At Home in the Wilderness

[A d'var Torah from May 10 to the Bronfman Center community, and especially to our graduating seniors. A special thanks to Julian Gonzalez and Sofia Pasternak for sharing their thoughts on the wilderness.]

This week’s Torah portion finds us bamidbar: in the wilderness.

I have a feeling some of us in this very room are feeling a little bit bamidbar right now, and it’s a complicated feeling: the joy of getting to the other side; the gratitude for freedom; the fear of a life of new and as-yet-unknown responsibilities; the sadness of letting go of a place we have come to know.

In the wilderness, there are few landmarks. There are no roadmaps. It’s a place of sand and rock, mountain and—we hope—oasis. It’s beautiful and it’s scary. It is wide open and expansive. It makes us feel free, and it makes us feel small.

For the people Israel, wilderness was a place of bitter complaint—“Were there no graves in Egypt, that you brought us here to die in this wilderness!?” (Exodus 14:11). And wilderness was a place of profound nurture and care and love—with the pillars of cloud and fire to guide the community, with the manna to nourish them, with God’s presence in the Tent of Meeting, always at the center of the camp.
< At our Torah study this week, I asked what wilderness means to you. Two responses stood out in apparent contradiction. “Foreign,” said one person. But another person offered, “Home.”

Indeed, the midbar is both utterly foreign and utterly familiar. It is a place of wandering and it is a place that somehow feels like home.

And so for many of us—whether we are graduating this coming week or headed out for summer road trips and internships, whether we are returning to this place or flying across an ocean for a semester abroad, whether we are culminating a long-term project or conceiving a new endeavor—we are all on the cusp of a wilderness. And we are wondering, Will it feel forgeign? Will I be at home?

And I think it isn’t just the place or the experience we’re worrying about. It’s our very selves. Will I be foreign or at home? Will I be welcomed? Will they get me? Will I be recognized for who I really am, what I really have to offer? Will the inhabitants of this wilderness come to truly know me?

The poet Kadya Molodowsky writes:

I am a wandering girl.
My heart is practiced in longing.
And when the day eats up the dew of the night,
I tuck up the small white curtain from my window pane,
And look upon a new street.
There lies coiled up
In a little corner of my heart
Such a singular, trembling idea:
Maybe no one here will love me.
Maybe no one here will want to know me!
But God forbid!
Like the threat of rain always hanging in the air
And falling in unexpected abundance on the earth,
That’s how each new city is for me,
Each new place.
And I don’t know how manifold my flesh is.
Every year a new ring
Grows in me, as on a tree,
I am mazily woven of rising and setting.
I am a wandering girl,
My heart is practiced in longing.

It is our longing for something more that brings us to the wilderness: our longing for freedom, our longing for community, our longing to escape slavery and idolatry, our longing to make deep and abiding commitments, our longing for the responsibility to use our free will to decide how we will conduct our lives, our longing for the Torah that will guide us to the promised lands we will someday reach. We long for something more and we find ourselves bamidbar, in the wilderness.

And here in the wilderness, feeling so very small against the wide expanse of the desert sky, we wonder, “Will they love me? Will they want to know me?”

When the Moabite Ruth finds welcome, acceptance, and even love in the Israelite Boaz, she marvels, מַדּוּעַ מָצָאתִי חֵן בְּעֵינֶיךָ לְהַכִּירֵנִי וְאָנֹכִי נָכְרִיָּה: —“How is it that I have found favor in your eyes, that you recognize me, though I am a foreigner?” (Ruth 2:10).

Lehakir, to recognize, to know, to be familiar. And nochriya, foreign, Other. Both stemming from the same root. Opposite and intimately linked. At home. Out of place. Ruth the Moabite—the quintessential outsider in the Torah—finds acceptance. She is recognized among Israel.

Will they know you? Will they love you? Out there, in that vast wilderness?

I pray that they will, and that you will each be able to marvel, Here I am, a newcomer and a foreigner,in a new wilderness, finding home.



[Molodowsky's poem appears in The Torah: A Women's Commentary.]

As If…

As I prepare for Different from All Other Nights: NYU’s Annual Queer Seder at the Bronfman Center, lawyers on two sides of what has become a vitriolic and polarized debate over the legalization of marriages between persons of the same sex will argue their causes before the Supreme Court of the United States.

I confess that, when I think about gay marriage, I think selfishly. I think about my own partner of fifteen years: we have a ketubah (Jewish marriage contract), but no civil marriage. I think about our son: I was present at his birth, but his original birth certificate had only my partner’s name as parent. We spent time and (quite a bit of!) money obtaining what’s called a second-parent adoption so that I would be recognized as his legal parent in the eyes of the State (I am grateful, of course, for the opportunity to obtain those rights and responsibilities). When it comes to the legalization of gay marriage, I think selfishly.

It’s easy to stand up for marriage equality when you’re talking about your own family. Your partner. Your child.

Perhaps you already know where I’m going with this: Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio and his celebrated (infamous?) reversal of opinion on gay marriage—from opposition to support—because he learned that his own son is gay. Many pundits and commentators—indeed many of my own friends (you know who you are…)—have acknowledged Senator Portman’s act as one of love. And rightly so. A father who loves his son stands up for him. But, what many of us also recognize are the limitations and dangers that the Senator’s actions imply: I care about the rights of my family—and no one else’s. As one online commenter quipped, “The best thing that could happen to such politicians is that they discover minority blood in their lineages, experience mental illnesses, realize their hired help are illegal immigrants, or have family who benefit from social programs.”

It’s kind of an Ahasueros move, if you think about it. You remember Ahaseuros—from the Scroll of Esther that we read just a few weeks ago on Purim. He’s the bumbling king who learns that his beautiful and obedient new wife Esther is actually one of them: a Jew! Knowing that the woman he loves is Jewish changes Ahaseuros’s mind about his own edict to annihilate the Jewish people. His love overrides his prejudices.

At our seder table this Tuesday night, a few students will share their coming out stories. We will celebrate their bravery, lament the discrimination they faced and continue to face, and give thanks for the family members (inherited and chosen) who support them with the unconditional love we all deserve from our families. I know I will find these stories moving and inspiring. And I know I will understand the crucial role that coming out has played and will continue to play in changing minds, in changing the culture.

But Purim cannot be the only model. It’s not a model for lasting change. It puts the burden on LGBTQI folks to be vulnerable and brave—as Esther was. But most insidiously of all, it assumes that we cannot support the rights of “Others” unless and until we can consider them our own. Must every single Ahasueros find his Esther?
Thankfully Jewish tradition gives us another model. Balancing the importance of honesty and bravery—the importance of coming out—that we learn from Queen Esther, the Jewish tradition gives us Passover. The holiday of as if:

בְּכָל־דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת־עַצְמוֹ, כְּאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרָיִם

B’chol dor va-dor chayav adam lirot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatza mi-Mitzrayim.—“In every generation a person is obligated to see himself as if he had gone out from Egypt.”

כְּאִלּוּ K’ilu—as if.

In his weekly podcast, Dan Savage, sex and relationship advice columnist and creator of the “It Gets Better” Project, called Senator Portman’s argument a “failure of the moral imagination.”

We might expect the Passover haggadah to emphasize our personal, familial, historical experience with enslavement. And it does. We recall the Torah’s oft-repeated dictum: “You shall not oppress the stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9). But our tradition knows that the direct experience of oppression cannot be the sole moral motivation to oppose the oppression we see—and sometimes inflict—in the world around us. Our seder invites us to imagine. To act as if.

In other words, it is precisely an act of imagination that our Passover seder asks of us. It does not ask us to recall our own bondage in Egypt so many ages ago. It obligates each of us to imagine that we had been enslaved in bitter bondage, and liberated by God’s mighty hand and outstretched arm. It invites us to imagine that awesome—terrible and overwhelming and miraculous—moment when the sea split, revealing dry land.

So this year, as the Supreme Court Justices ponder the arguments they will have heard on Monday and on Tuesday, let us imagine a world in which each Ahaseuros is indeed married to an Esther. Let us act as if our moral precepts demand ethical treatment of those Others around us. Let us act as if our fate were bound up in the fate of those around us—not just our own sons, our own daughters, our own children, but all those Others who cry out for freedom. For in every sense that matters, it is.

K’sharim, Ahava (Relationships, Love)

So, I wrote this whole other sermon for this morning. It was something about Facebook and Twitter and how we speak to and about one another in public forums and via social media. Perhaps someday I’ll give a version of that sermon. But, this morning, I’m giving a different sermon. I’m giving a different sermon because I decided I couldn’t ignore two crucial facts: (one) the mounting tension between Israel and Palestine over the new “roadmap to peace”… and (two) you.

One: Israel and Palestine. Let me assure you that I’m completely uninterested in telling you what to think about the recent Palestinian bid for statehood in the UN, the merits of the proposed Quartet peace plan, Netanyahu’s position on Jewish settlements in the West Bank, or any other aspect of what is known in the Middle East as “the conflict.” I’m not going to stand here and talk to you—many of you politics majors who know more about international relations than I do!—about the details of the peace plan itself. I want to talk about something related… but different. I want to talk about what our Jewish tradition teaches us about how Jews ought to relate to non-Jews.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to fact two: you. When I was here at Bates during Rosh Hashana, I learned a little bit about how some of you navigate expressing and exploring your Jewish identities on a campus with a relatively small Jewish presence. The choices you each make about your Jewishness, your faith, and your identity are not exactly parallel with the choices Israeli and Palestinian leaders face in figuring out how to express both their national identities. But Jewish Bates College students do make myriad decisions about how to relate to non-Jews and about how to relate to an institution that runs counter to the Jewish calendar. On the first day of the Jewish New Year, many of you faced the difficult choice of whether to attend services or go to class. Some of you had tests and assignments. Many of you wondered, what’s the point in going to services if I’m not even religious? Some of you may have felt disappointed that the services weren’t more “traditional” or familiar. Some of us, together, were chastised for performing the tashlich ritual in the Pond—something we might want to reimagine for next year! And then suddenly it was parents’ weekend—a raucous, joyful, and maybe even stressful time, smack in the middle of what was supposed to be, for Jews, a period of intense introspection and soul-searching.

What could I do with these two facts—the tenuous peace process in the Middle East and the decisions you make as Jewish students of Bates College?

I remember standing here on Erev Rosh Hashana, ready to pray the Aleinu at the end of the service, and panicking for a moment. Did I really want to say the line “she’lo asanu k’goyei ha’aratzot”—“that you have not made us like the other nations of the earth”? I was acutely aware of the fact that my hosts here at Bates include the Multifaith Chaplaincy Office and the Dean of Intercultural Education. I was acutely aware of the fact that, here at Bates, Jews and non-Jews explore one another’s culture and worship. And yet we pray in thanks to God for making “us” different from “them.”

What does Jewish tradition say about the relationship between Jews and non-Jews? To say the least… it’s complicated.

It’s really a shame we’re not going to hear the traditional Yom Kippur afternoon Torah reading. In it, we are charged to pursue justice and to eschew revenge, to share the fruits of our harvest and to deal kindly with the disadvantaged. How do we become holy? By providing food for the hungry. How do we become holy? By conducting our business honestly. How do we become holy? By judging the privileged and the poor equally. How do we become holy? By refusing to hold a grudge. How do we become holy? By letting go of hatred.

Sure, some of these guidelines to holiness refer only to how Jews must treat other Jews. But many of them are universal. We learn how to be holy in our interactions with others: K’ezrach mikem y’hyeh lachem ha’ger ha’gar itchem, v’ahavta lo kamochah, ki geirim hayitem b’eretz mitzrayim, “The stranger who lives among you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). Not only are we enjoined to treat the stranger as a citizen, but we are commanded to love the stranger as we love ourselves.

Is this really from the same Torah that also instructs, Rak me’arei ha’amim ha’eileh asher Adonai elohecha noten l’cha nachala, lo t’chyeh kol neshma, “But of the cities of these nations which the Eternal your God is giving to you as an inheritance, do not allow any soul to live” (Deuteronomy 20:16)?!

So, which is it? Are Jews the holy people who are supposed to love the stranger, welcome the disadvantaged, live peacefully with other nations? Or are Jews the people who are commanded by God to kill entire peoples—down to every last man, woman, and child?

The thing is, we can look to the Torah and to the broader field of sacred and rabbinic literature and argue either way. There are verses that support war and destruction and verses that urge justice and mercy. There are interpretations that restrict how we read inspiring passages like “Love your neighbor as yourself” to one meaning: Love your fellow (and I kinda do mean “fellow”) Jew as yourself. Whatever your personal political position on the conflict between Arabs and Jews in that tiny strip of land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, you can probably cite a Bible verse or a passage from the Talmud in your favor.

So I’m not turning, this morning, to any of those passages about “us” and “them.” I’m not going to offer a comprehensive—if that were even possible!—overview of what “Jewish tradition”—as if there were such a monolith!—says about how Jews ought to relate to non-Jews. I’m turning to something much smaller in scale. I’m turning to something much more intimate. I’m turning to a relationship. I’m turning to the relationship between Abraham and Hagar.

On Rosh Hashana, didn’t read the traditional First Day Torah reading, the story many refer to as “the birth of Isaac”—a story chosen for the holiday because of its association with birth (Rosh Hashana as the birthday of the world) and with God’s remembering us (God remembers Sarah and gives her a son in her old age). But the Torah portion of Isaac’s birth is also the story of another boy, another son of Abraham. It is the story of Ishmael. And the tale of how God remembers Sarah is also the story of another woman, another beloved of Abraham. It is the story of Hagar.

Isaac and Ishmael have come to stand iconically for Judaism and Islam, for Jew and Arab. In the Biblical story, Ishmael is born first. He is the son of Abraham’s concubine and slave, Hagar. Ishmael is born because Abraham’s wife Sarah is barren and fears she will never be able to give Abraham children. And somehow, Abraham is to be the father of many nations. On the first day of Rosh Hashana, we read that, finally, Isaac is born to Sarah, in fulfillment of the promise of the two angels who visited Abraham and Sarah in their tent. In the span of one verse, Isaac grows up and is weaned, and Abraham throws a huge celebration. Suddenly, we read that Sarah “saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian whom she had borne to Abraham playing” (Genesis 21:9). We’re not precisely sure what the Torah means by “playing,” but Sarah certainly doesn’t think it’s a good thing. We read next, “And she said to Abraham, ‘Banish that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave-woman will not inherit with my son, with Isaac’” (21:10). The Torah says, “This matter was very evil in Abraham’s eyes, because of the matter of his son”—that is, because Ishmael is his son and Abraham does not want to banish him (21:11). Despite that emotion, despite the bond between Abraham and Ishmael, God orders Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael to the desert. At the story’s end, Ishmael languishes in the desert, nearly dying of thirst. Hagar weeps some distance away so that she does not have to witness her son die, when suddenly “God heard the voice of the lad” and saved them by showing them a nearby well (21:17-19).

This complex story of a blended family gives just one tiny indication of how Abraham might have felt at the prospect of sending a woman with whom he had fathered a child, along with his first-born son, into the desert—never to see them again. The Torah only says, “This matter was very evil in Abraham’s eyes” (21:11) because of Ishmael, Abraham’s first-born son, his flesh and blood. But did Abraham weep over Hagar? Did he hesitate to send her into the desert? At the moment of banishment, the Torah tells us nothing whatsoever about the relationship between Abraham, father of the Jewish people, and “Hagar the Egyptian.”

For more than a thousand years, Jewish commentators have seen troubling gaps in this text. They have been troubled by the relationship between Abraham and Hagar, and troubled by Abraham’s apparent lack of concern for this woman with whom he shared a bed. Did Abraham really care so little for Hagar? Did the father of Judaism really treat as expendable the woman who would later become a beloved mother in Islam? Surely not! Despite the banishment, despite the fact that Abraham’s blessing is handed down only through the line of Isaac, despite Sarah’s suspicions about Ishmael—despite so many indications that Hagar was “only” a concubine, a slave-woman—Jewish tradition asserts that the relationship between Abraham and Hagar was marked by love.

In the Midrash, we find imaginative retellings of Biblical stories. In one expanded version of the Abraham-Sarah-Hagar saga, the author hints that the relationship between Abraham and Hagar exceeded the commercial bounds of an owner-slave arrangement. In this version of the story, when Sarah urges Abraham to exile Hagar, she says, “Write a get and send that slave-woman and her son away!” (Pirkei d’Rebbe Eliezer 30). What is a get? It is a bill of Jewish divorce—a document one gives not to a slave but to a wife.

Even further, this midrash imagines a lasting connection between Abraham and Hagar, even after the banishment to the desert. In the Torah story, Abraham places something on Hagar’s shoulders before sending her off as Sarah had ordered. What was it? It was a large barrel, says the Midrash, or a long, trailing piece of clothing. What is the significance of this? Abraham sent Hagar off into the desert dragging behind her an object that would leave a trail. A trail he could follow. A trail that would allow him to see his beloved Hagar and Ishmael again.

In the Torah, at several crucial points in Abraham’s life, Hagar and Ishmael are absent. Perhaps they don’t matter very much to Abraham. The Midrash disagrees. Hagar and Ishamel are never far from Abraham’s heart. At the moment when God asks Abraham to make the ultimate sacrifice—to kill his son—the Torah reports God’s words thus: “Take, please, your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and offer him up as a sacrifice” (Genesis 22:2). Your only son!? The Midrash imagines instead a conversation between God and Abraham: “‘Take, please your son.’ But he replied, ‘I have two sons.’ So [God] said, ‘Your only one.’ But he replied, ‘This one is the only child of his mother, and the other one is the only child of his mother.’ So [God] said, ‘The one whom you love.’ But he replied, ‘I love both of them.’ And God said, ‘Isaac’” (Bereshit Rabbah 45:7).

In the Midrash, the relationship between Abraham and Hagar does not end in the desert. After the story of the binding of Isaac, when Sarah has died, Abraham busies himself with the burial and with trying to find a proper wife for Isaac. But Isaac himself wanders out in the field, pouring out his fears and his grief in prayer. And where has Isaac been all this time, after his ordeal on the mountain? We read in the Torah that Isaac was returning from a place called “Be’er Le’hai Ro’ee” (Genesis 24:62)—the very same place where Hagar and Ishmael heard the voice of an angel of God, rescuing them from their thirst in the desert. And why did Isaac travel there? To find Hagar and bring her to his father Abraham so that they could be married (Bereshit Rabbah 60:14).

And indeed, just a few verses later in the Torah, we read that Abraham did remarry: “And Abraham took another wife, whose name was Keturah” (Genesis 25:1). The rabbis link the name “Keturah” to precious incense, katoret. And they link the name “Keturah” to the verb katar, to tie up. Keturah, says the Midrash, is none other than Hagar (Bereshit Rabbah 61:5). Hagar is “Keturah” because, like incense, she is pleasing. Hagar is “Keturah” because she “tied herself” only to Abraham—keeping chaste all those years between her banishment and her reunion with her beloved.

In Hebrew, the word for “relationship” is kesher—linked to a verb that also means to tie or to bind. Abraham tied a burden to Hagar’s shoulders so that she would leave him a trail to follow. Hagar tied her faithfulness to Abraham, despite the fact that he sent her and her son into the desert alone. To tie oneself to another demonstrates devotion and, indeed, love.

As we think about the relationship between Jews and Arabs, between Israelis and Palestinians, between Jews and non-Jews, it can be all too easy to look only at the level of institutions and nations and generalizations. And yet, when the rabbis of our Jewish tradition looked at the iconic rivalry between Isaac and Ishmael—between Sarah and Hagar—they saw more than the struggle between one nation and another. Admittedly, our tradition includes some pretty disturbing instructions on how to maintain the division between “us” and “them.” But Judaism also includes the Midrash: stories that reconcile the divide between Isaac and Ishmael, Sarah and Hagar, by looking for those relationships where there had to have been love.

We do not relate to one another solely as representatives of big categories. When Abraham banished Hagar into the desert, he might have been acting as “Father of the Jews” toward “a Mother of Islam.” But he was also a man who loved a woman. Imagine his anguish, standing at the opening of his tent, watching them enter the desert with just a loaf of bread and a canteen of water.

And, though we don’t necessarily face life-and-death consequences, it’s like that for us, too. Our daily lives are not, when it comes down to it, about “Bates College” and “Jewish students,” but about you and your professor, the one who was willing to give you some extra time on that assignment because you told her about the conflict between the academic calendar and the Jewish holiday. And, when you think about it, “Israel” and “Palestine”—symbolic and overdetermined as those categories have become—are really just collections of relationships, one person to another.

We will achieve nothing of peace and mutual understanding by thinking and strategizing only at the level of the nation, the icon, the generalization. We will achieve peace only if we look to individual relationships. The authors of the Midrash knew, in their heart of hearts, that banishments and birthrights and blessings were not the only story. There was also the tugging pull of love, the trail cut deep across the desert, leading one person to his beloved.



[I gave this as the Yom Kippur sermon for Bates College Hillel in Lewiston, Maine. Many thanks to the amazing students there for a wonderful experience! I thank my teacher, Rabbi Dr. Norman Cohen, for his reflections on the Midrashim about Abraham, Ishmael, and Hagar in his Introduction to Midrash course at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York.]

Loving Neighbors, Strangers, and Selves

[The following is my sermon for Yom Kippur Morning at Temple Beth Am, Monessen, PA. The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the community I am honored to serve this year.]

On Rosh HaShana, two days before the anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, my neighbor waited for the subway train to arrive on the platform. Suddenly, five New York City police officers assembled near her in a semi-circle, “staring quietly” straight ahead. What did they surround? A Muslim man who had rolled out a prayer rug to kneel and recite his evening prayers.

The Shabbat between Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur is called Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat of turning—turning toward God in repentance, as the new year moves from the Day of Remembrance into the Day of Atonement. This year, Shabbat Shuva coincided with September 11th, a day of remembrance for those souls killed in the terrorist attacks of 2001. A day of remembrance. A day when all was turned upside town, a day on which we turn to one another for support. A call to us on this Day of Atonement.

Usually a somber day of solidarity and mourning, this September 11 brought different sentiments and slogans to ground zero, including one picture of an innocent victim of the World Trade Center attacks with words beneath: “‘We love you!! Islam mosque right next to ground zero??? We should stop this!!’” (Anne Barnard and Manny Fernandez, “On Aniversary of Sept. 11, Rifts Amid Mourning,” NY Times, 12 September 2010).

By now all of you have heard about the controversies surrounding the building of an Islamic cultural center in downtown Manhattan—inaccurately referred to as the “Ground Zero Mosque”—and a Florida Christian minister’s plans—eventually cancelled after pressure from the Obama administration—to burn copies of the Quran on September 11. At one conservative protest held near the proposed site of the Islamic cultural center, a few blocks from ground zero, a crowd gathered to support the organization “Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America”; some shouted, about Muslims, “‘Kill them all!’” (Ibid. )… We love you… Kill them all.

Indiscriminate, bigoted, and violent, this call to kill all Muslims came not only on a day of national and, for far too many, personal mourning—September 11. It came not only on a day of remembrance and renewal for Jews—Rosh HaShana. It came on a day of celebration for Muslims—Eid, the festival marking the end of the fast of Ramadan, a time of year when Muslims, like Jews during the Days of Awe, look for the forgiveness of their sins and make amends. With recently reported incidents of violent assaults against Muslim cab drivers, shots fired into a mosque in upstate New York on September 4th, and calls for the burning of Islam’s holy book, many American Muslims, according to several newspapers, planned to have a low-key celebration this year, fearing that marking Eid would be misinterpreted as an act of hatred or disrespect.

A day for remembrance. A day for turning. A day for atonement.

September 11, 2010, was for many a day of alienation, a day of suspicion, a day of being labeled an outsider, a stranger.

This afternoon, on our Day of Atonement, we will read from the Holiness Code in Leviticus, a series of laws following the declaration, “You shall be holy, for I, the Eternal your God, am holy” (19:2). We learn what acts will help us to be holy, and we read: k’ezrach mikem y’hyeh lachem ha’ger ha’gar itchem, v’ahavta lo kamochah, ki geirim hayitem b’eretz mitzrayim, “The stranger who lives among you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (19:34).

The ger, the stranger, is not an enemy, nor a brother nor a kinsman. He is not a Jew, yet he lives, “either temporarily or long-term,” notes the Women’s Torah Commentary, in the Land, alongside the biblical Israelites (see Kaminowski, WTC 710). The ger is a “stranger,” not a citizen but treated like a citizen, a political and kin-group outsider. Often bundled together with the orphan, the widow, and the Levite (the tribe dedicated to Temple service and thus unable to participate in the normal political and economic life of the ancient Israelites), the ger is one who must be supported, treated kindly, incorporated into the system of justice. Throughout the Torah, we are repeatedly enjoined not to oppress the stranger, not to make the stranger into an enemy: “There shall be one law for you and the stranger who resides among you […] You and the stranger shall be alike before the Eternal” (Numbers 15:15), “Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19), “You shall not oppress the stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exocus 23:9).

The rabbis later adapted the word ger and applied it to a different kind of outsider: the convert. So, in Hebrew, the ger is twofold: the stranger who never “belongs” to the kinship group but whom one is obligated to treat with justice, and the convert who mystically, theologically, and legally “becomes” kin. One blogger called the Talmudic ger “someone who feels strange, but wishes to belong” (VirtualJewishLibrary).

Who are these strangers among us, those clamoring to belong, those who feel strange?

In the United States, not all Muslims are gerim, if ger is distinct from “citizen.” Many Muslims, of all shades and sects, are patriotic American citizens who, at least in name, according to the letter of the law, “belong” here. And yet so many Muslims are speaking out about feeling strange, alien. I think the analogy is worth exploring, this year, on the heels of a September 11th that turned from a day of remembrance to a day of bigotry and ignorance, confusion and exclusion.

On Yom Kippur, we are enjoined, “You shall love [the stranger] as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). How do we love the stranger, and precisely what does it mean to love the stranger “as yourself”?

The Hebrew verb ahav, love, appears as a command only three times in the Torah (WTC). It appears in the V’ahavta, in Deuteronomy: V’ahavta et Adonai elohecha, “And you shall love the Eternal your God” (6:5). And it appears twice in parashat Kedoshim, the section from Leviticus that we read on Yom Kippur afternoon: v’ahavta re’echa kamocha, “and you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) and k’ezrach mikem y’hyeh lachem ha’ger ha’gar itchem, v’ahavta lo kamochah, ki geirim hayitem b’eretz mitzrayim, “The stranger who lives among you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love [the stranger] as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (19:34). Scholar Tamara Cohn Eskenazi sees these three commandments about love as “three dimensions of a single, deep connection: to love God is to love others, those like us and those who are not” (“Another View on K’doshim,” WTC 716). Though we tend to link kedoshim, holiness, with separation, Eskenazi points out that the Holiness Code in Leviticus emphasizes connection, not separation. We learn that “holiness comes from cultivating relationships […]:the connection to parents whom one must honor, to the poor and disadvantaged whom one must protect, to the neighbor and stranger whom one must love, and of course to God” (Ibid. ). Holiness is about relationships; we are holy—or not—in how we treat one another.

On Yom Kippur, we remind ourselves that the Gates of Heaven are open to hear our pleas, that we will be forgiven, by the end of the day, for sins committed bein adam lamakom, between human beings and God. But sins committed bein adam lachaveiro, between one human being and another, are forgiven only when we approach those we have wronged to make amends. It is this same spirit that infuses the laws in the Holiness Code: laws that remind us that the Jewish covenant calls us to act with love not only toward God but toward one another—to our neighbors and to the strangers among us (cf. WTC 703).

How does one “love the stranger as yourself”? Suan Retik and Patti Quigley turned from their immeasurable grief to love, and love of the stranger, in the wake of the deaths of their husbands in the 9/11 attacks. As reported in the New York Times, these two women turned to strangers whose emotions they could perhaps understand: Afghani widows. As the US government responded to the terrorist attacks with a war, these widows founded an organization, Beyond the 11th, that provides education and economic assistance, designed to battle the conditions that made so many Afghanis easy targets for fundamentalist Taliban recruiters (Nicholas D. Kristof, “The Healers of 9/11,” New York Times, 8 September 2010). This is how we might love the stranger as ourselves, by reaching out, across ignorance and fear, to build a better world.

Reaching across ignorance and fear is precisely what Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative and imam of a Lower Manhattan mosque, intended in proposing the Park51 Islamic cultural center. Modeled after the YMCA and the Jewish Community Center, the space was designed as a shared community space for performances, social events, education, and recreation, with a swimming pool, classrooms, and multifaith prayer spaces (as well as individual prayer spaces for Muslims, Christians, and Jews) (Feisal Abdul Rauf, “Building on Faith,” New York Times, 7 September 2010). Indeed, he calls two commandments the institution’s cornerstones: “to love the Lord our creator with all of our hearts, minds, souls and strength; and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves” (Ibid. ). Rauf intended not to avoid the tough issues of the day, not to ignore the radicalism and fundamentalism that have become most associated with Islam in the popular media, but rather to confront the difficult issues head on, to provide a space for real dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims and to provide for a broader understanding of the variations in Islam (Ibid. ).

The word ger already carries ambiguity in Hebrew: the stranger, the convert; the one who does not quite belong but whom we love, the one who once stood outside and now is embraced as one of am Yisrael, the Jewish people. Things get even more muddled in our contemporary example; when those who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon lay claim to Islam, it is difficult to distinguish between the enemy and the stranger we are called to love. But making that distinction is crucial if we are to live the values and the ethics God calls us to live today, the Day of Atonement.

We need not pretend naively that enemies do not exist, that dangers do not threaten our freedoms, or that terrorists did not claim the lives of thousands of innocents on September 11th. But we can ill afford—neither as Jews nor as Americans—to lump all strangers into the category of enemies. President Obama crucially noted in his September 11 commemoration remarks at the Pentagon, “‘It was not a religion that attacked us that September day; it was Al Qaeda, a sorry band of men which perverts religion. And just as we condemn intolerance and extremism abroad, so we will stay true to our traditions here at home as a diverse and tolerant nation’” (Quoted in Barnard and Fernandez).

The polarized rhetoric that erupted this year on 9/11, Shabbat Shuva, a day of turning from the joy of the renewal of the new year to the process of making amends, reminds me so much of religious conflicts in Israel, where “Judaism” and “Jewish” are words that have been unfairly monopolized by a version of Orthodoxy that excludes and silences women, marginalizes and punishes gays and lesbians, and discounts Reform converts and rabbis. In fact, the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, a Reform organization based in Jerusalem, launched an ad campaign to combat this monopoly, with the slogan, Yeish yoteir mi derech achat lihiyot yehudi, “There’s more than one way to be Jewish.”

Indeed, our Torah portion this afternoon, Kedoshim, is a reminder that there is more than one way to live our lives according to our own Jewish tradition. In Reform synagogues, we read an abbreviated version of the list of commandments that will, the Torah says, help to make us holy. We leave out the troubling section about a man who “lies with another man,” the verse that uses the word “abomination” and has led to so much violence (including self-inflicted violence) against gays and lesbians. I had to remind myself of that stark fact as I read website after website of vitriolic anti-Muslim sentiment that equated Islam with sexism and homophobia.

Don’t get me wrong: I know that certain individuals and governments who claim to follow Islam—do promote sexism and homophobia. I have read the reports of stoning for adultery, stoning for homosexuality, honor killings against women believed to be “unchaste.” But there’s more than one way to be Muslim, too, although people on both sides of the frantic debate about burning the Quran and building the Islamic cultural center often forget variation and subtlety. They forget the ambiguity inherent in the word ger; they forget the challenge to distinguish between enemy and stranger; they forget the commandment to “love the stranger as yourself.” We can remember, not forget, by openly discussing and debating, right on that dangerous line between enemy and stranger. We can confront the fundamentalist and extremist versions of any religion—Islam or Judaism, Christianity or any other faith. We can call moderate and liberal Muslims and Jews to speak out against the extremists who lay claim to their respective religious traditions. And we can love the stranger as ourselves—love the imperfect, love knowing there are faults and failings, love with compassion and with principle. K’ezrach mikem y’hyeh lachem ha’ger ha’gar itchem, v’ahavta lo kamochah, ki geirim hayitem b’eretz mitzrayim, “The stranger who lives among you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34).

We are called to love the stranger in the same way in which we love ourselves.

Well, sometimes loving ourselves is a complicated endeavor, particularly on this Day of Atonement, when we stand in awareness of all our faults and failings, our shortcomings and our sins. We wonder whether our deeds of chesed outweigh the times we have missed the mark. We cling to the memory of Rosh HaShana, the Day of Remembrance, the day when God remembers not every misdeed we have committed but remembers the covenant between God and the Jewish people, remembers the acts of g’milut chasadim of all our ancestors. We remind ourselves that God loves us, because God loves the Jewish people, and we try to love ourselves. This love is a struggle.

In our struggle to love ourselves, to love God with all our hearts and souls and beings, to love our neighbor, and to love the stranger as ourselves, we can think about Jacob, the man who was renamed Israel, the one who struggled with the Divine.

Our forefather Jacob famously wrestled with a stranger, in the middle of the night. Though the Torah does not call this mysterious figure a ger, a stranger, the story tells us nothing of substance about him. He is ish, a man, an individual. He might be an angel, a Messenger of God. We read only that “a man struggled with [Jacob] until the break of dawn” (Genesis 32:25). Though Jacob pleads with the man to reveal his name, he refuses; Jacob injures his thigh, physically altered by this ambiguous encounter (is it hostile or friendly?). The man gives Jacob the blessing he requests, and because Jacob has “prevailed” in his struggle with both “divine beings and men,” the nameless man gives Jacob a new name: Israel. Left alone, injured, Jacob immediately changes the name of the place where the encounter happened, marking it as special. He calls it “Peniel,” a composite of the Hebrew words for “face” and “God,” as in “I have seen a divine being face to face” (Genesis 32:25-33).

Jacob struggled with the strange, the unfamiliar, and in that struggle was forever changed… was blessed.

We have turned our attention to change and blessing; we have turned from our past misdeeds; we have turned toward an effort to live the new year in peace and in blessing, with acts of kindness and with good deeds.

When violence and terror plague us, let us turn to one another in comfort and in healing. When extremists claim their religion as justification for murder and oppression, let us voice our opposition, let us lay claim to our own definition of religious living. When our neighbor rolls out his prayer rug, let us surround him in open and honest dialogue, and not in suspicion. When our neighbors build their house of worship, let us enter its doors in hope.

This Yom Kippur, may we turn our own struggles to love the stranger into a source not of strife but of blessing.


[This post was inspired by the prayer “For Unexpected Intimacy” in Siddur Sha’ar Zahav.]