taken, whose safety is imperiled, whose confidence teeters, bracing for the bully’s next attack. Remember and forget; we must do both. “We know what kind of city we want to live in,” said Rabbi Buchdahl. Indeed, we know what kind of world we want to live in. One in which fear and intimidation cannot win, where terror cannot prevail. Our tradition, in my estimation, tells us we dare not give up on that dream.

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There are forces that want to bathe our joy in inescapable grief, as we learned on Oct. 7, Simchat Torah just 3 years ago. But there are other forces, better forces, Godly forces, that can be an antidote to the disease of hate.

Miriam and Shamir were in Boston this past week and had the opportunity to visit Lehrhaus, the hipster mashup of restaurant, tavern, and beit midrash. A message board nestled amidst the books in Somerville features a quote from American Jewish painter R.B. Kitaj. It reads in all caps: PAINT THE OPPOSITE OF ANTISEMTISM. The hatred of our people is on a lot of our mind, I think. It’s in the news and on the tongues of prominent politicians. It’s coursing through our social media feeds. And certainly, it was a central message this week as many of us sat in our chapel to absorb the woeful words of Eicha on Tisha B’Av. Our burning Temples, pogroms, expulsions, inquisitions, the Shoah, October 7. The epigenetic weigh of Jewishness.

But this Shabbat is our annual escape hatch from that national Jewish day of Mourning. Shabbat Nachamu beckons us forth from grief, from the worst of our history, and the anxiety about the worst of our present circumstances, into an awareness of the many blessings surrounding us, and the possibilities of a brighter future. Today, this Shabbat, begins our march toward Rosh Hashanah, toward renewal and restoration.

My question for us is this: how might we paint the opposite of antisemitism? Or more specifically, how is Shabbat Nachamu an antidote to the pain of Tisha B’Av? As you may know, Tisha B’Av marked the conclusion of a period called bein hametzarim “between the straits,” the three weeks between the 17^th of Tamuz and the 9^th of Av. Shabbat Nachamu is the first of seven shabbatot of consolation, the shiva d’nechemta. So, three weeks, then seven weeks, after which we celebrate our New Year. But after those seven weeks, there are another three weeks, exactly 21 days between Rosh Hashanah and Hoshanah Rabbah during Sukkot, understood to be the real conclusion of High Holy Day season. Is there a relationship between the three weeks of mourning and these three weeks of introspection and, ultimately, joy?

The Hassidic masters believe there is. The Maor Vashamesh, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Epstein writes in the 19^th century (Parashat Pinchas):

כ”א יום הם כנגד כ”א יום שבין ראש השנה עד הושענא רבה

“The 21 days correspond to one another.” How?

אלא שאלו בין המצרים הם בהעלם, ואלו הימים שמראש השנה עד הושענא רבה הם באתגליא

“The Three Weeks are in concealment, whereas the days from Rosh Hashanah through Hoshana Rabbah are revealed.” What might be revealed? The 20^th century Slonimer Rebbe, the Netivot Shalom teaches that just as the Three Weeks are the root of sadness for the entire year – Sukkot is shoresh haSimcha, the root of joy. He draws on an earlier tradition from the original Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, the late 18^th century Apter Rebbe, who taught that the 21 days we just completed in Av and those 21 days of the fall chagim correspond to yet another 21 days: the eretz yisraeli Biblical festivals throughout the Jewish year. Shabbat counts as 1, Rosh Hodesh 1, Pesach 7, Shavuot 1, Rosh Hashanah 2, Yom Kippur 1, Sukkot 8 = 21.

All of this is to say that this moment in our calendar holds great potentiality, is pregnant with possibility. In a world filled with too much hate, bullies and their cheap words, despots and their costly actions, mobs and their terror, our tradition holds secrets for healing and wholeness. And this Shabbat, as we step from three weeks of pain into seven weeks of comfort, can ignite within us, if we let it, a force to carry us toward those fall holidays and into the New Year beyond. I want to suggest that shabbat Nachamu plays a catalytic role. How is this is a shabbat of love? Sadness may be the waters that have surrounded us. Joy is the ultimate destination, a wellspring of flourishing. But love propels us across the surface of those waters. It is the antidote to Tisha B’Av. “Hate cannot drive out hate,” wrote Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “only love can do that.”

So, it’s no coincidence that this Shabbat Nachamu is always Parashat V’Etchanan. And V’Etchanan contains not only the Ten Commandments but Shema and V’Ahavta. “You shall love the Lord your God, b’chol levavcha, with all your heart, b’chol nafshecha, with all your being, u’vechol meodecha, with all your substance” (Deu 6:5). Eicha! “How,” asked Parashat Devarim (1:12) and the book of Lamentations? “Ahavah, Love,” answers V’Etchanan.

But you might ask, isn’t V’ahavta about loving God? How is loving the Holy One meant to increase love in our world, in our lives? The poet Marge Piercy has a response, and one rooted in the best of our tradition:

So you shall love what is holy
with all your courage, with all your passion
with all your strength.
[…]

We should love ourselves, for we are of G-d.
We should love our neighbors as ourselves
We should love the stranger, for we
were once strangers in the land of Egypt
and have been strangers in all the lands of the world since.
Let love fill our hearts with its clear precious water.
[…]

We must choose life so our children’s children may live.
Be quiet and listen to the still small
voice within that speaks in love.
Open to that voice, hear it, heed it and work for life.
Let us remember and strive to be good.
Let us remember to find what is holy
within and without.

The cynic, or the skeptic, may hear these words and find them naïve. Love doesn’t win battles. Love doesn’t reach into the hearts of the truly intolerant and rescue them from their hate. There are battles worth fighting, of course. Words, despite the pacifist’s best intention, cannot stop a bullet or a prevent a genocide as our people have learned throughout the history we just commemorated on Tisha B’Av. But words do have a role, a critical role, in creating the conditions for fewer wars, less conflict, interrupted cycles of violence.

When Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Supreme Court Justice, wrote that the best remedy for hate speech is not enforced silence but “more speech,” he meant we should confront hate, admonish haters. But he also understood that societies who seek, first, to silence speech of one kind, especially with force, offer little protection against the silencing of dissenting voices of any kind. Those are societies without a free press, the right to peaceably assemble, the permission to protest. Shabbat Nachamu, out of the ashes of our suffering, offers us a counterpoint to our baser instincts—the possibility of connection, of compassion, of love.

Anyone listen to the Hartman Institute’s Identity/Crisis Podcast? There was an episode recently in which Yehuda Kurtzer interviewed Shaanan Streett, the Israeli hiphop artist and frontman for Hadag Nachash. Streett and Kurtzer were discussing the popular rap “Harbu Darbu,” the rage and hate-filled song by Ness and Stilla which became wildly popular in the months after October 7. Streett explained that he had met the duo, even performed with them. “They’re not crazy fascists,” he said. “They’re just ordinary Israelis that were swept in the moment…very humiliated, very angry. And that was their artistic response.”

Streett’s response, though, was different. He felt, beyond the battles, after the war, the only lasting way forward was the path of attempted understanding. So he recorded his own song titled “Chabru Dabru.” “Harbu Darbu means ‘destroy and hit’ in Arabic, he said, ‘but my song, you change around the letters and it becomes ‘connect and speak.’” That is a path of love.

“Paint the opposite of Antisemitism.” In my pre-Shabbat video, I mentioned Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and his teaching that the best response to sinat hinam, the baseless hatred which our Sages say caused the Temple’s destruction, is ahavat hinam. Free love. Not the Northern California kind of free love; boundless love, causeless love. Choosing to seek love when only hate seems possible.

The week after Tisha B’Av is all about love. The 9^th of Av is a day of catastrophe. The Shabbat that follows is one of comfort when we read the directive, “love God” and learn through that how to love our fellow. And then comes the 15^th of Av. What’s that? It’s Jewish Valentine’s Day. It’s our national day of love. Tu B’Av starts this Tuesday night. So, this week, let’s ask ourselves, how might we climb aboard that Love Boat, a vessel capable of carrying us across the waves of our sadness? What words might we choose when others tug at us from our fear and worry? Hevre, we have seven weeks to get ready for the next three. And then three weeks to prepare for Simchat Torah. There are forces that want to bathe our joy in inescapable grief, as we learned on that holiday just three years ago. But there are other forces, better forces, Godly forces that can be an antidote to the disease of hate. Love the Lord your God. The rest will follow.

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Jewish tradition is clear on the importance of hachnasat orchim, the mitzvah of hospitality. Hamakom has done it’s share and then some! Welcome banners, balloons, videos of our arrival. My face on banners. My face on posters. My face on electronic displays throughout the building…. Please know, I am truly grateful for the incredible efforts this congregation undertaken to extend a powerfully warm welcome to me personally—and to Miriam, Eliyah and Shamir. Truly grateful… and just a little embarrassed.

If you’ll allow, it all reminds me a bit of Rabbi Don Goor formerly of Temple Judea here in Tarzana who once told a story about being invited to a congregant’s home for sukkot. When Rabbi Goor walked into the man’s sukkah, he was bemused to find the sukkah decorated on all sides with pictures of himself—Rabbi Goor. Don was honored but uncertain as to why the congregants had done this. When he inquired, they responded, “this is the first year we’ve built a sukkah, and we weren’t sure what to do. Our friends attend Chabad, and they put pictures of their rabbi all around their sukkah!...”

So, while it’s an honor to see the posters and banners, it’s especially nice to see each other today, in three dimensions, face-to-face.

Shall we learn some Torah? Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “Irrefutably, indestructibly, never wearied by time, the Bible wanders through the ages…it speaks in every language and in every age…In fact, it is still in the very beginning of its career, the full meaning of its content having hardly touched the thresholds of our minds; like an ocean at the bottom of which countless pearls lie, waiting to be discovered” (God in Search of Man, p. 242).

We call Torah an Etz Chayim, a living tree. And it’s true, it is always growing and, as it does, it shapes us, grows with us throughout the generations. But Torah is also a treasure trove to be mined, or an ocean to be explored. We dive deep into its waters, claiming those pearls, applying its timeless wisdom to new contexts. We grow when we learn the lessons of our tradition in relationship to contemporary questions or challenges.

This feels like a worthy message on this, the Semiquincentennial of our country, America’s 250th birthday. There is much to love about this country, its beautiful landscapes as my family and I recently experienced, its commitment to our basic freedoms and representative democracy, the hamburger. But what I love best about America, and what is in some ways the most Jewish thing about this country, is the foundation of basic human equality upon which the nation was founded when the 2^nd Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

I’ve served three congregations in my years as a rabbi. The first one, Anshe Emet Synagogue in Chicago, features striking stained-glass windows in its historic sanctuary, including in a ceiling skylight. Included are the words “All men are created equal” in English, words from the Declaration. But immediately above these are Hebrew words from Bereishit: “na’aseh adam b’tzalmeinu kidemuteinu, let us make humanity in our image, according to our likeness.” The implication of course, the midrashic move if you will, is that America’s promise of equality is rooted in Torah values, the radical Jewish concept that each of us is created b’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image, and is therefore deserving of honor and dignity.

This is no accident in that the founding fathers were largely Hebraophiles, wishing to root the American experiment in what they saw as Christian Old Testament values and the Bible’s frequent call to justice, fairness, dignity, and prosperity. Now, if we’re being honest, Jefferson’s language was not as expansive or inclusive as I hope most of us believe our country should be in embracing human equality. In 1776 and long after, “equality” did not include, for example, women, people of African descent—even we Jews were not afforded de jure, full equal protection under the law until many, many years year. And today, there continue to be many societal inequities worth working to correct or improve.

But what I want to suggest to you today is that that is exactly why this anniversary is so important, so powerful. Because America, like Jewish tradition, is not only about the human being, but the human becoming. What we are is an invitation to who we might be. There are legal systems, political systems, social stratifications in the world which insist large segments of their societies are trapped in their station, defined inexorably by their race or gender or caste.

This, I believe, is not what America stands for. “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Not only being but becoming, pursuing.

And Torah, too, unfurls itself to us, revealing an internal Jewish struggle to live up to the principle of tzelem Elohim. Our parasha includes the b’not Tzlophehad, five daughters who come to Moses with a claim of unfair practices.

תְּנָה־לָּ֣נוּ אֲחֻזָּ֔ה בְּת֖וֹךְ אֲחֵ֥י אָבִֽינוּ׃

“Give us a holding among our father’s kinsmen,” they demand (Num. 27:4). It is unfair that just because we have no brothers, our family’s property should pass to another! And what’s amazing about this passage is that when Moshe brings the case to the Kadosh Baruch Hu, God insists not only that the b’not Tzlophehad get their due, but establishes a new legal precedent based on their claim. “Further, speak to the Israelite people as follows: ‘If a man dies without leaving a son, you shall transfer his property to his daughter’” (v. 8).

Humans becoming, society evolving based on a clear founding principle – equality. It’s this principle embedded in the Declaration of Independence that has led Americans to push for a what the constitution calls “a more perfect union.” In 1852, nine years before the Civil War, Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist who made his home in my previous home of Baltimore, delivered a speech in honor of Independence Day. His remarks draw on the tradition of the ancient prophets who call upon us to uphold our values, of Tzelophehad’s daughters who insist halacha abide by Torah’s own first principles.

Douglass doesn’t in any way reject the Declaration of Independence” Rather, in the spirit of American pursuit of happiness, he claims it in the name of a brighter future. “The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men,” he says. “They were great men, too, great enough to give frame to a great age…. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.”

And then Douglass admits with great sadness the truth of 1852, of a man who escaped slavery, but whose brothers and sisters remain in bondage. “I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary!... The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me…. This Fourth July is yours, not mine….” Nevertheless, says Douglass, “I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably, work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain.” His quote is from Isaiah 59 (v. 1). He’s prophetic; Sure enough, eleven years later Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. And by June 19, 1865, American slavery was at an end.

America is a land of becoming because the project of America is one that makes reinvention, reimagination possible. That’s why so many Jews came here, to Hollywood, making movies to tell stories both about an America they loved and also about an America they hoped would become more fully realized. That’s how Jewish poet Emma Lazarus was able to reimagine an enormous statue in New York Harbor, a gift of liberty presented by the French on July 4, 1884, but which Lazarus understood to stand for immigrants seeking a better life. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Her poem, written one year prior, would remake Lady Liberty as a beacon of welcome for people like my grandfather who would come to flee Nazi Germany in 1938. But in 1883, the same year Emma Lazarus penned “The New Colossus,” she also wrote a series of articles titled “An Epistle to the Hebrews” in which she coined the phrase: “Until we are all free, we are none of us free.” Lazarus was concerned in that essay about Jewish complacency, that comfortable and assimilated American Jews were not sufficiently concerned with the plight of suffering Eastern European Jewry and the repatriation of our fellow people not only to America but also to Eretz Yisrael. “I do not hesitate to say that our national defect is that we are not “tribal” enough;” she wrote, “we have not sufficient solidarity to perceive that when the life and property of a Jew in the uttermost provinces of the Caucuses are attacked, the dignity of a Jew in free America is humiliated.”

To enjoy the freedoms of America is not to disappear into some great melting pot. And it’s not to insist everything is perfect. It’s to celebrate the many wonderful things about this country, now a quarter of a millenium old. And it’s to honor the diverse and rich humanity which pulsates through this great nation. This Independence Day, may we seek to be and become, to confront our past not with shame but curiosity and love of a country that has given our people so much. May we continue to insist on the call to equality enshrined in our Declaration of Independence.

And Hamakom, as we begin our new journey together, may I be worthy of the values that undergird this wonderful community. We too are in a process of becoming, and I’m so very excited to see where we go from here!

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It’s been a while so thanks for your patience! I’ll be sharing my recent first sermon in my new shul (text and podcast) soon, with more to come!

Meanwhile, as I’ve been in the process of transitioning from Beth Am and Baltimore to my new synagogue Hamakom of Los Angeles, CA, I’ve been reflecting on sixteen wonderful years in Reservoir Hill. An incredible committee led by Clara Salzberg and Marc Ershler put together an unforgettable weekend including joyful Kabbalat Shabbat Services in Druid Hill Park and a fabulous Nefesh Mountain concert! The incomparable Shana Kroiz compiled a stunning tribute book which I will treasure for the rest of my life. Miriam, Eliyah, Shamir, and I were incredibly touched by the gratitude expressed and the effort put into celebrating our time together.

Throughout the Shabbat of June 12-13, 2026, there were touching speeches, some of which were recorded. For those who were unable to attend, here is a playlist from Beth Am’s YouTube channel with some of the speeches and performances. In it you’ll find:

• Governor Wes Moore’s tribute

• City Council President Zeke Cohen’s moving personal story about the loss of his mother and finding comfort at Beth Am

• A hilarious song from the Beth Am Purim spielers

• Heal Us Now performed by yours truly with my children

• My farewell sermon

• Rabbi Tyler Dratch’s blessing

L’Shalom,

Rav Daniel

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Rabbi Jonathan Sacks suggests that the book of Leviticus, “invites us to consider what it would mean for us to live a consecrated, dedicated life.” In Hebrew, the book in which we currently find ourselves is named Vayikra, meaning “and God called.” Rashi says this is לְשׁוֹן חִבָּה, God’s love language. For Sacks, this evokes the key Western concept of vocation or “calling.” “Not everyone who finds meaning in life does so in moral terms,” he writes. “But they almost always do so in terms of some project involving challenge, dedication, commitment, and effort that takes them beyond themselves.”

Today, as we celebrate Beth Am’s annual Volunteer Shabbat, we honor so many of you who have demonstrated this kind of altruism. Thank you! And today, I want to further explore this question of dedication, of holy commitment. Our parasha includes a strict admonition against eating hekdesh, that which is set aside for God.

וְכׇל־זָ֖ר לֹא־יֹ֣אכַל קֹ֑דֶשׁ

“No lay person shall eat of the sacred donations” (Lev. 22:10).

These terumah offerings were voluntary gifts provided to the priests. What’s the origin of the word terumah? It derives from the shoresh רום which means to elevate or exalt, which is the source of the archaic translation “heave offering.” In other words, once something has been elevated for sacred use, it cannot be claimed or consumed in the regular way. Terumah is for the kohein alone, or more specifically his household.

The haftarah, too, refers to hekdesh, commitment to the irreducible holy. In Ezekiel’s description of Temple worship he says, “The meal offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings shall be consumed by them....”

וְכׇל־חֵ֥רֶם בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל לָהֶ֥ם יִהְיֶֽה׃

“Everything proscribed in Israel shall be theirs” (Ez. 44:29). As Bible scholar Michael Fishbane points out, the language evokes next week’s double parasha, the concluding section to Sefer Vayikra. The Torah also uses the word חֵ֡רֶם which we often think of as a ban or excommunication. But here it means devoted—that is permitted to the priests but “banned” for everyone else.

אַךְ־כׇּל־חֵ֡רֶם אֲשֶׁ֣ר יַחֲרִם֩ אִ֨ישׁ לַֽה…

“But of all that anyone owns, be it man or beast or land of his holding, nothing that he has proscribed for the LORD may be sold or redeemed…”

כׇּל־חֵ֕רֶם קֹֽדֶשׁ־קׇדָשִׁ֥ים ה֖וּא לַה׃

“Every proscribed thing is totally consecrated to God” (Lev. 27:28).

This is the say that once we set aside anything to God—an animal, home, land—it must remain so. No take backs. The consecrated life is about elevated living. In Judaism (unlike gravity) what goes up, must stay up.

And the concept, it seems, applies to people as well. When Manoach’s wife dedicates her son Shimshon/Samson as a nazir, he remains a nazir. When Chana dedicates her son Shmuel for service, he must serve. This is why we have the mitzvah of pidyon haben, the redemption of the first born. Because just by virtue of one having been born first, we are obligated to the Temple. An elaborate ceremony is supposed to be performed, even to this day when beit hamikdash no longer stands, to redeem such a child from this service.

But this concept of the irreducible holy also applies beyond its strict application to priests and the Temple. Blessings, too, seem to be irrevocable. When Yaakov tricks his blind father Yitzhak, pretending to be Esav, what is Yitzhak’s response? Not to revoke the blessing as fruit from a poison tree.

וָאֲבָרְכֵ֑הוּ גַּם־בָּר֖וּךְ יִהְיֶֽה׃

“I blessed him,” Isaac proclaims, “so blessed will he be!” (Gen 27:34).

And famously, on Chanukah, how do we light the candles? We follow Beit Hillel who say we add one flame each night instead of subtracting because we should be “ma’alin bakodesh, v’lo moridin, we should only go up in holiness, not down.”

All this is hopefully inspiring, but know the world often does not work this way! The question for us then is less about the priesthood which is mostly vestigial in a post-exilic Jewish world. Our parasha’s challenge to us is how might we commit, vocationally, as a calling, to greater holiness in our lives? And how might that commitment uplift possibilities for future generations?

One example can be found in a middle-school student at Lincoln Square synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Having impressed her Hebrew school instructors and rabbi, 12-year-old Elena Kagan couldn’t understand why girls were not permitted to celebrate their coming of age with bat mitzvah. In those days it was uncommon for girls in Conservative shuls to read from the Torah—and unheard of in Orthodox ones like Lincoln Square. Young Elena was not permitted to. But on Friday night May 18, 1973, after fighting tooth and nail for the privilege, she did become the first girl at her shul to celebrate a bat mitzvah. “She certainly raised my consciousness,” said Rabbi Shlomo Riskin who years ago made Aliyah and has continued to evolve in his own thinking. Nowadays it’s de rigueur for Orthodox girls to have some sort of bat mitzvah celebration, and not uncommon for them to read Torah, including at Lincoln Square. Meanwhile, Elena Kagan would go on to become the first female dean of Harvard Law School and the first woman to serve as solicitor general.

So, it seems fitting that as the Supreme Court all but dismantled the last key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act this week, Justice Kagen took the rare step of delivering her powerful dissent aloud from the bench. This law “…was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers,” she said. “It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people’s representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court.” She might as well have been chanting a maftir or a haftarah from our prophets. Her Jeremiad is rooted not in nostalgia, but real concern for the degradation of rights and representation for Black Americans.

There is much to be said, and no time to say it now, about the history of the VRA and the importance of Black and Jewish alliances during the Civil Rights Era. These histories have been written. Where I’d like us to land today is in considering how hard it is to maintain upward momentum in our Jewish pursuit of justice. As Jews, it should concern us when hekdesh, achievements of a higher order—robust and diverse democratic participation, for example—are torn down in the name of progress. The question for us is not whether polling access for minorities is much better than it was in 1965. It is. The question is why.

And one big reason why is because of the protections afforded by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. As another pioneering Jewish Supreme Court justice wrote in 2015 when SCOTUS dismantled the preclearance provision of the same landmark legislation, “[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” A recent study published in the Journal of Politics shows throwing away the umbrella has had a marked effect on the racial gap in voter turnout since Shelby County v. Holder, translating to literally “hundreds of thousands of uncast ballots by voters of color.” Unfortunately, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg feared, it’s been a pretty soggy decade since the last time SCOTUS took up the Voting Rights Act.

What’s to be done when some seem to be working so hard to reduce the irreducible holy? First, we study our history. What is one of the first things you learn when learning to drive a car? Check your mirrors. New drivers are hyper-focused on the road ahead. Experienced drivers know we also have to look behind us: Your rear view, side mirrors, blind spots.

Consider our own Jewish history of disenfranchisement and suffering. There has been much focus in recent years on increasing Holocaust education. But as Holocaust Historian Daniel Greene argues in the new issue of Sources (“Holocaust Education for Today,” Spring 2026), in the battle to combat the very real and precipitous rise in Jew-hatred, cause and effect is less clear. Of course we should study the Shoah, and it should be studied more frequently not less, particularly with the rise of Holocaust denial, misinformation and disinformation campaigns. And some people are, undoubtedly, more sympathetic to Jews because of their knowledge of that history. But it would be inaccurate to claim that Holocaust education has decreased the overall rate of antisemitism. The evidence is overwhelming to the contrary.

Ultimately, we study history because it happened, argues Greene. The goal of learning about the past is not to “instrumentalize” it, it’s to understand it, to grapple with it. Likewise, understanding why African Americans were disenfranchised during Jim Crow is one critical step in the process of fighting for more inclusive elections.

Legislation, a new umbrella, may be part of the answer. A bill exists that, if passed, could help a lot. But trying to pass new laws without doing the relational work is unlikely to yield lasting results. Without a set of agreed-upon norms and values, what we do with our past is “up in the air,” so to speak. Holy is as holy does. We continue to have b’not mitzvah because our communities (including many Orthodox shuls) have agreed this is important. We have to win arguments, not just legal battles. We have to build empathy not only shout our displeasure online. We must build coalitions of people who remember their neighbors, not just their party affiliations, when they step into the voting booth.

And we must be open to the possibility of repair. On Mother’s Day, my family is going to see Holes at Center Stage. How many of you have read the book? Seen the movie? Seen the play? Holes is, at its heart, a Jewish story about healing. It’s the tale of two friends who redeem a century of injustice through kindness, fellowship, and by fighting for their futures. It’s about restorative justice. It’s about keeping our eyes set on road ahead, while checking the rearview mirror.

We Americans have dug ourselves into a hole of late. And there is real danger in feeling trapped by that hole. But we’re not. I don’t want to minimize the suffering, the fear, and anger. They are real and understandable. But if we think about it, we’ve always known that the irreducible holy is iterative. Our tradition may say we must only go up, but there are forces pulling us down; they are strong and they are determined. To live a “consecrated, dedicated life,” to achieve an aspirational society, requires stamina, patience, and a belief in a higher purpose for this complicated world. Gravity is gravity. It’s as old as time and space. But long before 1965, we humans figured out how to fly anyway. And recently, Victor Glover, the first Black astronaut on a moon mission, piloted humanity higher, further than we’ve ever flown.

So what’s next?

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My first Baltimore Justice column appeared in the second issue of Jmore in late 2016. Editor-in-Chief Alan Feiler had asked if I would be willing to share some reflections in the new monthly publication. Frankly, I was surprised. What value would a column about Jewish views on urban-oriented social justice hold in a glossy lifestyle publication geared mostly to a Pikesville crowd? Circumstances in America were changing rapidly, though. Donald Trump had just been elected. Many of us were grappling with what this new political reality would mean—for the Jewish community, the city of Baltimore, indeed for the nation.

And less than two years prior, Freddie Gray’s arrest and subsequent death had unleashed rage, reflection and a reckoning here in Baltimore. I had gained some national attention though my writing as an urban rabbi proximate to the uprising, with perspectives on both the history and legacy of Black-Jewish relations and with thoughts about what our robust Jewish textual heritage might have to offer as guidance. I told Alan I was honored to be asked. Thus began my new adventure as a regular columnist for Jmore!

Over the course of ten years and more than eighty columns, I’ve done my best to uplift local stories and challenge conventional wisdom on contemporary topics such as intersectionality, #MeToo, allyship, and America’s reckoning with Confederate statues. I’ve also written about Baltimore City’s relationship with the racism that defined its antebellum and Jim Crow eras and new possibilities for Druid Hill Park. My interest in what I call relational justice has also meant a strong conviction that we Jews need to stand up for who we are (from Baltimore to Israel) and our essential place in American society—and resist the othering that too often comes with America’s majority Christian culture.

The greatest throughline, however, has been my belief that Beth Am’s historic neighborhood of Reservoir Hill should flourish as what I’ve called The New Jewish Neighborhood, mindful of our history while working to soften artificial and counterproductive boundaries in favor of pluralism, inclusion, and mutual-esteem. This approach has also meant reminding our broader Jewish community at times that love for and investment in the city is both a sacred obligation and a win-win proposition. Where to begin? I’ve humbly suggested it all begins with relationships!

In June, I’ll be completing my time at Beth Am and in Baltimore. Miriam, our family, and I depart with abiding love for our adopted home, many enduring relationships, and great pride in what our synagogue, neighborhood, and city have accomplished. Rabbi Tyler Dratch will be taking over as Senior Rabbi here in Reservoir Hill. I leave our work of advancing urban Jewish Baltimore in his capable hands; the shul has never been stronger and more vibrant!

I wish to convey my abiding gratitude to Alan Feiler and Publisher Scott Rifkin for creating space for conversations about justice in the pages of Jmore. I am humbled to have penned this column for so long and hope that my doing so has contributed meaningfully to our discourse around some of Baltimore’s and the Jewish community’s thornier and most pressing issues.

A decade on, much has changed, but unfortunately, much remains to be accomplished. The forces that divide, minimize, and dehumanize are even more ascendent and persistent than when I began.

The equation (and my related hope for you, dear readers) is the same: an honest accounting of who we are, what we stand for and who we’ve been, plus a compassionate and curious approach to our fellow human beings, equals a more just society.

Here’s how I concluded that first column back in late 2016:

To better inhabit our Jewishness, we must be expansive in our concept of community. Baltimore’s greatness, like America’s greatness, is in its people. We Jews have flourished in this country and city because, despite real obstacles, here we have found a place to call home. So, let’s start at home. Making the world better requires making our neighborhoods better. And, wherever you live, city or county, making your neighborhood better requires making mine better too – and vice versa. Why? Because making Baltimore great means also identifying the parts of it that never were.

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Where does this idea come from, this notion that a skin ailment can be attributed to slander? Well, it’s not in Tazria or Metzora. It comes, eisegetically I would say, from two sources. I’ll take them in reverse chronological order. The first is from B’ha’alot’kha in the book of Numbers when Miriam and Aaron come to Moses with a complaint: “Vat’daber Miriam v’Aharon b’Moshe al odot ha’isha hakushit…, Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman he had married…” (12:1). The midrashic tradition assumes the affliction of tza’arat that follows nine verses later is a direct result of this lashon hara which literally means the “evil tongue.” But, while plausible, it’s not necessarily the most likely explanation. First of all, the Torah is explicit that Miriam, and not Aaron, is affected – but both of them spoke, yes? Disparity aside, perhaps Miriam was punished for challenging Moses publicly.

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A contemporary rabbi (Norman Cohen) suggests it could be a punishment for racism. Miriam doesn’t like the darkness of Moses’ Cushite wife, so God turns her excessively white – measure for measure, midah k’neged midah. But that’s almost certainly incorrect. Dark skin is no liability in the ancient Near East, and while prejudices of various kinds have existed as long as humanity itself, anti-Black racism as we understand it today is hundreds not thousands of years old.

Rashi, for his part, imagines them critiquing him for abandoning his wife, Tzipora! Even the translation “against” Moses is an interpretation; while the preposition “b’moshe” is atypical, it could still mean they spoke “to” Moses. The point is, there are any number of possible causes to Miriam’s ailment – and even if we take the text at face value and assume there is a cause at all, the conspicuous absence of any etiology in numerous chapters of Tazria or Metzora makes the Numbers case the exception, not the rule!

The second example connecting this disease with harmful speech comes earlier in the book of Exodus (Ch. 4) and is even more tenuous. Essentially, God gives Moshe two magic tricks to impress Pharaoh: transfiguring his staff into a snake and giving himself tza’arat before curing it just as quickly. The midrash says the skin ailment was a result of Moses’ questioning the Holy One’s command to go before Pharaoh, but there’s scant evidence for such a claim. For these reasons, though, our Sages say that the term metzora, one afflicted with this leprous condition, is an acronym for motzi (shem) ra, one who brings forth a bad name, one who gossips.

Tenuous though this may be, the wonder of Torah is that it is always revealing itself to us in new ways. My teacher, Prof. Walter Herzberg, would say perhaps the most important thing to keep an eye out for when studying Torah is “perspective.” Sometimes to really understand a text we need to look at things from a different angle. It’s April, so perhaps a baseball story is called for:

There’s a young boy with a bat in hand, practicing his hitting by tossing a baseball into the air and swinging at it. He does this once, tosses it up, takes a good swing and, swish, misses the ball entirely. He does the same thing a second time. Swings and misses. The third time, he tosses the ball in the air, and carefully keeping his eye on the ball, he watches it go up… and as it’s coming down he swings cleanly across his body and… woosh. Misses it again. “Strike three,” says the kid to himself, “I had no idea I was such a good pitcher!”

So, considering this alternate perspective, here’s another way of thinking about tzara’at. Since the Torah is clear in our double parasha that this disease has no cause, nor any discernable cure, perhaps the Rabbis are not so fanciful in viewing it less as a treatise on the nature of disease but as a powerful metaphor for the nature of speech. In what ways do gossip, slander, lashon hara, manifest like a disease? How do hurtful words corrode a person? How do they leave us feeling ugly – disfigured and vulnerable? How do they force us to live in partial or even total isolation? Aren’t they, literally, communicable?

The Torah says, “lo telekh rachil b’amekha. Lo ta’amod al dam rei’ekha…, Do not go as a talebearer among your people, do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor” (Lev. 19:16). And tradition suggests the two clauses in the verse are not unrelated. Speech can kill, sometimes literally – as in Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Russia where the tale bearing of neighbors lead to catastrophic loss of life. And in this internet age of social media our society provides vehicles upon vehicles for defamation, disinformation – or perhaps violent ICE dragnets. How many stories have we heard about kids who are mercilessly bullied, resorting, God forbid, to acts of self-harm?

But the arrested heart is only one version of death. Evil and destructive speech can also undo a life in other ways – by obliterating a friendship, unmaking a marriage, or ruining a career. Rabbi Israel Salanter, founder of the Mussar Movement says, “If you say of a rabbi that he does not have a good voice and of a cantor that he is not a scholar, you are a gossip. But if you say of a rabbi that he is no scholar and of a cantor that he has no voice – you are a murderer.” But think about it, inasmuch as death is a permanently altered state, the victim of slander or gossip is deprived of the life she once had. She may be born again, but it will be, on some level, Phoenix-like, out of ashes. The metzora, having no appearance of malady, may re-enter the camp. But the man who enters will not be identical to the one who left. The world is filled with human beings sporting scars invisible to the naked eye.

And, as the Talmud points out, it’s not only the slandered who is culpable. The bystander, too, bears some responsibility, perhaps a lot. “One who listens to l’shon hara is worse than one who recites it” we read in Masechet Pesahim (118a). For, as the verse in Leviticus makes clear, to stand idly by our neighbor’s blood is to condone, even support, and perhaps aid and abet the destructive act we witness.

But here’s the interesting thing; Jewish tradition makes a far more radical claim: In addition to being culpable, all three parties are, paradoxically, damaged as well. Not just the victim, but the slanderer and bystander, too, have lost something of their humanity. If, as the Torah teaches, we are all created in God’s image and likeness, to defame another is to diminish ourselves. Think about a time when you said something hurtful. How did you feel? Perhaps big for a moment – but, if you’re a good person, as I know all of you are, I bet it wasn’t long before you felt yourself deflate.

The Talmud (Arachin, 15b) teaches: [Slander and gossip] kills three persons: the one who tells, the one who hears and the one about whom it is said. And what is the range of such devastation? The Gemara continues:

Rabbi Hama bar Hanina said: what is the meaning of “Death and life are in the ‘hand’ of the tongue?” (Proverbs 18:21). ...It tells you that just as the hand can kill, so can the tongue. One might say that just as the hand can kill only one near it, thus also the tongue can kill only one near it, [but we read in Psalms (64:4)]: “Their tongue is a sharpened arrow.” Then one might assume that just as an arrow kills only within [a short distance], thus also the tongue.... Therefore, the text states: “They set their mouths against heaven and their tongues range over the earth” (Psalms 73:9).

The range of speech, positive and negative, is limitless – as the Chassidic story reminds us, doing lashon hara is like opening a feather pillow outside on a windy day – and then trying to collect all the feathers. And what could be truer in our modern world of cyber-technology? The number of lives who are literally snuffed out by their own hand or that of another is so utterly dwarfed by the number of people who are irrevocably harmed each and every minute of each and every day. So much bile courses through the invisible wires that connect us, ricochets between satellites. One hundred forty years ago, Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan penned a book called Chafetz Chayim. Its chief purpose was to enumerate the laws of shemirat halashon, proper and improper speech. His analogy? That of a telegram. “Notice how carefully they consider each word before putting it down,” he writes. “That is how careful we must be when we speak.” Words have always been precious to Jews, but now even the printed word, the texted word, the reposted meme is cheap and oh so ubiquitous. How much more relevant it is in our day that nearly one quarter of the forty-three sins listed in Yom Kippur’s Al Chet prayer are sins committed through speech!

Each Shabbat, we offer a Mi Sheberach, a prayer for healing. We consider those whose lives have been turned upside down by illness, whose families have been absorbed in their suffering. This week’s parasha masquerades as a text about a fantastical disease, when in reality it is a powerful metaphor for an all too real condition. The world, which God lovingly created with speech, has become eroded by it. What is the best response? As with disease: refuah, healing. We shouldn’t be naïve, the cure for a pandemic isn’t simple as all of us learned far too well in 2020, but here’s one small place to start: Let’s speak a bit less and listen a bit more. The rabbis point out the human head has two ears and one mouth. Which do you think we’re supposed to use more? Do we get credit for holding our tongues or their proxy, our keystrokes? Usually not. Rabbi Harold Kushner writes, “Only God can give us credit for the angry words we did not speak.” But speech unmade is also sin undone. It’s not a bad place to start.

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We have something akin to this with Pesach—there are powerful lessons, of course, about liberation, care for the vulnerable, power and faith. But since Passover frontloads its most salient ritual elements – the seders – those of us who abstain from chametz for the entire eight-day chag but may not come to shul each day, find ourselves focused (I suspect) less on grand themes and more on menu options. For the six final days of the holiday theology gives way to gastronomy. We plan our respective post-Pesach carbo-loading ritual: pizza, pasta or whatnot. Some of us pack up the Pesach dishes, schlep out the year-round utensils. And for next few days, if you’re like me, we’re focused on all the things we now get to eat and drink that we somehow survived without during the festival.

It happens to be, this year, that we also have a parasha appearing right after Pesach which, itself, is largely focused on food. Chapter 11 of Vayikra is our most detailed account of the Jewish dietary laws. Before your eyes glaze over, I don’t plan to talk about kashrut per se. Instead, I want to consider two verses toward the end of the catalogue of forbidden animals.

כֹּל֩ הוֹלֵ֨ךְ עַל־גָּח֜וֹן וְכֹ֣ל ׀ הוֹלֵ֣ךְ עַל־אַרְבַּ֗ע עַ֚ד כׇּל־מַרְבֵּ֣ה רַגְלַ֔יִם לְכׇל־הַשֶּׁ֖רֶץ הַשֹּׁרֵ֣ץ עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ לֹ֥א תֹאכְל֖וּם כִּי־שֶׁ֥קֶץ הֵֽם׃

Anything that crawls on its belly, or anything that walks on fours, or anything that has many legs, you shall not eat from among all things that swarm upon the earth, for they are an abomination (v. 42).

And then in Verse 43: You shall not draw abomination upon yourselves through anything that swarms; you shall not make yourselves unclean therewith and thus become unclean. While there are a number of foods forbidden to observant Jews, there seems to be something especially problematic about the sheretz, creepy crawly things like lizards, snakes, scorpions, insects, etc. In fact, the word used to describe them, sheketz, is also used in describing idolatry, one of the cardinal Jewish sins.

Everyone seems to agree that if the Jewish people are to be a mamlechet kohanim v’goy kadosh, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” we must separate ourselves from certain behaviors of our ancient pagan neighbors. To be holy to God is to be distinctive, ritually and ethically. Distinctive gastronomic requirements remind us to be distinctive in other important ways.

But Verse 45 of Ch. 11 in our parasha implies something more about the sheretz specifically—that the physical lowness of such creatures, their proximity to the ground, is somehow antithetical to our higher aspirations. We know from the Passover holiday that’s just concluded we praise God again and again for having brought us out of Egypt. Asher hotzeiti me’eretz Mitzrayim. But our pasuk doesn’t say that, not exactly.

כִּ֣י ׀ אֲנִ֣י ה הַֽמַּעֲלֶ֤ה אֶתְכֶם֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם לִהְיֹ֥ת לָכֶ֖ם לֵאלֹהִ֑ים וִהְיִיתֶ֣ם קְדֹשִׁ֔ים כִּ֥י קָד֖וֹשׁ אָֽנִי׃

Our verse doesn’t say “For I the LORD brought you out of the land of Egypt…,” it reads haMa’aleh etchem, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. This is strange, and the Rabbis pick up on the subtle difference. The context of the discussion in the Bavli, Mas. Bava Metzia (61b) is Sages’ discussion about God’s ability to make distinctions beyond human capacity. Rava, the 4^th Gen. Amora asks (rhetorically):

אָמַר רָבָא: לְמָה לִי דִּכְתַב רַחֲמָנָא יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם בְּרִבִּית, יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם גַּבֵּי צִיצִית, יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם בְּמִשְׁקָלוֹת

“Why does the Merciful One mention Egypt (in Torah) in matters of interest, tzitzit, and honest weights and measures?” Rava’s suggestion is that if the Holy One can distinguished in Egypt between the drop of seed that became a firstborn and the drop of seed that did not become a firstborn in order to carry out the 10^th plague, God can certainly make keen distinctions required to distinguish between real and fake techelet. This is a hermeneutic device called kal vachomer (a fortiori).

A couple generations later, Rav Hanina asks Ravina, co-editor of the Talmud itself, about our verse. Rav Hanina waits patiently as Ravina parrots back some version of Rava’s original statement. If God can distinguish between firstborn and second born in Egypt, the All Knowing One can surely make other distinctions. Rav Hanina, though, is not satisfied. “Ana hama’aleh ka kashya li!” I’m not asking about why Egypt is mentioned. I want to know why it’s a different verb in Lev. 11:45. Why does it say, in the context of creepy crawly things, “who brought you up from the land of Egypt,” and not “out of the land of Egypt?” What does Ravina answer? He cites the school of Rabbi Yishmael who taught, “Had I brought the Jewish people up from Egypt only for this matter, that would have been enough.”

I don’t recall this line from Dayeinu at the seder…but that’s the gist of Ravina’s answer. It would have been enough for God to redeem us only so that we would not become impure from eating the sheretz!

And here is where I want to leave you. The hyperbolic language is meant to say something less about food per se, I think. Less about kashrut specifically. This is symbolic. There is powerful symbolism in resisting the lowest common denominator, whether it’s bugs and snakes that crawl and slither around in the dirt or behavior that debases on degrades our sacred calling. Rashi puts it this way:

In all other places it is written, “I brought (you) forth”, and here it is written “who brought you up from the land of Egypt” …it should be regarded by them as an elevation for themselves — this is what is implied in the expression used here: מעלה (I raised you above the people of the land of `Egypt).

That is, you who were oppressed, made low, must now stand tall! On Chanukah we talk about being ma’alin bakodesh, elevating our chanukiot each night. On Yom Kippur, we abstain from food in order to ascend to the place of the high priest. We dress in white, in a kittel, a garment evocative of the one who stepped into the Holy of Holies. On Pesach we purge of domiciles of chametz. But when we depart not only from the Passover holiday but from Mitzrayim, Egypt itself, we step into a different way of being. We are what we eat, Torah seems to be saying to us in Parashat Shemini. What we put into our bodies says something about who we aspire to be.

I’m not here today to browbeat you about kashrut. The choice to become more observant is a complicated one, and Rav Tyler or I would be happy to discuss with you in private why we find it so meaningful. Rather, my goal here is to invite us into the consciousness of this period. If more of us are focused this Shabbos (as we were last week) on what we eat and what we don’t, might we lean into that awareness and consider the heights to which that awareness may take us. Today is the 9^th day of the Omer, gevurah sh’b’gevurah, strength within strength, a double dose of courage! This year as we come out of Egypt, let’s also consider our parasha’s invitation to come up from Egypt. And in this symbolic aliyah, consider how we might stand tall, stretch upward toward something more holy and, through it, more fulfilling of our Jewish calling.

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To my dear readers near and far:

Please forgive the long break between posts! Many of you know I have been in the midst of rabbinic placement these past several months. This July I will become the new Senior Rabbi of Hamakom, a dynamic, warm, and wonderful congregation in West Hills, CA.

Now that contract negotiations, home sale, home procurement, kids’ college considerations, etc. are wrapping up, I am delighted to re-engage with my Substack! Over the next several days, I’ll be sharing some podcasts of previous sermons and teachings. I’ll also share an advance copy of my final essay for Jmore, after more than a decade of writing their monthly Baltimore Justice column.

As my family and I make the transition to LA, I hope to use this platform to muse on my new work and adventure while reflecting back from time to time on my years in Baltimore. I’m intensely curious as to how my passion for fostering diverse and pluralistic communities will translate to this new geographic and cultural context.

Stay tuned….

Earlier this month, a group of us spent a magical Shabbat with the mountain gorillas of Bwindi National Park. We began the previous week with 19, praying and singing with Abayudaya, the Jewish community of Uganda. By the following weekend, 11 had returned home to Baltimore and 8 of us continued on to the Buhoma Community Rest Camp in Bwindi, on the edge of the Impenetrable Forest. It was like a dream: a verdant façade confronted us across the valley, a vertical Tolkienian landscape of ferns and twisted vines, Ceiba and Cecropia, towering old growth mahogany.

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We settled in to our rooms, then circled up for Kabbalat Shabbat, candle lighting and a homecooked meal of pumpkin soup, tilapia, chickpeas in a curry sauce, and boiled potatoes. Saturday morning, we walked into the bush and ascended one thousand meters (over three thousand feet). Aside from our tour company owner, guides, and porters, at 49, I was the youngest of our Beth Am delegation. The oldest was 81. With varying degrees of assistance, we all made the climb.

The heavy rains came around hour 3.5. We scrambled to pull ponchos over our heads, stepped over streams of fire ants, squatted on logs under the vast tree canopy—a quick Shabbat lunch while Fiona, the local ranger, went ahead to coordinate with our trackers. Finding gorillas is common, but not a given. They are wild and travel where they will. We were Shabbat guests in their home.

But find them we did. Around hour 5 we lowered our voices and donned surgical masks, a jarring reminder of the recent pandemic and also that we share over 98% of our DNA with the largest of the great apes, making disease transmission a danger to both species. For a full hour, we stood silently, surrounded by some fifteen gorillas. We observed mothers nurse their babies, a one-year-old noodge his older brother as the latter laughingly attempted to beat his chest, all while the majestic silver-back sat silently on a rise, arms crossed, watching over his family.

Some members of our group were shabbat observant. Others took photographs. For me, personally, as someone who throughout the previous week had sought the perfect shot—of elephants, giraffes, hippos, pied kingfishers, lions, leopards, and ubiquitous antelope—the experience of unmediated appreciation was surprisingly liberating. I’m grateful for our guide Paul Tamwenya who, not Jewish, captured many wonderful images that Shabbat. And, believing as I do in Jewish pluralism, I appreciate that for some of our group, taking photographs of the mountain gorillas did not diminish their Shabbat experience, and may even have accentuated it. But for me, the chance to observe them without capturing their likeness reminded me of Shabbat’s role as a counterpoint to everyday living.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote the Sabbath is for turning from “the results of creation to the mystery of creation.” Jewish tradition calls traditional Shabbat practice sh’mirat shabbat, literally to “guard” or “observe” the Sabbath. Rather than a litany of restrictions, the point of abstaining from certain labors is to better appreciate our place within, not above, the created universe. It’s when we can make, unmake, or capture things—and don’t—that we cultivate a sense of beingness attuned to the ultimate and singular Beingness we call God. And God, we feel, is best experienced in community; it’s why we require a minyan for prayer. Seeing those majestic gorillas in the wild alone would have been special, no doubt, but in Judaism, shared holiness is holiest.

Even more than this, collective Shabbat observance fuels our worthy collective labors the other six days of the week. The next day, we drove six hours to Lake Mburo National Park where we embarked on our final game drive, observing more of God’s wonders beneath the raised roofs of our safari vehicles. Our lodge that night was at the end of a muddy narrow road flanked by deep ditches. Dodging a stranded flatbed truck and minibus carrying Belgian bike tourists, our Toyota Land Cruiser slid from the road and tipped sideways into the embankment. Almost immediately, the Ugandan culture of collective responsibility kicked into gear. Observing one another in distress, drivers and passengers alike worked together to free the vehicles. Afterward, against the setting sun, handshakes were exchanged and weary travelers sought rest just up the road.

On those last two days of our Beth Am Uganda Adventure, I was reminded how collective achievement is a biproduct of shared observance. But being Shabbat observant is not simply about ritual, it’s about really observing, with meditative awareness, our remarkable world. Jewish observance extends well beyond Shabbat to places of work, recreation, and—yes—ditches along muddy African roads. Observance is a branch of observation. Observation is the key to collective thriving.

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A version of this article will appear in the March/April issue of Jmore.

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There are “wait and see” people in this world, and there are “jump right in” people. Our community lost two of the latter recently. In November we said goodbye to Stuart Stainman. On New Years Day, Juanita Thompson Garrison left us as well. Each person was connected deeply with Beth Am and Reservoir Hill. Stuart was a longtime member of the shul, quietly and firmly advocating for accessibility and environmental justice. Stuart was an amateur historian, docent, and serial volunteer. He could often be found digging holes in front of the shul and around the neighborhood – in order to plant new trees.

Of Stuart, his godson Samuel Abrams wrote: “American life is filled with extraordinary men whose names never appear in newspapers, whose achievements are never posted on social media, and whose virtues are visible only to the families and communities shaped by their quiet constancy…. Last week, one such man died suddenly…. He was not famous. He did not seek attention. He lived without pretense. And in that ordinariness, he was exceptional.”

Abrams describes just how rare and special it is for a person to eschew attention while painstakingly giving their own attention to others. “At a moment when American institutions feel brittle—when men are withdrawing from work, community life, family formation, and civic and religious institutions—Stuart’s life is a reminder that a society depends on millions like him. Ordinary men who wake each day and choose to care. Men who love their children without hesitation. Men who sustain synagogues, coach teams, tend parks, and keep neighborliness from disappearing. Men who save quietly so they can give quietly. Men who see service not as sacrifice but identity.”

Juanita Thompson Garrison, like Stuart Stainman, also led a life of service – to family, community, and God. For years, until her last, she sported a money piece hair dye, a little pizazz resting above her forehead, drawing attention to her beautiful eyes and broad smile. “Hey baby,” Ms. Juanita would say as she sauntered over with her little black dog pepper. She was, in the words of Rabbi Matia ben Harash, “the first to extend greetings.” But she often bemoaned this fact. She wanted others to get better at saying “hello,” especially some Beth Am congregants who might drive into the community, park, and walk to the synagogue without doing so. One year, IFO, Beth Am’s sister non-profit of whose board Ms. Juanita was a founding member, created a “just say hello” campaign.

Juanita, like Stuart, was devoted to the essentials without any expectation of reward. Beth Am’er and friend Dianne Schwartz called her a “live life to the fullest lady.” They would volunteer together, registering returning citizens to vote, go for walks together, “gab” together. “In all her story telling,” Dianne said of Juanita, “I kept looking for someone who might be angry about how the city of Baltimore went through terrible times and how the Black community was horribly marginalized over the course of many decades throughout her life. but she would get mad when I tried to ask about things race related. She would yell that we all just need to care about our neighbors and our family and our friends and take care of one another. And learn how to be polite and respectful.”

Of Stuart, Samuel Abrams wrote, “What makes his death so painful is what makes his life so important: There is no flashy story, no viral moment, nothing that fits our culture’s thirst for spectacle. Only steadiness, devotion, reliability, sacrifice, curiosity, and love.” The same could be said of Juanita. Rabbi Matia ben Harash, who like Ms. Juanita, reminds us to “say hello,” also advises: “Be a tail unto lions and not a head unto foxes.” Leaders sometimes lead from the front and other times from behind. These beloved people did some of both. But each was acutely aware of the need to serve with pride (pun intended) and not deceit. The old saying goes, “we’re only as good as the people we surround ourselves with.” But when you care about your neighborhood, your synagogue, your church, and your family, you don’t always have that luxury. Instead, taught Stuart and Juanita, you just take the people around you and make them better.

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A version of this post will appear in the February issue of Jmore

The beginning of this week’s parasha hints at a happy ending:

וַיִּשְׁלַ֤ח פַּרְעֹה֙ וַיִּקְרָ֣א אֶת־יוֹסֵ֔ף

Joseph is freed from jail and elevated in Mitzrayim. But Miketz itself does not have a happy ending; in fact, it doesn’t have an ending at all. Two years ago, in the midst of the Israel-Hamas War, I gave a sermon on this parasha titled, “A Lament from the Messy Middle,” reminding us that The Empire Strikes Back is, definitively the best Star Wars movie because (in contradistinction to Shawshank) it presents the heart of an ongoing saga. Miketz insists on two paradoxical truths: First, that the messy, painful middle will end, that we won’t be

here forever. How? Because we know that next week Judah will stand up for his brother Benjamin, that Joseph will reveal himself, that the brothers, long estranged, will reconcile at last. And the second truth is that any ending of this chapter of our story is but a beginning of the next. Here’s a bit of what I said a couple years ago:

We meet our protagonist rotting in prison, until Pharaoh has unsettling dreams that no one can interpret… Pharaoh’s dreams and Joseph’s ability to interpret changes everything. He’s cleaned up, given a shave and a haircut and thrust before the king…. he is elevated to vizier and placed in charge of agricultural policy for all of Egypt. And that’s how he comes to encounter his brothers once more…. Joseph spends the remainder of the parasha toying with his brothers. And since this is the messy middle, the portion doesn’t offer resolution….

Our parasha, I said, ends similarly to “Empire” leaving us to wonder: has Joseph become the enemy of the story, adopting a Pharaoh’s malevolence? Has he succumbed to the dark side? Will the brothers repeat their sins, leaving Benjamin for dead and probably destroying their father Jacob for good? Will the old Judah show up, the one who suggested they sell Joseph, who called for his daughter-in-law’s execution? Or will there be a nechemta, a reproachment, a truce, a reckoning, a stable and lasting peace?

That was then, in December 2023, and I was very focused on that Shabbat (throughout that entire year really) on the trauma of Oct. 7, on the horror of rising antisemitism, on the suffering of our living hostages, on the seeming intractability of the War. Since then, some things have changed, some have not.

But though Israel’s plight continues to tug at my heart daily, though I was privileged to spend Chanukah this week at the Embassy in DC as Ran Gvili’s sister lit the chanukiah, today I come not to talk about Israel. I got thinking about happy endings this week for another reason: because of Rob Reiner. My God, folks, what is happening in this country?! In this world?! The beaches of Sydney, Australia, soaked with the blood of our people. Ten-year-old Matilda. 82-year-old Holocaust survivor Marika. Murders at Brown and MIT.

There’s more, and I don’t mean for one moment to minimize any of these, but I got thinking about Rob Reiner and happy endings because of the utterly tragic and so very unhappy end he and his wife Michele met this past week. To me, it was such a counterpoint to so many of Reiner’s own wonderful films. A Few Good Men, The American President, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…. The American President ends with Michael Douglas (nice Jewish boy) growing a conscience and getting the girl. The Princess Bride famously concludes with Peter Falk (another nice Jewish boy) describing the perfect final kiss between Wesley and Buttercup to his grandson played by Fred Savage (yet another nice Jewish boy). Misery ends with the author’s escape. Sally, of course, falls for Harry in the end. Even A Few Good Men has its own version of a happy ending with Jack Nicholson (possibly but probably not of any Jewish ancestry) getting his just desserts from Tom Cruise (definitely not a Jew).

But truth be told, as I began to reflect on the film legacy of Rob Reiner, I began to realize there’s a better way to think about the endings. Some are happy. Some are less so, like Stand by Me, based on the Stephen King story “The Body,” which ends with the group of boys encountering the horror of death for the first time. Yet, I’ve always loved the final line from that film: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?” Who delivered that line? Richard Dreyfuss. Yup, Jewish. And what I realize about the endings of great and memorable movies, Reiner’s and so many others, is that whether they’re happy, bitter-sweet, or incredibly sad. They’re satisfying. They feel right.

The next couple weeks of our Torah cycle finds our ancestors gathering in Egypt. Joseph’s story comes to an end, and his end is satisfying if not entirely happy. It’s the beginning, after all, of a terrible story of hundreds of years of slavery, of trauma, and suffering. But it’s the right ending because it sets us up for the theophany, the revelation at Sinai and the continuing and revelatory relationship between our people and God through engagement with our most cherished book. It’s satisfying because of the iterative redemption that comes with yetziat mitzrayim, our arrival to Eretz Yisrael, the thriving of Jewish life across the globe over millennia, the upbuilding of Medinat Yisrael in our ancestral homeland.

Torah and our Jewish interpretative tradition offer a constantly unfolding Jewish story. One of my favorite lines from Pirkei Avot (5:22) is Ben Bag Bag’s comment,

הֲפֹךְ בָּהּ וַהֲפֹךְ בָּהּ, דְּכֹלָּא בָהּ.

Turn it over, and [again] turn it over, for all is therein.

וּבָהּ תֶּחֱזֵי, וְסִיב וּבְלֵה בָהּ, וּמִנַּהּ לֹא תָזוּעַ,

Look into it; And become gray and old therein; And do not move away from it,

שֶׁאֵין לְךָ מִדָּה טוֹבָה הֵימֶנָּה:

for you have no better portion than it.

The paradox of Torah is it is both circular and linear. We read this parasha last year and two years ago. Our people have read it over thousands of years. Our descendants will continue to do so. We literally roll Torah back to the beginning as we stand on the banks of the Jordan. We begin again and again and again, learning, growing, hopefully progressing in each subsequent generation through our encounter with those first generations of our people.

But our history within and beyond Torah, within and beyond Tana’kh is decidedly more linear. In fact we Jews more or less invented the concept of linear time, not only that our own people has an origin story and a destiny, but that history moves inexorably forward from a starting point toward some distant future, that unlike the Greek gods or those of the Sumerians and others before them, lords of the ever-turning Wheel of Time, our God is a God of history and of justice.

Thomas Cahill wrote about this in his 1998 book The Gifts of the Jews. “All evidence points to there having been, in the earliest religious thought, a vision of the cosmos that was profoundly cyclical. The assumptions that early man made about the world were, in all their essentials, little different from the assumptions that later and more sophisticated societies, like Greece and India, would make in a more elaborate manner….. Jews saw time differently,” says Cahill. “It isn’t an endless circle; it’s linear moving towards a triumphant destiny. And every generation – every person – is contributing to writing and shaping the story…. Since time is no longer cyclical but one-way and irreversible, personal history is now possible, and an individual life can have value…. “The Jews, he says, “were the first people to break out of this circle, to find a new way of thinking and experiencing, a new way of understanding and feeling the world.”

This is true. So yes, I’m a sucker for a happy ending, but too often, I think, we get suckered by happy endings. We focus so much on the conclusion we yearn to see, we forget that endings, themselves, are iterative and additive. There’s a quote I like often misattributed to John Lennon: “It will all by ok in the end. If it’s not, it’s not the end.” The line’s true source seems to be Fernando Sabino’s 1988 Brazilian Portuguese book The Checkerboard. My point though is that Parashat Miketz reminds us that to be a Jew is to contend with a world in which we are open to endings to come. Joseph’s satisfying ending becomes our people’s sojourn and then suffering. Our suffering gives way to salvation and revelation. Our wanderings bring us from the wilderness to the Promised Land. Our exiles from there in 586 BCE, in 70 CE are not permanent either. And our current struggles in the world and within Israel will yield new endings – may they be redemptive and restorative.

I’ll close with this. Recently, I had the opportunity to stay in a Best Western. It had been some time, and I was reminded of a wonderful song by the singer-songwriter Richard Shindell. This week, having rediscovered it, I found myself playing it on repeat. It’s the tale of a hapless trucker who flips to a Christian radio station in the middle of the night on I-80 East. While the preacher gives a fire and brimstone sermon, the truck driver struggles both with his ebbing faith and his own weariness at 4 am. Nevertheless, he offers a modest prayer: to make it safely to his destination – by way of the next motel, one leg on a continuing journey across a vast network of highways. I’ll sing you the middle verse and the chorus:

Did he who made the lamb
Put the tremble in the hand
That reaches out to take my quarter?
I look him in the eye
But there isn’t any time
Just time enough to pass the tender.
The highway takes its toll
The green light flashes go
And it’s welcome to Ohio.

Whoever watches over all these truckers
Show a little mercy for a weary sinner
And deliver me, Lord, deliver me
Deliver me to the next Best Western

Joseph in jail might have sung something similar. Our ancestors in bondage too. And our people under the thumb of one repressive regime after another. Today, in the messy middle of Parashat Miketz, amidst the interlocking circular and linear journeys of our people, Jewish faith means we know that despite false starts, flat tires, or wrong turns, there will be rest and restoration for us weary travelers, a satisfying ending just over the horizon. Or just beyond the next bend in the road.

On November 9 and 10, 1938, the Nazi regime in Germany carried out its infamous November Pogrom, Kristallnacht, the Night of Shattered Glass. 400 Jews were murdered or driven to suicide. More than 1400 synagogues and 7500 Jewish businesses and homes were destroyed. Jewish cemeteries were desecrated. In the days that followed, 30,000 Jewish men were transported to concentration camps.

Did this pogrom materialize out of thin air? Of course not. Antisemitism was nothing new to Germany nor to Europe. And most of the 1930’s saw marginalizing of Jews, stripping them of rights, and subjecting them to violence. According to the Jewish Museum of Berlin, “For years already, the Nazi regime had been pursuing a plan of forcibly expropriating Jews and, in particular, “Aryanizing” Jewish businesses to finance Germany’s re-armament process.”

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And then, of course, there was a spark that lit the fuse, a pretext to justify attacks on Jews in the minds of those itching to punish them for their crime of simply existing in Germany. The scapegoating came in the form of seventeen-year-old Herschel Grynszpan who, on 7 November 1938, shot German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, who died of his injuries two days later. The Jewish Museum’s website writes the following: “The assassination provided a welcome pretext to strike out against the Jewish population with unprecedented brutality. Nazi propaganda portrayed the violence as an outbreak of ‘spontaneous national rage.’” Of course, as we know, it was exactly the opposite, an orchestrated attack by Hitler and Goebbels, by the SA and SS, with popular support from a willing public.

I share the story of Kristallnacht, because for me it was the beginning of my own paternal family’s immigration story, the day my grandfather’s home was ransacked and he escaped, eventually joining his sister in Chicago. He was accepted to this country as a refugee, fleeing oppression and seeking to build a better life in America. The US did not make it easy. There was rampant antisemitism in the State Department that blocked so many Jews from escaping in the years when that was still possible. But he did come and I’m here because of it.

I want to touch on the theme of immigration today, and truth be told, I hesitated to share this story at all. First, because drawing Holocaust analogies is really almost never a good idea. In considering our American response to the recent and inexcusable DC shooting of Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and murder of Spec. Sarah Beckstrom, there will be some who want to claim some sort of parity between these acts or types of acts, that these two young men and their actions, nearly 90 years apart, were equally culpable of taking lives or equally innocent because of the geo-political context in which they came to their violent acts. I want to caution us against drawing these types of comparisons between Hershel Grynszpan or Rahmanullah Lakanwal. They are different people. The national and historical contexts are far from identical. The sociological question of what societal conditions help to breed violence or when or against whom violence might be justified is in interesting one, but not one I feel prepared to address at this time.

No, I share the story of Kristallnacht because I’m interested in how societies relate to outsiders, how they can weaponize racist tropes against foreigners, including when those so-called foreigners are legal residents, citizens even. I’m not going to restate today my specific concerns about Ernst Fraenkel’s “normative” and “prerogative” states and I how I fear his framework is increasingly relevant to life in America today. That sermon from Yom Kippur is online if you wish to review it.

What I want to consider today is what we might do when faced with the erosion of basic democratic norms and civil legal protections, when minority populations are subject to leaders or citizens from the majority making blanket claims about their own insecurity while asserting blanket condemnations of entire populations that they consider to be, well, “garbage.” Beyond important and necessary legal challenges, beyond OpEds and protests, what are some non-violent tools available to us to push back against the scapegoating of migrants, of racist and xenophobic rhetoric condemning the cultures of entire countries and their millions upon millions of inhabitants and expatriates?

Years ago, at the height of the #MeToo Era, I gave a sermon on Parashat Vayishlach, this week’s parsha, about the rape of Dinah. I spoke of a Tarbut Ra’ah, the Talmud’s term to describe a culture of pervasive tolerance, even permissiveness surrounding bad behavior. I suggested then that Jacob’s silence on the rape of his daughter may have been reflective of that culture, the tendency to blame women for sexual violence or undervalue considerations of consent.

Here we are, now eight years later, and Stephen Miller is claiming the tarbut ra’ah, the irredeemably wicked culture, is that of Afghanistan, of Sudan and Somalia. “You are not just importing individuals,” Miller tweeted (on Thanksgiving, for God’s sake). “You are importing societies. No magic transformation occurs when failed states cross borders. At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.”

To be clear, I don’t disagree that these are, in many ways, failed societies. The brutality in Sudan is horrific. The Taliban’s totalitarian oppression of women and dissidents is terrifying, which is why our Afghan neighbors selling their wares at our Boutique last Sunday are here, in the United States! But how Miller justifies his own family’s immigration story and American success after his great-grandparents fled Czarist pogroms, I have no idea. Does he honestly think the Nazi Germany from which my grandfather escaped was anything other than a “failed state?” By such logic, am I and my children somehow tainted by the tarbut ra’ah, the societal rot that forced Grandpa Montrose to flee, that caused the extermination of two-thirds of European Jewry? Orwell himself would be hard-pressed to imagine a more Orwellian inversion.

I am deeply concerned about global terror and how it affects Jewish communities around the world, but I would submit that if there is a tarbut ra’ah, a pervasively dangerous culture that threatens America urgently at this moment, it is in fact the increasing normalization of nativism, of white nationalism, of antisemitism and anti-Israeli-ism, of racism, sexism, islamophobia, and more. In Parashat Noah, there’s a famous debate about Noah. Was he truly “blameless?” Was he a hero for having been a good man against the backdrop of his failed society? Or was he only “blameless” in comparison to them? No matter the answer, the implication of such a debate though is that it is quite difficult to buck a trend, to be good when bad behavior surrounds us. That’s the danger of a tarbut ra’ah, and it’s one the characters of our parasha contend with as well.

Not long after the Rape of Dinah narrative, and just before Rachel tragically dies in childbirth while delivering her son Benjamin, the Torah offers an enigmatic passage:

וַתָּ֤מׇת דְּבֹרָה֙ מֵינֶ֣קֶת רִבְקָ֔ה

Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died,

וַתִּקָּבֵ֛ר מִתַּ֥חַת לְבֵֽית־אֵ֖ל תַּ֣חַת הָֽאַלּ֑וֹן

and was buried under the oak below Beth-El;

וַיִּקְרָ֥א שְׁמ֖וֹ אַלּ֥וֹן בָּכֽוּת׃

so it was named Allon-bacuth.

Who was this Deborah? In a text where we infrequently hear details of women’s lives, let alone the particulars of their deaths, why would the Torah take time to tell us about Rebekah’s nurse? The thirteenth century Catalonian sage Ramban suggests the verse is not really about Deborah at all. Drawing from Bereishit Rabbah (81:8) he writes, “for the weeping and anguish could not have been such for the passing of the old nurse that the place would have been named on account of it. Instead, Jacob wept and mourned for his righteous mother who had loved him and sent him to Paddan-aram and who was not privileged to see him when he returned.”

But Rashi in Troyes two centuries earlier thinks different. He reminds us that decades earlier, after Jacob bargained for Esau’s birthright and stole his brother’s blessing, Esau wanted to kill him. So, Jacob fled to Haran, to the house of her Rebekah’s brother Lavan. וְשָׁלַחְתִּ֖י וּלְקַחְתִּ֣יךָ מִשָּׁ֑ם, she says. “I will send and fetch you from there” once your brother’s anger dies down. Jacob, of course, stays a long time, twenty years, and the question is, does Rebekah actually send for him? According to Rashi in the name of his teacher Moshe HaDarshan, she does in the form of her maid Deborah.

But the real question is why does it take so long to leave? What is happening in Haran that keeps Jacob there? We know his uncle Lavan is manipulative, that he switches his daughters under the chuppah, that he compels Jacob to work for him for fourteen years, but the midrash suggests something even more sinister was going on. That the household of Lavan and his father Bethuel before him was a tarbut ra’ah, a depraved culture. One midrash argues that the reason they try to hold Rebekah (Gen. 24:55) for ten days before allowing her to depart with Abraham’s servant is related to the reason Lavan, a generation later, delays Jacob’s departure. This was a household that abused women.

In Rebekah’s case, the midrash in Yalkut Shimoni (Gen. 109), suggests that Bethuel, king of Haran, had introduced jus primae noctis, a custom granting lords the so-called “right of the first night” with a virgin bride before she is given to her husband. Bethuel and then his son Lavan after him were about to exercise that “right” before God intervenes and Rebekah is able to flee to Canaan with Abraham’s servant and her own nurse by her side.

This midrashic tradition is probably what Rabbi Yosef Ber Soloveitchik, the twentieth century leader of Yeshiva University, has in mind when he posits an intriguing theory about Deborah, the maid who Rashi says goes back home to fetch Jacob, who spends decades with him, and who is honored with a burial in today’s Torah reading. “Apparently,” he writes, “Deborah played a major role in shaping the history and destiny of the Jewish people.” How? “Deborah was the leader of a moral underground movement.”

The Rav’s argument hinges on Rebekah’s quality of chesed. Much like the ancient debate about Noah in his time, he asks how someone who is raised in such an abusive household could be so kind? He writes, “Rebecca was brought up in the house of Bethuel and Lavan, in a pagan orgiastic society – how did she exhibit such great humility and chesed?... Why was she not influenced by her family and society? There must have been an ‘underground community’ in Haran, preaching Abraham’s morality. Rebecca was part of this underground movement. She studied and absorbed Abraham’s philosophy and adopted his weltanschauung (his worldview) – living by his principles of justice and righteousness.” Deborah, as Rebekah’s nurse, he argues must have been the conveyor of these values. That’s why she merits to be named in our parsha. That’s why she is buried at Alon Bachut, the so-called “weeping oak.” She was the jedi master, a subversive teacher of kindness against the backdrop of her tarbut ra’ah.

Hevre, I don’t know the extent to which our current circumstances call for an underground movement. As I said, we should be careful to honor distinctions between this political moment in this country and others that might serve as a cautionary tale. And yet, this era is, on its face, a dangerous one for many who dwell in this land, most of whom are responsible, hardworking, and fully deserving of the opportunities afforded my family, Stephen Miller’s and just about all of yours. I do believe there are things, both public and private we can be doing to support immigrants, including of course, the many who arrived here lawfully, many of whom have protected status, and some of whom are friends of this congregation.

For those who are getting up to speed or could use a reminder of the administration’s actions following the shooting of Wolfe and Beckstrom, the US Customs and Immigration Service issued a new policy memo this past Tuesday reiterating actions that the agency has been instructed to take. These are:

· Placing a hold on all affirmative asylum case decisions

· Placing a hold on all pending applications for immigration benefits including applications for work authorizations and green cards) from nationals of the 19 travel ban countries

· Conducting a re-review of all approved immigration benefits requests from nationals of the 19 travel ban countries

Given these circumstances, here are a few specific things we might do at the national level (with thanks to Evan Serpick for helping compile these resources).

· HIAS, the century-old Jewish organization which advocates on behalf of immigrants and refugees suggests going to Refuge Council USA (rcusa.org) and follow their action alerts. You can also go to congress.gov to contact your elected officials and insist they resist isolationist and/or racist policies.

· Contact the ACLU who are mobilizing legal and political advocacy responses.

In our Reservoir Hill neighborhood:

· Support and/or volunteer at Beth Am’s weekly produce distribution on Tuesdays or Byron McKenney-Powell Free Market on Thursdays, which support about 100 Afghan migrants living in the neighborhood as well as other neighbors in need.

· Support and/or volunteer at the Reservoir Hill House of Peace, 2401 Eutaw Pl., which provides stipends, housing, and community for asylum seekers, fill out the contact form here and/or contact Ruth Clemens, 410-935-1862, ruthkclemens@gmail.com

· Support and/or volunteer with ERICA, which is looking for volunteers to co-teach English classes for Afghan women in Reservoir Hill on Tuesdays from 9:30-11:00 (contact Daniel Jacoby, 443-756-7377, djacoby@erica-baltimore.org).

Baltimore Citywide:

· CASA is the largest and most organized local organization providing direct support to migrants under threat, including emergency legal support, family support, and legislative advocacy.

· Our partners at JUFJ work closely with CASA to advocate for local immigrants. They are currently asking people to urge Baltimore County officials not to require law enforcement to cooperate with ICE.

· The Esperanza Center offers English as a Second Language (ESL) education, healthcare, and low-cost immigration legal services.

Friends, let me end with this. I know many of us feel paralyzed by the volume and range of things coming our way these days. It’s easy to get overwhelmed. Start small. Pick something you can dedicate some time to. Think about what is the best use of your time as well as the most effective. And remember, a Jewish commitment to the stranger, the foreigner, is both a reflection of our own historical experience as a people who have been shut out (or worse) from so very many societies and nations.

It’s also at the core of our Torah text which reminds us again and again to notice and respond to the ger, the resident alien in our midst. It will take moral communities, above ground and perhaps underground, to continually remind our country and fellow countrymen who we ought to be. We Jews know what it is to be scapegoated, which I believe means we have an obligation to speak out when we see it happening to others. How we do that effectively is always a critical question. If only we could ask Deborah of our parsha, of Soloveitchik’s imagination, the underground warrior-nurse. I’m sure she would have some ideas for us as well. Meanwhile, we’ll do our utmost to do some good in her stead.

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This year, our 1895 Baltimore rowhome turned 130 years old. We live on Eutaw Place near Beth Am and, beginning in the early twentieth century, a succession of Jewish families purchased and lived in the home. Sometimes I consider our deep wooden windowsills and wonder how many previous menorahs shone there in the decades when Reservoir Hill was at the heart of the Jewish community. For many years when the kids were younger, we placed our family hanukiyot in those windows so that passersby could see them from the street. (We did so again in 2023 after Oct. 7 as a reminder we need not and would not be afraid to identify ours as a Jewish home). In most recent years, though, they’ve lived on our dining room mantel and radiator, still by a window, but where we can admire their glow while eating our latkes.

Jews have a longstanding tradition of placing the Hanukkah menorah in a publicly visible place:

“It is a mitzvah to place the Hanukkah lamp at the outside of one’s house within the handbreadth closest to [the edge of] the entrance, so that the mezuzah will be to the right and the Hanukkah lamp to the left. And if he was living in an attic [or second story apartment], he should place it in the window that is closest to the public domain. One who has placed the Hanukkah lamp above twenty cubits has not done anything, because it is not recognizable.”

— Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Megillah v’Hanukkah 4:7

Maimonides’ rationale, based on the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 23b), is pirsumei nisa, publicizing the miracle of Hanukkah. This may not be a given. Hanukkah memorializes an era, not entirely unlike our own, in which Jews endured great pressure to assimilate. Some were Hellenizers. Others were observant Jews insistent on maintaining their traditions despite societal pressure (and imperial decree) to do otherwise.

This value of pirsumei nisa was so important that if an impoverished family had funds sufficient for either kiddush wine or a Hanukkah lamp but not both, the priority was the Hanukkah lamp because that would enable the family to proclaim their Jewishness publicly and proudly.

What exactly is the miracle we are meant to publicize? One possibility is that it is the unlikely victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Greeks. The more common story justifies Hanukkah’s timeframe, suggesting one small cruse of oil was sufficient to keep the menorah burning for eight days. Modern thinker Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg writes about the Jewish spirit implicated in such a legend: “Pessimists and assimilationists have more than once informed Jews that there is no more oil left to burn. As long as Hanukkah is studied and remembered, Jews will not surrender to the night. The proper response, as Hanukkah teaches, is not to curse the darkness but to light a candle” (The Jewish Way, P. 282).

A Talmudic tale imagines an unlikely origin story for the festival of Hanukkah. Adam, the first human, was created on day six, but crucially not long after Rosh Hashanah, in a season when the days get shorter and darker earlier. When he noticed this he said, “Woe is me; perhaps because I sinned the world is becoming dark around me and will return to chaos and disorder…. He arose and spent eight days in fasting and in prayer” (Avodah Zarah 8a). While the Gemara references pagan festivals Kalenda and Saturnalia, it’s hard not to notice a nod toward Sukkot, the eight day fall holiday that follows Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

We know from the book of Maccabees that there is a connection between Sukkot and Hanukkah, each an eight-day holiday, one around the fall equinox and the other frequently soon after the winter solstice. The connection is downplayed by the tale of the oil, but the legend from the Talmud offers some reprieve for Adam. The world wasn’t growing darker because he sinned, it was growing darker because winter was coming. Once Adam crossed the threshold of the winter solstice, however, things changed and the days began to get longer. Adam observed another eight days, this time feasting and expressing gratitude simply for the “order of the world” One interpretation of this fantastic tale is that Adam invents both Sukkot and Hanukkah, seasonal festivals that would be appropriated by pagans before, one day, becoming Jewish expressions of joy and light.

This month brings us Hanukkah, our Jewish festival of illumination, a celebration filled with candles in the darkness. In a darkening world, where a litany of evils swell and rise, where antisemitism threatens to force our people into hiding once more, our tradition insists we increase our light. Isaiah proclaims we are to be an “or lagoyim,” a light unto the nations (42:6).

A miracle of this Hanukkah is that 130 years after our house was built, we can still place our hanukiyot in the window, that we survive to tell these tales thousands of years after the Greeks became the latest (but unfortunately not the last) empire to try (and fail) to stamp us out. In Adam’s time, the miracle of this season was that the world began getting a little brighter. In our time, it’s the miracle of Jewish hutzpah, our insistence on lighting candles rather than cursing the darkness.

A version of this post appears in the December issue of Jmore.

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American Buddhist author Tara Brach teaches Mindfulness Meditation around the world. She often shares the joke in her classes while exploring identity and masking. We all wear masks. How do we know when someone is being authentic? “The word ‘person’” she reminds us, “is derived from the ancient Greek term persona, which referred to the masks actors wore to represent certain humans, animals, or gods. In our daily lives, we habitually put on our own personas to suit particular situations.”

Think about your own lives. What masks do we wear? Who sees when we’re angry, disappointed, excited, curious? How often and in what contexts do we reveal the real us? How much energy do we exert hiding? In our parasha it’s none other than God who grapples with how much to reveal to Abraham. The KBH is planning on destroy S’dom and Amora. And the verse tells us: “Now the LORD had said,

הַֽמְכַסֶּ֤ה אֲנִי֙ מֵֽאַבְרָהָ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֖ר אֲנִ֥י עֹשֶֽׂה “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do?”

The Holy One takes Abraham into His confidence (as it were). God asks and then answers the question: “…Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him? For I have singled him out, that he may instruct his children and his posterity to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is just and right צְדָקָ֖ה וּמִשְׁפָּ֑ט…” (Gen 18:17-19). In other words, God reveals the divine plans for Sodom and Gemorrah because to charge Abraham to be a man of justice is to demonstrate that the Source of justice is, in fact, just. When Abraham cries out:

הֲשֹׁפֵט֙ כׇּל־הָאָ֔רֶץ לֹ֥א יַעֲשֶׂ֖ה מִשְׁפָּֽט “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justice?”

It is because God has shown God’s hand. Abraham understands that God isn’t just dressed up as a god. Hashem is the real God. In so much of history, according to our Sages, God is hester panim, hiding the divine face. But here the Holy One says,

“?הַֽמְכַסֶּ֤ה אֲנִי֙, shall I hide? No. Let’s be real with one another.”

?הַֽמְכַסֶּ֤ה אֲנִי֙ It’s hard to chew on this question, “shall I hide?” without considering the inverse, “shall we seek?” Relationships, whether egalitarian or hierarchical, turn on this push and pull, this negotiating the boundaries of other and self. Another interesting question here is not simply, “why does God remove the mask?” but “how surprised do we think Abraham is when God does?” How much of that confession is information Abraham already assumes about God? – that God seeks justice, that God welcomes dialogue and debate, that God wishes to be a teacher with curious and motivated students?

The question of whether to seek is, at its core, a question of how much we believe we already know about another. So often we simply assume we understand and appreciate the person sitting across from us – what she’s thinking, what they care about, whether his still waters are shallow or if they run deep? This is important, because relationships demand obligation. We’re accountable to our partners, our parents, our children, our colleagues, our fellow congregants, our rabbis – and they to us. The nature and contours of those obligations grow out of these connections.

My teacher Elana Stein Hain, Rosh Beit Midrash of the Shalom Hartman Institute, considers the nature of obligation in an essay from last year’s spring edition of the journal Sources. “My second model of obligation,” she writes, “comes from thinking about the very possibility of maintaining a relationship with God or with another human being or community.” She references sociologist Adam Seligman who makes a distinction between the “sincere self” and the “ritual self” (“Ritual, the Self, and Sincerity,” Social Research 76, no. 4, 2009, 1082–83). “The sincere self,” says Hain “is what I subjectively think or feel at any given time: it is the self that is sometimes tired, sometimes happy, angry, in love, bored, etc. We can ask this self: how are you feeling about this? The ritual self, on the other hand, is found in what am I doing: I might be dancing or eating or reading or sleeping, etc.”

Considering this framework, I would suggest that if you are someone who craves sincerity, if you wear your heart on your sleeve, if you are the type of person who when asking yourself, ?הַֽמְכַסֶּ֤ה אֲנִי֙ Shall I hide? your inclination is “no,” than you are probably disappointed with (and maybe surprised by) people whose performative “ritual” selves are misaligned with their “sincere selves.” To you they’re just dressing up. On the other hand, if you are someone who is skeptical, maybe even cynical, about most people’s ability or inclination to harmonize these selves, if you yourself are not what our Sages call tocho k’varo, if you personally feel disinclined to reveal your more authentic self to others, then you likely have fewer expectations that others would do so.

Seligman, though, offers a different perspective on this question of obligation, suggesting that healthy relationships actually require us to create space for both selves, that it is a fools errand to strive for absolute harmony, that performing, even with our most intimate partners is a necessary investment in deep connections we wish to maintain and further develop.

Consider the words, “I love you.” Seligman writes, “We can in the end distinguish two forms of the words ‘I love you.’ The emotionally wrought confession by the star-struck young man appeals to the sincere mode…. On the other hand, we also have the ritual ‘I love you,’ whose performative aspect is more important than its denotative function.” Dr. Hain explains it this way: “[While] there is a sincere form of ‘I love you’ that means ‘I am feeling love for you right now,’ there is also a ritual ‘I love you’ that is said as a means of maintaining relationship: ‘I am in this loving relationship with you.’ It is tempting to value the former and to disregard the latter, but Seligman argues that the sincere self and the ritual self are both necessary forms of the self. Both are not only legitimate but needed when we want to be connected with others.”

But there’s a final layer to explore here, because the assumptions we make about others, whether and how they are masking, suggests we can know not just who someone is, but who they will become. I do think intuition and curiosity, real engagement, go a long way toward understanding and appreciating someone, but who among us is a finished product? The very nature of existence is formation, evolution. We are learning, adapting, and growing all the time. We are beings, becoming. The trap we so often fall into is to believe we ourselves are capable of growth, but others are trapped by their own past, their preconceptions, some algorithm that shapes their future.

There’s a midrash that considers the future of an important character in this week’s parasha. Sarah and Abraham have just exiled Hagar and her young child Ishmael, a child Abraham loves and had hoped would become his heir. Wandering the desert near Be’er Sheva, their skin of water having run dry, Hagar leaves Ishmael alone under a bush and bursts into tears. She cannot bear to watch him die. The Torah tells us:

יִּשְׁמַ֣ע אֱלֹהִים֮ אֶת־ק֣וֹל הַנַּ֒עַר֒

“God heard the cry of the boy,” which is already interesting because the text said Hagar was the one who cried. And the verse continues, “an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is.”

“Where he is,” בַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר הוּא־שָֽׁם, three words that seem unnecessary. Most commentators assume the verse means God responds to Ishmael in the place where his mother had left him, out of earshot from her, under the bush. But the midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 53:11) implies the text is not concerned with where he is but when he is – and who he will become someday.

The ministering angels rose to accuse Ishmael. They said, “Lord of the Universe, here is someone who will one day slay Your children with thirst. Will You now provide him with a well?” God said to them, “What is he now, righteous or wicked?” They said, “righteous.” God responds:

אֵינִי דָן אֶת הָאָדָם אֶלָּא בִּשְׁעָתוֹ.

I judge people only as they are in this moment.

What an extraordinary statement! God knows that Ishmael would become an enemy of Isaac’s descendants, of the Israelites. God knows that Ishmaelites would one day sell Joseph into servitude in Egypt. The prophecy in last week’s parashah even stated he would be a “wild ass of a man, his hand against everyone, and everyone’s hand against him” (Gen 16:12). He will not simply dress up as a clown. He will become that clown. But here, right now, he is none of those things. He has no descendants. He has done nothing wrong. He is a dying child, and God insists that means his life ought to be spared.

While in Israeli custody, three years before he was released along with 1,026 other prisoners in the Gilad Shalit deal, Yahyah Sinwar had a terminal brain tumor. Israeli doctors operated and saved his life. Fifteen years later, Sinwar planned and executed a terrorist rampage that saw the worst violence done to the Jewish people since the Shoah through which he also further advanced his reign of terror against Palestinian civilians. Were those doctors wrong to perform that surgery? With the benefit of hindsight, we might say “yes.” My point here is not to argue that Sinwar should or should not have been saved given what the Israeli government knew about him at the time. That’s a different conversation. My point is that the vast majority of people are not Sinwar, they are not irredeemably monstrous. They’re decent, flawed people, stumbling through life like the rest of us. And who can say with any certainty who any of us will be in the future?

The fundamental problem with how too many of us think about others is that we make a thousand calculations as to whether we should act in one way or another toward someone and expend much less energy meeting them where they’re at.

אֵינִי דָן אֶת הָאָדָם אֶלָּא בִּשְׁעָתוֹ.

I judge people only as they are in this moment.

What would it be like if we committed right now to judge our fellow human beings not as we fear they might be but ba’asher hu sham, as they are? People are not personas, they are people, created in God’s image. Some portion of us lose or never had the ability to access that divine goodness. But most of us do. We are beings, becoming. Who are we to rob someone of that possible future by insisting we know better what it might behold?

“Shall I hide?” It’s a personal choice and a situational one. The ritual and sincere selves each have value in our relationships. “Shall we seek?” My hope is that, if nothing else, more of us will do a bit more of that.

Prelude:

This coming Tuesday is the 30^th Anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. Monday is his yahrzeit. It’s hard to believe it’s been three decades. It’s even harder to wrap my head around how much has changed – and how much has stayed the same since then. Rabin was killed on November 4, 1995, by a Jewish extremist who wished to upend the Oslo Peace Process. It came on the heels of several Hamas run terrorist attacks. In summer of ‘96, I arrived in Israel for Ulpan and a year of study at Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus. On kibbutz in the Galil, I met Janis Coulter, also a student, who would be murdered years later by Hamas at Hebrew U during the 2^nd Intifada, in a cafeteria we once frequented. In November of ‘96, though, Janis and I joined several friends and traveled to Tel Aviv for a peace rally and memorial marking one year since Rabin’s assassination.

In the months that followed, I found myself processing a cascade of feelings and experiences during a dizzying time. On one hand, I was having an amazing year, making friends, learning and exploring my Judaism in Yerushalayim, traveling around the country at a time when peace still seemed possible. I had an internship at the WF Albright Institute in East Jerusalem. I would walk down from Har Hatzofim, stop at my favorite Palestinian falafel stand, spend a few hours labeling pottery sherds and then enter the Old City through the Damascus Gate, occasionally stopping to get a treat at the Arab suk.

On the other hand, Netanyahu had just been elected Prime Minister for the first time. He and Arafat both would prove disinterested in making real concessions or pursuing lasting solutions. Months after Rabin’s murder, just after Ramadan, and a few months before I arrived to Israel, Hamas has done its own very substantial damage to the peace process when it planned and executed four terrorist attacks in nine days, killing 61 and injuring over 200. The last of these took place at Dizengoff Center, in the heart of Tel Aviv, on Purim, as children milled about in their costumes. The bomb, laced with nails and screws, wounded 130 Israelis and killed one soldier and twelve civilians, including five who were thirteen years old or younger.

In early ’97, still living on Mt. Scopus, I wrote a song called “Jerusalem 5756,” reflecting on the year including and following Rabin’s assassination, the year that concluded with my Rosh Hashanah on kibbutz. I’d like to play it for you today. The song is a chronicle of a young man’s heartbreak and confusion, trying to discern my own place among the Jewish people, confronting the ferocity of anti-Jewish hatred, yearning for peace. The tune concludes with the narrator, present at once in the newly renamed Rabin Square and also on Mount Herzl where the slain leader is buried, reflecting on Rabin’s final moments, chuckling at his awkward smile and his tone-deaf singing of “Shir L’Shalom,” wondering what would become of this country with which I had fallen deeply in love. Here’s my love song, my tribute, to an embattled ancient city and a resilient ancient people. This is “Jerusalem 5756.”

The sun was going down as we drove into town on the bus coming from Tel Aviv. As we rounded the turn I could feel my heart yearn for the city I’d so longed to see. But my eyes found instead the roadblock ahead, and a soldier stepped out of the booth. And we all heard him say, “there were more killed today,” as he cautiously waved us on through.

At the close of the day I found my way to the heart of the city of gold. Then at last the sun fell, and the siren, it welcomed the bride to her city of old. And as the men gathered round I drank in the sound of their prayers rising up from the wall. But when they turned around I just stared at the ground like a child lost in the dark.

And I feel so helpless again as I wander at night through the streets. And I cry for Jerusalem for the 3,000 years she has seen.

When the month reached its end I cried again as my vision had vanished in flames. From their prayer they had turned to an anger that burned and a vengeance which could not be tamed. Four times the Earth trembled in fear and in hell as countless were lost without need. And I closed my eyes tried to block out the cries of the children who’d died in the streets.

And I feel so helpless again as I wander at night through the streets. Tell me why my Jerusalem do you suffer for all that you’ve seen?

Remembering one year ago when the candles burned slowly to rhythms and visions of peace. Then he sang the last song as the cheers lingered on and we laughed at the smile on his face. But when he left our sight, three shots in the night. And “why” was all we could say. And I looked around, took a stone from the ground, and I placed it on top of his grave.

And I feel so helpless again as I wander at night through the streets. And I cry for Jerusalem for her struggle at last to be free. Yes, I feel so helpless and then in the night I cry out from the streets. Still you try my... Will it end? Oh... Close your eyes my Jerusalem. Close your eyes for perhaps in the dark, we can dream.

©1997 by Daniel Burg

Postlude:

“Amar Rabbi Yochanan, Rabbi Yochanan said: In your eyes there is a white part, through which you are not able to see, and a dark part in the middle of the eye, by means of which one does see. In other words, one can [only] see out of the dark part of the eye….” 29 years ago, I prayed for dreams of a better tomorrow to emerge from the darkness. We dream with our eyes closed, but we see, through darkness, with our eyes wide open. This week, on this 30^th yahrzeit, we remember a man, battle scarred, who dared to dream, whose very life was bound up in service of Medinat Yisrael, who knew well the darkness of war, who died skeptical, clear-eyed yet hopeful, al kiddush Hashem, a grudging martyr, for an unlikely peace. Yehi zichro baruch, may his memory be for a blessing. And may his hope against hope ultimately prove not to have been in vain” (Midrash Tanchuma Tetzaveh 6).

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