Tekiah!

The sound of the shofar isn’t exactly comforting. The call of the ram’s horn always makes me stand with my back a bit straighter, my eyes a bit wider. Sometimes the final, long call (the tekiah gedolah) simultaneously brings tears to my eyes and makes me feel like I should run out the door of the synagogue to start doing good deeds. There’s something about the tone of a shofar that feels big, expansive. And there’s something about the pattern of the different calls—the announcing call , the three harkening upward-inflected blasts, the staccato bursts, and the high-pitched sustained note—all arranged in several combinations, that just sounds ancient, primal.

The shofar’s blast can sound like a battle cry, a warning, or an announcement. As we prepare to hear its call, we recite prayers around three themes: sovereignty, remembrance, and revelation. These are themes of power and majesty, reminding us of our smallness and helplessness. These prayers highlight the nature of Rosh HaShana as Yom HaDin, the Day of Judgment. This is a day when God reviews the record of all our deeds and decides, the Days of Awe prayerbook bluntly states, whether we will live or die. A primal call to awaken us to this bald fact: we are mortal, and there is much in our lives we cannot control.

I suspect that this year, many of us don’t exactly need a reminder of this helplessness, this smallness, this lack of control.

On Saturday, when I hear the blast of the shofar, I don’t want to close my ears to the magnitude of the day. But I’m afraid I might feel annoyed or resentful: why do I need to listen to this reminder of something I already know? Can You cut me some slack?

The prayers in the section of the service for blowing the shofar talk about God’s majesty, the creation of the world, the all-knowingness of God and our utter inability to hide our flaws. They talk about judgment and justice and glory. But they also talk about remembrance and mercy and compassion.

The “remembrance” prayers engage in a bit of name-dropping: God, we know you’re all-powerful and our fates are in your hand. Do you, by the way, know my ancestor Abraham? … We mention and we acknowledge the covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as a way to hold God accountable; we want God to continue keeping the promise. We acknowledge God as one who remembers the work of creation and is mindful of all that was fashioned in the beginning.

The sound of the shofar reaches into our gut to shake us awake, to motivate us to change what we need to change. But it is an echo that reaches to the farthest reaches of our existence, that calls out to God, too. It is a reminder to God to keep an ancient covenant, and it is a call to us to remember: “God remembered His covenant with them and comforted them in His great love.”

When we hear on the Day of Judgment that God “remembers all that has been forgotten” for all eternity, we understandably might shake in our boots and feel, as I sometimes do, the urge to run out and immediately set things right. But the point is not that God remembers all the terrible things we have done and hidden and forgotten—or at least, that’s not the whole point. The point is that God remembers that we’re in a relationship. God remembers the covenant.

I suppose the blast of the shofar isn’t comforting to people who are uncomfortable with the idea of God or with the notion of covenant. Whether you do or not, though, the sound of the shofar can be a powerful call to remember the complexity of our lives, to balance out the fear of mortality with an awareness of the preciousness of our finite lives, to measure the misdeeds against the compassion we have been shown. It can serve as a call to remember our responsibilities to the people around us—our responsibility to show them compassion and to approach them with the humility we are urged to feel on a Day of Judgment, the awareness of the history of our relationships appropriate for a Day of Remembrance, and the kindness and joy of the beginning of a New Year.

One Thing

Saturday night begins the final week of preparation for the Days of Awe: Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, the Day of Judgment and the Day of Atonement. We pray for forgiveness and strength and courage of spirit using the words of Psalm 27, which begins “The Eternal is my light and my help; whom should I fear?”

A few lines down, the psalmist declares, “One thing I ask of the Eternal; this one thing I seek: that I might live in the house of the Eternal all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Eternal and to visit his Temple.”

Just this one thing, the psalmist says, and then lists what appear to be three requests, all of them magnificent in scale: to dwell with God, to see God’s beauty, to visit God’s abode.

Just this one thing.

I seem to have innumerable requests of God this coming year: health for loved ones, a smooth acclimation to rabbinical school for me and my classmates, the humility and confidence to enter this profession, and other, sometimes petty, sometimes weighty concerns that often come with a new year. Help me keep up the weight loss. Help me balance school, work, and home. Don’t let me make a complete fool of myself in front of my fifth-graders. Help us continue to strengthen our marriage. Don’t let me lose touch with my sisters, my in-laws, my cousins, and my friends as the year gets busy.

Resolutions and reflections are common even at the secular new year, but the Jewish Rosh HaShana takes place in the context of the Days of Awe—days of terrible and awesome power and import, days in which, it is said, God decides the fate of all living things for the coming year. Even the angels tremble, according to the central prayer of Rosh HaShana, before the judgment of God. We are called to make a heshbon nefesh, a spiritual accounting, a detailed balance sheet of our lives and deeds over the past year. It is a daunting and certainly a humbling task.

And in the course of all this self-searching, as we make amends face-to-face with the people we have wronged over the past year, knowing that the forgiveness God can grant on Yom Kippur will not erase our duties toward other human beings, we pray Selichot, pleading prayers for forgiveness and for the ability to repent, to turn to God, to start the new year with sincerity.

And we make requests.

“One thing I ask of the Eternal; this one thing I seek: that I might live in the house of the Eternal all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Eternal and to visit his Temple.”

What would your one thing be? What deep desire lies at the heart of your turning to God and to good this year?

I’ve already joked that I can’t cut it down to just one thing, but I wonder if the psalmist was on to something, declaring his “one” request and then listing what seem to be three. Perhaps living in God’s house, gazing upon God’s beauty, and visiting God’s Temple are, indeed, all one thing. Perhaps it’s about how we look at the world, how we perceive the limited reality that surrounds us, and in some cases (I know in my own and, during this economic crisis, in many others’ lives it does) burdens us.

If the one thing I seek is to live with God all the days of my life—and I am most certainly not talking about afterlife—where might I gaze upon God’s beauty and visit his Temple? I’m not generally a literal reader of the Tanakh, and so I can imagine many situations in which we do gaze upon God’s beauty and visit God’s Temple: live with God in the days of our own lives. I think about the amazing experiences of the past year: sharing Shabbat during the joyful holiday of Sukkot with family in Tzfat, standing under the huppah and singing the Sheva Brachot (the seven wedding blessings) for my friends, hugging and kissing Rachel in the airport upon my return from Jerusalem, hearing an amazing sermon about our duties to ourselves and each another from Dean Idelson of HUC, sharing a Shabbat meal with old friends and new around our table in Brooklyn. In small ways, we can get a taste of what it’s like to live in the house of the Eternal, but we have to be open to feeling those moments.

Sometimes the one thing we ask for is a huge thing. We can’t put it into words or separate out its components. It seems un-grantable. It seems too big and too far for us to grasp. But it might be around us, in little pieces. We have to look at them, to turn them in the light. But they are there. They are little pieces of that one thing we seek.

“Hear, Eternal, when I cry out; have mercy on me, answer me […] Do not hide Your face.”

Dust, Ashes, Everything

Since my childhood, I have struggled with “Pride.” In Catholicism, pride is a sin—a grave one. And when I was just six years old, a nun implied that I danced dangerously close to committing that grave sin.

I can’t remember what prompted the conversation, but this nun—who was well-meaning, I am sure—warned me not to discuss my academic accomplishments in front of other children, but she warned, too, that I must not earn anything less than an “A” in every class or activity. “God gave you a gift,” she said, “and you shouldn’t waste it. But God didn’t give all the other children the same gift, so you shouldn’t brag.”

I am fairly certain that, at six years old and already fairly self-critical, I had no real notion of the difference between proudly acknowledging my “gifts” and sinfully bragging about them. The conversation left me ashamed of my “natural” abilities and terrified of noting when I had, indeed, worked hard to achieve something. Every hard-earned milestone in reading and writing came to feel like an amazing gift I did not deserve.

Over the past year in Jerusalem, I have learned much about pride from my colleagues in rabbinical school—many of whom seem to have been, like me, self-critical and extremely bright children. One, with whom I share a joy (and I suppose a fear) of “grades,” introduced me to a famous Chasidic teaching. I am sure she did not know she was introducing me to the teaching, and I am positive she knew nothing of how much it has influenced my thinking about the upcoming year at the New York campus.

Here is the story: A Chasidic rabbi taught that a man ought to carry two slips of paper, one in each pocket. “I am but dust and ashes,” one reads; the other, “The world was created for me.”

Perhaps humility, awe, and gratitude are better words than “pride” to describe what this rabbi was getting at. The phrase “I am but dust and ashes” is taken from the story of Abraham confronting God about the plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham approaches God and God’s power with humility, with an awareness of his humble beginnings and of his mortality. Even in his moment of audaciously challenging God, Abraham knew his limits. We are here temporarily, and we are small. Yet, “The world was created” for each of us. This phrase appears in the Talmud (a long and complex work of rabbinic literature edited around the year 600 CE), and it is part of a longer discussion about Adam, the first human being, and about what it means to be human. Human beings were created from one original creation, Adam, in order to teach all human beings several lessons about our place in the world. For example, we learn that, while human beings use a single stamp to produce many identical coins, God used one image (Adam, created in the image of God) to produce many human beings who are far from identical. The Talmud concludes, “For this reason, every individual must say, the world was created for me.”

I am trying to approach the coming year, and my own studies and growth, with these two pieces of wisdom in mind. I am indeed but dust and ashes, and no matter how clever or accomplished I am, I am but one person trying to approach the world in humility, in awareness of my own limitations. But the world was created for me: I need not sink into self-deprecating despair at my small place in the universe but instead celebrate my uniqueness and indeed take responsibility in the world. If the world was created for me, what I am asked to do in that world? I am not utterly powerless. I have a role to play. And I want to approach the year with gratitude to the One who created this world for me and who created me from dust and ashes.

Jubilee

The following was given as my student sermon at the end of the academic year in Jerusalem.

In thirteen days, a voice over a loudspeaker will proclaim: “Now boarding El Al Flight 331 to New York.” My jubilee.

At least, that’s what I first thought when I sat down to write about this week’s parasha, which includes instructions for counting to the Jubilee year. I admit it: I am counting down, and in my mind I’m counting down to “jubilee,” popularly connoting joy and celebration, a translation of the Hebrew yoveil,.

When the ancient Israelites followed the laws of the Jubilee year, what did they do? We heard this morning, V’kidashtem et shnat hachamishim shana u’kratem dror ba’aretz l’chol yoshveha—yoveil hi t’hiyeh lachem –You shall sanctify the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty in the land, unto all its inhabitants: it shall be a yoveil for you.

The Torah instructs us to observe the yoveil by counting seven times seven years, and by blowing the shofar to proclaim the fiftieth year, a year of liberty—d’ror. Any Jew who has sold himself into slavery is released; planting and harvesting cease. Land sold in the previous years reverts to its original owner, and we live on the previous crops, like in the Sabbatical year. As Modern Orthodox commentator Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch notes, the yoveil year is a leveler: all people become equally dependent on God for their sustenance, from the rich landowner to the poor slave. All are reminded that what we own in this world does not belong to us, but rather, is given by God. We remember that we cannot be slaves to any human master because our only avodah, our only service, is to God.

Most of us aren’t counting out the years to the Jubilee, carefully planning our crops. In the past, the yoveil concretely reminded us that we don’t own this world in which we live. Today, without that concrete returning, what does the yoveil teach us? What does the word itself mean? And how helpful is the contemporary association with release, freedom, jubilee and, indeed, jubilation?

While Rashi tells us yoveil means “ram’s horn,” to symbolize the shofar proclaiming liberty, Ramban wonders, “what sense is there” in declaring that a year “shall be unto you a blowing of a ram’s horn”? Instead, the focus of the yoveil, for him, is the d’ror, the liberty. This freedom is not the shichrur we hear about in the news, hoping for the release of Gilad Shalit, nor the chofesh of vacation. D’ror is a unique word, appearing only this once in the Torah. Brown, Driver, and Briggs translate it as both “a flowing” and as “free run, liberty.” In Jeremiah, a d’ror is a stream, an abundant flow of water, and a d’ror is a swallow, a bird that resists captivity.

The shofar blast announces, then, that we are, each of us, free to flow where the current will take us, free to bear responsibility only to ourselves and to our God—no longer bound, no longer slaves. The yoveil announces this freedom, but, according to Ramban, it also does something else. Yoveil denotes transportation. The word is derived from the root yud-vet-lamed, l’hovil to conduct, to bear along, yuval, to to be transported. The 18th-century commentary MeAm Lo’ez reads this “transportation” literally: things are returned, physically moved. Land reverts to its original owners, slaves return to their ancestral homes. Shimshon Raphael Hirsch digs a bit deeper, saying that the yoveil is a kind of spiritual homecoming, “to bring a person to where he is suited to be, or a thing to whom it really belongs.”

So we’re back to the beginning, then: I will return to where, and to whom, I really belong, in thirteen days, and it will be unto me a yoveil.

But I’m not so sure. Because the yoveil is also about being transported, being carried … but carried to where?

U’kratem dror ba’aretz l’chol yoshveha—yoveil hi t’hiyeh lachem—v’shavtem ish el achuzato v’ish el misphachto tashuvu—and each of you will return to his holding and each of you will return to his family.

The yoveil, after the counting of seven times seven years, in the fiftieth year, an occurrence perhaps as rare in our lives as the word d’ror is rare in the Torah—the yoveil carries us, brings us home. We return to our source, Ramban says, referring to a verse in Jeremiah: Baruch hagever asher yivtach b’adonai, v’haya Adonai mivtacho. V’haya c’eitz shatul al mayim, v’al yuval y’shalach shorashav—“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Eternal, whose trust is the Eternal alone. He shall be like a tree planted by waters, sending forth its roots by a yuval, a stream.” The yoveil promises to return us to our roots, to our nourishing source, to a cool and steady stream.

Where is your source, the place where your roots drink deep? When the shofar proclaims d’ror to all the land, where will the yoveil transport you?

Perhaps the sound of the shofar has already proclaimed d’ror, and the yoveil has carried us to the Year in Israel.

What if this has been our Jubilee year?

D’ror might not be the first word that comes to mind, but what else has this year brought?

It’s brought culture shock, tiskul, dramatic surroundings and spiritual heights. It’s brought moments you’ll remember: your first trip to the Kotel, a sunrise in the desert, and meeting a new friend who has become a lifelong friend. We have lived a unique experience, one intended to nourish our roots and make them stronger.
We have been transported to the land to which Avram migrated, sight unseen, leaving behind his land and his birthplace and his father’s house—the land that became the birthplace of the Jewish people as a people. Whether we criticize it or praise it, Israel remains an origin, the achuzah, the portion or holding that one returns to during the Jubilee year, the achuzah of the Jewish people. However much Hannah Shafir and of course Harrison would be thrilled to hear it, I don’t mean that we should all cancel our return flights and set up permanent homes here. I mean that we will always be linked to this place; our future congregants and students will expect us to have a relationship to Israel as a State, a homeland, or a nation—positive, negative or indifferent—but some kind of relationship. During this Jubilee year, how has Israel served as your achuza?

Or perhaps it has not. Perhaps you’ve learned that your roots are utterly disconnected from this physical place, but they are nourished by Israel in the sense of peoplehood. Our parasha instructs us, v’ish el misphachto tashuvu, each of you will return to his family. Our community can strive to be for one another a mishpacha of colleagues. And we can continue to engage with Hebrew, the language of the Jewish mishpacha.

Yoveil comes from the verb l’hovil: to bring, to bear, to carry. I don’t know about you, but I was carried here—carried here by Judaism, faith, career goals, idealism… and, sure, carried here (somewhat unwillingly) by HUC. We have been brought, and we have brought with us our histories, our knowledge, our ignorance, our faith, and our doubt. I sincerely challenge each of us to recognize that this year has indeed served as a yoveil, a return to origins, a release into a year of introspection, study, and relationship to God, Israel, and the Jewish community. I have been carried to Israel, but I hope and pray that I have also been transported—transported to a new understanding of what it means to live a Jewish life, transported and transformed.

After all, we won’t get a chance like this for another forty-nine years.

The Call

When we sing, “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end of our Passover seder, we’re not really talking about Jerusalem. We’re singing our longing, God’s promise, and our hope for a better future, a time of peace and completion, wholeness, shalom.

After sharing seder with a warm and generous Israeli family on a kibbutz near Ashkelon, I traveled to Barcelona for the rest of my vacation, meeting Rachel for some much-needed time together. The modernisme architecture, World’s Fair grounds and buildings, and Gothic streets provided countless diversions and amusements; contemporary art exhibits around the city and the “Blue Period” works in the Picasso museum sparked thoughts and discussions. And the narrow streets of the Jewish Quarter, nearly indistinguishable from other narrow streets in the winding alleyways of the old Roman city, changed how I will sing “Next Year in Jerusalem” at future seders.

Spain’s once-thriving Jewish population, a large group in the city of Barcelona, living mostly alongside their Christian neighbors but in a close-knit community (the “kahal, a Hebrew word we still use today) and geographical area known as “The Call”>, faced persecution and eventually expulsion at the hands of Spain’s Catholic rulers. This is far from a story of redemption; rather, it is one of desperation and mourning—an entire community forced to convert, to migrate, to leave behind a rich culture, personal networks, lives they had built over centuries. The only trace of Jewish life in Spain that Rachel and I could find were a few doorposts marked in places where a mezuzah had once been affixed, some inscriptions along the walls of buildings that now house souvenir shops and clothing stores, and the remains of a 12-th century synagogue that now serves as a museum.

Unlike Barcelona’s Church tours, which focus on art, architecture, and history, the synagogue and museum also explains religion, outlining major Jewish practices and festivals for the non-Jewish tourist. Sadly, I am not sure how many of those the museum gets. When we walked in, the guide immediately asked us if we spoke Hebrew, and later that same day we ran into an Israeli tour group learning about the fraught and tragic history of our people in Spain and crowding together in the alleyways to imagine rather than see vibrant Jewish life in Barcelona.

Touching the stones of these former houses where people celebrated Passover and baked their Shabbat challah, I felt a sense of responsibility, as a Jew and as a future rabbi, to the memory of this community, but more so to Jewish communities around the world. It’s a feeling I never really internalized before, but I imagined what it might have meant, in medieval times, to be forced out of your village somewhere in the mountains, to reach the city of Barcelona, and to know that all you had to do was find the Call, and with it you would find open arms, a hot meal, a place to stay, an invitation to Shabbos dinner.

Later in the week, we visited another Jewish Quarter, in the city of Girona. Similarly, its museum, housed in what was once a major Girona synagogue, not only outlined the history of the Jewish community in Girona and in Spain, but also explained major Jewish beliefs, practices, and philosophies. The streets were narrow, and I could imagine the terrible days of being confined to just two streets with their intertwining courtyards, dead ends, and shallow stairs. Photographs of a nearby palace showed how Jewish cemeteries were raided, their carved stones used as building materials for new, Christian communities.

For the most part, I spent my time in the Jewish Quarters in contemplation—not in overwhelming or debilitating grief, though I certainly felt a sadness for a community that has all but disappeared. And then Friday afternoon came, and sunset approached, and it was time for Shabbat.

The progressive synagogue in Barcelona is not located on the nicest of the Gracia neighborhood’s streets. A metal grate covers the door until just before services begin, revealing curtained windows and a small mezuzah. But inside, it’s Jerusalem.

It was Kabbalat Shabbat at Bet Shalom. Greeting us warmly with a “Shabbat Shalom” and a kiss on each check, the dedicated members of this small but warm and welcoming kahal eagerly spoke with us (in broken Spanish, Hebrew, and English, and with much patience all around) about where we’re from, our visit, our synagogues, and my studies at HUC. Rabbi Jim Glazier, serving the community on his sabbatical from his home congregation in Vermont, graciously invited me to light the Shabbat candles and say the blessing, a great honor. The melodies were familiar, the cantor’s voice and presence were smooth and prayerful, the faces were bright and smiling, the mood in the room was enveloping, open, inviting. After the prayer, we chatted with Spanish, Catalonian, Italian, American, French—I can’t even count all the places of origin—members and visitors, students on their year abroad, families, friends. Rosina Levy, who helped us organize our visit, introduced us to members of the community, translated, learned about our lives, told us about the community’s activities, and generally did much to create a warm atmosphere. Suddenly, several people started setting up tables in the center of the room, and we found ourselves sitting down to a very late dinner (a Catalonian tradition), prepared by a member of the community. People lingered, talking and laughing, eating and drinking (we passed on the shots of Tequila!), sharing stories.

The Jewish Quarter in the old city of Barcelona thrives, but as a commercial center and a tourist destination. The people who live over its storefronts do not light Shabbat candles or bake challah. But in Gracia, a progressive community of Jews, mostly praying without a full-time rabbi, creates a kahal to which all Jews are welcome. They are making Judaism live and continue and thrive in a place that once saw crushing prejudice and mass destruction. They are making each Shabbat, each holiday, each community gathering a fulfillment of the promise of redemption and wholeness, completion and shalom.

Lifting the Veil

On Purim, we wore masks and disguises, but Queen Esther wasn’t hiding anything when she went before King Ahasverous and revealed her true identity, her true origins. Making herself extremely vulnerable, Esther removed all pretenses, all masks. No longer hiding in the safety of the harem, no longer passing as just another woman willing to be used by the powerful king, she revealed a truth that had consequences for herself and for the entire Jewish people. Her act of revelation reversed the cruel decree and saved the Jews from annihilation.

Mordechai urged Esther to declare herself, despite the grave danger of appearing uninvited before the king to make a demand. “Think not that in the king’s palace you shall escape, any more than all the Jews,” Mordechai said. Esther cannot hide forever; she must remove the mask.

We praise Esther for refusing to hide. We crave unmediated, face-to-face relationships. We don’t like people who wear masks, creating a barrier between us and them. But this week’s paresha complicates that picture. Moshe Rabbeinu, our teacher Moses—the man who speaks with God panim el panim, face to face—places a barrier between himself and the people Israel: a מסוה masveh, a veil.
Moses emerges from the fiery cloud on Mount Sinai bearing the Tablets of the Covenant, unaware that his face radiates light. But he soon learns that something about him has changed. Frightened and still reeling from the sin of the Golden Calf and its harsh and swift punishment, the people shrink from Moses until he calls them near and imparts all that God has instructed him on the mountaintop. We read in chapter 34, verse 33, “vay’chal Moshe midaber itam, vayiten al panav masveh”—“When Moses finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.”

The image here is of a terrified and traumatized people, still new to freedom and certainly new to a relationship with a God who expects much of them. They have experienced the revelation of God first-hand at the foot of Mount Sinai; they have heard the Ten Commandments; they have sinned by worshipping the Golden Calf. Their leader Moses has disappeared into the clouds, returning with more revelation, more Law, more details about this covenant with the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Moses is physically changed; rays of light emanate from his face as he descends to the people, and they shrink in fear.

Biblical commentators throughout Jewish history have interpreted and reinterpreted this veil that divides Moses’ face, a face that has communed directly with God, from the faces of the wandering Israelites.

One reading asserts that Moses covered his face not to respect his relationship to the frightened Israelites, but to respect his relationship with God, with the sacred. Moses covered his face with a veil to prevent the people from using the light shining from his face for “common purposes,” just as we reserve the lights of Hanukkah for the sole, sacred purpose of remembering the miracles of days past. Moses wears a veil to mark a separation not precisely between himself and his people but between his unique spiritual experience and the quotidian worries of the desert. The veil says, no human being ever attained such a close relationship with God, and none had left the mundane world so far behind as to achieve the “complete” spirituality Moses achieved. Indeed, in our paresha we read, “v’diber adonai el moshe panim el panim ca’asher y’daber ish el re’eh’hu”—“The Eternal would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (33:11). The veil serves to preserve a distinction between the sacred and the profane, to guard Moses’ special relationship with God by withholding so much Divine radiance from the ordinary people who would be overwhelmed.

Here at the Hebrew Union College, we rabbinic students continually examine our own spiritual practice, our own encounter with both God and Torah. Like Moses, we, as future Jewish leaders, must carve out time and space to distinguish between the sacred pursuit of Torah knowledge and the mundane cares of shuk-shopping and bill-paying. We must engage in a relationship with God and with Jewish text and tradition—a relationship that is personal, close, panim-el-panim. Moses’ veil might teach us how, as teachers ourselves, we must also learn.
Indeed, to see the pedagogical and spiritual role of the rabbi as primarily founded in a personal relationship to God and Torah is a common view. Traditionally, rabbis didn’t have practicum courses in visiting the sick, comforting mourners, counseling the troubled, or effectively conducting a community Torah study. But this week’s paresha and the wealth of commentary on Moses’ veil offer us other paradigms on teaching and learning Jewish tradition.

According to medieval commentator Rabbi Levi ben Gershon , Moses puts on the veil in an effort to “bring himself down,” as it were, from his spiritual heights. Otherwise, it would be impossible to communicate with the Israelites. As modern interpreter Nechama Leibowitz explains, this is an image of a Moses aware of his difference from the Israelites: he knows that the people, on their earthly level, cannot relate to his unique spirituality. He puts on the veil not to separate himself from the kahal, the Jewish community, but to separate himself from the “transcendental and holy.” To use a buzzword in today’s Jewish circles, Moses makes an effort to meet the people where they’re at. As a teacher, a rabbi must of course challenge the community to reach new levels of understanding of Jewish text, tradition, and spirituality, but such understanding cannot be reached in a vacuum—it emerges from the real, lived experience of our communities. Moses does not force the people to ascend the mountain with him, to absorb the overwhelming Divine Light. Instead he comes down, and he mitigates the powerful light with a veil.
But does he withhold that light altogether? In our teaching, are we to keep our personal relationship with God and with Torah utterly separate from our community interactions? Does Moses wear the veil for the rest of his life, excluding only his encounters with God panim-el-panim?

Medieval commentator Rashi, in his usual direct manner, says no, and his opinion stems from a verse that also appears in this week’s paresha, chapter 34, verse 34: “Whenever Moses went in before the Eternal to converse, he would leave the veil off until he came out; and when he came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, the Israelites would see how radiant the skin of Moses’ face was. Moses would then put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with God” (34:34). Rashi extrapolates from this verse that Moses always received God’s teachings and relayed God’s teachings to the people without wearing a veil; only when Moses had finished with the business of hearing and transmitting the words of Torah did he replace the veil over his face and cover the glow of the Divine.
God’s revelation of Torah to Moses on Sinai happens panim el panim, face-to-face, our paresha tells us. So, too, does Moses’ teaching of the Torah to the Jewish people happen without barrier, without mediation, face-to-face.

As a rabbinical student and a future teacher of the Jewish people, I am curious about Moses’ pedagogy. What does it mean to teach without the veil—despite the uniqueness of his face-to-face relationship with God and despite the people’s fear?
Perhaps Moses does use the veil to prevent the mixing of the sacred with the profane. Perhaps he wears the veil, as many commentators assert, out of modesty or humility. The 18th century commentary Me’Am Lo’ez notes, “It is true that when [Moses] taught the people he took off the [veil]. He felt that the people would assume that the radiance was a result of the Torah that he was teaching. After he finished teaching he would replace the [veil].”

Teachers can shine with the radiance and the power of the material they present, and this is especially true for those of us who are blessed with the privilege of teaching Jewish tradition. Moses’ face shone with a Divine light, and he does not want the people to think that light comes from him. While he is teaching, the people might safely assume that it is not Moses himself who is so radiant, but the Torah he transmits. Ki va oreich, we sing as we welcome in Shabbat—for your light has come, the light of the Torah. Moses, then, wears the veil to demonstrate to the people that it is the Torah, the Jewish tradition, the lesson he imparts—and not Moses himself—that illuminates their lives.

As I learned from one of my most influential professors, a truly successful and ethical teacher understands that the student ought never to be excited about you but about the material you present, the tools you give her to learn, to discover, and to develop her own voice. Like Moses, a teacher ought to encourage his students to see the brilliance in the subject he transmits.


All this talk about faces and masks and the boundaries between ourselves and the Other revolve not only around pedagogy in a technical sense. This isn’t a lesson on ensuring your students will remember the material for the test. The relationship between teacher and student motivates the student to enact Judaism (or whatever the subject taught) in her own life—to take the kodesh of Torah, of Jewish tradition, into the chol of Olam haZeh, this world in which we live, this world so much in need of repair. That repair, as Jewish philosopher and Biblical scholar Martin Buber taught, begins panim-el-panim. When we look into the face of the Other, we see not a reflection of ourselves. We see an unknown and yet familiar entity: we see a human being with needs, desires, and fears, and, locked in that gaze, we are called to responsibility to this vulnerable Other. Buber sees the relationship with the Other, the relationship that happens panim-el-panim, as part of a relationship with the Other we can never fully comprehend, the Other who is utterly unknowable yet crucial to our lives—the Other who is God.

When Moses thought the people would fail to connect the radiance of his face with the brilliance of the Torah, he veiled himself. Speaking as both a student and as a teacher, I think this is a pretty good way to use a veil—what could be an impediment to human connection becomes a teaching methodology. But, I would also emphasize that Moses did not wear the veil incessantly: he allowed for face-to-face connection with the people Israel, offering opportunities to confirm that sense of responsibility that only happens when we look the Other in the face and see a glimpse of the Divine. As we move from the revelry and the disguises of Purim to Pesach and the Exodus, we ought to take care that our veil not become a mask. We ought to remember that sometimes what people need is for us to reveal ourselves, like Queen Esther, for who we truly are.

Sheket

My brain is always going: a near-constant stream of words and thoughts, snippets of melodies, images of family, sudden flashes of Hebrew, lists of tasks I need to accomplish. In moments when I can find it, I really appreciate quiet—in Hebrew, sheket.

This morning I was awakened by a whistling noise I can’t quite identify or locate—I’ve narrowed it down to either the old radiator in my Jerusalem apartment or a bird nesting directly outside my window. Occasional traffic up and down nearby Keren HaYesod buzzed up and down the hill. My roommates, as usual, rose earlier than I, making their morning preparations. And then there were the nervous and excited conversations, sporadic because many of us are not used to rising at such an early hour, of my classmates and I as we made our way to the Kotel.

Today is Rosh Hodesh Adar, the new moon of Adar, the beginning of this Hebrew month. This morning, the Women of the Wall met, as they do every Rosh Hodesh, to pray the morning prayer and to sing the celebratory verses of Hallel, songs of praise to God.

At the Kotel, there was sheket. It was the quiet I always feel by the ancient stones—the quiet hum of history, the supplication of the prayers stuffed into the cracks, the voices of Jews of the past and the present expressed in whispers and in wails. Normally, it is a quiet, on the women’s side, only occasionally broken by the recitation of Hebrew verses, while the men’s side more regularly includes chanting and communal prayer. But when the Women of the Wall meet, their voices echo off the stones in joy, and in protest, sometimes in fear and pain, and always in praise of God.

As you can read in an Israeli news source, our group this morning included dozens of Reform women rabbis from North America, but the core of Women of the Wall is a small group of Israeli women who come here each month without the comfort of such a large, joyous crowd. Donning tallitot (prayer shawls) and bringing our own prayer books, we huddled together at the back of the women’s section of the main prayer plaza at the Western Wall. Most of our prayer happened very quietly, barely audibly, as each woman chanted the words to herself. But, sometimes, we sang aloud.

I took a deep breath in the quiet before we began each communally sung piece. We sang verses of joy and gratitude that declare God’s desire for song: God is “the one who chooses songs and hymns.” We chanted, as all Jews pray every morning, “All that has breath shall praise God.” And so we did, b’kol ram, in a loud voice—mostly loud because there were so many of us, standing there so close together on the hard Jerusalem stone, with the wall, the place where God’s Presence is said to dwell, magnifying our voices. I closed my eyes, and I felt that God was listening, rejoicing in the gratitude of the Jewish people for having reached this season, the month of Adar, a time of celebration.

“Sheket! Lo lashir!”—“Quiet! No singing!” Our voices angered some of the Orthodox men and women gathered that day to pray. And I have to admit, I remain ambivalent about that anger and about my own reaction. In the moment of praying, I felt sadness and fear, though I understand, too, that these people spoke out of the fear that women’s voices threaten their religious and spiritual reality. But the Wall is a powerful place in Judaism, and Judaism includes all Jews. How can we ensure that all Jews feel welcome expressing their relationship to Jewish history, the Jewish people, and, most crucially, to God, at this emotionally charged site? Shouting that our way of prayer is a "desecration," spitting at us, and throwing pebbles our way ensures only division.

Ultimately, I keep coming back to the words we sang: Sing to God, praise God with verse and hymns, all that has breath shall praise God. Our prayer didn’t last very long, and for the most part it happened in quiet, personal moments. But in reciting verses of praise and celebration, verses about the collective joy of the Jewish people in reaching this season, the month of Adar, in which we will celebrate the festival of Purim, a topsy-turvy day when the persecuted Jews triumph over their would-be-annihilators, it just seemed right to sing out b’kol ram.

Obama's New Era of Responsibility

A few years ago, my sister and I took a (nerdy) vacation together to Colonial Williamsburg, a living history museum that embodies the everyday existence and historical significance of Williamsburg, Virginia, during the period surrounding the American Revolution. Walking along the cobblestone streets, viewing the restored homes and public buildings, I enjoyed the educational foray into the daily lives of eighteenth century colonists. But my favorite part of the day was witnessing a speech by “Thomas Jefferson.”

Peppered with quotes from actual letters, publications, and speeches of Jefferson’s, the performance addressed the crowd as colonists and argued for rebellion against the British Crown. With sweeping rhetoric and grand ideas, “Jefferson” called for a new political union, a new country and a new government unlike any preceding it, one that required bravery and vision, audacity and hopefulness. When I clapped and cheered “Huzzah!” I did so not as an audience to a convincing performance (thought it was) but as an enthusiastic supporter of Jefferson’s call to a new kind of nationhood—a government of the people, for the people, and by the people that would require hard work, education, dedication, and sacrifice.

Standing there in Colonial Williamsburg, I thought, and not for the first time, that the United States needs to revitalize its ideal of public service. In an age of increasing individualism, an age in which everyone and his blog is “famous,” we need a call to collective responsibility as a nation. We need a reminder that the founders of our nation, though marred by their own prejudices and biases, ultimately called themselves and future generations to strive to improve the life, the liberty, and the happiness of the many, not the one.

In his inaugural address, President Barack Obama made such a call, honoring the memory and the legacy of countless Americans who “struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions, greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.” Through remarkable acts of self-sacrifice by our military personnel to the seemingly simple and too often ignored moral dedication of a parent, Americans, President Obama argued, have served their country and through it the human good through a “spirit of service, a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.”

“What is required of us now,” the President urged, “is a new era of responsibility—a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”

In Hebrew, the word for responsibility is acharayut. Its first three letters also spell achier, “other” or “one who comes after.” I like to think about this connection between responsibility and the Other—the one who is different from us, the one we think we will never understand. I like to remind myself that my responsibility—to the Jewish community, to the Jewish people, to the nation of America, and to the world—is not only to myself or even to those I love, but to future generations. In Judaism, we share countless stories, prayers, and obligations about tze’etzaeinu v’tze’etzaei tze’etzaeinu, “our descendants and our descendants’ descendants.” The new era of responsibility that President Obama wants to catalyze is one that will weather us through the crisis, hopefully in our own lifetimes, but its focus and its riches will truly reach future generations: “Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end” and that “we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”

May we remember that our acharayut, our responsibility, is to those who come after us, the other, acheir.

Bringing Home the Bones

"Joseph adjured Israel’s children, saying 'God will surely take care of you; bring my bones up from this place!' Joseph died at the age of 110 years. They embalmed him and he was put into a coffin in Egypt." (Bereshit 50: 25-26). Thus the Book of Genesis concludes, the children of Israel—for now—prosperous and well in Egypt, the patriarch Jacob buried in the land of his fathers, and in a coffin uniquely described as an aron (like the ark that will hold the tablets of the covenant), Joseph’s bones in Egypt, waiting to be returned home.

For Jacob, home—the place that defines the core of him—begins in Luz, the spot where he dreamed of a ladder reaching from the earth into the heavens, the place he called a Beit Elohim, a house of God. On his deathbed, when Jacob hears that his beloved son Joseph has arrived, he gathers up all his strength and sits up in bed. "El Shaddai appeared to me in Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me," he says, and relates the promise God made to him (48:5). Jacob is not only giving Joseph crucial information about the covenant between God and Israel, but offering his son his own origin story. This is where I come from, Jacob excitedly reports, and this is who I am. That place, that dream, that covenant—that’s home.

Just about two weeks ago, I was happily eating shish kebab in Jerusalem with a group of Beth Elohim members. Everyone wanted to know how the first year of rabbinical school is going, what I have been learning, how I have been coping with being so far away from home. A new city, a new language, a new academic program, a new career path—of course I have felt, at times, overwhelmed and homesick. But I honestly did not realize how much I missed this place— this Beit Elohim—until I saw the familiar faces from this community, in many ways the birthplace of my Judaism, a source of my dreaming, and a familiar ground. Back here tonight, in the same room where I converted, I feel comforted, sure, but I want to ask, what do we do with this feeling of home? What do we do with our origin stories? Most of us cannot and will not (and really, if we want to grow as human beings, should not) stay in one place forever. I know this acutely as I feel, now, a tug toward Jerusalem, City of Gold, its stones and its narrow streets, the rhythm of Hebrew, the hot and crispy falafel. When we return home, what do we bring from our other experiences? When we go out into the world, how do we reveal our origins to those we encounter?

For Jacob, his burial place marks a crucial tie to home. He tells Joseph, "When I rest with my ancestors [in death], carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burial-place." Concerned that his request be carried out, Jacob ignores Joseph’s willing reply and insists, "Swear it to me!" (47:29-31). Later in the paresha, Jacob again repeats his request to be buried in Canaan to all his sons, specifically mentioning the Cave of Machpelah, the burial place of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, and Leah (49:29-31). Jacob wants the place where future generations will specially recall his memory to be a place linked to his ancestors, not the foreign soil of Egypt. And when he dies, Jacob’s sons fulfill his wish and bury him in Canaan.

But something else happens first. Having lived in Egypt for the better part of his life, Joseph—successful, important, acculturated to Pharaoh’s court—honors his father with some Egyptian customs. At the moment of his father’s death, Joseph follows his personal instincts: "Joseph threw himself upon his father and wept over him and kissed him" (50:1). Then, he has his father’s body embalmed and the whole of Egypt wept for Jacob for seventy days (50:2-3). After receiving permission to leave Egypt from Pharaoh, Joseph then journeys with his brothers to fulfill their promise to bury their father in Canaan. "When they reached Goren ha-Arad on the other side of the Jordan, they held there a great and solemn lamentation,” we read. Joseph “mourned his father for seven days" (50:10). This second period of lamentation is a shiva, a Jewish custom Joseph performs despite the long Egyptian mourning period, despite his distance from his brothers and from his father’s land and customs. When he crosses into the land of his ancestors, when he comes home, Joseph enacts his Jewish identity.

Joseph’s life in Egypt is not a life lived "on hold," simply waiting to return to the land of his fathers. Rather, Joseph thrives in Egypt, establishing a family there, engaging in a lucrative and important career, adopting Egyptian customs, learning the local language. He retains his personal character and instincts—crying at his father’s bedside, weeping just before he finally reveals his identity to his brothers—but also incorporates lessons learned from his Egyptian peers and colleagues. Ultimately, when he returns to his origins, he realizes that he retains, too, Jewish values—sitting shiva for his father. And it is by the names of Joseph’s Egyptian-born sons that Jews bless our children on Erev Shabbat: ישמך אלוהים כאפרים וכמנשה, Yismcha elohim k’efraim u-k’menasheh "May God make you like Ephraim and like Menasheh."

It is important to value our homes, our places of origin. But it is crucial, too, to retain all the parts of ourselves as we move from place to place, from experience to experience. Joseph brings his personal character, his Egyptian ways, and his Jewish heritage with him around the ancient world. Returning to Beth Elohim, I hope I have brought with me a bit of Jerusalem: the complicated political balance, the Jewish rhythm of the days, the richness of the Hebrew language.

In Jerusalem, it’s been easy for me to have a "traditional" and personally fulfilling Shabbat. Stores close on Friday afternoon, forcing me to prepare early. My Friday ritual usually involves frantically completing my homework in the morning hours, cleaning my house, preparing a meal to share with friends later, and finally, dressing up before heading to shul. I have rarely spent a Shabbat in Jerusalem where I wasn’t surrounded by friends, eating challah, drinking wine, and putting aside the worries of the week. The rhythm of Saturday in Jerusalem is calm and quiet and slow. There are few cars on the streets. There are families picnicking in the parks. In Brooklyn, making Shabbat becomes more of a choice. The rhythm of the secular world continues here in a way that it doesn’t in Jerusalem. I don’t want to change Brooklyn into Jerusalem. But I think it’s important, like Joseph’s preserving his Jewishness even in Egypt, to carry back to Brooklyn the crucial values of a Jerusalem shabbas.

Even just last year, my Shabbat only began when Cantor Leuchter began a nigun. Holding on to the cares of the week until the absolute last moment, I was carried into Shabbat. Rather than actively welcoming, through my own preparations, I was almost surprised by this weekly opportunity to rest. Our Shabbat observance at Beth Elohim has changed over the 4 years that I’ve been a member of this community, from including more of the psalms for kabbalat Shabbat, incorporating new melodies, and changing the Friday night service time. We have been seeking ways both to make Shabbat more personally meaningful and also to remain firmly rooted in Jewish tradition. For how many of us does Shabbat only begin in this room? Learning from my Shabbat preparation ritual, a personally new tradition that I have adopted in Jerusalem, I want to encourage each of us to consider how we make Shabbat. What tasks and concerns do we leave aside? What family traditions have we preserved or should we establish? When Shabbat truly means a rest from all labor, one is forced to pay closer attention to the moments before its arrival— after all, it’s impossible to pick something up at the Jerusalem equivalent of Union Market on Saturday afternoon. When Shabbat truly differs from the rest of the week, we welcome the Shabbat bride, not only into our synagogue, but into our homes. For me, home is now both Jerusalem and Park Slope. Home is singing in a community on erev Shabbat and hurrying to complete the mundane tasks on Friday mornings. I will strive to live my Brooklyn self in Jerusalem and my Jerusalem self in Brooklyn.

This week’s paresha, ויחי, deals mostly with death, but it begins "and he lived." Let this serve as a reminder that we ought to truly live in the places we find ourselves, carrying with us always the bones of our ancestors, the places we call home, the customs that link us to Jewish tradition, and the stories that reveal who we truly are.