Walking Hadrian's Wall

For a link to a 13 minute video of my coast-to-coast walk across England on the Hadrian's Wall path last month, see:

https://vimeo.com/1028600588?share=copy

Busy Being Born

Thirty-six years—which is to say, double “Chai” or two Jewish lifetimes ago—I received my rabbinic ordination from the Hebrew Union College.  On that occasion, my father, Rabbi Arnold Fink, had the honor of addressing the congregation of teachers, classmates, friends and family.  He acknowledged the holiness of the hour, then reminded us that every rabbi’s authority is a gift bestowed by the community that they serve.  He opened with a verse from that morning’s Torah portion, Beha’alotchah:

Bring the Levites forward before the Holy One, and let the children of Israel lay their hands upon the Levites. . . 

Commenting on this passage, Dad noted: 

The people ordain!  Your communities will teach you about God, and their lives will be Torah.  You will celebrate with them in their joys and bring them comfort in their sorrows, for they will give you access to themselves that they will extend to no one else, in the highest and lowest moments of life.  They will shape you and you will become different because of those whose lives touch yours.  

As I reflect upon three decades as your rabbi, my father’s words feel prophetic.  Over the course of our journey together, we have shared so many sacred occasions.  We have danced at weddings, kvelled at baby namings and b’nai mitzvah, rejoiced at birthdays, graduations, and anniversaries.  We have also mourned heartbreaking losses—deaths and divorces, debilitating illnesses, unemployment, infertility—and endured countless ordinary setbacks and indignities.  We’ve marched for justice at MLK Day, partied for LGBTQ equality at Pride, demonstrated for democracy and human rights.  We have fed the hungry, housed the homeless, rallied for refugees and welcomed new Americans.  We’ve also davened from an evolving array of prayerbooks, Reform and Conservative, in this historic sanctuary that we moved from its original home on State Street—and in local parks, on Payette Lake at our annual retreat in McCall, and in the Owyhee and Sawtooth wilderness for desert seders and teen backpacking trips.

Over the past thirty years we have more than doubled in size, growing together with the Treasure Valley through boom and bust, prosperity and pandemic, tragedy and triumph and everything in between.  We’ve lived through times of war and peace, for Israel and America, and supported one another in this alarming season of skyrocketing antisemitism.  In a stridently polarized world, we strive, always, to embody inclusive, caring and compassionate community, to truly listen to one another in ways that both respect our differences and celebrate our shared commitment to our tradition’s highest calling: to uphold the ultimate dignity of humanity and all Creation.

My friends, working in partnership with this holy congregation has been one of my life’s greatest privileges.  As Psalm 119 teaches: Mi kol m’lamdai hiskalti—From all of my teachers, I have gleaned wisdom.  Just as my father foretold, I have learned—and continue to learn—from my entire community.  I have had the honor of serving with an evolving and deeply gifted staff and countless extraordinary volunteers—each and every one of you has essentially shaped the rabbi and the person that I have become.  

I do not take this distinction for granted.  I know, all too well, from troubling conversations with colleagues, that this is not always the nature of the rabbi-congregational relationship.  I’ve heard many trying tales of intractable conflict and chronic ill-will from peers who lament, “It’s dark out there!”  But that has never been my experience and such accounts only remind me just how incredibly lucky I’ve been.  While we have experienced a few disappointments and disagreements along the way, as even the best long-term partnerships inevitably bring, I can honestly note that I’ve never doubted that our contract was anything but a true brit, a sacred covenant grounded in mutual respect, love, and light.  Every morning, I can unequivocally affirm the beautiful line embedded in the Shacharit service: 

Ashreynu, mah tov chelkeynu, mah na’im goraleynu

How blessed I am, how good my portion, how fortunate my fate!

**********

Beloved CABI members and friends, as I have been privileged to both grieve and celebrate with you in your lives’ defining passages, so, too, have you stood with me and my family over the course of our own.  You were with us through a divorce and a second marriage, my father’s too early death, a pregnancy, and the coming of age of all my children.  You accompanied us even when the roads we chose did not necessarily follow custom or convention.  You walked with me as we found our way, bountifully extending your love and support.  When I came here in 1994, you were my congregation.  Over the ensuing years, you became my community.  Thank you.

As for my family, having grown up the son of a rabbi myself, I know a bit about the challenges of being part of a rabbinic household.  I recognize that while I freely chose the public pressures of this path, for Janet and Tanya and Rosa and Rachel and Jonah, it was part of the package that came with having me as their partner and father.  Yet over the years, they have each, in their own way, worn this inheritance with unsurpassed grace.  For their unerring support, unconditional love, boundless patience, creativity, compassion, and wisdom, I am grateful beyond measure.

In this moment, I recall a beautiful passage from Rabbi Harold Kushner’s reflection on the life of Moses.  He writes:

In the grace after meals in the Jewish tradition, we ask God to bless us, “as You blessed our forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with a brachah shleimah, a full and complete blessing.” But the Bible tells us of how their lives were marked by fertility problems, quarrels with neighbors, conflicts between husbands and wives, between parents and children.  What sort of blessings were these?  I can only understand the phrase “a full and complete blessing” to mean the experience of life in its fullness, taking everything that life has to offer, the bitter and the sweet, the honey and the bee stings, love and loss, joy and despair, hope and rejection.  The blessing of completeness means a full life, not an easy life, a life that strikes the black keys and the white keys on the keyboard so that every emotional tone is sounded.

That is exactly the kind of blessing that you have all given to me over the past thirty years.

**********

Now we enter a season of change.  The coming months offer what I faithfully believe will be a time of fruitful transition, as I settle into retirement and CABI’s journey continues with Rabbi Appel as interim and then, God willing, with a gifted settled rabbi.  Those passages will certainly pose their challenges, as almost no significant transformations come with utter ease.  We will be in a place that our tradition—including this week’s Torah portion and the biblical book that contains it—refers to as bamidar, in the wilderness.  Rabbi Lawrence Kushner’s description of that geographical and metaphorical locale offers both instruction and a kind of hard-won consolation, as he writes in Honey from the Rock:

Wilderness is not just a desert through which we wandered for forty years. It is a way of being. A place that demands being open to the flow of life around you. A place that demands being honest with yourself without regard to the cost in personal anxiety. A place that demands being present with all of yourself. In the wilderness your possessions cannot surround you. Your preconceptions cannot protect you. Your logic cannot promise you the future. You are left alone each day with an immediacy that astonishes, chastens, and exults. You see the world as if for the first time. 

With this in mind, I ask your forbearance as I conclude with just one piece of soon-to-be rabbi emeritus advice by way of a classic Jewish story:

There was once a community whose longtime rabbi was nearing retirement.  The congregation loved this rabbi, who had served them well for much of her adult life.  They were accustomed to her ways, comfortable with her style, and content under her leadership.  So it was with a heavy heart that they took on the task of finding her successor.

But the decision, at least initially, proved surprisingly simple: they decided that upon the rabbi’s stepping down, they would hire her daughter.  This, they were convinced, was the perfect solution, providing the continuity that they so desired.

Well, as planned, the rabbi retired and her daughter assumed her position at the synagogue.  But it wasn’t long before some of the congregants started to notice that the new rabbi’s manner was quite distinctive from her mother’s.  She followed some divergent customs and took a very different approach to problem-solving.  This confused the congregants, so the board of directors decided they needed to clarify matters.  They scheduled a talk with the young rabbi.

When the time arrived, they invited the rabbi into the conference room and got straight to the point: “Why,” they asked her, “do you do things so very differently from your mother?”

To which the young rabbi calmly replied: “I do exactly as my mother does.  She always blazed her own path as this congregation’s rabbi, refusing to imitate anyone else.  I follow that same course.”

My friends, in that spirit, the single kernel of counsel that I urge you to consider—the lone request I make tonight—is that while honoring our community’s core values, you also remain open to the new visions, pathways, and proceses that my successors will undoubtedly bring to the table.  For while we do not know for certain what forms Jewish community will take in the years to come, and we possess no assurances of what will bring success, of this we can be sure: doing the same old thing, year after year, is a surefire guarantee of failure.  As my rebbe Bob Dylan noted long ago, he not busy being born is busy dying.   And so I end with the time-honored words that Moses offered to Joshua as he passed the mantle of leadership to the next generation:

Chazak v’amatz—go forward, with boldness, strength, and good courage.

Keep busy being born.

Ken y’hi ratzon

People Get Ready: Lessons in Liberation from Moses and Motown

Special thanks to the Idaho Human Rights Commission, for the opportunity to speak at today's MLK celebration, and to Cherie Buckner-Webb, for bringing the songs to life

Social justice work is hard even under the best of circumstances; in tough times and adverse settings, it can feel impossibly daunting.  For human rights activists here in Idaho, the current landscape is extraordinarily challenging.  Economic inequity deepens; hunger and homelessness strain our streets, gun violence proliferates.  Racism, misogyny, antisemitism and Islamophobia poison these halls; too many of the legislators charged with protecting the rights of our most vulnerable citizens instead seem to revel in bashing immigrants, eviscerating reproductive rights, and endangering lesbian, gay, queer, and trans Idahoans. Most of the majority party is in thrall to an authoritarian ex-president who feeds on rage, foments insurrection, and despises democracy.  Year after year, the worst extremists run roughshod over common sense and decency while moderates who know better too often lack the courage to stand for their convictions.  All too often, walking through the door of this statehouse feels like entering Dante’s gate to hell, with its infamous inscription: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

But this is not an option.  With lives on the line, we dare not surrender to futility. Instead, on this sacred day, dedicated to human rights, let us seek solace and wisdom from those who have traveled the path before us.  Dr. King’s vision of hope was hewn out of a mountain of despair. And even Moses, the great liberator of the Hebrew Bible, experienced shattering dejection before leading his people out of Egypt.  When he first promises to free the Israelites, they cannot hear his message of redemption, due to what Torah describes as kotzer ruach (Exodus 6:6-7).  While the exact meaning of this phrase is open to interpretation, one prominent commentator understands it as a kind of spiritual impatience, suggesting that the Israelites briefly took heart but grew demoralized as the plagues wore on, failing to recognize that freedom does not blossom overnight. It’s a cautionary tale of how dashed expectations can quickly turn to despondency.

 So how do we make our way through Idaho’s howling political wilderness toward our vison of the Promised Land?  Alas, I have no sure roadmap for that journey.  The best I can offer this afternoon is some modest advice gleaned from a couple of my favorite teachers: Moses and Motown.  I’ve already introduced the former; we’ll approach the latter through three of the civil rights movement’s most influential anthems: Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come”; Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready”; and Martha and the Vandellas’ “Dancing in the Streets”.

**********

There been times that I thought I couldn't last for long

But now I think I'm able to carry on

It's been a long, a long time coming but I know

A change gonna come, oh yes it will.

            -Sam Cook, "A Change is Gonna Come"

Through countless trials and tribulations, Moses recognized that the liberation journey would extend beyond his own lifetime. So he spent forty years preparing the next generation to cross the Jordan and died gazing on the plains of Canaan from afar.  Echoing that experience, Dr. King spoke prophetically the night before his own death: “We’ve got some difficult days ahead.  But it doesn’t matter to me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.”  So, too, Sam Cooke was fatally shot two weeks before his classic, “A Change is Gonna Come” hit the airwaves.  Like Moses and MLK, he reminds us that the pursuit of justice is a marathon, not a sprint.  It’s a long time coming, he achingly acknowledges; there are no short cuts on the road to freedom.  

We forget this wisdom at our peril.  Too often, understandably hungry for immediate returns after decades of electoral losses, we expend copious time and money on big ticket races only to inevitably lose badly.  Sam Cooke suggests that we are better off playing a long game, creating a justice campaign that grows from the grassroots up rather than trickling down from the halls of power. We need to think bigger than two-to-four-year political cycles.  Instead of pouring millions of dollars into currently futile statewide races, we can build a movement starting with PTOs, school boards, county commissions, highway districts. Home by home, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Consider the example of Reclaim Idaho, whose strategy is straightforward: One campaign at a time, we seek to grow a movement of local leaders and volunteers with the power to demand change. It isn’t glamorous but it works.  Year after year, our legislature refused to expand Medicaid even as countless Idahoans unnecessarily sickened, died, and fell deep into debt with medical expenses.  So Reclaim Idaho campaigned tirelessly behind the scenes to create a ballot initiative, and in 2018, over 60% of Idahoans voted for Medicaid expansion.  Here was hard evidence for a truth I think we all knew in our hearts: Idahoans are better than the extremists we elect to represent us.  When we take the long way, making our case door by door, we can accomplish great things.  

My colleague, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, teaches that we generally overestimate how much we can realize in a year, but underestimate what we can achieve in ten.  Another wise teacher, Wes Jackson, takes this principle even farther.  Back in the early 1970s, he recognized that contemporary agriculture is fundamentally unsustainable and set out to develop a radically new agrarian practice. For the past five decades, he has toiled at that task, breeding new perennial hybrids to feed healthy human communities. A few years ago, a journalist asked him, “How long will it take before you succeed?” Jackson replied: “I believe we’ll find our answers within the next twenty-five years.”

The questioner followed up: “But you are well into your eighties!  It seems extremely unlikely that you’ll live to see that day.  Isn’t it terribly frustrating, to labor so long without witnessing the fruit of your efforts?”

Wes Jackson paused for a moment, then responded: “If your life’s work can be completed within your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”

It's been a long, a long time coming, but I know a change gonna come

**********

People get ready there's a train a-coming

You don't need no baggage, you just get on board

All you need is faith to hear the diesels humming

Don't need no ticket--you just thank the Lord

            -Curtis Mayfield, "People Get Ready"

Curtis Mayfield’s anthem, “People Get Ready” is a masterpiece in a long line of Black American hymns that invite the listener aboard the freedom train bound for a better world.  While Mayfield pointedly denies admission to the truly malevolent who would “hurt all mankind just to save his own,” he emphasizes from start to finish that this railroad promises hope for everyone else.  It’s picking up passengers from coast to coast, no baggage, no ticket required.  You just get on board.  That inclusive spirit of beloved community is the engine that drives the whole train down the tracks.  We move forward only when—and because—we travel together.

Moses teaches the same lesson at a critical junction in his struggle with Pharaoh.  With the plague of locusts devouring every growing thing in Egypt, Pharaoh’s courtiers persuade their boss to offer a compromise: he will let Moses, Aaron, and the Israelite men go and worship their God.  But Moses knows better than to divide the people, whose strength lies in their unity. Without a moment’s hesitation he replies: We will all go together, young and old, with our sons and our daughters alike.  Then, as now, our capacity to prevail depends upon our unbreakable solidarity.

Alas, too often in our contemporary human rights work, we create barriers and baggage, demanding that our fellow pilgrims pass litmus tests to earn their tickets to ride.  Instead of working through our legitimate differences on assumptions and tactics, we divide into competing tribes, prioritizing ideological absolutism over consensus and compromise.  In his essay, “Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis,” activist Maurice Mitchell argues that to effectively combat rampant racist and authoritarian forces, we must nurture pragmatic partnerships.  He warns against the kind of unyielding purity that holds anything less than the most idealistic position as a betrayal of core values and evidence of corruption or cowardice.  How can we move forward, he asks, if we self-righteously refuse to engage with those who do not already share all our views and values? 

If this cautionary note holds true for Maurice Mitchell, who lives in deep blue New York surrounded by progressive allies, all the more so for us here in Idaho, where we can scarcely afford to alienate potential coalition partners.  In our environment, unity creates possibility; division spells doom.  As with Moses and the ancient Israelites, our liberation journey depends upon our ability to travel together.  We need to march side by side: vegans with hunters in support of wilderness; socialist academics with blue collar unions for fair wages; radical queer activists with mainstream libertarians for gay rights; liberal Democrats with moderate Republicans for open primaries; Jews and Muslims and atheists and liberal Christians against white fundamentalist nationalism.  For as Dr. King reminded us: We may have come over on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

We are stronger together.  You don’t need no ticket—you just get on board.

**********       

Callin' out around the world

Are you ready for a brand new beat?

Summer's here and the time is right

For dancing in the streeets

            -Martha Reeves and the Vandellas

Emma Goldman famously proclaimed: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution”; Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’ 1964 hit “Dancing in the Street” provides the groove.  Legend has it that the song’s writers, Mickey Stevenson and Marvin Gaye were driving through the streets of Detroit when they saw children of different races playing and dancing in the water of an open-fire hydrant. That image of integration inspired the two men to create the song.

For the hard work of justice to endure, it must be suffused with joy.  The night before the Israelites left Egypt, Moses declared a communal holiday, celebrating the Passover before it actually happened: This day shall be to you one of remembrance; you shall rejoice in it as a festival for all time.  Though much hard labor lay both ahead and behind—though Pharaoh’s legions would soon be in furious pursuit—it was nonetheless essential to make time for gladness and thanksgiving.

In her article “Black Justice, Black Joy,” Lindsay Norward of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund writes: 

For weeks following the horrific murder of George Floyd, protesters took to the streets. Brimming with passion and energy, the sounds of their despair and exhaustion at persistent injustices reverberated. At the same time, though, lively chants, speakers blasting protest anthems, rhythmic drumming, and joyous song saliently filled the air, harmonizing against the clash of tear gas and violence directed at them as they rallied for justice.

Within these sounds, despite and amid the pain, were expressions rooted in Black joy. 

These simultaneous expressions of deep sorrow and hopeful elation are an enduring part of Black people’s present and past in the United States, existing in various forms throughout the long and winding fight for civil rights and racial equality. . . Voting rights foot soldiers in 1965 crooned “Freedom Songs” as they marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, despite facing unspeakable violence and harassment from law enforcement. In sharing joy amid sorrow, Black people have not only challenged injustice with triumph —they’ve envisioned the unwritten and unseen within the future, imagining what could be possible. 

Make no mistake: our demonstrations are deficient without dancing and graceless without gratitude.  Even as we live amidst cruelty, suffering, and bigotry, let us remember that this world is also filled with beauty, courage, and delight.  Without those precious stores to draw upon in times of trial, we would soon deplete ourselves of the holy energy we need to bend the arc toward justice.  So look around this room.  Celebrate the faces and look into the eyes of those who stand here, together, side by side, and smile.  Take good pleasure in this soulful congregation of friends and strangers dedicated to the fulfillment of Dr. King’s dream.  Savor the blessing—the unquenchable joy—of Cherie Buckner-Webb’s extraordinary voice and know: the time is right for dancing in the street!

**********

My friends, I believe that a change is gonna come.  I don’t expect the work to be finished within my lifetime, but I know, with all my heart and soul, that one day this Capitol dome will ring with liberty and justice for all Idahoans.  

So, people, get ready.  

There’s work to be done.  

Let’s dance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5zDRtEC0x0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOXmaSCt4ZE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Uv959QuCg

Mr. Menorah-head 5784/2023

As their favorite season drew closer this year

The Jews down in Jew-ville lacked Chanukah cheer

They all loved this holiday, boychiks and maidels

They longed to light candles, eat latkes, spin dreidels

To gather their families, from lands far and wide

To sing “Rock of Ages” and eat stuff that’s fried

But this year the season brought trouble and grief

The Jew-ville Jews struggled to find some relief

Alone and uncertain, forlorn and unsure

Wandering lost through the thick fog of war

Hostages suffering who knows what fate?

Rising intolerance, anger and hate

Alliances collapsed and old friendships frayed

Again and again, the Jews felt betrayed

Anxious, abandoned and bleeding at heart

Facing such tzures, where should we start?

Alas, where extremists on both sides agreed

Was in blaming our people, in word and in deed

Yes, folks with the most divergent of views

Had one thing in common: contempt for the Jews

On campuses, hubris and ethical error

Led so-called progressives to champion terror

With prominent activist scholars and writers

Saluting Hamas as brave freedom fighters

They scorned Jews as colonists—heaven forbid

We should dwell in the land where our ancestors lived

On the right Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk

Talked smack about Jews from dawn until dusk

They and their cronies defame and debase us

Supporting the folks who say Jews won’t replace us.

Some cheered on Bibi but that was a ruse—

For to love right-wing Israel is not to love Jews

With so many villains putting us down,

The Jew-ville Jews feared for the fate of their town

Yes, all of the shtetl was filled with dismay

Would a hero arise who could still save the day?

Every Jew down in Jew-ville, each boychick and maidel

Held hope Lucy Latke and Dana the Dreidel

And brave Gershon Geltbag might relieve the tension

But as it turned out, they had all gone on pension.

All hope seemed to fade as the day it grew dimmer

But off in the distance, the Jews saw a glimmer

It moved toward the people, quite quickly it sped

Yet the light did not shine on Menorah-head’s head

(Menorahhead and boxing rabbi)

Yes, although their old hero had clearly returned

His bald head was dark where the candles once burned

And boxing Reb Moishe, his side kick of years

Looked ragged and weary, his face lined with tears

The people cried, “Save us!”—their hero said, “No—

We must all work together if we want to grow

There’s no Caped Crusader and no super power

To come to the rescue in this urgent hour

Help won’t descend like a gift from the skies—

If you seek peace and justice, then friends, now arise!

I’ll be cheering you on every step of the way

Your time—it is now, the work starts today! 

It’s true the world’s broken, and feeling quite dark

But if you want light, you must gather up sparks

And kindle new flames, for in this trying time

You’re the ones who must make hope and history rhyme

Know that to love your own tribe is no sin;

In fact this is where human love must begin

Hillel was right—he spoke truthfully

If I’m not for myself, who will be for me?

Does life have you down with the Chanukah blues?

Then embrace who you are and stand tall with the Jews

With your feet on the ground and your head in the sky

Give thanks for our people, Am Yisrael Chai!

But the quote’s other half you must also apply:

If I’m only for myself, then what am I?

If we don’t also grieve Palestinian dead

Then we’ve hardened our hearts and our souls and our heads.

The grim path of Bibi, Smotrich and Ben Gvir

Leaves no hope for peace—only cruelty and fear

Such a harsh moral vision, so stingy and narrow

Is unworthy of Jews—it’s the failed path of Pharaoh

Though at times we must fight, pray for bloodshed to cease

When living with war, don’t stop working for peace

And though the Jew-hatred has left a big scar,

Times like these show us who are true friends really are

Even though we’re all hurting, in life’s stormy weather

There’s solace in knowing we face it together

The darkness will pass, the light will return

The bright flames of freedom will once again burn

Then gathering strength, without hesitation

Menorah-head implored his whole congregation: 

For the past thirty years we’ve fought tyrants galore

For each we’ve defeated, arose several more

The prophet spoke truth though it’s hard now to hear it:

Not by might, not by power, but only by spirit

In the end superheroes will not save this nation—

Together you must make your own celebration

In tough times like these, in the dark of the night

If we’re to prevail, you must all kindle light

Friends, you each have your own righteous light you must sow—

So let your light shine and the darkness will go!  

Then each Jewville Jew looked into their soul

And the flame of community glowed like a coal

With courage and faith, they banished despair

And it’s said that a great miracle happened there—

Hope was rekindled, hatred was gone

As Jewville burst into a Chanukah song—

And the neighboring nations—they all sang along! 

They sang about peace, of Salaam and Shalom

Of hope and of healing upon their shared home. 

And Mr. Menorahead, now shining bright

Said “Gut Yuntiff to all and to all a good night.”

Living in the Balance (portion Lech L'chah 5784/2023)

In this dark and difficult time—as in so many dark and difficult times past—Torah offers guidance.  

In the midst of the conflict in Israel and Gaza, I find it extraordinary that this week’s portion, Lech L’chah—a story written three thousand years ago—speaks deeper truth and offers more profound insight into our current situation than the latest hour’s headlines from media sources both left and right.  Let us listen, together.

We begin with God’s call to Abraham and Sarah: “Go from your country and your kindred and your ancestral home to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”

And we end with an affirmation of the gift of the land as part of an everlasting covenant, where the Holy One promises: I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land where you are now a sojourner, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding, and I will be their God.

From start to finish, the parshah reiterates, again and again, the bond between the Jewish people, born of our father Abraham and mother Sarah, and our ancient and beloved homeland of Israel.  That land is a gift that is hard-earned.  God prophesies to Abraham that his offspring will be strangers in Egypt, oppressed and enslaved for four hundred years.  And so it goes.  But the promise is never forgotten.  Through bondage and wandering in the wilderness, it endures.  Finally, Joshua leads us over the threshold.  Judges wage war, David founds Jerusalem, Solomon builds the Temple, kings and queens rise and fall, empires come and go.  But we never forget Zion, and we never abandon it either.  Even when we lack political power, Jews have always made it their holy home.

The land was, is, and will continue to be, the covenantal blessing of Abraham through us, the Jewish people, his spiritual descendants.

**********

This narrative puts to lie to the colonialist perspective through which too many critics on the far left view the current conflict.  Jewish Israelis are not imperialist outsiders; they are indigenous people rooted in the holy land from the beginning—though I hasten to add, and more on this in a few minutes—we must always remember that we are not the only indigenous residents.  But yes, Israel is the home of the Jewish people.  It is the place to which our tribe has always returned.

And I want to affirm that it is no sin to care first and foremost about one’s own tribe.  Universal concerns do not erase our particularist passions.  Any good parent puts their own children first—not because they are better than other people’s children but precisely because they are ours.  Family.  I unapologetically love Israel, the Jewish people, and place them at the center of my concern—not because we are chosen over others but because they are my people.  Torah reminds us that there is no sin in caring for our own, especially in hard times—and given the antisemitism that the current conflict has aroused all over the world, especially from some of my usual allies on the progressive left, I stand proudly with my people.

AND. . . and I choose to say “and” rather than “but” because both halves of this truth are equally important—our Torah portion demands that we extend our circle of care and concern and empathy and justice beyond the boundaries of our tribe.  It reminds us that while it is, as I have said, natural and permissible, to care first and foremost for one’s own children, it is not acceptable to harden our hearts and ignore the suffering of other people’s children—even (or especially) in the middle of a war.

We learn this in the middle of this week’s portion where, in between all of God’s promises of land and prosperity for the people of Israel, we encounter the story of Hagar and Ishmael.  Here’s what my teacher, Rabbi Shai Held, says about that narrative:

In Genesis 16, the chapter immediately following God's covenant ceremony with Abraham, the text tells us of Hagar, an Egyptian maidservant. Employing a word that cannot be coincidental, we learn that Sarah, Abraham's wife, "oppressed her" (va-te'anneha, from innui, or oppression, 16:6). The role reversal is stark: an Israelite mistress subjugates her Egyptian slave, and the term used to describe the slave's experience is a word almost always associated with what the Israelites suffer at the hands of Egypt. And by a simple shift in vowels, the Egyptian slave's name, Hagar, becomes "Ha-Ger," the stranger. Gerut (being a stranger), avdut (being a slave), and innui (being oppressed) are here the fate of an Egyptian, exposed to the cruelties of her Israelite master.

Why does Genesis go out of its way, in the very first chapter after the terms of the covenant between God and Abraham are set, to tell us of an Egyptian slave being oppressed by an Israelite? In order to tell us something crucial, I think: the role of victim and victimizer are not set in stone. Israelites are not always victims, any more than Egyptians are always victimizers. Perhaps the Torah is nervous about crudely triumphalistic interpretations of the covenant, according to which being God's chosen people somehow implies moral blamelessness…

The Torah also warns against another form of triumphalism. Perhaps the Israelites will assume that being God's elect is equivalent to being the only people about whom God cares. So again, right after the blessings are first expressed to Abraham, the text tells us that God promised Hagar, as God promised Abraham, abundant offspring, too numerous to be counted (16:10). The text gives voice to God's concern with the Egyptian slave with great poignancy. Abraham and Sarah never refer to Hagar by name; to them, she is always just the slave-girl, a womb without her own identity as a person. So it is extremely striking that the very first word the angel of God utters when he finds her in the wilderness is "Hagar" (16:8). The Egyptian slave, nameless to her Israelite masters, has a name. Hagar, in turn, gives God a name, El-Ro'i, the "God of seeing", or perhaps, the "God who sees me". (If I am not mistaken, she is the only character in the Bible who gives God a name).

Tonight, I want to encourage us to see with open eyes, to see the suffering of our brothers and sisters in Israel, and of the Palestinian people, the descendants of Ishmael and Hagar.

Let us follow the path of the God of Lech L’chah and reject the binaries of us and them.  This is not a sport where we celebrate one team’s glorious domination of another.   We are better than that, capable of holding truths in tension with one another rather than reducing ourselves to moral simpletons.  In that kind of zero sum game, everyone loses.  This is not Isaac vs. Ishmael, Jews against Muslims or Israelis against Palestinians.  To stand for Israel is not to stand against Gaza.  The God of portion Lech L’chah wants us to seek peace for the people of Israel and for the civilians in Gaza, too—to pray for victory over Hamas and, at the same time, to grieve the mounting death toll of Palestinians caught in the crossfire.  

So let us go—lech l’chah, l’chhi lach—in community together. 

V’heyay brachah—and be a blessing.

Be a proud Jew.  And be a mensch.

Love and Hate, War and Peace

Ecclesiastes teaches that there is a season for every experience under heaven:

Eit leh’ehov v’eit lisno, eit milchamah v’eit shalom

A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace

But in this confusing, terrible time that we, the Jewish people, are living through right now, when it so often feels like we are experiencing all of these conflicting things at once, both God and the devil are in the details: love, hate, war, peace—which one, when, in what proportions, and how do we hold them, and ourselves, together? 

We arrive here united in grief, upset, and anger—and, I suspect, already divided in our thoughts around what happens next.  Being Jews, on that question, we must live with incongruities, both in our community and even, or especially, within our own hearts.  

Because in a world of no good options, we must seek solace and support in one another.  The Talmud teaches: 

"A person should be distressed together with the community. As we found with Moses our teacher that he was distressed together with the community, as it is stated during the war with Amalek: But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat upon it (Exodus 17:12). But didn’t Moses have one pillow or one cushion to sit upon; why was he forced to sit on a rock? Rather, Moses said as follows: Since the Jewish people are immersed in suffering, I too will be with them in suffering, as much as I am able, although I am not participating in the fighting. The baraita adds: And anyone who is distressed together with the community will merit seeing the consolation of the community."

And so we gather, to offer our prayers and songs and meditations in a way that embraces, or at least holds together, all of the contradictions, the paradoxes, quarrels and questions that are part and parcel of this badly broken world.

We will pray for peace, for shalom—and for victory over Hamas, whose evil has been laid bare by their barbaric deeds

We will pray for the innocent civilians in harm’s way—and for our Israeli soldiers who must fight in the most perilous of places against a foe that uses those civilians as human shields

We will pray for those held hostage, for their quick and safe return, even as we acknowledge the cost and danger of negotiating with terrorists.

We pray for wisdom and strength, compassion and justice.

And we sing, because we can all sing.

Kol Nidre 5784: Singing Our Way to the Promised Land

Late summer, 1970.  I’m nine years old, lying in bed, lamenting that my baseball team, the perpetually terrible Washington Senators, have lost yet again.  My low-fi transistor radio is hidden beneath my pillow, its bulbous white earpiece furtively wired up to my right ear.  As the postgame show winds down, I start to doze, too sleepy to turn off the radio.  And then, like a bolt of lightning, I’m wide awake, enraptured by the strange and breathtaking music crackling through the headphone: Oh, Mama, can this really be the end, to be stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again?

That was the first time I heard Bob Dylan, and it changed my life.  “Stuck in Inside of Mobile” is a surreal seven-minute journey populated by mythical and historical characters: the Senator, Preacher, Shakespeare, Rag Man, Rain Man, Neon Madmen, and a recently deceased grandfather who “built a fire on Main Street and shot it full of holes.”  As I listened that long ago night, I had no clue what the words were about, and though I’ve been an amateur Dylanologist my entire adult life, I mostly still don’t.  But it didn’t matter, because the music was so remarkable—an uncanny mix of electric guitar, organ, and harmonica that Dylan later described as “that thin wild mercury sound, metallic and bright gold”— the closest he ever came to capturing on vinyl the tones he heard in his own head.   I was mesmerized, transported to a brighter, weirder world, unbound by laws, where the possibilities felt limitless.  All I understood was that I wanted more.  What I felt was awe.

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Awe is my theme for this sacred season, the Yamim Nora’im—Days of Awe.  In his new book on the subject, Dacher Keltner identifies several realms where we experience deep wonder.  On Rosh Hashanah, I spoke about two: nature and moral beauty.  Tonight, I turn to another: music.  After all, it is a melody—Kol Nidre—that gives this holiest evening of the Jewish year its name. The story of that song says a lot about how and why music moves us.

While one can trace the origins of this legalistic annulment of vows, we know that, from its first appearance, in 8th century Babylon, most of the leading Sages opposed its inclusion in our liturgy.  In 879 CE, the editor of the first siddur, Rav Amram Gaon, called it minhag shtus, a foolish custom.  Since then, many venerated rabbinic authorities have argued against Kol Nidre, dismissing it as a misguided practice that makes light of pledges and promises.  

And yet, despite centuries of vehement opposition from leading scholars, Kol Nidre endured—because the passion of its music trumped the rabbis’ reasoned resistance to its words.  The melody is the message.  It opens with a fall, a descending minor tone, which continues for two full phrases—then breaks away to a determined rise.  It acknowledges our pain and heartbreak, then lifts us with a heroic—even defiant— echo of endurance, crescendoing into hard-earned triumph.  As Rabbi Reuven Hammer teaches, “the emotional experience of Kol Nidre overwhelms any individual attempt to understand what is being said.”  It’s all about awe.

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On Rosh Hashanah, I spoke of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, our great Jewish theologian of awe, who was deeply committed to natural wonder and social activism.  Heschel also wrote movingly about the power of music.  Given that his wife, Sylvia Strauss Heschel, was an accomplished concert pianist, this experience was near and dear to him. In his essay, “The Vocation of the Cantor,” he reflects:

The only language that seems to be compatible with the mystery of being is the language of music.  It is a reaching out. . . beyond the reach of verbal propositions.  I define myself as a person who has been smitten by music.

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What is it about music that evokes such awe?  Why does it so universally and uniquely stir us? 

I believe the magic starts in our flesh and bones.  Much of our lived experience unfolds in our heads, but that’s not where wonder and wildness flourish.  The cerebral cortex is optimized to categorize, rationalize, and order the world.  While this is often helpful, even essential, we want more—beyond the operating instructions, we need the poetry, the muse, the unabashedly physically felt-emotion of music.  Philosopher Susan Sontag observed: “I listen with my body, and it is my body that aches in response to the passion and pathos embodied in the music.”  Like the Beach Boys Brian Wilson, we all want to keep those good vibrations happening.

This is why music both literally and metaphorically moves us.  As individuals, we respond to music by tapping our feet and clapping our hands. If we’re bold, we may even twist and shout.  En masse, music fuels communal change—it’s no accident they’re called social movements, because music has been rousing us to action since Moses and Miriam sang our ancestors through the Red Sea to freedom’s shore.  America has a rich heritage of potent protest songs, many of which were written by Jews, from Abel Meeropol’s “Strange Fruit” to Dylan’s civil rights and anti-war anthems to the feminist riot grrrl rock of Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein.  Sometimes the lyrics carry the message; other times all it takes to rouse the believers is a killer beat—consider some of the artists that propelled the quest for LTBGQ equality: Madonna, Queen, George Michael, Dianna Ross, Lady Gaga, and the Village People.  All affirm the worldview of the American-Jewish immigrant activist Emma Goldman: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.”  

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If one aspect of musical awe is primal physicality, another is elegant complexity.   Many of us love music because of its unique capacity to cross and confound simple boundaries.  Influences blend across time and space; discord and harmony wrestle and resolve; melodies and lyrics contain wildly different emotions.  It’s complicated, in the very best sense.  Listen to Bach—the beauty lies in the intricate variations, two and three and four parts, impeccably woven together. Or, for a very different example, consider Jimi Hendrix’s electrifying version of the Star-Spangled Banner.  It’s simultaneously nationalistic and subversive, traditional and radical—a young black guitar virtuoso’s protest as patriotism that both honors and challenges Francis Scott Key, and with him, all American history. 

Music also blurs the often-arbitrary barriers between sacred and secular.  That’s why you can be devoutly religious and still love classic rock, or ardently atheistic and take profound comfort in Gregorian chant.  When Taylor Swift belts out her gospel-influenced electro-pop hit “Don’t Blame Me”, the packed stadium crowds regularly respond: “Take me to church!”  For while the lyrics address human love and obsession in a media age, the light show and music and iconic imagery transport the audience to a kind of heaven on earth. This blend of holy and profane runs deep in Jewish music, too—that’s why we chant Shema to Viennese waltzes and Adon Olam to everything from medieval French drinking songs to. . . well, Taylor Swift.  As Joey Weisenberg concludes in his book, The Torah of Music: 

When we sing, sound merges with silence, sadness with joy, slavery with freedom, poor with rich, night with day, war with peace. . .  Song emerges from the reconciliation of different ideas, when we hear each others’ experiences and prayers.  

Or, as Walt Whitman would have put it, music contains multitudes.

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Music is awe-inspiring because it is physical and complex—and, perhaps above all, because it is communal.   While my first transformative musical experience with “Stuck Inside of Mobile” was solitary, almost all that have followed were shared in the good company of fellow music lovers: 

Long, late, lyrical teenage nights listening to Neil Young, Stevie Wonder, and Bonnie Raitt with buddies in my best friend’s basement.  

Almost fifty years of stellar shows, from Jackson Browne premiering “Running on Empty” at the Merriweather Post Pavilion in 1977 to Esme Patterson owning the main stage at Treefort. 

And, of course, playing with so many avid musicians: blowing harmonica on tunes by The Who and Howlin’ Wolf with my high school band; jamming on “Sweet Home Chicago” in a blues bar in Kathmandu; Simchat Torah banjo-picking Ein Adir with the Red Sea Ramblers.  It’s been a wild, wonderful, truly awe-filled ride.

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We know that language too often divides us, as Torah teaches with the Tower of Babel.  In a world awash in different tongues, most of humanity cannot converse with one another.  And even among those lucky enough to share a common language, words may create barriers as much as bridges.  Speech so easily lapses into un-constructive criticism and rigid dogma, dichotomies of right and wrong, us and them.  Words frequently harden into walls that keep us apart.  

Music tears down those walls.  People unable to speak together can sing and dance in beautiful harmony.  As the great 20th century troubadour Pete Seeger explained, “Music leaps over barriers of language, religion, and politics.”  Seeger drew on lived experience.  During the McCarthy era, he was blacklisted for nearly a decade.  But this did not silence his song.  Pete Seeger continued to play for peace and justice well into the next millennium.  When he died in 2014, at the age of 94, President Obama eulogized him, lauding his steadfast belief in music’s capacity to create community.  Speaking for so many Americans, and people around the globe, Obama concluded: “He always invited us to sing along.”

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Indeed, musical community even transcends humankind.  While written language is limited to humanity, music fills the natural world.  Creation is a magnificent ongoing yet ever-changing song of chirping insects, whistling birds, rustling leaves, drumming rains and so much more.  Just listen to the psalms in our Kabbalat Shabbat liturgy, where seas thunder and rivers clap hands, fields exult, mountains dance, and trees of the forest sing with joy.  No wonder the great spiritual master, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, prayed each day: 

May it be my custom to go outdoors among all growing things to talk with the One to whom I belong. May the foliage of the field - all grasses, trees, and plants - awake at my coming, to send the powers of their song into the words of my supplication. . .

Rebbe Nachman’s vision of prayer here is pure, unalloyed awe—the overwhelming joy of being a tiny yet meaningful voice in an unimaginably vast cosmic choir, to hum along with the celestial spheres.  This is music’s greatest gift, situating us within the living, breathing, singing congregation that is our universe.  As the psalmist proclaimed: Kol ha-neshama t’hallel Yah—the Soul of All Creation chants praise to the Holy One.

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I opened with my first musical hero, Bob Dylan.  As I draw toward my final chorus, I turn to another inspiration, Bruce Springsteen, who, for me, embodies the spirit of musical community.  I first saw the Boss in 1980—he opened with “Prove It All Night” and proceeded to do just that, taking us on an epic journey from the despair of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” to the unbridled exhilaration of “Born to Run.”  I’ve been to four shows since, mostly recently last February, and every one has been a profound spiritual experience.  Here’s how he describes his mission:

I want to go on a pilgrimage! I want to find that river, that river of life! I want to go on a pilgrimage to that river of love, that river of faith, and that river of hope. That's where I want to go tonight, to that river of joy and happiness. . .  And what I want to know now is, are you ready to go with me? Because I need to go with you. You can't get to those things by yourself. That's why we're here tonight, and that's why tonight I want to throw a rock and roll baptism! A rock and roll exorcism! A rock and roll bar mitzvah! We're gonna wash ourselves in those waters and set ourselves free! 

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Tonight, I confess: my ultimate goal as a rabbi and ba’al tefillah, a conductor of prayer, is to officiate a service with even a semblance of the spiritual power of a Springsteen concert.  This may be an impossibly high bar, and I realize I have so much to learn.  But there’s one thing I know for certain: music is the way.

My dear colleague and paddling partner, Rabbi David Fine, has taught me that every person and congregation has its own super power.  Friends, here at CABI, ours is music.  We are, thankfully, a synagogue that sings, loud and proud.  That’s no small part of why I have stayed here for three decades, for it has been an extraordinary privilege to make music with you.  We’ve got Red Sea Ramblers and Moody Jews and Hila Lenz and Joel Brotman and a proud history of late greats from Joel Stone to Dan Stern to John Barnet.  And most of all, we have you, the Jews in the Pews—our equivalent of the heart-stopping, house-rocking, earth-quaking, booty-shaking E Street Band—out here raising a joyful noise, serving the Holy One with gladness and song!

In nine months, I’ll be stepping back from center stage, but I have endless hope and rock-solid faith that you will keep on keeping on, singing a new song, and some old ones, too—all those holy awe-inspiring melodies that lead the way to the Promised Land.