From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Following the March of the Living trip, Cantor Rosemberg remained in Israel to volunteer and perform with 25 Latin American cantors. Listen to learn about Cantor Rosemberg's incredibly meaningful and moving experience!

Standards. Is there an elegant theory for when to enforce them and when to choose not to enforce them? Parents face this question all the time. We have standards in our home! But our children do their own thing that flies in the face of our standards. Do we enforce the standard, or let it go? Synagogues face this question all the time. To celebrate a Bar/Bat Mitzvah in our community, a family is expected to fulfill certain requirements, like attending Shabbat services a certain number of times. What do we do when a family does not comply with those standards? Do we enforce the standard, or let it go? Employers face this question all the time. Post-pandemic employers have rules about in person attendance—e.g., three times a week in person. When an employee does not meet that standard, is the employer to enforce the standard, or let it go? We also face this question of standards in larger contexts: our love of America, our love of Israel. We have standards for the kind of conduct we would expect to see in a democracy and in a Jewish homeland. When those standards are seemingly not met, what do we do? Are standards mere suggestions? Do standards have teeth? Does violating standards have consequences? Our study tomorrow will focus on a standard that could not be more clear or more explicit—priests with defects cannot officiate—and it comes from our most authoritative source, the Torah in the voice of God. (In halakhic terminology, it is called a deoreita command).The Lord spoke further to Moses: Speak to Aaron and say: No man of your offspring throughout the ages who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the food of his God. No one at all who has a defect shall be qualified….No man among the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the Lord's gift; having a defect, he shall not be qualified to offer the food of his God. Leviticus 21: 17 and 21.Yet, in the face of this crystal-clear rule, repeated four times, the Talmud chooses not to enforce this standard in all cases, and offers multiple cases where priests with visible defects were nonetheless allowed to officiate. What do we learn from the Talmud about when we might choose to enforce, and when we might choose not to enforce, our standards? To what extent do our personal relationships with people who do not meet the standard but we nonetheless love matter? To what extent does the community's actual practice matter especially when it ignores the standard?

Fifty-three years ago, on March 31, 1972, the Soviet Union launched a spacecraft that was supposed to go to Venus. But it never made it to Venus. Some malfunction in the rocket prevented it from leaving the earth's orbit. The Soviets named this spacecraft Cosmos 482—which became code in Soviet lexicon for epic failure. For 53 years, the spacecraft that could never make it to Venus circled the earth. Year after year never getting to where it was meant to go. Year after year stuck in a perpetual orbit. But it turns out that every year it lost a little bit of height in its orbital wanderings so that, last Saturday, on Shabbos, Cosmos 482 could finally find rest. Last Saturday, Cosmos 482 fell back to the earth, into the sea, without causing harm to people or property.I am not a space person. I don't follow NASA. But the minute I heard this crazy story, I thought to myself: There is a sermon in that! Because what happened to Cosmos 482 happens to every one of us in our own way.

Loving critics. The phrase feels like an oxymoron. In fact it is a willed double entendre. Perhaps it means that critics are loving. Their words of critique flow from a place of love. In fact, they feel that suppressing their critique, going along to get along, would undermine that which they love. Perhaps loving critics means that people who are not critics should nonetheless love and appreciate people who are critics. Perhaps they have something to say that we and others need to hear. Should we become loving critics? If we have never before been fans of critics, should we reevaluate and gain a new respect for loving critics? Perhaps loving critics might be helpful for this current fraught moment in America and in Israel.  Tomorrow we will examine three sources from two thinkers. Elana Stein Hain recently taught the two texts we will encounter from Martha Nussbaum, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago from the Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, to a CJP Mission in Israel. And Larry Bacow wrote a piece in Harvard Magazine entitled Loving Critics, from which the title of this class comes. How do we love the lands we love in their winter of discontent? Complicated.

Adina Vogel Ayalon – an Israeli citizen who has lived and raised a family in Israel and worked for decades toward building peaceful relations between Israelis and Palestinians – and Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz are uniquely positioned to unpack some of the difficult questions facing our communities today, including:How can American Jews most effectively advocate to bring about the return of the hostages, sideline Hamas and promote a peaceful and safe future for Israeli and Palestinian families alike?What constitutes anti-semitism on campus and how can we best combat it?How should our community encourage the US government to address Iran's nuclear ambitions and support of terrorism throughout the region?How would the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel affect Israel's security?

May 10, 2025

Last week we encountered one kind of “imperfect peace,” to use the term coined by our teacher, Sara Labaton of Hartman: shalom bayit, domestic harmony, made possible by a lack of transparency in a marriage. We read the ruling of Ovadia Yosef that a wife not disclose the fact of her abortion before she had met her husband so that their marriage could continue.This week we encounter another complicated rabbinic category of imperfect peace: mipnei darchei shalom, the things we do for the sake of peace. Tomorrow morning we will encounter the Talmudic teaching that encourages Jews to be nice to gentiles: to bury their dead, to visit their sick, and to provide financial support to their poor, for the sake of peaceful relations. Is that transactional or relational? Is that practical or admirable? Is that aspirational or calculated? We will compare the Talmudic teachings of mipnei darchei shalom to Donniel Hartman's most frequently taught text about a person who does the right thing just because it is the right thing to do, without calculating any benefit, and in fact losing out financially by doing so.Is local peace, whether transactional or relational, an adequate response to a world on fire?

A woman in Israel approached her rabbi with the following dilemma. When she was a younger woman, she was not religious. She had relations with a man and got pregnant. She had an abortion. She then became religious. She did teshuvah, repentance. She committed herself to learning Torah, doing mitzvot and joining an observant community. She moved to a new town, where she was not known, met a young yeshiva student who did not know about her past. She did not tell him. They got married. She got pregnant and delivered a healthy baby boy. Her husband wanted them to do a special ritual ceremony called pidyon haben, redemption of the first born, where they thank God for the gift of their first-born. Under Jewish law, however, the family could not do this ceremony because of her prior abortion, which the husband did not know about. So this wife and new mother approaches her local rabbi to ask: Should she now tell her husband about her past, that she had had an abortion, and that this baby was not eligible for this ritual? Doing so would have spared her husband from saying a prayer at the ritual that he should not have said, a ritual infraction known as a berakhah le'vatala, a blessing made in vain? But doing so might also have endangered their marriage. Or should she permit her husband to say a blessing in vain which would preserve the marriage and family peace, even though doing so perpetuates the omission?

Sara Labaton, the Director of Teaching and Learning at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, recently taught a group of local rabbis. She observed that the prophetic ideals of peace (lion lies down the with lamb, nations will beat swords into ploughshares, neither will they know war anymore) are so lofty as to be unattainable. Would we be better off looking towards rabbinic ideals of peace?The good news for rabbinic ideals of peace: not lofty. Not utopian.The bad news: rabbinic ideals of peace are small, local, and very imperfect.On Shabbat we will consider a fascinating source about a most imperfect, indeed troubling peace. Three things about this source are striking.One the genre. It is sheilah u'teshuva, a legal question and answer, a responsum. Not a genre we have studied before.Two, the author is Ovadia Yosef, zichrono livracha, who was the Orthodox Chief Rabbi of the Sephardi community in Israel and throughout the world. He was incredibly learned and inspired passionate devotion among his followers. When he died in 2013, 800,000 people attended his funeral, the largest funeral in the history of Israel.Three, the fact pattern. A young woman has sex outside of marriage, gets pregnant, and has an abortion. Later, she becomes very observant, marries a yeshiva bocher, gets pregnant, has a baby boy. She never tells her husband about her abortion. When their child is born, the husband wants to do a ceremony called pidyon haben, the redemption of the first-born boy. Since she had had an abortion, she was not eligible for the pidyon haben. But he did not know. Would it be better to tell the truth, and not have the pidyon haben? Or to perpetuate the omission, and have the pidyon haben that she was not eligible to have, in which case the ceremony would contain a blessing that should not have been said?Read this short, saucy case. What did Ovadia Yosef decide? Why? Do you agree with his decision? How would you assess pros and cons? What do we learn from his decision that could apply to our very different world?Is an imperfect peace worth pursuing? Is local peace an adequate response to a world on fire?

God is always confusing. We never know what to think. But that is especially true now in this fraught theological season between commemorating the Shoah (April 24), honoring soldiers who fell in Israel's wars and victims of terrorism on Yom Hazikaron (April 30), and celebrating the birth of the State of Israel on om Ha'atzmaut (May 1). Tomorrow we are going to study a modern Jewish philosopher that we have never before studied, Rabbi Irving Greenberg, who came up with a new scheme: the Three Eras of Jewish History.It is new. It is thoughtful. It is engaging. It gives us what to talk about.But does it work? After all, the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel happened within three years of one another, very much in the same era.We will also look at the special insertions in our Amidah for Yom Hashoah and Yom Ha'atzmaut to see what statement they make on God's relationship to the Jewish people and to history in 1941-45 and in 1948. We will also examine an important text from the Talmud that shows our sense of God's presence or absence is very much affected by what is actually happening in the world. Spoiler alert: it's not about the answers. There are none. It's about the wrestling. One other alternative: Who needs God? Since there are no answers, since the wrestling never leads to an answer, are we better off if God is not all that important to us—which, by the way, is what the vast majority of Temple Emanuel members will say about how they actually lead their lives. “I'm not a God person. I am here for the community.” Maybe that is the wisest posture of all?

Led by Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

What happens when we lose our loved ones before we lose them? This happens to so many of our families. Our loved one experiences a slow decline, cognitively, or physically, that takes place over years that feels like forever. The decline crowds out earlier chapters.Our mother has not been herself for so long I can't even remember what she used to be like.It's been so long since my father was who he really was, I can't remember him before his dementia set in.What do we do with this pain when we lose our loved ones before we lose them?We are about to say Yizkor. Yizkor offers us a poignant way to flip the script.It is true that we sometimes lose our loved ones before we lose them. But because of Yizkor, it is also true that after we lose our loved ones, we still have them.

In 1987 Oprah Winfrey read a book that changed her life. What happened to her as a result of reading that book, the unanticipated lesson she learned, remains fresh and urgent for her 38 years later.The book, by author Toni Morrison, was a novel called Beloved in which Morrison attempts to show what it was like to be a slave. What did slavery do to the enslaved person's inner life, to their psyche, to their soul? How did slavery shape not only the enslaved person, but also their descendants—even when slavery was over?When Oprah Winfrey first read the novel, she fell in love with it. She just knew that she had to make a movie based on this book. Toni Morrison had never allowed any of her novels to be made into a film, but the author succumbed to the charms and persuasive powers of Oprah Winfrey.Oprah worked on the film Beloved for more than ten years. She herself played the lead. She used her power and influence to get the film made. The film was 3 hours long, was intense, hard, and sad—and did not have a happy ending.How did the film do? Alan Stone, a professor of law and psychiatry at Harvard Law School at the time, saw the film in Harvard Square when it first opened. He wrote:Ten minutes into the film, I began to hear audible groans from my two companions, who subsequently predicted Beloved's demise at the box office. They hated the film: they could not follow it…Baffled by the narrative…they like most filmgoers, missed the experience that Oprah wanted them to have.Alan Stone's friends would prove prophetic. The film cost 80 million dollars to make. It took in 22 million dollars at the box office. The first weekend it came out, even with Oprah's star power, the film was beaten at the box office by a horror movie called The Bride of Chucky. It took ten years to make. It was pulled from the theatres after four weeks.Oprah had been completely invested in this project. She worked on it for more than ten years. She believed in it. She really cared. And after all that personal care and investment, her beloved film Beloved did not land.The failure of her film devastated Oprah. When she learned that Beloved got beat at the box office by Chucky, she shared that stayed home and ate a prodigious amount of macaroni and cheese, and she experienced a major depression. She observed: “It was the only time in my life that I was ever depressed, and I recognized that I was depressed because I've done enough shows on the topic. ‘O, this is what people must feel like who are depressed.'All of which happened in 1998. Why am I bringing it up now?Author John Maxwell observed that life's greatest lessons always come from our failures, not from our successes. The more painful our failure, the more important it is to extract a life-enhancing lesson from that failure. That is just what Oprah did.

Powerful leaders who lie are as old as the Bible. Our Haftarah tomorrow, King David's song of gratitude to God (2 Samuel 22:1-51), contains a big fat lie—a lie so obvious, so brazen, that one wonders how he had the temerity to utter it. King David says of himself:The Lord rewarded me according to my merit,He requited the cleanness of my hands.For I have kept the ways of the LordAnd have not been guilty before my God;I am mindful of all His rulesAnd have not departed from His laws.I have been blameless before Him,And I have guarded myself against sinning—And the Lord has requited my merit,According to my purity in His sight.We know all these words are blatantly, outrageously false. King David committed adultery with Batsheba. He committed murder, having her honorable and courageous husband Uriah put on the front lines so that Uriah would be killed in battle. King David violated Uriah's trust, having Uriah carry the executive order of the King to the general demanding that Uriah be put in the most dangerous spot in battle—Uriah carried his own death warrant because he was so trusting of his king.We also know that King David was not blameless before God. God sent the prophet Nathan to chastise King David and to pronounce a curse upon him and his household.Therefore the sword shall never depart fromyour House—because you spurned Me by takingthe wife of Uriah the Hittite and making her your wife.Thus said the Lord: I will make a calamity rise against youfrom within your own house.King David's family life is ruined forever after.Given his egregious and well known sin and punishment, what would possess King David to lie like this? And why does our tradition canonize this lie twice? We read the Haftarah tomorrow, and we read it as the Haftarah for parshat Ha'azinu.What is the lesson here? Do lies become true when we repeat them enough? Or is there some other lesson to be learned?

How is this Passover different from all other Passovers? How is the seder we are doing tonight different from all the other seders we have ever done? Let me share a recent conversation I had with a good friend.We have a beloved member of our shul whose mother was born in Londorf, Germany. She was taken with all the other Jews of Londorf to Auschwitz. She was the only survivor from her town. Every other Jew of Londorf perished in Auschwitz. But his mother would go on to survive and thrive, to live a beautiful, joyful life and to build a family with generations of love. Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945. Which meant that this past January 27, 2025 marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. He and his wife went to Auschwitz-Birkenau for the occasion, where they recited Kaddish for all those who perished. And it turns out that that very day was also his own mother's yahrtzeit. Their words of Kaddish were filled with multiple meanings.I was talking to him about the unreal intensity of this experience, and he asked me a question that I had never thought about before. He asked: Can you imagine the Jewish story without suffering? A Jewish history without hatred? My initial response was no: The suffering comes with our story. As we say in the Haggadah, b'chol dor v'dor omdim aleinu l'chaloteinu, in every generation, our enemies will arise to try to destroy us.

In 1992 Rabbi Joseph Telushkin published a book entitled Jewish Humor: What the Best Jewish Jokes Say About Jews. While he dedicated the book to his three daughters, the first chapter is about how hard it is for generations in a Jewish family to understand one another; how easy it is for frictions and misunderstandings to grow. Chapter one is entitled “Oedipus, Shmedipus, as Long as He Loves His Mother.” This is the first joke in his book.Three elderly Jewish women are seated on a bench in Miami Beach, each one bragging about how devoted her son is to her. The first one says: “My son is so devoted that last year for my birthday he gave me an all-expense paid cruise around the world. First class.”The second one says: “My son is more devoted. For my 75th birthday last year, he catered an affair for me. And even gave me money to fly down my good friends from New York.The third one says: My son is the most devoted. Three times a week he goes to a psychiatrist. Hundreds of dollars an hour he pays him. And what does he speak about the whole time? Me.You might think that parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, are natural allies. That the natural energy is for the generations to get along easily. We share so much. We share a past, present, and future. We share family history. We share values. We share genes. We share a home. We sleep under the same roof. We share dreams. Your success is my success. In fact, I am happier for your success than for my success. What is so complicated? What could go wrong?And yet, it is complicated, and it often does go wrong. That is not only evidenced by the jokes in Telushkin book. The inevitability of generational tension is the backdrop for the climactic passage in the special Haftarah from the prophet Malakhi who imagines that someday, in the future, there will be a yom Adonai hagadol v'hanorah, a day of the Lord that is great and awesome—that is how today became Shabbat hagadol. What will happen on that great and awesome day of the Lord? God “shall reconcile parents with their children and children with their parents.”

Can one person change the world?That is the question at the end of the tractate Sanhedrin. The word "Sanhedrin" means the supreme judicial, civic, legal, religious authority in ancient Israel. The Talmudic tractate Sanhedrin is about justice-the human beings, institutions, procedures and protocols, evidentiary rules, safeguards, that enable human beings to create and sustain a just society.Because justice in this world is so elusive, Sanhedrin's final chapter deals with other-worldly matters of the world to come (olam ha'ba) and the resurrection of the dead (techiyat hameitim). If we do not get justice in this world, perhaps we might get it in the next. Impossible to prove or disprove concepts like the world to come and resurrection of the dead might be a consolation for those living in a current reality that is, as Thomas Hobbes put it, "nasty, brutish and short."Justice is so urgent. Justice is so hard. Sometimes we fail. Which leads to the last question of this tractate: Can one person change the world? Not can one person change his or her own world? Rather, can one person change the world?Sanhedrin's answer to its own question is complex. It seems to answer that question yes. But the person it talks about right before the boffo end is none other than the prophet Elijah, who famously makes his appearance at the end of our seders. Everything about Elijah is ambiguous, which the tractate itself will bring out and highlight.On the eve of Passover, we will consider Sanhedrin's question of the power of an individual to change the world by examining the complicated figure of Elijah. The subtext question in our conversation: Do you believe you can, or that you cannot, change the world?

Rabbi Mishael Zion comes from a Haggadah-filled home: he is co-author of A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices (2007) and The Israeli Haggadah (2024), together with his father Noam Zion, who is the author of A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah (Hartman, 1997). Mishael was ordained by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York, has served as co-Director and rabbi of the Bronfman Fellowships, and founded the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture for Israeli Arts, Culture and Media leaders. He is also leader of the Klausner Minyan in Talpiot, Jerusalem, the neighborhood he was born in and in where his wife Elana, and their four daughters, live.

This week, I was speaking with a member who has been struggling with an intense family situation and was heading into a tense and painful meeting. She was riding in a Lyft. The driver was playing Christian radio quietly in the front. A few minutes before they arrived at their destination, she heard something on the radio that piqued her interest. "Can you turn that up?" she asked. The hosts of the Christian radio show were discussing a verse from the book of Joshua where God says to Joshua, "I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you and I will not forsake you." Just then, the car stopped at her destination.She shared that as she was riding in the Lyft, she was feeling deeply afraid and alone. Hearing that verse gave her strength. As she put it, “how freaking amazing to get that message from Christian radio of all places in the exact moment I needed it….[and] of all the verses they could possibly be discussing, they are not only discussing verses from my part of the Bible as a Jew, but they are also discussing the exact verses that I need to put my faith in right now.” When she got out of the Lyft, she stood taller and stronger, fortified by the wisdom of Torah echoing through Christian radio.Now, let's just pause for a moment. Think about this: What if our member had just been in that car, stressing about her meeting, messing around on her phone, tuning out the world? That would have been a totally reasonable response. In a stressful situation, it is so tempting to disconnect. It is so tempting to lose oneself in music, social media, reading and entertainment, or in chemical substances. But she was sitting in that car with her phone put away, looking out the window, listening to a random radio broadcast in her Lyft. Because her eyes and ears were open to possibility, that's how she received the wisdom she needed for that moment.

Shall we invite the troubling headlines—from Israel, Gaza, America, our world—to our seders? Are our seders supposed to be a joyful way to avoid the world (family, friends, songs, children's skits, plays, games, great food, lots of wine, tasty desserts), or an invitation to engage the world and think out loud together about how we can make it better?Are there any great options? Three options present themselves:Festival of worry. If everyone around the seder table agrees, and we talk about it, what ensues is a lot of worry, angst, negative energy, along with resolving to do our part to protest the troubling turn of events.Festival of acrimony. If people around the seder table do not agree, and we talk about it, what ensues is conflict, friction, acrimony. Who needs it?Festival of willed indifference. We do at the seder what we do most days, live our lives like it is not happening. Ignore the elephant. Talk about something else. But is that what we should be doing at a seder whose purpose is to inspire us to do our part to create a more just world?We do not have the answer for this question. But we are going to explore four lenses that can enable you to arrive at your own answer: • a halakhic lens• a poetic lens• an interpersonal relationship lens• a justice lens from the HaggadahAre we to celebrate the redemption that happened thousands of years ago, or to engage the redemption that needs to happen now? What do you think?

In the Torah God tells us that from time to time God will hide God's face. This would seem to be such a time. How do we find God in our troubled world together?

A woman named Jessica Sklar, her husband and their two children were happily living their lives in Pacific Palisades when their house burned down. Since losing all their earthly possessions, they have been wandering in the wilderness. In less than two months, this family has moved five times, from A B & B X5. In the home they used to love, they had stability and serenity. In the wilderness they now inhabit, they have anxiety and uncertainty. A deep question lodges in their soul: We are not okay. Will we ever be okay again? In the face of this anxiety and uncertainty, one place has brought them deep comfort: the Pacific Palisades Youth Baseball League which, because the Palisades fields were destroyed by the fire, are in neighboring towns. A Times article recently reported: At last came the siren call: Play ball! The pomp and circumstance…provided a modicum of normalcy for families who in the previous 53 days have had to find new homes, schools, doctors, cars, clothes, places to worship and more—all while navigating the maze of insurance and government assistance and deciding what to do next. I cried seeing people, said Juliana Davis, who lost her home. I cried coming, said her friend Erin Chidsey, whose house also burned.Of the 450 boys and girls who had signed up to play before the fire, 305 are still playing. And parents and children are finding it a tonic to their souls.What do we do when we are in the wilderness? We have not lost our homes to the wildfire. Yet many of us feel that we are in a different kind of wilderness.I have a wonderful Sisterhood class on Tuesday mornings. More than 30 people show up every Tuesday. We have been talking about our world through the prism of Jewish texts. What I hear from these students is deep anxiety. I have deep anxiety about our world. We are not okay. Will we ever be okay again?What will be with Israel? I have always loved Israel. But I am just confused. And worried. How does this end? What will be with our country? My students will say to me: I know you can't talk about politics, and we respect that. But what is happening with our checks and balances? Will we be leaving a democracy to our future generations?Edge. Anxiety. Concern for our future. Not feeling deeply anchored. And wondering: what can I do to create the world I want to live in and leave to my loved ones?That is the Torah's question now. How do we create a counterworld to the wilderness?

How are we to understand the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil and the stated intent of the federal government to deport him?It is good. He is an Israel hater. Finally the federal government is cracking down on Israel hate and Jew hate that have been running rampant on college campuses, leading to the intimidation and harassment of Jewish students and supporters of Israel. Columbia has been the capital of Jew hate and Israel hate. It is about time.It is bad. It changes the fundamental character of our country if somebody can be arrested and possibly deported for expressing opinions, however distasteful they may be to some. Deporting somebody for the exercise of free speech means we are in scary times in a scary country. Though some in the pro-Israel community may cheer this development, how can we be sure that we are not next? See Pastor Marin Niemoller's iconic words about Nazi Germany:First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.It is good. The intimidation and harassment of Jewish students have gone on too long. Our children who go to Columbia walk past signs, posters, and placards that say: “Jews go back to Europe.” How can we not see and combat that kind of hatred, which is real, throbbing, urgent, and getting worse? The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil will deter ugly hate directed against Jews and against Israel that has gone on for too long. Thank you, President Trump.It is bad. The administration is weaponizing antisemitism to try to achieve its immigration objectives. It does not actually care about antisemitism. And it is going to come back to haunt the Jewish and pro-Israel community by deepening divisions and hatred.Deepening hatred? How could it be worse than it is today, signs in New York City telling Jewish students and professors: “Jews go back to Europe.” The thing we fear may happen next is here. Now.On and on. How do we process such a complicated conundrum and negative energy sink hole? Tomorrow I want to offer an unexpected lens: the documentary hypothesis. Unlike our headlines, the documentary hypothesis is dry, a little boring, and safe to talk about in public. It will offend nobody. Also, and most importantly: At its heart is an insight that, whatever your view on the painful headlines, we all need to hear.

Robert Housman established Yad Chessed so he could help his neighbors struggling in Boston's Jewish community. In the early years, he ran it by himself, with help from his wife Sue, as he worked full-time as a computer programmer. He directed Yad Chessed until the summer of 2012 when he became a member of its Board of Directors.

On Yom Kippur, October 9, 1943, in the middle of the Holocaust, Rabbi Walter Wurzburger gave a sermon at Congregation Chai Odom in Brighton, Massachusetts entitled “The Individual in the Crisis.” He argued that Jews in Greater Boston own moral responsibility for the Holocaust. On the basis of the High Priest's avodah service, Rabbi Wurzburger offered this stark challenge:We behold a world of agony, misery, cruelty, injustice, brutality, and tyranny. We are responsible for it. It is our world. No complaints! No excuses! No defense mechanisms! No passing of the buck. (quoting the High Priest) “I and my family, we sinned, we failed, we are guilty, we are responsible.”If this be our lens, we cannot just lament and decry the pain of our world. We own the pain. We own the moral responsibility for doing something to fix it.That feels like a tall order. What can we do, here or in Israel? Maybe we should just focus on our dalet amot, the four cubits of our own existence. We cannot control what goes on in Washington or in Israel or in Gaza. We can have more control over what goes on in our homes, workplaces and communities.So consider this lens. When Moses announces the decisive tenth plague, he says it will happen at about midnight. The Talmud jumps on the word about. Why wasn't Moses more precise? The Talmud's answer: The Torah says about midnight to teach us to say: “I don't know.”Is “I don't know” a valid Jewish response to the pain of the world? I did not cause it. I cannot fix it. I don't know.The first lens came from a class this past summer at Hartman taught by Elana Stein Hain. The second lens came from a class taught by Yehuda Kurtzer. Are we living the second lens? If so, is that okay?

In 1992, then 25-year-old Sinéad O'Connor appeared on Saturday Night Live. She was a budding international musical superstar with two chart-topping records to her name. And, unbeknownst to producers, she had decided to use her platform to protest rampant child abuse in the Catholic Church. At the end of her performance, she stared straight into the camera, tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II and threw it at the camera as she shouted, “fight the real enemy.”Now remember, 1992 was almost a decade before the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church would come to light in this country. Not only were most Americans unaware of the evils that had unfolded behind closed doors, but they were also outraged that a pop star would dare to dishonor and defame a venerated religious leader. Sinéad was immediately and very publicly scorned, mocked, and ridiculed.Two weeks later, she was scheduled to perform at a special Madison Square Garden concert. Country music star Kris Kristofferson introduced her by saying, “I'm real proud to introduce this next artist, whose name's become synonymous with courage and integrity, Sinéad O'Connor.” As soon as he says her name, the crowd begins to boo and jeer at her. Sinéad walks on stage and stands in the face of that hate for what seems like forever. She adjusts her mic, tries saying “thank you” the way she would begin any other performance, but the crowd just keeps screaming at her. The band tries to save her by starting her song, but she cuts them off. 20,000 people in the audience are still booing. Jeering. The hate doesn't end. She stares out, waiting. Kris returns. He leans in and whispers something in her ear, then walks away. Again, the band tries to temper the vitriol of the crowd with instrumentals to no avail. Finally, Sinéad says, “turn this up,” and then begins to sing/scream the same song she sang on Saturday Night Live. She gets out every word. The crowd is still booing. She finishes, turns and begins to walk off the stage. Kris meets her, hugs her, and the two exit together.As a performer, I cannot imagine the grit it took to stand strong in front of 20,000 angry, booing audience members; not only to stand strong but to have the presence of mind to be able to pause and reflect about what she wanted to do, how she wanted to proceed, to decide to sing the very same song that earned her all of this vitriol. Later she would share that she herself was the victim of abuse growing up. That the picture she shredded belonged to her abusive mother. That she wasn't just taking a stand for victims in general, but for herself and for every child that had ever been abused. That she believed that she was more than a pretty voice and had an obligation to stand for justice. Fundamentally she was right. A decade later, the country would be roiled by revelations of abuse, cover ups, and the church would begin paying out settlements. But she was a ahead of her time. That courageous stand ended her career.This story made the rounds in September of 2024, when Kris Kristofferson passed away, because this moment of support kindled a beautiful friendship that would last for the next thirty-one years. But it resurfaced in my memory this week for a very different reason.

Often music reflects the mood of the time we are in. That is the case with Megillat Esther – but in a surprising way. While we are chanting in a joyous musical mode, reflected in the trope of Purim, we suddenly hear two mournful tunes at several points during the Megillah reading. There are six verses that we sing to this mournful trope, the trope for Eicha, the book of Lamentations, which we read on Tisha B'Av. What does Purim, our happiest holiday, have to do with Tisha B'Av, our saddest?Join us on Shabbat morning as we examine different times during the Jewish year where there is a juxtaposition between joy and sorrow. How do we hold both at the same time?

Has this ever happened to you? One frigid morning, I grab my warmest jacket. I reach down to zip the zipper and it won't budge. I pull. I push. I take it apart. I put it back. I pull again. I'm late. I'm from California – I need this coat to zip. Now there are probably more rational things to have done, but I do not do them. I pull with all my strength – words that I make it a practice not to say bubbling up in my mind – until I have whipped myself into a quiet frenzy. The coat is broken. The world is broken. It's all too much.From broken zipper to broken world in 60 seconds flat. As the feeling moved from my kishkes to my head and calm descended, I thought of the many members who have shared how close to the surface that feeling of overwhelm is for so many right now in this moment of shifting ground. Our assumptions of what is usual or expected, in everything from the political to the tech to the economic to the global – whether you think those changes are good or not good – have been so rapidly changing that one could be forgiven for experiencing some whiplash. How do we meet this moment?

I was out having a coffee last week with a friend. In our musings about the vagaries of life, the phrase, “If only” come up in conversation. How would our lives be different “if only?” Would they be better? Worse? If only we had done this and not that, or NOT done this or that? Our micro and macro decisions effect not only the trajectory of our lives, but the lives our family, friends, community and perhaps beyond. How different would our world be if for example Drew Bledsoe had not been injured? If the Challenger had not exploded? If Noah had argued with God? If Pharoh had decided to kill the girls? When and how does “If only” become, “If not now, when?”As always, Torah has a way of framing and addressing these philosophical questions. Looking forward to exploring with you on Shabbat morning “if, only” through the lens of society, Biblical text, and personal reflection.

February 8, 2025

What is the greatest miracle in Jewish history? Many would answer it is the one we read about this Shabbat – the splitting of the sea. Rarely, though, do we stop to notice another, perhaps equally astounding, miracle that happened when our ancestors reached the shore – they all broke out into song together. How did this happen? What did it look like? Why should we care?The vision of simultaneous song endures as an example of striking unity among our people. It is also fleeting. Today, division runs deep and unity remains fleeting. Does this song, or the other song from which Shabbat Shira gets its name, the song of Devorah, give us any insight helpful to our modern experience which is characterized by anything but simultaneous song? Join us tomorrow morning as we unpack what the Torah is trying to tell us about the possibility or impossibility of lasting unity (source sheethere).

February 1, 2025

There is a fascinating paradox at the core of human experience: we know what is required to live healthy, happy lives and yet, we often make choices that directly contradict our own well-being. This is well-documented. For example, the consequences of smoking cigarettes have been studied intensively, and the results of those studies have been widely publicized. And yet, experts estimate that there are still1.1 billion smokers world-wide, a number which has remained constant despite intensive efforts to protect public health. In other words, knowing what is healthy and what is not is not necessarily predictive of whether or not we will be able to actualize our own best interests.That's where our Torah is so important. As we open Exodus, we see a pattern that we know all too well. Pharaoh in the midst of a plague is open to change. With locusts devouring the land or under cover of darkness, Pharaoh repents and offers to change his behavior for the better. But as soon as the plague recedes, Pharaoh reverts to his cruel ways and to his refusals of our people. How many times have we done the same?Interestingly, God is also aware of this pattern and the dangers of the human condition. God asserts that the signs and wonders are in order to show Pharaoh and the Israelites that God is powerful and present, with the hope that the Israelites will forever remember God's intervention in their lives and remain thereafter faithful.But like Pharaoh, the Israelites recognize God's glory in the midst of the signs and wonders and do not always remember God's glory when memory of those miracles recedes. God's answer to this collective amnesia is ritualized memory. But what is ours? How do we subvert our own attention and memory such that we can make the best choices in every moment, even when we are not suffering from a particular plague?Here are the sources.

Shimon The Righteous would say that the world stands upon three things: upon Torah, upon Avodah - the Temple Service, and upon G'milut Hasadim - acts of loving kindness. Since I am finishing my fifth month working with the teen community here at Temple Emanuel I thought that I would humbly reflect upon three stories that illustrate these three pillars of Jewish life, which point our compass as we continue to establish our teen community.

If you have not already done so, please take a couple of moments to watch this clip of the most famous part of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde's sermon at a prayer service this past Tuesday, the day after the inauguration, at the Washington National Cathedral. In class we will watch this clip together before our study and conversation. Here are some questions we will consider together: What do you think of her message? What does it say about our nation now that Bishop Budde's message—have mercy—can ignite so much emotion and controversy? How do you think it felt to be Bishop Budde delivering that message in that moment to the new President, to the nation, and to the world? How do Jewish sources help us interpret this moment? Tomorrow we will look at two prophets who speak truth to power: Nathan, who tells King David that he was immoral; and Jeremiah, who is nearly killed by a mob for saying that if the Judaeans do not change their ways, Babylon will destroy the Temple and exile the people. Does speaking truth to power ever work? For those of us who are not prophets and bishops, how does this large question intersect with our daily lives? What is asked of us, now?

For 469 days, ever since October 7, every morning, and every evening, at our daily minyan, we pray for the IDF, that God should guard and protect Israel's courageous and heroic soldiers. We pray that God return our hostages safely to their families. We say Mourner's Kaddish as a community, as part of am Yisrael, for Israel's fallen soldiers. Occasionally, somebody will ask: how much longer? How much longer will we offer these prayers? No one knows for sure, but the general answer has to be something like: We will keep praying for the IDF for as long as Israel is at war. We will keep praying for the hostages as long as the hostages are stuck in Gaza. And we will keep saying Kaddish as long as soldiers keep dying in combat. Just this week, 5 more IDF soldiers were killed in northern Gaza. If you read the article in the Times of Israel, it just breaks your heart. You see pictures of these five idealistic, noble, beautiful young people. So incredibly, heartbreakingly young: Cpt. Yair Yakov Shushan, 23; Staff Sgt. Yahav Hadar, 20. Staff Sgt. Guy Karmiel, 20; Yoaf Feffer, 19; Aviel Wiseman, 20. Fifteen months later all that young beautiful life snuffed out. How could we not say Kaddish for them? The larger point is: it is all so murky—and sad. When will it end? How will it end? How will Israel and Israelis be at the end? All so murky. And then this week, news of the ceasefire and hostage deal. I want to offer three questions. First, what is a lens through which we can see this murky deal in this murky war? Second, when we apply that lens to the facts before us, what do we think, and how does it make us feel? Third, what do we do?

This week we begin the Exodus story which offers humanity a one-two punch. First, a cruel new Pharaoh who demonizes a vulnerable and marginalized minority and commands “all his people, saying: Every boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.” Exodus 1-22. In other words, baby-killing is state policy. Infanticide is the law of the land. Second, in the face of such cruelty, in all of Egypt, only two people, Shifrah and Puah, stand up to resist. At most two in a whole land fight against manifest cruelty. The rest of the country went along. Why only two? Where was everybody else? How to explain indifference to manifest immorality? In class we will not only read the story of Shifra and Puah, but also a piece of stunning biblical scholarship by an Israeli scholar named Judy Klitsner which sees the Exodus story as what she calls the “subversive sequel” to the Tower of Babel story in Genesis. Brilliant insight which will leave us thinking: what does all of this mean to us now?

There is a new form of loss in the world, and it is spreading like wildfire. We know what it is like to lose a person we love. Our mother dies. Our father dies. Our grandparent or sibling or friend dies. There is a Hebrew word for that, and it comes from the Joseph story. After the brothers sold Joseph into slavery, older brother Reuben observes hayeled einenu, Joseph is no more. And when that happens, the person we love dies and is no more, it is usually sad, sometimes tragic, and always a huge, paradigm-shifting change. The one we love is no more. How will we do life without the one we love? But we are set up for it. Our tradition has equipped us with the rituals that will help us get through it. We have shiva. We have sheloshim. We have minyan. We have kaddish. We have yahrtzeit. We have the words to say and the deeds to do in the comfort of a community that enable us both to mourn our loss and also affirm our life. But now there is a new form of loss. We don't have the rituals and traditions and know-how, because we have not seen this epic loss, on this epic scale, before. What happens when it is not a person who is no more, but a house, and all that it contains, that is no more? The house we grew up in is no more. The house that we wake up in and go to sleep in and do life in is no more. The ketubah on the wall is no more. The artwork gathered over a lifetime of going to art galleries in special places is no more. The Judaica is no more. The challah trays and challah covers, the kiddush cups, the Shabbat candlesticks that are a family heirloom from a beloved departed grandmother is no more. The seder plates, the Elijah cups and Miriam cups, the haggadot are no more. The benchers, the kippot, the tallitot are no more. The kitchen table and the dining room table on which we had 1,000 beautiful meals with our loved ones is no more. The cards and letters and photographs and memories are no more. The relics of our children's childhood—the macaroni-encrusted pencil holders spray-painted gold that they would give us for Father's Day and Mother's Day, are no more. The home is gone. And with it the physical manifestation of the life we used to live is no more. Multiply that by all the businesses that are no more. Add to that the synagogue in Pacific Palisades where Elias's friend and cantorial colleague Ruth works, a 100-year old congregation, that is no more. Thank God the Torah scroll was saved from the wreckage, but the rest of the House of the Lord is no more. We have members who grew up in Pacific Palisades. They came to the special prayer service for LA we held in the Gann Chapel on Thursday night. Before the service, she showed me on her cell phone what einenu, what is no more, looks like when homes, businesses, and every structure that used to stand is no more. Where a city block used to be, it is no more. Apocalyptic emptiness. The loss is so enormous. Where do people whose house is no more go to live? What clothes do they wear when their clothes are incinerated? What food do they eat? How do they go to work and do a day of life when their entire foundation has been so cruelly overturned? And that is not even dealing with the deep, deep, super scary, terrifying financial implications. From what I have read, and heard from my family in Los Angeles, most residents who lost their homes do not have insurance that covers a home destroyed by fire. They lost everything. There is no insurance. What happens now?

How is it with your soul? In her book on evangelical Christianity, Circle of Hope, Eliza Griswold shares the centrality of that question in helping people understand one another. How is it with your soul? Do I wake up angry and aggrieved, and spend my energy honking the horn, sending flaming emails, taking offense, looking for a fight? Do I wake up feeling grateful for the good in my life? Do I wake up rattled and unsettled or centered and anchored? What shapes our soul? What shapes our inner life? Can we control it? Can we intentionally become less angry, more grateful, less rattled, more serene? Tomorrow morning we will look at the inner life of Joseph and David as they are dying—an abject lesson in how our deeds shape our souls, and how our souls shape our deeds.

January 4, 2025

Earlier in the year, Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote about her father's friend who was kidnapped at knife-point 50 years ago. It was a powerful piece--both for the thoughtful discussion of this original trauma and its impact on her and on her family friend. But the real story wasn't the kidnapping, nor the way the kidnapping re-ignited memories of her own lived traumas. The real story was that her article inspired countless emails from total strangers who reached out to share their own stories of trauma. Six months after her original article, Taffy published a second reflection titled, "I Published a Story about Trauma. I Heard About Everyone Else's." As humans, we are desperate to share our stories. And, when we tell our stories it doesn't just give us the opportunity to connect, those stories can have a healing affect on our emotional well-being and on the trajectory of our lives. There is a whole school of psychotherapy called narrative theory and practice whereby mental health practitioners help people to process trauma by telling and retelling their story until they find meaning. In this week's Talmud class, we're going to apply narrative theory and practice to the story of Joseph. Joseph's life is full of trauma: he loses his family, is tossed into a pit and sold into slavery, is wrongly accused and imprisoned, and lives the rest of his adult life as an outsider. His story could be a story of loss and trauma, but he reflects a story of hope and connection. He says God brought him to exactly where he needed to be. He gives thanks. How can do this? How can we use the power of stories to metabolize trauma into healing and transformational possibility?

One of the most magnetic moments drawing us to shul is the observance of a yahrtzeit, the anniversary of our loved one's passing, which offers us a precious opportunity to show up again for our beloved departed, to say a few words about them, and to recite Kaddish in their memory. Ordinary people who do not show up at shul all that much the rest of the year show up for their loved one's yahrtzeit. That is through all the seasons. That is through the snow and the cold and the ice. And they do that for years, for decades, sometimes even remembering their loved one in death far longer than they were blessed to have them in life. And when somebody comes to mark their loved one's yahrtzeit, a thing we often say is: may you continue to be your loved one's living legacy. May your father's beautiful values live on in you. May your mother's beautiful values live on in you. We say it. We mean it. It is beautiful and true. I have been saying it, and I have been receiving it when others say it to me, for many years. But this year, for the first time, I experienced a wrinkle, a complexity, that I had never noticed before. What happens if we and our beloved departed mother or father or grandparent have a real disagreement over a matter of principle? They lived. They died. We know where they stand. Their legacy is now ours. But on a fundamental question of principle, we disagree. For the first time ten days ago, I felt this tension myself.

I have a thought experiment for you. In honor of Hanukkah, which begins Wednesday night, find a photograph of you lighting Hanukkah candles with your family from 25 years ago. Take a good long look at that old photo. How does it make you feel? For many of us, it can be complicated. On the one hand, there is a certain wistful beauty to it. Our children were so young and small and cute. We were so much younger. Our parents were alive, standing with our children, three generations lighting candles. What a blessing. On the other hand, there can be a certain wistful melancholy to it. Our children are grown and gone and out of the house. We don't see them every day like we used to. Our parents have passed. We were not only younger back then but also healthier. Before the back pain. Before the hip pointer. Back when we used to be able to run and play tennis whenever we wanted and climb up and down stairs without even thinking about it. An old photo is a mixed bag. My late father in love used to say: “There are no happy pictures. There are only pictures of happy memories.” The memories are of course happy. We were blessed to have lit candles with our young children and our beloved parents. But the picture is not entirely happy because in the intervening years we have felt the ravages of time in our body and in our soul. Is there any inoculation against the ravages of time? We cannot stop the worries, stresses and conflicts of daily living. That comes with the human condition. But is there a way to think about our life that minimizes the ravages of time? Our Torah has so much to say here.

Immediately ahead are seven years of great abundance in all the land of Egypt. After them will come seven years of famine, and all the abundance in the land of Egypt will be forgotten. (Genesis 41: 29-30) Truer words were never spoken. Joseph's interpretation of how lean years swallow up fat years, how bad times swallow up good times, how seventy years of life and health get swallowed up by a decade of dementia, when we struggle to remember what our loved one used to be like—his words were true for ancient Egypt, and they are true for us. In his commentary on Joseph's interpretation, Rashi picks up on this note of swallowing. Bad swallows good. What have you done for me lately? The recency bias is so powerful. Like the thin ears of corn that swallow the fat ears of corn, like the scrawny cows that swallow the robust cows, today's truth crowds out yesterday's truth. In sports, in the economy, in culture, the fact that a team used to win, that the economy used to be strong, that a singer used to belt out number one hits, is always eclipsed by what is happening now. So too our moods. The fact that we used to be happy is scant consolation if we are depressed now. And, as noted above, one of the cruelest expressions of the recency bias is dementia. It literally is hard to remember our loved one before their decline, so powerful is their decline at swallowing up time and energy. Is there an answer for the all-powerful recency bias? Joseph's solution is to store up a reserve during the good time to hold us in the bad time. That solution worked for ancient Egypt. At least it staved off mass starvation. Does the storing up solution work for us? If not, do we have any other way to counter the awesome power of the recency bias?

The volume of outrage in our world has hit a crescendo. All the time I hear questions like, “how can you bear to be around someone who voted like that?!” or “how can you stand working with people who are so anti-Zionist or who are so pro-Israel?” As if people who do not rage against those they disagree with are somehow condoning or supporting evil perspectives. Young people, already stressed by the pressures of their own lives, feel pressured to respond to hateful social media posts and/or to present content that will fight against what they see as evil lies. Everything is pitched as though the conversation is an existential battle between good and evil and each one of us is either fighting for good or conceding to forces of evil. We saw this so sharply this week. When Luigi Mangione murdered Brian Thompson in broad daylight, the story on the street and on social media wasn't about a horrific crime against humanity. People lionized Luigi, they asked him on dates, they offered to be his alibi, they fundraised for his legal costs, they even competed in dress-alike competitions. Why? Because they see him as someone willing to take decisive action against the evils of our world, never mind that he committed an atrocious crime and never mind that killing Brian Thompson does nothing to fix our broken health care system nor address the real pain of the American people. There's a word for this energy in our tradition: zealotry. Zealots are people who are inspired by passion, who take action without due process, and who force the world to align with their vision. The most famous zealots in our tradition arose in a tumultuous time in our history. Way back in the first century, during the Second Temple Period, our ancestors were fighting to build a life in the shadow of the Roman Empire. At the time, the future of Judaism and Jewish community was precarious and there were different groups that had different ideas about what should happen. Some groups fought for justice and against elitism and classism that they felt were destroying society. Some believed that the Roman Empire was the way of the future. They promoted assimilation and Hellenization and worked to try to suppress Jewish revolt against the occupying power. While others raged against Roman rule, encouraging resistance to Roman culture and strict adherence to Jewish cultic rites. According to the Talmud, the elders of the Jewish community wanted to mobilize their community thoughtfully. But the zealots didn't have the patience for this. They felt an existential threat and believed it was their duty to force the Jewish community into action. They provoked and attacked the Romans, trying to incite violence. And when their guerilla tactics worked and the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, the zealots burned the granaries and food stores in the city so our ancestors would be forced to fight for their lives. When we tell this story, we focus on our survival. We focus on Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai's improbable escape in a coffin. We focus on his heroic journey to Yavne and the way he preserved the Judaism that he and the other rabbis believed in. But that leaves out a critical piece of our history. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai had to escape because of the zealots, because their radical ideology created a toxic culture of violence which threatened our very existence. Today, more than ever, we need to remember the zealots.

The murder last week of CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York in broad daylight inspired large-scale celebration. The article from the Times and social media posts show delight in his murder; the celebration of his murderer as a hero. What is wrong with us? How could thousands of Americans celebrate murder? There is an ugliness and hate in our nation now. Is there any way to heal it? Our reading this week deals with violence in a violent place, Shechem: the rape of Dinah, the revenge of Simon and Levi. Violence often leads to more violence. Hate to more hate. Ugliness to more ugliness. But are those cycles inevitable? What do we learn from this violent story about how to heal the hate in our world now, if healing is even possible? In the wake of Brian Thompson's murder, much has been written and spoken about anger, outrage, fury at the health insurance industry's denials and delays which have led to death and dying during people's most vulnerable times. Does our Torah offer us a better way to respond to this pain than what happened on the streets of New York?

On a Tuesday in late October, 2022, Jared Goff, a quarterback for the Detroit Lions, was summoned to a meeting in the office of his coach Dan Campbell. The summons gave Jared Goff a pit in his stomach. He figured he was going to be benched or released—fired. Some version of bad news felt inevitable. Goff had begun his career with the Los Angeles Rams, who had traded him to the Detroit Lions for the Lions' former quarterback, Matthew Stafford. In his first year, Stafford led the Rams to a Super Bowl victory. But Goff's first year for the Lions was a disaster. The team went 3-13-1. His second season started out just as bad: one win, six losses, including an ugly loss that Sunday in which Goff played terribly. Hence the summons to the coach's office. When he got to the coach's office, to Goff's surprise, Coach Campbell did not have bad news. He had a good question. Jared, you are a much better player than the way you have been playing. What do you think is going on? What do you think you might do differently to play better? What tweak might we think about? To which Jared Goff responded: I've been trying to do too much. I need to let go of all my anxiety and just do my best one play at a time. To which Campbell responded: Jared, that's all I've wanted you to do this whole time. The next game, Jared Goff played dramatically better. The team still lost, but his play improved appreciably. And the game after that, the Lions won, and they have been winning ever since. This year the Lions are tied for the best record in the league. Goff's play has been spectacular. I bring up this story not to talk about football but to talk about how to respond to people who are seriously struggling. Jared Goff assumed that he was going to be benched or released. But Dan Campbell did not give up on him. How do we not give up on people or places that we love that are going through a hard time?

Is everything going to be okay? We live with that question every day. Is everything going to be okay with Israel? December 7, marks 14 months of war, and the situation is still murky, unresolved and painful for all. This week when he was in dialogue with Michelle, Donniel Hartman was real, and real was not upbeat. Is everything going to be okay with our country? We are a 50-50 nation. Both halves have deep convictions and deep anxieties. The side that is not in power is worried. Is everything going to be okay with ourselves and our loved ones? When we face serious challenges—relational, emotional, physical, financial, professional—will we emerge okay on the other end? What kind of prayer is helpful when we worry whether everything is going to be okay? The Torah offers us a primer of two different models of prayer, same person, same anxiety, same dread fear, twenty years apart. Young Jacob running away from home worries that Esau will kill him. Older Jacob coming back home to Canaan worries that Esau will kill him and his family. In both cases, he prays. Tomorrow we will consider each prayer in its own context and ask whether we pray a prayer like that, and if so, whether doing so helps. We will also study the interpretation of these two prayers by the late Rabbi Harold Kushner found in his classic When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Rabbi Kushner uses these two prayers of Jacob as illuminating prayers that do and do not work. How is it with your prayer life? Can our prayer life grow so that our prayers help strengthen us when we could use the strength?

Listen to a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend sermon with Rabbi Michelle Robinson

Last week, I came across a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine. Kim Tingley, in her article “‘Nature's Swiss Army Knife': What can we Learn from Venom ?” writes about the incredible potential of highly toxic reptile and insect venom to provide pharmaceutical miracles. It turns out that reptile and inspect venom contains hundreds, even thousands of molecules, which each have the ability to act in powerful ways on the human body. In the aggregate, the venom can have disastrous consequences. But applied strategically and sparingly, these compounds can make a world of difference. Take, for example, the wildly popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound. These drugs were created from research into a venomous reptile called the Gila monster which lives mostly underground in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. It's a very striking lizard—typically they have a black head and matching black tongue, black legs, and a tiger-like pattern of orange and black down their back and tail. And they are highly toxic. If you Google them after shabbos, you'll find a bunch of stories of people who have lost their lives to chance encounters on hiking trails or from bites from Gila monster pets. Gila monster venom had been screened back in the 80s, but when gastroenterologist Jean-Pierre Raufman and endocrinologist John Eng re-screened it, they discovered a molecule that had been previously overlooked which resembled a hormone that regulates insulin in healthy humans. That molecule, which they called Exendin-4, is the basis for these weight-loss drugs which have so transformed the medical landscape. Learning about this research and these medicines made me wonder—what would happen if we were able to look at the toxins in our lives with the same outlook?  There is no universe where we would see all the misfortunes of our lives as helpful or even healing, but would it ever be possible to get to a place where we could see elements of the challenges in our lives as having blessed us with possibility?

Dear friends, There is a fascinating paradox in our Torah reading this week. On the one hand, we've spent these last weeks reading about the trials and tribulations of our ancestors. In our Talmud class, we've discussed how loss, trauma, and pain shape their lives. We've seen how they suffer from dislocation, dashed hopes, and painful interpersonal dynamics. And yet, at the end of their lives, the Torah focuses not on the challenges they've endured but on the complete and total blessing of their lives. We are taught that each and every one of Sarah's 127 years was equally good. We are taught that God blessed Abraham in everything. How can this be? Is it possible that Sarah's years of infertility and strife were as good as the years she spent showering her son, Isaac, with love? Could it be that God's blessing for Abraham included dislocation, war, and the dissolution of the family he so yearned for? Or is it possible that the blessing and goodness that our ancestors experienced was less about what objectively happened and more about their adopted perspective?