Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Our ice maker in our fridge broke again. I called the service line. You know the drill: obnoxious faux classical music, repeated robotic recordings, “we care about your business and will answer your call as soon as possible. Please stay on the line.” Finally my call was answered by a woman who said her name was Jennifer and sounded like she was answering from South Asia. I told her our ice maker saga and once she had gotten all the information, she sai,d “thank you ma’am, I just submitted this request and am waiting for a response from my manager.”

“Ok, thanks,” I said. There was silence. Then, since we were waiting on the phone together, I asked, “how’s your day going?”

There was no response.

“Are you there?” I asked.

“Yes, I’m here ma’am.”

“Oh good,” I said, “How’s your day going?”

“Ma’am, are you talking to me?”

“Yes, of course, who else would I be talking to? I figured as long as we were waiting, we could chat.”

“Oh, ma’am, I am so sorry. No one ever talks to me, I just thought that you were talking to someone else. My day is going alright. How is yours?”

I was caught off-guard. “Wait, is that true? No one ever asks you about your day? Ever?”

“No ma’am. People just call to talk about their refrigerator and most of the time they are very upset.”

After the call, and after Jennifer had helpfully sorted my broken ice maker, I couldn’t stop thinking about our conversation. What would it be like to be Jennifer? What would it be like to sit in a call center for 12 hours straight, answering calls from angry people who are uniformly short-tempered in a language that is not your own? What would it be like to be called a different name—something that’s easier for Americans to pronounce—and to exist unseen—where you literally can only respond with the scripted responses that the company has green-lighted? What would it be like to work in an environment where you never get to share your passions, your interests, or your dreams? Where you are so divorced from amiable human connection that when you hear, “how’s your day,” you don’t even consider the possibility that someone might be speaking to you?

Every Friday Shira calls her brother and sister-in-love in Jerusalem, Ari and Tziporit, to check in, to hear about their Shabbat plans, to hear about their children who are serving in Gaza or up north, and to wish them a Shabbat shalom.  Two weeks ago they had a particularly evocative conversation.  That week Ari and Tziporit had been blessed with a new grandson, and that very Friday night they were hosting what is called a Shalom Zachor, a festive gathering the first Friday night after the birth of a boy.  Since the baby’s father had been on miluim up north for 8 months, and had gotten home only a few weeks before the baby was born, this would be an especially joyful Shalom Zachor.  The conversation was about the delicious food they were serving, the gorgeous flowers and flower arrangements that we could see with FaceTime, and the many family and friends who would show up to share the simcha.  So far, so good.  And then Tziporit added:  We are setting up the dining room, the living room, and the outdoor garden.  And we are also setting up the safe room just in case there is a siren and everyone has to go downstairs to the bomb shelter. 

Prepare for a gorgeous simcha full of love and joy and food and singing.  Prepare for missile attacks.  At the same time.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky served as the 19th Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2021-23), Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School (2012-2021), and Chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital (2017-2021). Dr. Walensky is an infectious disease clinician whose research career is guided by a belief that the clinical and economic outcomes of medical decisions can be improved through the explicit articulation of choices, the systematic assembly of evidence, and the careful assessment of comparative costs and benefits. She has focused these beliefs on mathematical model-based research toward the promotion of global access to HIV prevention, screening, and care. Her ground-breaking work and over 300 research publications have motivated changes to US HIV testing and immigration policy; promoted expanded funding for HIV-related research, treatment, and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPfAR); and led to policy revisions toward aggressive HIV screening – especially for the underserved – and earlier treatment in resource-limited international settings. In light of these contributions, Dr. Walensky has been an active member of policy discussions at the WHO, UNAIDS, the DHHS HIV Guidelines Committee, and the NIH Office of AIDS Research.

View the texts HERE

I want to tell you a story that has a coda and a second coda.

The context is college baseball. If college baseball is not your thing, if you have never followed college baseball, not to worry. The story, which I heard on ESPN Daily Podcast, is about life.

There is a college in North Carolina called Wake Forest, which has a historically mediocre baseball team called the Wake Forest Demon Deacons. The team last won the College World Series 70 years ago.

In 2010 a man named Tom Walter became the coach at Wake Forest. The lifeblood of college athletics is recruiting star high school athletes. In Columbus, Georgia there was a star outfielder named Kevin Jordan. In baseball parlance, Kevin Jordan was a 5-tool player. He could do everything that is required to shine on a baseball diamond: hit to get on base, hit for home runs, run, throw, and play superb defense. As a teenager Kevin Jordan was one of the most highly recruited high school baseball stars. He was drafted by the New York Yankees. He was courted by the most powerful and prestigious college baseball programs, which Wake Forest was not. And he was courted by Tom Walter, the new coach of Wake Forest. As Tom Walter would put it, calling Kevin Jordan was his first call.

As college coaches in all sports do, Tom Walter paid a recruiting visit to the Jordan home, meeting this young star outfielder and his parents. Tom Walter promised the parents: if Kevin comes to Wake Forest, I will take care of your child. I will watch over him. Both Kevin Jordan, and his parents, believe Tom Walter. The family made the surprising, unexpected decision to say no to the New York Yankees; to say no to the college powerhouse programs; and to say yes to a mediocre college baseball program that had last won a College World Series in the 1950s. They did so based on their intuition that Tom Walter was a mensch.

Roll the film forward. In Kevin Jordan’s senior year in high school, he started to lose weight. He could not eat. He could not hold anything down. He became slower, weaker. He went to lots of doctors, and they could not diagnose his problem. Meanwhile, his performance on the baseball diamond dropped precipitously.

That fall he went to Wake Forest to begin his freshman year. He no longer looked or acted like the superstar athlete he once was. He was very sick. At last he was diagnosed with having a rare auto immune kidney disease. He was in kidney failure. He took 35 pills a day, and was on dialysis three times a week, just to be able to stay alive. The only way he would survive is if he were to get a kidney transplant.

But there was a problem. There is far greater need for kidneys than availability of kidneys. If a person needs a kidney transplant, but does not have a kidney donor, they go on a list, which is very crowded with other people who also need kidneys. Kevin Jordan did not have time. If he did not get a kidney, he was not going to survive.

All the members of his family were tested, but there was no match. Tom Walter stepped up and said: I’ll get tested. Long story short, Tom Walter was a match, and when he discovered that he was a match, he did not hesitate. He agreed immediately that he would donate one of his kidneys to Kevin Jordan.

What character in the Hebrew Bible says, “kill me now”? What character is so burnt out, so dark inside, so spent, so worn down, that he does not want to live any more and literally says “kill me now”?

The answer is Moses in our reading this morning. Usually the Torah says nothing about its characters’ interior lives. When God commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham says hineni, here I am, ready to do the deed. What was he thinking? What was he feeling? The Torah does not say.

In stark contrast, in today’s reading, upon hearing the Israelites complain for the umpteenth time, upon hearing their revisionist history that they used to eat fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic for free in the land of Egypt, upon hearing their demand for meat when there was no meat to be had, Moses finally lets God have it:

And Moses said to the Lord, “Why have You dealt ill with Your servant,

and why have I not enjoyed Your favor, that You have laid the burden of all this

people upon me? Did I conceive all this people, did I bear them…I cannot carry

all this people by myself, for it is too much for me. If You would deal thus with me,

kill me now, I beg You, and let me see no more of my wretchedness.

Numbers 11:11-15.

We need to pay attention to this passage. Moses had an interior life, and his interior life was not being tended to, and as a result, he was in a deeply dark place. What is true for Moses is true for all of us. We all have interior lives. Jewish language for that is neshamah, soul. We all have a soul. And we need to tend to our soul lest we become burnt out, anxious, depressed.

For our last Talmud class of the year we want to leave you with a question to ponder about asymmetry—an asymmetry between Israeli Jews and American Jews.

For its 75th, Israel had a contest for what Israeli song best captures Israel? Israelis voted for the winner: a song that was composed in 1982 called ein li eretz acheret, I have no other land.

Here are some questions:

What is the essential message of this song?

What is it about this song that inspires Israelis to vote for it as conveying the Israeli condition?

What language, what adjective, would you use to describe the rendition of this song in the video, accompanied by photos of life in Israel?

The song, the lyrics, the video, all suggest a deep purpose and blessing, and a deep cost and heaviness, to living in Israel, but the narrator has no other choice: I have no other country. With all its challenges, with all the blood, sweat and tears, with all the wars and terrorism, with all the Israelis who have died in battle or from acts of terrorism, it is the only country they’ve got.

But we’ve got another country, imperfect though it may be. When the going in Israel gets tough, we have another home to come home to.

Their 18-year olds do military service in places like Gaza and Jenin. Ours go off to college. How do we think about that asymmetry? Is that just a fact of nature, like gravity. Or do we have a decision to make about how to think about and act in the face of this asymmetry?

I promise that in the fullness of time I will, one day, give a sermon that is not about the Boston Celtics. But today is not that day. We have to process Game 7. What happened on the court Monday night was not just a sad basketball story, if you happen to be a Celtics fan. It was also a confusing, perplexing human story.

How do we understand our team losing the first three games, including two at home, and then winning the next three games, including two on the road? How do we understand the Celtics’ stunning, last tenth of a second victory in Miami on Saturday night, and then their utter collapse at the Garden on Monday night? So hot, so cold. So dialed in, so not dialed in. So inspiring, so disappointing. Same team. Same players. Same coach. Same week. I had a friend who was at the game. OK, it’s Matt Hills, and he and Lisa were at the Garden instead of the Gann Chapel, which is why the team lost. But I digress. Matt observed that the teams’ body language told the story. The Miami Heat players were focused and intense. The Celtics were listless.

The intense team of Saturday night became the listless team on Monday night. I always think of this as the sudden stranger syndrome. What happens when somebody you think you know, somebody you know and love, starts acting so strangely that they become a stranger to you. You think who are you? I don’t quite recognize you.

Why do we do what we do as Jews? What is a mitzvah? Is it a nice thing to do, a commandment, or a cultural folkway of the Jewish people? If we don't believe in a commanding God, can we believe in commandment? If not, how can Judaism make any demands upon us? And if we do not allow our faith to make demands upon us, is it too thin and weak to be of consequence?

These were the questions that came up in last week's class about the essay by Elliot Cosgrove entitled "A Choosing People" published in Sources (Spring 2023). Rabbi Cosgrove diagnosed the problem: "The Jews I serve are not halakhic Jews living lives bound by Jewish law." p. 11. What to do about this reality remains elusive.

Enter the very next article in Sources written by Rabbi Leon A. Morris, President of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem (and son in love to our own Joel Berkowitz), entitled "In Defense of Surrender in Liberal Jewish Life." This is a fascinating piece conveying an important distinction that was new to me--and potentially very useful to us.

Citing the work of psychoanalyst Emmanuel Ghent, Rabbi Morris distinguishes between surrender and submission:

Ghent defined surrender as "a quality of liberation and expansion of the self as a corollary to the letting down of defensive barriers." Rather than abandoning or rejecting the self, surrender's "ultimate direction is the discovery of one's identity, one's sense of self, one's sense of wholeness, even one's sense of unity with other living beings."

Ghent defines submission in sharp contrast to the notion of surrender. Submission allows a person to be controlled by another's power while one's own distinct sense of identity is weakened... What we really desire is to be able to surrender our lives to a larger force, not to be controlled by someone else. p. 22

Rabbi Morris shows how we surrender to larger forces all the time in order to fulfill our deepest purposes. Parents surrender to the needs of their children. Children surrender to the needs of their elderly parents.

Architects and artists surrender to the "boundaries, borders and limits" of their fields to produce their designs and their art. p. 28.cHow might this concept of surrender (familiar to us in these other contexts) intersect with our quest for a thick and rich Judaism that imposes boundaries, borders and limits on our lives, and in so doing, creates beauty, meaning, community, and deep relationship? 

Rabbi Samuel Chiel, of blessed memory, used to say: the Jewish people are not superstitious…kenahorah.

Recently I was an eyewitness to the birth, the thriving, and the death of a superstition…kenahora.

It happened in our evening minyan in the Gann Chapel, and it concerned the seating arrangement of two of our evening minyan regulars, Grant Finkel and Lisa Hills. Every night Grant sits in the section to the left, facing the bimah, in the second row. Every night Lisa Hills sits in the section to the right, facing the bimah, in the first row. That is how it has been forever. But one night, for whatever reason, only God knows, Grant Finkel sat next to Lisa Hills in the first row of her section. He had never sat there before. And do you know what happened as a result?

I’ll tell you what happened. The Celtics won that night.

They were in the midst of a playoff series.  Their play had been inconsistent.  The previous game they had not played so well in the fourth quarter and lost.  But the night that Grant sat next to Lisa, the Celtics won a tough game on the road.  Obviously, they won because Grant sat where he sat. 

The next night, as folks walked into Gann at about 7:28, we said to Grant: sit next to Lisa again.  He did. And the Celtics won again.

The next night, at 7:28, as folks walked in, Lisa and Grant came in as usual.  But on this particular night Lisa’s husband Matt Hills also came in.  We said to him: scram! You can’t sit next to your wife.  The Celtics are playing!  Sit a few seats away from your wife so that Grant’s magical powers continue to lift up the Celtics.  Matt himself is a big Celtics fan.  As it happens, that very night he was wearing a Celtics t-shirt.  He happily complied. Grant sat next to Lisa. The Celtics won.

Then came the Miami series. 

This Shabbat is the second day of Shavuot—a good time to think about our relationship to the Torah as a source of law (halakhah) that is supposed to shape how we live every day. 

Problem: For most of us, it doesn’t. 

The Torah says: keep kosher. Many of us don’t. 

The Torah says: observe Shabbat. For many of us, Saturday is not Shabbat but another weekend day, not particularly distinguishable from Sunday. 

The Torah (as the rabbis interpret it) says: we are obligated to pray daily. Many of us don’t. Perhaps we come to shul when we have a Yahrtzeit, or when we are invited to a Bar/Bat Mitzvah or an auf ruf. But few of us actually believe we are required to pray every day. Witness that in our congregation of almost 4,000 souls, we average 20 to 40 people at our daily minyanim. 

The Torah we received at Sinai posits a commanding God whose commands we are obligated to observe. 

Few, if any of us, believe in that commanding God. 

There is a disconnect between the commanding God we are supposed to believe in and the autonomous lives we lead, where we do what we want to do, when we want to do it.  

How do we understand this disconnect? Can we solve for it, or at least ameliorate it? 

To consider these questions, please read the attached article by Elliot Cosgrove, the rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York, “A Choosing People,” published in Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, Spring 2023. In addition, Rabbi Cosgrove was in dialogue with Yehuda Kurtzer in this recent podcast. 

Rabbi Cosgrove asserts: 

 While the language of “obligation” may have run its course, “commandedness” has not. The performance of mitzvot as an expression of service to God remains a powerful driver for Jewish practice. 

Can we resuscitate commandedness as a relevant category in our religious lives? If not, do you have an elegant theory that explains why you do what you do as a Jew? What is your personal definition of the word mitzvah?

May 20, 2023

Shira and I spent the last two weeks of December at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem being with our father. While attending to a loved one in these circumstances is obviously painful, at the same time, we marveled at how day-to-day life at Hadassah Hospital felt not only like Israel at its best, but almost like the fulfillment of prophetic visions of peace, of the lion and lamb dwelling together in harmony.

The patients, doctors, nurses, medical crews, cleaning and maintenance crews, cashiers in the restaurants and cafes, represent the enormous diversity of Israel: Haredi, religious Zionists, secular Israelis, Arab Israelis, Palestinian Israelis, Druse, side by side, in harmony. We were there during Hanukkah. Every night we would go to the community room on our floor and light candles with all the above. Outside of Hadassah, there would have been no connection. Inside of Hadassah, there was no distance. The only Haredi Israelis I have ever talked to were at Hadassah Hospital.

We are so blessed this Shabbat to have with us Hadassah’s head nurse, Rely Alon. Michelle, Elias and Dan will be in dialogue with Rely to ask her: Why do complex human relationships work so well in spite of difference at Hadassah, and not outside Hadassah? What can the rest of Israel and the Jewish people learn from Hadassah?

Dan is a board member of Repair the World (Jewish engagement through service) and the Friends of the Arava Institute (bringing Arabs and Jews together in Israel to address environmental and climate issues). He is a long-time member of Temple Emanuel and has, over the years, volunteered with other Jewish organizations, including Combined Jewish Philanthropies, JCDS, the Newton Centre Minyan, and Our Generation Speaks.

In his free time, Dan created a software package for calculating income tax, as well as software to help attorneys and individuals with the financial aspects of divorce.

Sivan Kotler-Berkowitz (he/him) is a rising sophomore at UMass Amherst studying Special Education and Psychology. He is passionate about transgender youth advocacy, working with kids with disabilities, and making the world a better place. As an advocate, Sivan shares his story as a thriving transgender teenager to help replace misinformation about transgender youth. Through his advocacy, he has appeared on national television, worked with Nike, met with officials in the U.S. Department of Education, attended events at the White House, and even spoken to the President and Vice President. 

How do we think about Mother’s Day when our own mother has passed away? Even if we are blessed to have our mothers alive,  how do we think about lots of joyful moments in the spring season when that joy belongs to other people, but not to us? 

How do we dance at somebody else’s adult child’s wedding when our own adult child is still looking?

How do we feel joy for somebody else’s graduations when our own season of graduations is long gone, when young family energy is a distant memory?

How do we attend a brit milah or baby naming for somebody else when there are no babies in our family?

In our parched season, can we truly feel joy for somebody else? This is the question of the prophet Habakkuk in the Haftarah for Shavuot, second day:

           Though the fig tree does not bud

           And no yield is on the vine,

           Though the olive crop has failed

           And the fields produce no grain,

           Though sheep have vanished from the fold

           And no cattle are in the pen,

            Yet will I rejoice in the Lord,

           Exult in the God who delivers me. (3: 17-18)

I have bolded the word Yet to highlight the question: how, in a down time, do we exult, do we feel joy, do we nevertheless sing? 

There is a Hebrew word to the rescue which we will discuss in Talmud tomorrow: firgun, which means to be genuinely happy for somebody else’s happiness.  Firgun has been described as the opposite of Schaudenfreude.  Firgun is such a spiritual challenge that there is no English equivalent. Can we do it? Are we capable of it? Can we nurture it within our own parched hearts?

Happy Mother’s Day.

If you are a Boston sports fan, two words inspire pathos: Boston Bruins. This past regular season, the Bruins enjoyed not just a successful season, but a historically successful season. The National Hockey League, NHL, is 106 years old. In the long history of the league, this year’s Bruins set the record for most wins in a season. They set the record for most points in a season. Not only did they win lots of games; they usually trounced their opponent. The NHL keeps a record of what is called goal differential: by how many goals did the winning team beat the losing team. Boston’s goal differential ranks second in history. During the regular season the Bruins could not have been more dominant.

Meanwhile, their opponents in the playoffs, the Florida Panthers, could not have been more mediocre. Literally an average team, actually below average. Out of 32 teams, the Panthers had the 17th best record. They just barely made the playoffs.

When the series started, the Bruins took a commanding 3-1 lead in a best of seven series. All they had to do was win one more game, a reasonable expectation for the team with the most points and wins in the history of the league. And yet, remarkably, the Bruins lost three games in a row, including game 7 at the Garden on Sunday night.

In the wake of this historic collapse of this historic team, sports commentators broadly pointed out that the Bruins failed to finish. Failed to close.

How should we think about finishing, about closing out a project?

When the history of twentieth-century Jewry is written, I believe that one of the most important, impactful, influential thinkers will be Rabbi Harold Kushner, who was laid to his eternal rest this past Monday. I do not know of a rabbi whose teaching had a broader reach or a bigger

impact. 

It is not just that his books sold millions of copies. 

Not just that his books were translated into many languages. 

Not just that his work was read by Jews and non-Jews alike. 

Rabbi Harold Kushner did something else virtually miraculous: he talked about God in a way that landed for ordinary people who do not usually talk about God. What was his secret sauce? How did he make God real and relatable for millions of people, Jews and non-Jews alike? Now that he has passed, how can his Torah on God connect with you?

May Rabbi Harold Kushner rest in peace. May his Torah deepen our relationship with God, with Torah, with mitzvah, and with the very special community we are blessed to have at Temple Emanuel.

Join Rabbi Michelle Robinson and Jill Ebstein as they discuss Jill's book, "Alfred's Journey to be Liked".

Find the book here!

April 29, 2023

Join Oren Kessler as he discusses his book, Palestine 1936: The Great Revolt and the Roots of the Middle East Conflict.

For some reason--I don’t know why it happens, I just know that it happens--tensions seem to rise in a family before a big milestone or family simcha. People tend to argue. To bicker. To get into negative energy patterns. The classic example of weird negative energy preceding what should be a happy family time is a wedding. If you have ever planned a wedding, you know this. As the day draws near, anxiety rises. Lists proliferate. Who is going to go to Costco to get the bottled water and the small bags of Cape Cod potato chips? Who is going to the hotels to drop off the gifts baskets? We just had a Covid cancellation. We need to redo table 11.

Simcha anxiety is such a well-known phenomenon that I tell every couple that I have ever worked with for their wedding to get out of the wedding business a week before their wedding—no more wedding details, no more wedding to do lists—so that they can spend that last week focusing on what matters: their love for one another.

We the Jewish people are now having a case of simcha anxiety on steroids. Just 10 days from now—today is April 15, on the evening of April 25—we will mark what should be the most joyful milestone imaginable for our people: Israel’s 75th anniversary. This should be the happiest, or among the happiest, moments in Jewish history, but it is not. Three years after the Holocaust, three years after one-third of our people perished in the flames, three years after our lowest low, the State of Israel was founded, and we were recreated as a people. It is not just that there was a new Jewish state, but a new Jew: a Jew who was strong and vigorous, who had a home, who was not subject to pogroms and massacres. The State of Israel would provide not only a safe home, a sanctuary, for the Jewish people, but also a place of Jewish thriving, a renaissance of Jewish culture and letters and music and language. It would be a place where the finest Jewish values of our prophets and rabbis could be actually fulfilled in a sovereign state. Against all odds, what a miracle, Israel was created, and it is here 75 years later.

And yet, like the joyful family milestone where the joy is not felt, but the bickering, the worrying, the quarreling, the joy of Israel is largely not being felt in this season of its 75th anniversary.

When I was home for Thanksgiving this year, my mom and I were going through some old boxes at the bottom of a closet when we came across a bag of colorful fabrics. 

“What’s this?” I asked my mom.

With a funny look on her face, my mom took the bag and started looking through it.  “This is the quilt I was going to make you when you were a baby.”

Apparently, when I was born, my mom didn’t want to just be a stay-at-home caretaker.  She wanted to feel productive.  To be able to show something beyond a growing baby for the time she was spending at home.  Naturally, she decided to make a baby quilt.  She went to the fabric store and picked out a book of quilt patterns, she bought fabric and washed it, and then every day, when she would put me down for a nap, she would go and work on that quilt.  It all seemed to be going well until it came time to put the squares together.  Then, somehow, they wouldn’t fit.  At the time, my mom was so sleep-deprived that she couldn’t figure out how to make it work.  She threw those squares into a bag in frustration, and that bag of fabric squares and scraps has been sitting at the bottom of her closet for the last 33 years.

When it was time to head back to Boston, I absconded with the bag intending to finish the quilt my mom started all those years ago.  I thought it would be a beautiful surprise for her and a gift for our baby—a quilt made over two generations.  I didn’t realize the quilt would come to teach me about what it means to honor legacy and to transmit values over the course of generations.

For those of you hearty enough to come to shul on the seventh day of Pesach, I want to share with you a love story—in fact a Pesach double love story.  But to appreciate this double love story, we need first to talk about halakha, Jewish law.  When was the last time that happened in a sermon? 

The Torah commands us to have no chametz in our possession during the holiday of Pesach.  Chametz is  defined as five species of grain: wheat, barley, spelt, rye, and oats.  It is not just that we can’t eat chametz.  It is also that we cannot have chametz, cannot own chametz.  Our homes have to be chametz-free.

Now we have all had the experience, when cleaning our house for Pesach, of finding in the back of the food pantry a stale box of crackers with the expiration date of February 2020.  We happily dispose of the stale crackers grateful for the impetus Pesach gives us to do a deep cleaning of our kitchen once a year.

But what do we do with all the chametz that is fresh, the fresh boxes of pasta and crackers?  It would be wasteful to throw out perfectly good food.  So our tradition has evolved this legal fiction called mechirat chametz, selling our chametz to a gentile, to a person who is not commanded to have no chametz in their home.  Dan loves this mitzvah.  Starting around Thanksgiving, he will announce that it is time to start selling our chametz for Pesach.   This year Dan sold our chametz to our wonderful receptionist Rhiannon.  Since she is not Jewish, she is allowed to own as much chametz as she wants.  She owns the chametz of the members of Temple Emanuel who empowered Dan to sell to her.  Theoretically Rhiannon is legally allowed to enter your home, go to your basement, eat your crackers and pretzels, drink your beer, imbibe your scotch.  But it is a legal fiction.  It would never happen.  The point of this legal fiction is to gesture towards two competing values.  One, no chametz during Pesach. Two, don’t waste food.  When the holiday is over tomorrow night, Dan will buy back your chametz from Rhiannon.  As a result of this legal maneuver, you did not own any chametz on Pesach, and you did not waste perfectly good food.

What does this dry legalism have to do with a love story?  Last week the Journal had a story about the halachic problems posed by observant dog owners during Pesach.  Dog food is rife with chametz.  It is made of forbidden grains.  It is true of course that we don’t eat dog food.  But the legal prohibition is not just not to eat it, but also not to have it in our possession.  Feeding our beloved dog Rover means having chametz in our homes.  What is an observant dog owner to do?

I recently heard a teaching that I experienced as an epiphany. The context was the Spark mission to Israel to celebrate its 75th anniversary leaving in a few weeks. Three hundred people from Greater Jewish Boston are going on nine buses. Marc Baker, the CEO of CJP, was speaking to the folks who were leading each of these buses.

He shared that when he was still at Gann Academy, he was hired by CJP to lead a mission of young Jewish leaders from Boston called Acharai. The first thing he did was to change his title. He was hired to be a scholar. He did not want to be a scholar. He wanted to be a Jewish journey facilitator. The purpose of a scholar is to share facts. The purpose of a Jewish journey facilitator is to work with, to walk with, the people in your group to help them make meaning of the experience that they are in the middle of.

He shared that on one very hard day the group went to one of the Nazi concentration camps. After confronting this unimaginable inhumanity, they were on the grounds outside the camp. All they wanted was space and silence to process the enormity of what they had just seen. But there was a concentration camp tour guide who started talking at them. Facts and factoids and figures about the camp. This talking head went over very badly.

Marc cautioned us not to be that kind of talking head, who does not read the room, who sees their job as a one-way path of transmitting content and not as a two-way relationship of making sense of complexity. Then Marc shared a question that I have been turning over in my head ever since:

Do you make space, or do you take up space?

One of the best parts of being a rabbi is sitting down with a young couple that has just become engaged and is now beginning the exciting journey of planning their wedding day. That initial conversation always involves the sharing of the proposal story. Almost always there is an element of surprise. One partner does not know it’s coming or coming then. There is usually a photographer hiding in a bush taking pictures or a videographer hiding in a bush capturing the whole thing on video. There is often a room somewhere strewn with roses or flower petals and bottles of champaign. It is not uncommon for the person planning the proposal to have arranged for both sets of parents and siblings to be at a cool restaurant to celebrate. Betrothal energy is unique, and uniquely beautiful. It happens once, and the couple remembers it forever. What do we make then of the end of the Haftarah from Hosea: I will betroth you forever; I will betroth you with righteousness and justice, And with goodness and mercy, And I will betroth you with faithfulness; Then you shall be devoted to the Lord. (2: 21-22) These lines of betrothal are part of our daily morning prayer practice. We say them as we wrap tefillin every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Rinse and repeat for our whole lives. What does it mean that betrothal energy, engagement energy, flower and champagne energy, photographers hiding out in the bushes energy to capture a once in a lifetime moment, is recited every single week day? For our last class, we focus on three life lessons that flow from turning a once in a lifetime deal to an everyday deal.

Lhakpa Sherpa grew up impoverished in the shadow of Mount Everest.  Her father worked as a shepherd and her mother raised her along with her ten siblings.  They were dirt poor.  So poor that they couldn’t afford to buy shoes for the children, let alone to send Lhakpa to school.  Instead, she spent her days wandering barefoot through the mountains.

Ever since she was little, Lhakpa has had one dream: she wanted to climb Mount Everest.  At the time, women were not welcome to try.  Every climber was male, every Sherpa porter was male, and even the thought of a woman trying to climb Mount Everest was enough to make experienced mountaineers laugh out loud.  When Lhakpa was about 15, she started hanging around base camp and begging the Sherpa porters there to give her a chance.  She spent two years pleading, begging, lobbying, and trying to persuade them before Babu Chhiri Sherpa, a legend in his own right who once spent a record-breaking 21 hours on the top of Mount Everest without oxygen, agreed to give her a chance.

She quickly rose through the ranks.  She started as a regular porter, just carrying wealthy tourists’ oxygen canisters and tents and supplies and then became a “kitchen boy.”  She would rise before the tourists, hike with all the supplies to the next base camp, set up camp, and then cook dinner all so that when the tourists arrived, they could have a hot meal and go to sleep.

But that wasn’t enough for Lhakpa.

Israel. The images of civil unrest playing out in Israel this past Monday are images we never thought we would see. Demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of Israelis; counter demonstrations; the airport closed; IDF soldiers and reservists and pilots refusing to serve; general strikes; universities closing; ambassadors resigning; a high government official, Yoav Gallant, fired for speaking his mind and asking for dialogue. All this happening just as Israel is about to celebrate its 75th anniversary.

And all this happening just as we are about to sit down to our seders Wednesday and Thursday nights. How, if at all, do we talk about Israel at our seders?

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” - William Faulkner 

Faulkner’s famous quotation underlies all of Rachel Korazim’s sessions in this series about the crisis in Israel today. To understand the push for reform, and the protests against reform, we went back to the Altalena incident in 1948 (March 18 Talmud class) and to what Arabs in Israel have come to call their naqba, also 1948 (March 25 Talmud class).  Rachel takes us to the Wadi Salib neighborhood of Haifa on July 9, 1959, when police shot and wounded a man named Yaakov Elkarif, as a result of which riots ensued. These riots were fueled by tensions between Ashkenazis and Mizrachis—all of which is brought to life by the poems we will consider tomorrow. The tensions today are in part fueled by unresolved tensions between Ashkenazis and Mizrachis. The past is never dead. It’s not even past. We here may not be able to solve the tensions at play on the streets of Israel today. But Rachel’s teaching will enable us to better understand them. Learning is always good.

How can you make sure to have the most meaningful and impactful Passover? Is it about preparation? The extent to which you clean out every cabinet and kasher your kitchen? Is it about the Seder itself—the Haggadah you choose and the activities you plan for the Seder?

In the spring of 2014, I was in my second year of rabbinical school and got a gig as a cruise-ship rabbi. Given that this was my first real gig as a rabbi, I was determined to create the most meaningful Passover experience ever. I researched for months leading up to Pesach and put together a folder of midrashim and teachings for every part of the Seder.

Little did I know what the cruise had in store for me.....

Talk to any Israeli, talk to any American who has recently been to Israel, and the words one hears are: depressing, very concerning, unprecedented, I’m afraid. I don’t know how this ends. 

How did we get here? Where does this story begin? 

Last week, Rachel Korazim, our Israeli teacher of Israeli poetry, made a point that is so simple, so profound, and so important. The conflicts playing out in Israel did not just spontaneously happen in year 75. They have been cooking for 75 years. Their roots go back to the beginning of Israel’s existence. Last week she talked about how the Altalena conflict evinced deep conflicts among Jewish Israelis that continue to play out on the streets today.

This week, Rachel is going to go back to 1948 again, to what Palestinians call the Naqba, as reflected in this poetry. There is no more urgent issue for American Jews than Israel. There is no better teacher on Israel than Rachel Korazim. Let’s learn together.

I am not proud of it, but one day while on a recent long flight, to make the time pass, I found myself reading a rom com, total beach reading. There were so many other worthier things I could have read. I could have read an analysis of the impasse on judicial reform in Israel. Or I could have done daf yomi, the study of a daily page of Talmud. Or with Passover coming up, I could have studied the Haggadah to get ready for the seders. But no, I read a rom com, light and breezy. I know it would be wrong to evade taking responsibility for this choice. I did it. I own it. I would never want to blame anyone else. I would never want to blame my wife Shira, for example. Even though Shira read it first and seemed to be thoroughly engaged while reading it. Even though Shira downloaded it on our family Kindle. Even though when I asked Shira for a recommendation, she pointed me to this book. Still reading the rom com is on me.

The novel features a woman named Nora who writes love stories produced on The Romance Channel. All of her stories follow a script. In fact, so much so, that she challenges one of the characters to offer her some random facts, from which she will fashion one of her scripted stories. She says to this other character:

Give me a gender, a location, and a career.

Okay…female, Chicago, real estate developer.

Okay, easy. Stephanie, a young urban real estate developer, takes a trip to rural

Illinois to look into buying a dairy farm and turning it into a corporate retreat center.

The young handsome owner of the farm doesn’t want to sell, and they butt heads. But

as she spends more time on the farm, she sees how important it is to the community, and

they fall in love….One day she gets a call that she needs to shut down the farm immediately

or lose her job. She leaves for Chicago. He is heartbroken.

Oh, no.

Oh, yes. But wait…one day he’s plugging along, and who comes back? Stephanie!

Yes!

She’s gone back to Chicago and has realized big city living isn’t for her. She’s going

to stay out in the sticks, and oh, P.S., she has a brilliant idea for how to save the farm.

The end.

Nora generates story after story that follows the script, each gets produced as a movie on The Romance Channel, and so it goes until her own husband, and the father of their two young children, walks out on her, leaving her a single mother. The writer of scripts is now living a life off script. Thus the title of this rom com is Nora Goes Off Script.

Why do I mention this just now? Because the theme of this rom com connects directly with both our Torah reading—and our lives.

The impasse over judicial reform in Israel continues to be concerning and unresolved. Protests continue. Conversations have not resulted in resolution. Positions are hardening. The compromise which President Herzog implored both sides to work towards remains elusive. Talk to Israelis—their morale is low. They are troubled. “We hope we get there”—to Israel’s 75th. This Shabbat we are blessed to have a familiar voice and dear friend offering us a genre that we have not yet encountered regarding the impasse: poetry. Rachel Korazim, born in 1948, has lived her life in Israel. She is an expert in Israeli poetry. Before the pandemic, she would teach at TE in person every year. Since the pandemic, she has continued to offer classes to TE members on Zoom. In fact, one of the classes she is offering remotely now concerns how poetry speaks to this moment. On Shabbat, through the magic of technology (thank you Brian Lefsky and David Beckman), Rachel Korazim, in Israel, joins our clergy team and in person learners in Room 24-25 in dialogue. She will share her personal experience as a citizen of Israel who has attended many protests. And she will teach three poems, one by Uri Tzvi Greenberg and two by Nathan Alterman, that will give us a helpful frame for this heavy and hard moment. Thank you Rachel Korazim for helping us connect with Israel through the sacred text of Israeli poetry.

I recently heard a podcast featuring Andy Stanley--have I mentioned him before? He is a pastor in Atlanta--and his wife Sandra, and they were discussing a most compelling question: How do we parent our children so that when they grow up and grow out, they want to spend time with their parents, and with one another, even when they don’t have to? If this is our goal, our parenting north star, that should motivate all our parenting decisions along the way.

When I was in Jerusalem last week sitting shiva for our father, after folks gave their condolences and shared their memories, they would ask me for my take on Israel. The conversation was sobering, making me feel naïve and disconnected from the real Israel that is.

Me: In Greater Jewish Boston, we are so excited to be marking Israel at 75. A big contingent from our shul is going to celebrate Israel at 75! A big contingent from the whole Boston Jewish community is going to mark this joyful and incredible milestone! How are you thinking about Israel at 75?

Comforters: One of two responses. The less common: “Not on our radar screen at all. We’ve given it no thought till you just mentioned it.” By far the more common: “I hope we get there. Not clear that we will make it to 75 as one country.”

In the shiva house, I had the sinking feeling that there was not one death I was mourning, but two. Something has died in Israel beyond our father – a belief of Israelis in a bright future for Israel.

Nothing makes that clearer than two titles of Danny Gordis. When he and his family made Aliyah in the 90s, during Oslo, his first book about Israel was called If a Land Can Make You Cry. The title evoked the pathos, the emotion, the ups and downs, the resilience, but the fundamental hopefulness of a nation whose national anthem is Hatikvah. That title seems long gone. The new title, from his piece this week: Drowning in a Sea of Resentment and Hate, It’s Far from Clear that Israel Can Make it Back to Shore. This piece details how numerous tribes within Israel—settlers, Haredis, Israeli Arabs, Palestinian Israelis, Ashkenazi, Mizrachi—feel betrayed (his word) by the state. One can sense this hate in the friction over dedicated war hero pilots who are protesting the erosion of Israeli democracy being called a “pathetic bunch of deserters” by the ruling coalition.

What do we do about it?

This week Thomas Friedman offered us another sobering essay with a sobering title: “American Jews, You Have to Choose Sides on Israel.” He quotes Rabbi Sharon Brous who speaks of rabbis giving Death by Israel sermons.

Is he right? Is our response to this moment to see it as a political fork in the road, and we have to choose, and bear the consequences of our choice? Is there another way to frame and respond to this moment?

How does our weekly Torah portion (uncannily, it involves a civil war, a milchemet achim, in the wake of the sin of the golden calf) help us frame this sad and sober moment in the history of Israel? How can we help? Can we take a principled stand in favor of democracy and against Israel becoming an authoritarian regime without checks and balances without adding to the division of this moment?

March 4, 2023

June 1, 2024

As a child, I reveled in the heroism of Mordechai. I admired him for his gumption, for the way he stood up to Haman and never betrayed his values--even when his very life was at stake. I was taught to see Mordechai as a capable and wise civil servant, as a mensch who took in his orphaned niece and loved her like his own, and as a visionary who empowered the people around him, most especially his niece, Esther.

But the story of Mordechai is more complicated than that of a simple hero.

Tomorrow, we're going to interrogate the narrative that so many of us were taught:

Was Mordechai a true hero who lifted up good Jewish values every minute of his life? Or was Mordechai a self-centered politician who was so focused on his own image that he risked the safety and well-being of the Jewish people in order to prove his dedication to Judaism?

Was Mordechai a benevolent and loving uncle? Or was he a manipulative abuser, forcing Esther to conform to his will and serve his purposes?

Is the point of Purim to celebrate heroism in its simplest form, or does the holiday remind us that the line between hero and villain is impossibly thin such that we must take care in every moment not to cross over to the wrong side?

Will everything be OK? Will all the things that I am worrying about be OK? Will all the things you are worrying about be OK? Will all the things we are worrying about be OK?

I would love to believe the premise of a children’s story by Anna Dewdney with an evocative title--Everything Will be OK. The plot is that a little bunny worries about little things, like getting the wrong kind of sandwich for lunch; medium things, like losing a kite; and big things, like missing family. In each case the bunny wonders will everything be OK, and in each case the answer is yes, everything will be OK.

This book resonates for me because it gives voice to an inchoate anxiety that many of us feel, and to a question that many of us ask: Will everything be OK? What do we do with this question that never goes away? And what do we do when the real answer to the question, if we are being honest with ourselves, is no.

That happens to all of us. Our health, or the health of somebody we love, is not OK.

Somebody we love is struggling with mental illness, which can be a formidable, sometimes seemingly intractable foe. Not OK. A spouse loses their partner and now lives a much lonelier life. Not OK. Somebody we love dies young, and our world is shaken. Not OK.

Somebody loses their job and has to deal with the uncertainty of now what do I do, and the resultant financial anxiety. Not OK. Relational stress and conflict. Not OK. It’s great when the problem gets solved, and everything is OK, but what happens when that does not happen?

That is the situation for the Israelites in the middle of the Book of Exodus.

The mass murderer of 11 innocent people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh will go on trial in April. The Justice Department is seeking the death penalty. What do we think of that? Two questions present themselves.

First, if we were to look for wisdom from Jewish sources, should the Tree of Life mass murderer be sentenced to life in prison,

or the death penalty? One of the strongest arguments against the death penalty is concern that the justice system might makes a mistake and convict and execute an innocent person. That is not a concern here. There is 100% certainty that on October 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the defendant murdered 11 innocent human beings. If we know that he did this unspeakable act of evil, would the primary Jewish source suggest that this is one of the rare times we would favor capital punishment, or not?

Remember, however, that mass shootings in America are tragically and depressingly all too common. If you believe that the defendant in the Tree of Life murders should receive the death penalty, would you advocate for the same result for all the defendants guilty of murdering innocent people in mass shootings? There are a heartbreaking lot of them.

Second, with what organ do we decide this question: our head or our heart? You will remember the first question in the famous debate of Governor Dukakis and Vice President Bush in 1988. If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would the Governor support the death penalty? The Governor answered all head, no heart, and many thought he lost the election in that moment.

Are feelings of anger, revenge, and tribal connection appropriate or not appropriate as we think about the worst massacre of Jews on American soil in American Jewish history coming to trial in a few weeks?

Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz and Alan Teperow as they discuss Alan's passion for painting.

This week, we are reading Parshat Mishpatim. This Torah portion is all about rules and regs. After the revelation, God spells out in minute detail what the people should do and how they should behave. It’s not a conversation, not open to interpretation, the laws are given without explanation and the people simply accept them. They say, na’aseh v’nishmah—we will do what God says and then we will seek to understand what we are doing and why.

So often, this is how we engage with our world. That is how law enforcement agents get into trouble. They get so hooked on forcing people to behave in a certain way, so focused on doing rather than thinking, that they lose track of what is appropriate force and end up causing harm rather than maintaining order. It happens in the classroom too. Recently, I was speaking with a family. Their child had come up with a creative way to solve a math equation. Their methodology wasn’t the same as what was being taught, but it worked. Every answer they wrote on their worksheet was right. But the teacher gave them a 0 for the assignment. Why? Because the way they did the work was different than what the teacher had taught. And the teacher wanted them to follow the rules—na’aseh v’nishmah.

When we receive rules and follow them in this way, there is a strength. It saves mental energy. Na’aseh v’nishma means you don’t have to evaluate every given situation. You just do, you follow the rules, you get through the day, and you save your mental energy for the projects and ideas you care about most.

But there is another way to engage with rules and with law that is revealed in the book of Vayikra. God says וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֤ם אֶת־חֻקֹּתַי֙ וְאֶת־מִשְׁפָּטַ֔י אֲשֶׁ֨ר יַעֲשֶׂ֥ה אֹתָ֛ם הָאָדָ֖ם וָחַ֣י בָּהֶ֑ם you shall guard my laws and ordinances and you shall live by them. In other words, rules aren’t just limits that are intended to be followed without thought. In an ideal world, the process of following rules, of affirming societal norms, should enhance and sustain our lives.

A 26-year old named Ilya Sosansky was the seventh victim of the terrorist attack in Jerusalem on January 27 in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood. Ilya Sosansky was a graduate of AMIT Technology High School. AMIT sent out an email describing the indescribable loss of this young man.

Ilya Sosansky was a beloved, popular DJ. His friends

described him as a young man filled with a joy for life,

who could cheer up anyone. Adi Yona referred to Ilya as,

“A charm, a walking smile, a good soul who only did good.”

At the end of AMIT’s email are three Hebrew words: “Hashem Yikom Damo,” meaning, may God take revenge for his blood.

How do we think about praying for revenge? It is a complicated question with sources on both sides.

On the one hand, there is a famous prayer for bloody revenge during the Shabbat Musaf service Av Harachamim that is in traditional Orthodox siddurim that channels the vengeful, bloody energy of Psalm 137 (“By the rivers of Babylon, there we say…and wept”), which climaxes by invoking a blessing “on him who seizes Babylonian babies (Babylon destroyed the first Temple) and dashes them against the rocks!” These prayers for vengeance are wholly absent from our siddur, where in the same spot in the Shabbat morning service we offer a Prayer for Peace and a Prayer for the Renewal of Creation.

On the other hand, whether we know it or not, we actually do pray for revenge three times a day, in the malshinim prayer of the thrice-daily

Amidah which is deliberately mistranslated by the Rabbinical Assembly siddur in order to take out the offensive edge.

Famously the Jewish people have been debating for thousands of years whether, at our Passover seders, when we reduce our cup of wine by ten droplets for the ten plagues, those are tears of joy (our enslavers got the punishment they deserved), or are tears of sadness (the Egyptians are also human beings made by God, and they also suffered).

The ambivalence of this seder ritual carries forward to today. Do we pray for revenge of the terrorists who murdered Ilya Sosansky, just desserts for those who spilled innocent blood? Or do we channel the wisdom of the famous Beruriah in the Talmud, tractate Berakhot, interpreting Psalm 104, that we want sin to disappear not by the sinners dying, but by the sinners changing their ways so that they are no longer sinners?

Sadly, this issue is not going away. It recurs. Just this week a 17-year old Jewish man, and a 20-year old Jewish man, were stabbed in Jerusalem. The news source reporting the story concluded: “The terrorists, 14 and 13 years of age respectively, hailed from eastern Jerusalem.”

If there's one lesson of this coming Shabbat, it is that life is not a solo sport - we are better when we are together - all of us. That applies to leadership - Yitro teaches Moses to include others as leaders. That applies to family - Moses listens to Yitro, including him in decision making. And that applies to community - when our ancestors gathered at Sinai, they spoke together as one, including all.

We are holy when we are one. We are stronger when we are one. We are better when "we" is truly inclusive of all!

This week at our Talmud Class we have the privilege of learning in conversation with a true expert on how to get inclusion right, Shelly Christensen, co-founder of Jewish Disabilities Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month (JDAIM). She will be teaching us, “From Longing to Belonging: How wisdom from Isaiah gives us God’s definition of inclusion.”

Click here for texts.

Often, we experience music in a passive way. In a synagogue setting, very few of us know where liturgical melodies come from and rarely do we have the time to consider the effect of any particular melody on our prayer experience. (Even when we do have the time and inclination, we often struggle to find words to articulate the impact of a melody on our emotional or psychospiritual experience.)

This class is about tuning in--literally--to the magic of Sephardic music.

These melodies are fascinating. They are often rhythmic and upbeat. They play with intervals and motifs which sound exotic to our ears. When paired with prayers, these melodies have a very different effect on our hearts than do the traditional Ashkenazi melodies that sometimes dominate Jewish spaces.

During Talmud, Elias sings different Ashkenazi and Sephardic melodies for five different prayers and we as a clergy team are going to be discussing how each melody affects our heart and our internal experience. This class isn't about music theory or musicology. It is about discovery and about opening our hearts to the magic that is in store for us all through the day tomorrow!

We could all use a booster shot of hope. Where do we find it? Tomorrow we are going to examine two very different models for finding hope in dark circumstances: Rabbi Akiva in the Talmud, Makot 24 A and B, and Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his epic Morality, published shortly before he passed away in 2020. Rabbi Akiva’s approach to hope seems to be about a new lens: Look at reality differently. Rabbi Sacks’s approach to hope seems to be about a new action plan: Act differently. What is the relationship of these two approaches to each other, and to us now?

January 28, 2023

The law of unanticipated consequences.

As Micah Goodman shares with Danny Gordis in this utterly fascinating conversation about Israel today (35 minutes and well worth it), conservative leaders are chastened and restrained by the law of unanticipated consequences. Since we never actually know what will ensue from our conduct, the wisest course is humility and restraint lest we unintentionally unleash a hurricane that we never saw coming. Micah offers two examples:

What is the unanticipated consequence of birth control being readily available in Europe? Answer: Radicalized xenophobic, racist, far-right politics.

How? Because of the pill, European families had smaller families, which led to fewer workers, which led to increased immigration to fill those worker slots, which led to Muslim immigration, which led to complexity and navigating cultural difference, which led to a conservative backlash against Muslim immigration, which led to the ascendancy of far-right xenophobic parties in Europe. Unanticipated.

What is the unanticipated consequence of the internet, of all that knowledge being a click away on Google? Answer: The undermining of democracy.

How? We thought that the internet would result in the profusion of information, which would strengthen the marketplace of ideas, which would strengthen healthy and vigorous debate, which would strengthen democracy. What also happened, that few if any foresaw, was the profusion of dis-information, which led to echo chambers, which led to conspiracy theories, which led to people not debating the merits but re-enforcing their own views, which led to the undermining of democracy. Unanticipated.

Micah’s talk with Danny Gordis talks about how the law of unanticipated consequences applies to Israel today.

In Talmud class, we talk about how the same law is a revealing lens for our biblical story.

• Joseph is sold into slavery, but becomes second only to Pharaoh. Unanticipated.
• Joseph’s family is taken care of during a time of severe famine, given the best land of Goshen, which leads to their becoming slaves for 430 years. Unanticipated.
• The Israelites are freed in tomorrow’s reading, which leads to their complaining why do you bring us to the wilderness to die, when we used to get leeks, melons and cucumbers for free in Egypt. Unanticipated.

How does the law of unanticipated consequences play out in your Jewish life, and in your life? Being aware of this law, do we act any differently?

The great writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez once observed: “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”

I learned of this quote in the forward to a fascinating book about secrets. Written by noted American Jewish author Letty Cottin Pogrebin, the book is entitled Shanda: A Memoir of Shame and Secrecy. Pogrebin talks about how deeply held, and deeply embarrassing, secrets were part of her family’s culture.

“Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am the Lord. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God…I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob…”

But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.” Exodus 6: 6-9.

Our reading this week begins with God promising the Israelites, through

five famous verbs, that God would save them. The promises all turned out to be true. Every year at our seders, we celebrate these five verbs of redemption through the four cups of wine and the fifth cup for Elijah and Miriam. Famously, however, the Hebrew slaves who were the intended audience for this reassurance could not take it in. Why not? Because of Abraham Maslow.

In 1943 Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, wrote a paper entitled “A Theory of Human Motivation” in which he argued that there is a hierarchy of needs. Before we can get to spiritual liberation (the apex of the pyramid), we need to feel safe, secure and protected (the base of the pyramid). All of us have experienced the truth of Maslow’s hierarchy if you have ever attended an outdoor burial in January in New England. It does not matter how much you love the person being laid to their rest, when you are at the graveside, all you want is to conclude the burial as quickly as possible and get back into a warm car.

The Israelites could not take in promises of liberation when their reality on the ground was so painful.  What about us? In Hallel, we thank God, but only after we recover from illness or serious threat. What does Maslow’s hierarchy of needs say to us, today? How do we provide spiritual comfort to people whose physical realities remain challenging with no ready solution?

January 14, 2023