Parashat Nitzavim

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat Nitzavim, which we will read again in just over a week for Yom Kippur as well. The parasha contains some of Moses’s final address to the people, including words of teshuvah. The passage (Deuteronomy 30:1-3) makes clear that God expects us to miss the mark, to transgress the Torah, and to need to make teshuvah, to need to make active efforts to return to God. God does also, of course, assure us that God will take us back, but there will be hard roads ahead as the People of Israel sin and repent and need to be punished before their apologies are fully accepted again. 

We will soon talk about forgiveness and teshuvah so much the words may run the risk of losing all meaning. However, here’s one more offering in preamble to the high holy days; I will keep this brief:

 If you haven’t already, the time is nigh to start making your apologies to those you’ve hurt in 5779, and start offering your forgiveness to those who’ve hurt you in 5779. These conversations are rarely easy. If they do feel easy, they are probably happening on too superficial a level. They should be at best awkward, and at worst they can be heart-wrenching and inconclusive as you seek resolution for the open wounds in your life. 

And yet, if we learn from this parasha that sins and misteps are inevitable, perhaps it can allow us so more comfort in accepting the uncomfortable reality of accepting responsibility for our mistakes and understanding the reasons why others have made mistakes we think should have been obvious no-nos. Most human relationships do not come with such explicit instructions and agreements as that which is given to us in the Torah, and yet if we can break those specified laws and still be accepted as God’s holy people, then I think we can each find it within ourselves to accept the teshuvah of others in our lives. 

May we build a strong and trusting community with forgiveness and love. Amen and Shabbat Shalom. 

Rosh HaShana Morning

            Good Yontif. At the beginning of this summer, I was watching the latest season of Queer Eye. If you aren’t familiar with the show, each of the Fab Five has their own roles as they makeover the lives of others: one, Karamo Brown, being a life coach. In episode two of season four, their client is a man who was paralyzed from the waist down due to a gunshot wound. The injury helped him to rethink a lot of aspects of his life, and really turn himself around for the better, but he still needed the help to make some aesthetic changes that would help him get around in style, within his home and outside it, in his wheelchair. As a part of their makeover, Karamo facilitates a conversation between their client and the person who shot him. On their drive to meet the shooter, they talk about forgiveness. Karamo tells his client, “People assume forgiveness is a destination and not realizing it’s a journey you take throughout your life.”

            The meeting goes well, and afterward the client tells Karamo he better understands now what happened the day he was shot and feels like a weight has been lifted off of him. The resonance of Karamo’s statement in the car earlier remains. Sometimes after trauma or other terrible offence, forgiveness comes in stages. There may be moments of feeling at peace with the reality of what happened, feeling like we’ve let go, forgiven the other person to their faces or in our hearts, and thinking we’ve moved on. And then there often continue to be moments where we are triggered by something and we realize we are still angry or sad or hurt by something we thought we’d let go of, and we have to go through a process of forgiving and forgetting all over again. It can be a frustrating process, but it is a normal and healthy way of dealing with something that was not normal or healthy in your life. It does not mean you did the forgiving wrong the first time or that you were lying to yourself or anything of the sort. It likely means the thing that happened was actually fairly unforgiveable, but learning to move on from it is necessary for your own well-being so the forgiveness takes a long, long time, in fits and starts. It’s a journey, not a destination.

            In the traditional Torah portions of Rosh HaShana, we see some terrible interactions that could be read as unforgiveable behavior. In the portion we read here, Abraham tries to kill his own son! In the portion just preceding this, which some other synagogues read on this day, Sarah demands Hagar and young Ishmael be cast out into the desert. Abraham complies and the child nearly dies. After these events, the immediate next section of Torah tells us that Sarah dies, which the ancient rabbis understand as being a direct result from learning what happened (or almost happened) on Mount Moriah. The Torah never again depicts Isaac and Abraham interacting, and we can easily draw conclusions about why that might be. We never see Hagar again, at least not by name, and Ishmael never returns to his father or brother until his father dies.

            In the newest Reform machzor, there are some reflections on the Torah readings included in the book before the readings themselves are written. Rabbi Alan Henkin writes about Abraham’s m’sirat hanefesh, his willingness to surrender himself. The akeidah teaches us how to respond to Rosh HaShanah because of the moral to transcend one’s own desires and relinquish that which is important to yourself in the name of better serving God. I like the moral, but think it would be better suited if Isaac was in on the sacrifice. Abraham loves his son, but he doesn’t own him and he isn’t giving up a cherished possession. He’s making decisions over someone else’s life and expecting the ultimate sacrifice from someone who isn’t given a choice. Isaac is the one who surrenders himself, who transcends his own body. He takes note of the firewood and butcher knife and the lack of sacrificial animal, and the Torah hints to us that he knows what’s coming. And yet he walks on. The Torah does not tell us he cries out or resists when Abraham binds him. It is not an unreasonable reading of the text to think that Isaac indeed resigns himself to what’s happening. And perhaps he understands why; perhaps he is truly willing to be a sacrifice to God. But even so, it is reasonable for him to be upset with his father for not discussing the matter with him first. Isaac can be both ok with the idea of self-sacrifice and the unknowable nature of God’s demands, and still be not ok with how the situation was handled by Abraham. This conflict of emotion could easily create the kind of situation in which forgiveness is given slowly, coldly, within strict boundaries to their relationship following this event.

            Rabbi Amy Scheinerman writes that the akeidah is a model for our season of teshuvah because it depicts the difficulties of establishing moral relationships with God and our fellow humans. She says, “Avraham’s all-consuming desire to do God’s will at the expense of those he loves most (Sarah, Hagar, Yishmael, Yitzchak) points to areas for moral growth and development for all of us. When we see God as wholly other and divorced from the immediate world of our relationships with human beings, we fail to recognize the God within us and the divine spark within others. God becomes splintered and deformed, and our moral lives do as well.” In other words, we best serve God when we take care of each other. A seeming directive to serve God by hurting others, whether physically or emotionally, through legislation or exclusion, neglect or violence, xenophobia or passive chauvinism, is a directive misunderstood, a test failed. Yet it opens up the opportunity for teshuvah, repentance and forgiveness, returning and becoming a more holistic community.

When Abraham does die, Ishmael and Isaac both come to bury their father together. The Torah tells us that Abraham’s second wife, Ketura, is there as well, and the traditional midrash suggests Ketura is actually Hagar returned. We don’t see what Abraham does for teshuvah, if he does any at all. We don’t hear the sons’ eulogies. We don’t know what their feelings of residual anger and hurt were, or what they felt about the lasting trauma his actions inflicted on their lives. But we do know that they at least forgave him enough to come home and give him a proper burial. They bury him in the Cave of Machpelah next to Sarah, the woman who coldly cast one of them out to die in the wilderness, the mother killed by grief from the actions done to other of them. They are enough at peace with their family dynamics to agree to this, to perform the one final mitzvah that cannot be returned. And then they go their separate ways again.

This year, I invite you all to tune into your own forgiveness journeys. What are the events in your life you are still struggling to forgive? How are you working to move on from them in healthy ways anyway? How do you view those who have hurt you, what is your ongoing relationship like after you have tried to forgive them? What are the ways in which you think you might still be affecting others who are trying to forgive actions of yours? What can you be doing to move forward in those relationships with teshuvah and new foundations of trust? While these gates of prayer, repentance, and judgement are flung wide open these ten days, let us reflect on this and resolve to step into 5780 with greater awareness, more forgiveness, and quicker acts of teshuvah. Amen and Shana Tova.

Erev Rosh HaShana

Behold, the gates are opening! Many of us have been waiting in front of these gates for some time now. Some of us may have begun lining up since Tisha B’Av to get the latest teshuva update. Some prefer to wait until Elul, or even up until Selichot. Some of you in the back maybe just walked up this evening. The more time you’ve spent in preparation, waiting in this line, the quicker you might be able to find what you’re looking for beyond these gates, or the more time you might find you have to leisurely look at multiple options for this year’s teshuva. But even if you don’t like to think too far ahead about these Days of Awe, these gates are opening for you, too, and soon you will have your own opportunity to seek out what you hope for and need beyond them.

As Rosh HaShanah begins, the Gates of Repentance and Judgement begin to swing open, and at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, they will again close for the year. We peek inside, glimpse beyond the veil of Divine mystery, and see our own past, present and future. We face the mistakes we have made and take stock of that which we must atone for. We look inward at our own spiritual life and pray in earnest to better connect with God and each other. And we look ahead at all the ways we will aim higher, try harder, be stronger in the year to come, if only we will be inscribed for blessing in the Book of Life, that large and lofty book that awaits just on the other side of these gates.

We are told each year in our High Holy Day liturgy about these gates, but Rabbi Eleazer, one of our earliest rabbis who helped to write the Mishnah, is recorded as having claimed that the Gates of Prayer closed and were locked permanently when the ancient Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. To support this dramatic claim, he cites the Book of Lamentations, “Also when I cry out, He shuts out my prayer.” However, before we let that information discourage us too much from continuing to pray, he does continue by saying, “Yet, though the gates for prayer are locked, the gates for tears are not, for it is written [in Psalms], ‘Hear my prayer, God, and listen to my cry; do not be silent in the face of my tears’.”

We are faced with so many gates, each with their own patterns of opening and closing. We stand now before the Gates of Repentance and Judgement, hopeful for a good deal on the latest teshuva, looking ahead at the line and wondering how long this is going to take, eager and anxious, excited and a little bored, all at the same time. We know this is a limited time offer, and we need to be here now to take advantage of these gates opening now.

We pray all year, not just for repentance and compassionate judgement, so what does it mean that those gates are closed? For one possibility of historical explanation, Rabbi Eleazar himself lived through the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. How many of us, in moments of our own deepest heartbreaks and hardships, have felt like prayer was simply no longer an option, that there was no one listening anymore, that a new way had to be forged forward to readjust to some new, terrible reality? The early rabbis who wrote the Mishnah did just that. Rabbi Eleazar might have said that the Gates of Prayer closed on that fateful day, but he and his colleagues then proceeded to recreate a new Judaism, one where heartfelt prayer replaced physical sacrifices, where sages replaced priests, where study and knowledge replaced purity, where tribal affiliations fell away and all the remnants of the Israelites were as one community and family, a community that could maintain its ties to each other and the holy land no matter how far any one Jew traveled away from Mount Zion. They forged a new path forward in order to create and maintain a strong foundation of Judaism that the rest of us to always return to, no matter how closed off we feel at any given moment from God and prayer.

And in those moments where the Gates of Prayer feel the most closed off, when we are in the narrow places of oppression, or in the dark belly of a giant sea monster, or by the waters of Babylon, or carried off to the hedonistic city of ancient Rome, or in the Warsaw ghetto, or any other moment that feels like it may be the end of the Jewish people, the Gates of Tears are always open. The Gates of Wailing will always receive our cries of anguish, our earnest pleas to return to a normal life, our demands that Am Yisrael Chai.

So yes, tonight we stand in anticipation for the Grand Re-Opening of the Gates of Repentance and Judgement. Hopefully the only tears any of us will shed over the next ten days will be the cathartic tears of a truly moving spiritual experience. But after Yom Kippur, when these gates close and we fully turn toward our new year, with all the promises we make to ourselves, God, and our loved ones during our time of atonement and resolutions, there will need to continue to be moments of the same fervent spirit with which we pray on the High Holy Days. There will need to continue to be introspection and dedication to our goals if we want this coming year to be at all different, better, than the one we are leaving behind. And there will continue to be fresh tears, fresh difficulties and hurts, failures to achieve perfection, new incidents for which to atone next year. As long as we remember to cry out to the Gates that are always open, perhaps the Gates of Prayer will open up for us again as well, and along with them, maybe new gates: Gates of Compassion, Gates of Justice, Gates of Comfort, Gates of Love, Gates of Welcome. May these gates never close.

As we enter through the gates of a new year, may we remember to always open the gates of our own hearts to the Divine spirit that moves through each of us, open toward others, and open for allowing ourselves to grow. Amen and Shana Tova.

Parashat Ki Tavo

            Shabbat Shalom! In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Ki Tavo, Moses is wrapping up his Deuteronomy-long final address to the people. From here on out, it’s a lot about blessings and curses, about choosing to do the mitzvot or choosing to turn away from them. Here is where the Israelites start to be really pushed to understand all that they agreed to back at Sinai, and what their responsibilities will be upon entering the Promised Land, how to uphold their end of the covenant to the One who led them safely out of slavery through the wilderness and right into the land flowing with milk and honey.

There’s a part in the parasha where Moses instructs them to find two specific mountains upon entering the Holy Land, and he splits the tribes up, telling some tribes to climb one mountain and the others to climb the opposite mountain. One mountain gets to shout all the blessings, “If you heed the word of the Lord you will be blessed in the city and the country … in your comings and your goings… etc.” And all the people will respond, “Amen”. The other mountain gets to shout all the curses, “If you don’t heed the word of the Lord you shall be cursed in the country and in the city … in your comings and your goings … etc.” And all the people will respond “Amen.” I once taught this scene to second graders by splitting the class in half and giving each student in the blessing half to share something good, “Bless ice cream!” The other half had a chance to share something negative, “Curse homework!” and then after each child shared their blessing or their curse, the rest of the class had to respond, “Amen”. We talked about gratitude and responsibility and why some rules are important to keep us safe and to teach us how to be good people. It was a lot of fun, and I think most of the kids got the message, though for sure some just enjoyed shouting what they liked or didn’t like.

A little earlier in the parasha, we find the words I just read: “The LORD your God commands you this day to observe these laws and rules; observe them faithfully with all your heart and soul. You have affirmed this day that the LORD is your God, that you will walk in His ways, that you will observe His laws and commandments and rules, and that you will obey Him. And the LORD has affirmed this day that you are, as He promised you, His treasured people who shall observe all His commandments, and that He will set you, in fame and renown and glory, high above all the nations that He has made; and that you shall be, as He promised, a holy people to the LORD your God.” On these passages, Rashi says, “When it says ‘this day’. God means that each day the mitzvot should be to you as something new, as though you had received the commands that very day for the first time.” Sforno adds that in this way, the mitzvot will guide us to “try and emulate God’s characteristics to the extent that God has seen fit to reveal them to each of us; to the best of our abilities we are to understand the meaning of life through the lens of Torah and to teach it.”

On Wednesday, I took a Talmud class with the radically traditional yeshiva Svara. The instructor explained that the name of the program, Svara, comes from one of the principles by which Jewish law is derived in the Talmud, and it translates roughly as moral intuition. She reminded us that it is our duty as Jews, as studiers of Jewish law each in our own right, to follow our own moral intuition. Using the Torah, tradition, and our ancestors as our guide, we must make the mitzvot new and relevant for ourselves each day, and rely on our own svara to enable us to emulate the Divine and to teach others to do the same. I believe that each person in this room has the ability to do this. I have had the opportunity to see it up close with some of you, in conversations about Judaism and God, in all manner of classes and holiday celebrations. It renews my own love for Judaism and my ability to experience these daily prayers and rituals as new when I see others doing the same. In this way, we are able to lift each other up, and carry on the Jewish people.

May each of you discover your own love of Torah, filled with complexity and God-wrestling, that each day may feel new and Divine. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

Parashat Ki Teitzei

            Shabbat Shalom. This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Ki Teitzei, contains more commandments than any other single Torah portion. Many of them have nothing to do with one another, and some of them which seem like they might fall into a similar category are scattered throughout the reading, rather than being grouped together. This section of Deuteronomy is a list of “Because I said so” type rules from God, pouring out of Moses as he remembers each one.

            There are a good handful that may fall within a “fair business practice” category. Rules against exacting interest when giving a loan to your neighbors and friends, rules against using tricky means of falsifying weights and measures, rules about paying employees fair wages and on time, and about being kind in how to treat collateral on a loan. There are rules to let the oxen munch on the grains as it pulls the plow, and rules to allow the destitute come and eat that which is left unplowed. There are also many other unrelated rules in the parasha, so it’s hard to say that there’s any consistent theme, but at least one of the themes of the Torah as a whole, which is shown through these verses, could be said to be a strong work ethic that breeds generosity and fairness.

            Now, many of us in this room have careers that don’t exactly lend themselves to these types of business ethics. We aren’t farmers, many are not storeowners or money lenders, aren’t in a position that pays employees directly, or weighs goods, and so on. But if the teachings of our sacred scriptures are this concerned with how people engaged with one another on small, personal transactions and how people treat their work animals and such, all the more so we can assume the importance of professional ethics in careers that require leadership roles. When we have jobs that extend beyond an “office” and become part of our identities, it is essential to know what our values truly are and live them all the time. I know I feel that way as a clergy person, and I can imagine some of you feel that way about your professions and life choices. One of the final lines of this week’s reading is, “Everyone who deals dishonestly is abhorrent to the Lord.” Whether in business dealings or in community leadership, we are expected to live righteously and deal with those we engage professionally with empathy and honesty. In doing do, we may build a stronger and more trusting community together.

This Shabbat, may we commit to working together in honest dealings, treating each other with respect and generosity. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.