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These past months have been very difficult for our OVS community. All too often, we opened our email and saw the devastating news that a member of our community had died. When God said in בראשית/Bereshit/Genesis “לא טוב היות אדם לבדו/It is not good for people to be alone” (2:18) it was a clue to humanity that we’re intended to live lives of relationships. We spend our lives building relationships, and with each relationship, we take a risk and leave ourselves vulnerable. Each relationship can be the source of the greatest of all joys and the source of the greatest of pain. The pain is brought about by our knowledge and fear that one day the relationship will end and the other person will no longer be with us. If we choose to focus on the other side of the risk, we leave ourselves open to experience great joy and incredible lives. The truth is that we all live somewhere in the middle. We all have highs and lows and that’s what it means to live in community, and in relationship.

Next Tuesday, the 18^th, will mark the conclusion of the שלושים/Sheloshim period of mourning for one of our members, Wendell Lynn. Many of us are still in shock that Wendell is no longer sitting in the back row of our services or at the first table in the Social Hall to roll out panettis for burekas. It’s hard to believe Wendell only came to our community in March of 2023. It’s hard to believe he made such an impact and so many relationships in such a short time. We have taken on the responsibility of saying קדיש/Kaddish for Wendell as we were his family. If you are interested in helping and taking a day or more, please let us know and we will help you get on the schedule. We will be saying Kaddish daily for the 11 months of mourning.

וַתָּ֣מׇת שָׂרָ֗ה בְּקִרְיַ֥ת אַרְבַּ֛ע הִ֥וא חֶבְר֖וֹן בְּאֶ֣רֶץ כְּנָ֑עַן וַיָּבֹא֙ אַבְרָהָ֔ם לִסְפֹּ֥ד לְשָׂרָ֖ה וְלִבְכֹּתָֽהּ׃/And Sarah died in Keriat Arbah, which is Hebron in the land of Canaan, and Avraham came to eulogize and cry for her (Genesis 23:2). Up until this point, death existed in the תורה/Torah but we didn’t know about the grief that accompanied the death. We didn’t learn about anyone’s response to experiencing the immense pain of losing someone close to them. This one verse describes two very distinct parts of grief: sadness and reflection. When someone dies, we’re left to mourn what’s gone and to recall what we can. We are left to mourn and to reflect in the same way אברהם taught us all those years ago. This week’s פרשה/Portion: חיי שרה/Chaye Sarah marks the first eulogy and it was delivered by אברהם for his wife, שרה.

I recently began to work on a writing project. Over the years, I’ve amassed a large collection of eulogies from funerals I officiated at. Each time I meet with a family, I sit down and learn from them about their loved one. I learn about their journey and who they were. We talk about the person’s biography, about their essence, and their soul. I then begin the process of putting together the story of the person. Eulogies are sacred to me. The family needs something to hold on. The person needs something to begin to live eternal life through. The community needs a way to voice their grief. Every one of these eulogies has been unique. I’ve never merely cut and pasted something from one to another. I might have reused an idea, but every eulogy is personal and about the person we’re there to remember. I’m now going through my library of eulogies and selecting some to share with the world. We’ll see if the project goes anywhere, but it’s sacred work to look back through years of my writings about those I helped care for after they died and to give them greater immortality. In that spirit, I want to offer you the opportunity to read one of these eulogies this week. Click here and you’ll find the words I delivered at Wendell’s funeral. I pray they bring comfort to those of us in search of solace and comfort. May Wendell’s memory forever be a blessing.

I remember walking into my childhood house on a Saturday afternoon. I’d been playing hockey with some friends and I was looking forward to some rest. Instead, when I walked in, my dad was watching breaking news so I sat down next to him. The Prime Minister of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, had been shot after leaving a peace rally. We were numb and we were hurt. Within minutes, it was announced that he had succumbed to his injuries. The Prime Minister of Israel was dead. In the minutes and hours that followed, we all assumed he’d been killed by an external enemy. We all assumed this would trigger a giant war. Then we learned the even worse and more devastating news. It wasn’t an external foe but a terrorist from within. Rabin had been murdered in cold blood by a Jew. He had been murdered by a person who professed to be a religious and observant Jew. He had been murdered because of the difficult and necessary decisions he and his government had been making.

Those days are etched into my memory. President Clinton’s famous words: שלום חבר/Shalom Chaver/Goodbye my friend. The hastily convened funeral at Mt Herzl featuring leaders from around the world. The immensely tearful eulogy Rabin’s granddaughter delivered, discussing not his leadership or military accomplishments, but his core and soul and who he was as a person and her grandfather. Watching people hold up his widow, Leah. Seeing Shimon Peres suddenly assume the role of leader.

Zionism already was a core part of my identity. I was already deeply committed to, and involved with, our people and our religion. The tragedy could not be lost on us that this was not some foreign action or the act of an enemy we were battling. This was Jew vs. Jew, and one of the greatest leaders of the young state paid with his life. It just so happened I made my first trip to Israel less than a year later. I was on the 1996 March of the Living. On that trip, we would go to Mt Herzl and see the new grave of Prime Minister Rabin and we were taken to Rabin Square in Tel-Aviv. There was no way to look past the enormous mark his life and his murder left on Israel and the Jewish People.

This week, we read the powerful and troubling words of the עקידת יצחק/Akeidat Yitzhak/The Binding of Isaac. There’s a midrash I believe could be instructive to us about this: “ ’As אברהם/Avraham raised his arm’, and the knife, how was this? It teaches that three tears fell from the ministering angels (Heaven) and broke the knife.” This midrash evokes the tears of heaven over this action, and it evokes the breaking of the instrument that had been intended to kill. There can be no comparison made between the act of a terrorist and the act of our righteous ancestor, אברהם, but there can be some connection in the way we understand the world.

Rabin’s murderer saw himself as fighting to defend the Jews and the Land of Israel. He was wrong and anyone who sees him as an inspiration is wrong. אברהם was seeking to fulfill a command from God and thankfully that was negated by God telling him to stop. In the case of Rabin’s murderer, he was unable to hear the Divine voice stopping him because of his hatred and his inability to recognize he was wrong. If Heaven was brought to tears by the potential death at the command of God, how much more must Heaven cry when the deaths are not commanded by God but by the command of misguided hatred? The tears shed by Heaven must break these weapons and these inclinations. The tears of Heaven must break the divisions we Jews are experiencing. The tears of Heaven must remind us that we’re never alone and that God is with us in all of our struggles.

Today we continue to be a people divided. We must look back at our history and recognize our divisions will not strengthen us but weaken us. We need to see that to live together, we need to put our weapons away and open ourselves to being unified, even with people we sometimes disagree with. Our tears can unite us, and in that unity, we can build a better Jewish world.

Last week I signed a letter with over a thousand of my colleagues from around the U.S. The letter was prompted by the current mayoral race in New York City, but was really about the current climate we find ourselves in, and the continual politicization of Israel and Zionism. Click here to read the letter. Since October 7^th, we’ve seen an already growing trend grow even greater at an alarming rate. Jews have been marginalized and made to feel “other” in a way that’s reminiscent of some of the darkest chapters in Jewish and non-Jewish history. Antisemitism is on the rise and we cannot sit by and watch as this happens.

As Jews, we cannot be asked to leave our Zionism at the door when having conversations and interactions with different groups we want to be part of. We also can’t allow Jews, and Israel, to be used and abused by politicians or political groups to score points and win. In the case of the New York City race, Zohran Mamdani is running to be the mayor of the largest Jewish population in a city outside of Israel. Jews make up a large percentage of the city and his candidacy presents a clear risk. He’s been unwilling to condemn language that calls for the mass murder and terrorizing of Jews around the world, “globalize the intifada”. He has a well-established record of accusing the only Jewish state in the world of crimes like apartheid and genocide. Most importantly, he refuses to acknowledge Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. This last point is one we must not lose sight of. The Jewish People, like all people, have the right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland. Nobody tells other groups around the world they aren’t entitled to this and it should never become normal for anyone to say this about our people.

I’m a rabbi, and I do believe it’s wrong for me to tell my congregants how to vote and who to vote for in almost all circumstances. Luckily, we don’t live in NYC and as such, this is simply a warning to us all and not an instruction. This week we’re learning in the תורה/Torah about God telling אברם/Avram that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and that they will be a blessing. God tells אברם that people who bless us will be blessed and people who curse us will be cursed. It’s 2025 and people are still cursing us. It’s sad that so much progress has been made and yet the oldest hatred in the world is still alive and well. It’s sad that we continue to deal with antisemitism on college campuses, in the halls of congress, on the streets of cities, around the world and in elections. We cannot accept people endangering our people. We cannot accept people normalizing the language of murder. We cannot accept people who seek to marginalize us. We cannot be silent when our future is at risk, and our wellbeing is endangered. That’s the reason that I chose to sign this letter in my name. I signed it because as the תלמוד/Talmud teaches: silence is consent.

In the Hebrew Bible, the תָּנָ”ךְ, there are two epic stories of ships/boats: Noah/נֹחַ and Jonah/יוֹנָה. These two stories have much in common: God tells a prophet that evil has happened and needs to be remedied. A ship is a major part of the mission. And the word יוֹנָה is found in both. While these are just a few similarities, they are very big. Let’s focus on the last one, the word יוֹנָה. The name of Jonah is יוֹנָה and the word for the dove at the end of the Noah/נֹחַ story is also יוֹנָה. One might imagine this is just a coincidence, but I don’t think it’s okay to look past this incredible connection. The job of the יוֹנָה in the flood story of this week’s פָּרשָׁה/parsha/portion, is to investigate if the waters had receded. His job was to let us know that life could resume and the struggle was over. יוֹֹנָה’s job was to go to a foreign city and let the people know they needed to change because they were doing something that was contrary to God’s vision of the world.

One יוֹנָה was bringing a message on ending the disaster/plague and the other was coming to stop the disaster from continuing and thus stopping the necessity of the destruction of an entire people. Both stories are tied together by God’s realization that the world had evil in it and that it went against the world God had created. God created our world to be one filled with creation, mutuality and community. God created a world where we would be partners in creation. God created a world where humankind would work together to right wrongs and make things better for others.

When we look at the world today what do we see? Do we see a יוֹנָה showing the end or the beginning of the disaster? Do we see a messenger doing his part or running from it? Are we seeing a נֹחַ that listened to God and saved creation from complete destruction, or are we witnessing a יוֹנָה running from God and shunning responsibility for humanity? In reality, we’re seeing both. It’s too much of a stretch to say it’s all one or the other. We need to recognize there are pieces of us who heed the call to action, and there are pieces of us that fall woefully short and ignore what we need to do.

In both stories, the word “חָמָס” is used. It is pronounced “hamas” and it means wrong or evil or violent. In the נֹחַ story, the earth is described as having been filled with it and in the יוֹנָה story it’s part of the decree of the King of Nineveh that people “turn back from their own evil ways and from the injustice of which they are guilty.” (Jonah 3:8) It’s impossible to read these words today and not be reminded of the evil in our midst, Hamas. While their name is not from the Bible, it’s a coincidence. Their name comes from an Arabic acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement. With that in mind, it’s still intriguing to see that the Hebrew word describes them so well. נֹחַ heeded a call to be an agent of change and destroy that evil, while יוֹנָה ran from it only to have to confront it in the end.

Today we’re still in our moment of euphoria to have our hostages home. But there is still much to do. So long as there is חָמָס or Hamas in this world, we must heed the commands to fight it and destroy it. Evil can never be given safe haven or any oxygen to breathe and grow. We need to recognize we’re on this ship together and we’ll ride these dangerous waves because we have no choice. One day our יוֹנָה will find the dry land to let us know it’s safe, and the חָמָס and Hamas, are defeated and we can begin to rebuild a better world for tomorrow.

There are moments in our lives we can remember in vivid details. We can remember where we were, what we were doing and how we felt at that moment. These moments are etched into our souls and tend to be transformational to us. 24 years ago, I was in my apartment in Los Angeles about to wake up to drive up to school, Rabbinical School. My phone rang and it was my mom screaming. I didn’t understand why she still hadn’t learned that LA was three hours earlier and she needed to wait to call… or why was she screaming. As I was getting ready, I was listening to NPR and I was hearing craziness but didn’t understand it. My mom called again and now I was alert and awake and I was able to understand that she was screaming because we were under attack. I turned on my TV and within moments I watched live on TV as the tower fell.

Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001? How about November 4, 1995? It was a שבת/Shabbat, and I was hanging out with friends. When I got back home, my dad looked at me and told me the Prime Minister of Israel, יצחק רבין/Yitzhak Rabin, had been assassinated. I remember the shock and bewilderment. I remember the anger and hurt. Do you remember where you were on October 7, 2023? It was שמיני עצרת / Shemini Atzeret and we were having services here at OVS when someone walked in and told us what had happened in Israel. All morning, we held services in a daze as we didn’t have a full understanding of what had happened. I remember coming back to the synagogue that night for שמחת תורה/Simchat Torah and not being able to celebrate or rejoice. We sat on the ground for services that night.

Tragic times tend to grab us and confront our world, our sense of security and our mortality. We all remember these, and other major events, in our lives. Today is September 11 and it’s a day that has been forever perverted by hatred. While I know where I was at that moment, and I know what I was thinking, I’ve often thought about the people I wasn’t with at that moment. I’ve thought about the people on the planes, in the towers, the Pentagon, and the first responders who were going into a death trap to try and save lives. What were they thinking? These people likely knew their lives were coming to an end. They were aware they weren’t going to have a tomorrow. It’s unfair to ask, but what would I be thinking in a moment like that? What would I do, say, feel and think if I knew these would be my last moments on earth?

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a local AIPAC event and hear a speaker, Nimrod Palmach, and this gave me some insight into what one might feel and experience at such a moment. Nimrod was awoken by an emergency call for help on October 7, 2023, and as a member of an elite unit in the IDF, he raced to get to the Gaza Envelope to do all he could to save lives. He told us he had a moment alone that morning before he began to confront the terrorists and he took out his phone and recorded a message to his kids. It was 20 seconds in length, and it was his intention that when he died in the act of defending the innocent, his family would get his phone and see his message.

Nimrod is a hero. The number of people he saved that day cannot be calculated… it’s too large a number. He’s permanently scarred by all he saw and did that day, and he’s trying to help people heal and to spread the word about all he experienced. But his message to his kids has stuck with me. Had I been in one of the towers, on one of the planes, a kibbutz safe room, a shelter on the side of the road or any other place in harm’s way… I would want to say to the people who’ve made my life all it is that I love them and wish I could’ve had one more day. I don’t know if I would have had the ability to do so, but I’d like to believe this is what I would have spent those few moments on.

We have less than two weeks left of the year 5785 and we’re all watching as time is moving forward and disappearing. What will be, becomes what is now and what is now, becomes what was. All in the blink of an eye. We cannot stop time, and we cannot slow it down. We don’t have the ability to rewind and replay. We all need to remain active and engaged and part of our world.

One thing I hope is that the poor souls in those towers, the planes and in the Gaza Envelope, were not experiencing regret. We spend too many moments of our lives filled with regret. We spend too much time wishing something had been this way or that, and all of that fills us with an inability to be in the here and now. Let us all recognize the people around us are the most important thing in the world to us. Let us all recognize that if we had to give everything up tomorrow, we would know we were blessed to have lives touched by such incredible and precious people.

This week’s פרשה: כי תבוא is about משה/Moshe/Moses and his approaching the end of his life. He has been very aware for some time that he had little time left, and he had been spending all of this time imparting his wisdom to us. This week he introduced the ritual of the ביכורים/bikurim/first fruits. We were commanded to bring the first of our fruits we grew in the land to the Temple, and offer them to God with a declaration that told our history (this is the source material for the part of the הגדה/Hagada “my father was a wandering Aramean…”).

In a new חומש/Chumash attributed to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ז”ל, there’s a commentary that’s interesting about the first fruit ritual that preceded the curses which make up a large portion of the פרשה. Rabbi Sacks explained “Judaism is a religion of rejoicing; of remembering where we came from, and not taking our blessings for granted; of recalling the source of good, and therefore not forgetting the larger truth that it comes to us from the hand of God”. When we are confronted with our own mortality, may it be that we remember all the blessings we had in our lives, and our wish for those blessings to outlive us.

I’m a big fan of, and advocate for, therapy. I think every human should have a therapist to meet with and talk to. Some might need more sessions, and some might need fewer, but all would be well served by having a moment to sit with a professional and dig deep into their souls. I make time each week, or sometimes every other week, to meet with my therapist. I disclose this not only to be transparent, but to also destigmatize mental health care for all of us.

Over the years, my conversations with my therapists have been on all sorts of issues. I’m sure when I was much younger, I spoke more about my relationships with friends and teachers and my parents. As I got older, there were conversations about relationships, marriage, career and eventually about being a better parent. Over the course of all these years, I’ve unearthed an enormous amount of regret and have plunged headfirst into trying to find a path to self-forgiveness. It turns out we humans are very tough on ourselves and when we look into the magic mirror that shows us the within, we often see things we’re not happy with or proud of.

In the תורה/Torah we find the golden rule we’re all familiar with:לֹֽא־תִקֹּ֤ם וְלֹֽא־תִטֹּר֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י עַמֶּ֔ךָ וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י השם/You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow as yourself: I am ה’. (ויקרא יט:יח) When looking a bit closer at this text, we find something very deep, we’re not allowed to hold a grudge against others, and we are to love others as we love ourselves. If the recipe for not holding grudges to other people is loving them, then perhaps the recipe to not holding grudges against ourselves is self-love. In order to love others, we need to love ourselves. We know that and we live that. We know the more hurt and wounded we are, the less we’re capable of compassion and understanding of others. We know the more lost and wandering we are, the less capable we are of seeing people and how lost they’ve become. It’s when we sense we have value, and the ability to come back from bad things, that we become strong and capable of great love and support of others. This is an essential aspect of self-growth and self-realization.

In the words of Psalm 51:12: “Create a pure heart in me, God; and renew a true soul within me.” We come to God when we are crushed or when we need to be uplifted. We come because coming to God shows we matter. If God is concerned with our state and our behaviors, then we have value and worth to God. We turn to God because we recognize we can be better. The optimal word there must be “can” as in “it is 100% possible for us to be better”. It’s when we’re deflated and unable to see past our pain that we fail to recognize we have the power to be better and not drown ourselves in self-loathing. Earlier in the same Psalm (51) in verses four and five the psalmist states: “(4) Wash me thoroughly of my iniquity, and purify me of my sin; (5) for I recognize my transgressions, and am ever conscious of my sin.” We often find ourselves unable to move forward and are stuck in our own hurt and pain, which is the ever consciousness that’s being spoken of. When that happens, we would do well to look in the same mirror again and tell ourselves we’re not alone. We’re in good company with people all around us who have messed up. We need to look into the mirror and see the spark of Divinity that’s within all of us. We need to look and recognize that God is with us when we do wrong so we can change and do right.

I’d like to leave you with the words of my colleague, Rabbi Alan Lew, from his book This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared:

[I.] Self-forgiveness is the essential act of the High Holiday season. That’s why we need heaven. That’s why we need God. We can forgive others on our own. But we turn to God, Rabbi Eli Spitz reminds us, because we cannot forgive ourselves. We need to feel judged and accepted by a Power who transcends our limited years and who embodies our highest values. When we wish to wipe the slate clean, to finalize self-forgiveness, we need heaven – a sense of something or someone larger and beyond our self.

[II.] Self-forgiveness is difficult largely because we hold ourselves to such high standards, higher than it is possible to live up to. And it is precisely when we are hardest on ourselves that we are most tempted to bury our misdeeds – to hide from our reality, to deny weakness, to deny that we’ve done anything wrong.

[III.] The relentlessness of the High Holidays – the long days in synagogue, the constant repetition of the prayers, the fasting – wears down our defenses and helps us open to the truth of our lives. The aspect of the High Holidays that is most helpful in this regard is their holiness. The sense of the sacred is attenuated in the modern world, to say the least. Still, these are and have never stopped being the High Holy Days, the Days of Awe, the days that convey a quality of holiness we can all feel, even if we feel it only dimly. It is precisely this holiness that helps us forgive ourselves. These days create a context of holiness, and if we pay close attention, we begin to notice that everything in our lives is suffused with holiness, even those “faults” we thought we had to forgive ourselves for. Even that behavior we took to be wrongful, we now realize, has a holy spark at its center waiting to be released. This is the essence of self-forgiveness.

Pages 126 – 127

I wrote the following on Facebook a month ago: How many times have you seen someone on the worst day of their lives? Have you felt their pain, or did you laugh at them for their pain? Every one of us has experienced our worst day so far. They vary in magnitude and cause. But none of us would ever want to be judged by that. None of us would want to be ridiculed or be the butt of every joke. Just a thought. Not that I approve of infidelity in any way shape or form. Just some perspective about our culture.

These words were in response to the numerous memes and satires of the infamous Coldplay Concert Kiss Cam incident. I wrote these words because I was tired of the joy and laughter at the expense of others great misfortune. I was tired of the humiliation and the inability to recognize that lives had been destroyed by that awful choice and awful night. Nobody seemed to think of that, but perhaps each of us should be a bit more careful to judge less harshly and to minimize how we laugh at people and cause them pain.

We have a custom that when we fill our קידוש/Kiddush Cups with wine, we add a drop of water. The reason is the wine is seen as the substance of judgement, and the water the substance of kindness. We need to have kindness in the way we judge others, and ourselves. That’s of the utmost importance. We should never judge people when they’re living their worst day as that’s not who they are… that’s not the totality of their existence. When שבת/Shabbat concludes this week, we’ll begin the month of אלול/Elul which is the final month of the year and the one that leads up to the New Years celebration, ראש השנה/Rosh Hashana. Each morning we’ll say סליחות/Selichot and blow the שופר/Shofar. All of this is to awaken within us the power to change and to be better. Each of us is a work in progress… none of us is a final product. Each of us has work to do to make ourselves better… to make our relationships better… and to make our community and world better.

Jonah ben Abraham Gerundi was a 13^th century rabbi from Spain who’s best known for his book: שערי תשובה/ShaArei Teshuvah/Gates of Repentance. Early in his career he had been an opponent of Moses Maimonides and his philosophies. The tradition is that he witnessed the burning of volumes of the תלמוד/Talmud in 1240 and saw this as Divine displeasure for having joined ranks against the רמב”ם/Rambam/Maimonides. He wrote this book on repentance to find a way to repent for his wrongs in the past. In the 28^th entry of the “First Gate,” the first section, he wrote: “The would-be penitent should take a lead from the Sages with regard to humble behavior. They said: ‘And be lowly of spirit before all people.’ (פרקי אבות ד:י) From this, one may deduce that one should neither become angry nor deal strictly with one’s associates. One should pay no mind to anything one hears spoken against oneself. One should view any personal injury caused by others as an atonement for one’s sins. Such action would confirm what the Sages said: ‘Were one to overlook injuries, one’s sins would be forgiven.’ (תלמוד בבלי ראש השנה י”ז:א)”

We must be careful when we judge other people. When we judge other people, we must be aware we’re going down a road that is difficult to navigate and hard to find a way to exit. But perhaps each of us needs to see that Jonah ben Abraham’s instructions to us can help us understand that every person will be hurt in this world and will need to find a means by which to forgive the person who has injured him or her. Each and every person must see that repentance is essential, but so is the act of forgiveness. Each of us needs to look at this אלול as an opportunity to begin to repent for what we’ve done wrong and to start down a new path. At the same time, we all need to find the chance to forgive and let go, since that’s the way we can move forward to a better tomorrow together.

All too often we judge people by their singular wrongs. All of us have had bad days and all of us know what it means to be judged by our poor decisions on those days. Those actions, however, aren’t the totality of our existence and thus each of us needs to open our hearts to the power of forgiveness. Let us begin this אלול in such a fashion.

I once had a teacher with a comic strip in their classroom that said “as long as there are tests there will always be prayer in school.” This has always made me laugh because it’s so relatable. Think about all of the times we had our tests returned to us and we sat there saying to ourselves: “please let it be an A, please let it be an A, PLEASE LET IT BE AN A.” As we aged, we turned this truism into many other places like medical tests, phone calls from relatives and so much more.

We quietly utter prayers to ourselves time and again because deep down inside we have fears and think that these moments of “prayer” and reflection could alter the reality sitting there before us. In the תלמוד/Talmud, there is actually great concern about such prayers as they’re an example of a ברכה לבטלה/Beracha L’Vatelah/wasted blessing. The rabbis talk about the idea of praying for a pregnant woman to be carrying a certain gender, or for the screams we hear when we’re not home to not be from our own houses (ברכות נד:ב). All of these are examples of things that have already occurred, the decision has already been made, this is the same thing as our prayers in school or our spontaneous prayers today for all sorts of issues.

These prayers may be “wasted prayer” but we need to lean into the act of prayer a whole lot more. We need to incorporate prayer into our daily lives. There’s a very interesting read on this week’s פרשה/Parsha/portion: עקב/Eikev by the Ben Ish Chai, an Iraqi scholar from 1835 – 1909. In דברים י:י”ב/Deuteronomy 10:12 we read:

וְעַתָּה֙ יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל מָ֚ה ה׳ אֱלֹקֶ֔יךָ שֹׁאֵ֖ל מֵעִמָּ֑ךְ כִּ֣י אִם־לְ֠יִרְאָ֠ה אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹקֶ֜יךָ לָלֶ֤כֶת בְּכׇל־דְּרָכָיו֙ וּלְאַהֲבָ֣ה אֹת֔וֹ וְלַֽעֲבֹד֙ אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹקֶ֔יךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ֖ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶֽׁךָ׃

“And now, O Israel, what does your God ה׳ demand of you? Only this: to revere your God ה׳, to walk only in divine paths, to love and to serve your God ה׳ with all your heart and soul.”

This פסוק/verse has been used to talk about everything that’s known to God, aside from fear of God, in many sources. This means God knows everything and all is predetermined, aside from our faith and our belief in God.

For now, let’s look at the viewpoint that the Ben Ish Chai favored which is that the verse needs to be read a bit differently; we should not read it as מה/Mah/what, but as מאה/meah/one hundred. That would mean that the verse would read: “And now, O Israel, your God ה׳ demands 100 of you? Only this: to revere your God ה׳, to walk only in divine paths, to love and to serve your God ה׳ with all your heart and soul.” If we read it that way, the question of what is this “100” is answered right after as fear and love and service are the answer. The Ben Ish Chai, and others, hold that this alludes to the idea that God requires us to each make 100 blessings a day.

This concept seems daunting at first glance but perhaps it doesn’t need to be… perhaps it’s aspirational rather than reality. Perhaps we have an obligation to stretch and reach to be cognizant of God and all our myriad blessings as often as humanly possible. Perhaps we need to find opportunities in our daily lives to connect with ourselves, with those around us, and with God. Perhaps we can rise to the occasion to sanctify the ordinary and make it sacred. Perhaps we can hear these words and find blessing all around us. If God is asking for 100 blessings a day from us, we can and should meet God in the world and find those blessings.

 

 

The watch words of our people are the words of the שמע/Shema and they’re found in this week’s פרשה/Parshah: ואתחנן/VaEtchanan (דברים ו:ד). In the תורה/Torah there are many peculiarities in the way the words and letters are written. Sometimes it’s a matter of how they’re laid out and sometimes it’s the unique way a word is spelled. There are times where whole verses are bracketed with letters, and there are times when letters are extra big or extra small. In the case of the שמע, the verse is bookended by two large letters. In the word שמע the letter “ע” is extra big and in the word אחד the letter “ד” is also extra big. The two words look like this שמע and אחד. While the most realistic reason for this is that there’s a concern that the letters could be mistaken for look-alike letters. A “ד” could be mistaken for a “ר.” An “ע” could be mistaken for a “צ” or perhaps for its partner silent letter “א.” Any of these mistakes would cause a total misread of this major central verse of our people. In the case of the “ד” if it were mistaken as a “ר” the word would not be אחד/Echad/One but rather אחר/Acher/Other. God would not be One but rather God would be “other…”

In looking for other, more poetic, reasons for these enlarged letters, we can find deeper value and meaning. For instance, if we take these two large letters and put them together, “עד,” we would have either “Eid” or “Ad.” “Eid” means witness and “Ad” means forever. Let’s take the word as being “עד” a witness. When we say the שמע, we’re testifying to the unity of God. When we say the שמע, we’re standing with fellow Jews from before us, with us and those who will come after us. When we say the שמע, we’re pledging allegiance to our people and to God. It’s a powerful lesson for all of us to understand.

But what does it actually mean to be a witness? In עשרת הדיברות/Eseret HaDibrot/The Ten Commandments/Statements we learn in the ninth (דברים ה:יז) that we shall not bear false witness. We shall not lie about what other people do. But there’s a deeper false witness and that’s the institution of the עד זומם/Ed Zomem/”Scheming Witness” that’s explained in the תלמוד/Talmud in מסכת מכות/Maseket Makot. It’s there we learn about these extra awful false witnesses that are considered scheming, not because they’re lying about what they saw, but they’re lying because they were not even present at all. When I was learning this part of the תלמוד, we took to calling them non-present scheming witnesses. These extra terrible people are considered bad because they were not even there… they didn’t even show up in the first place. The punishment they receive is whatever punishment they were trying to have placed on the person they were testifying against.

So, when we put this all together, we see a picture of what we as Jews need to do when we live by the שמע… we need to show up and be present. We need to stop phoning in our Jewish lives and begin to show up in person and for real. We need to be active and engaged so we can testify we are, indeed, active and engaged and thus thriving. To say the שמע without actively being a part of our people is to be an עד זומם, a non-present witness that has no ability to testify about any of this at all. The שמע is thus calling on all of us to be good upstanding witnesses about God, the תורה, the Jewish people and about our relationship to all the pillars of our religion.

This past week I was looking through a drawer at home and came upon a piece of paper that was folded up. I opened the paper and discovered the last birthday letter my dad wrote to me. He had typed it out as his penmanship was not so good and had handed it to me on our birthday (we shared the same one) not knowing it was the last time we would celebrate together. I sat on the floor dumfounded and amazed. I thought of how he must have felt while he wrote the words. I wondered if he was thinking that it may be the last time he would write me a card on our birthday. I wondered if he was crying when he wrote it or if he was smiling. I wondered all of this, and I treasured that moment sitting there and reading these words from my dad to me.

As Jews, we have a tradition called ethical wills. The idea is that we sit down and write our story, our ethics and our values and bequeath those items to our loved ones. This is not some new age idea but something that’s preserved from generations back. While we might see the origin of this practice in יעקב’s/YaAkov’s/Jacob’s assembling his sons and speaking to them on his deathbed, the better origin is the entirety of the book of דברים/Devarim/Deuteronomy, which we begin this week. For some time, the Jewish People have held the belief that the entire book of דברים is משה’s/Moshe’s/Moses’ ethical will to our people. It’s filled with his parting words and his memories. He retells our story to our people and recaps many of the מצות/Mitzvot in this final book of the תורה/Torah. It is, in fact, the origin of the ethical will. I never had the chance to sit with my dad and ask him to write his ethical will. I regret that lost opportunity. This letter I rediscovered allowed me the beautiful opportunity to connect and reconnect and learn from my dad in a way I didn’t know I could.

The great Sephardic scholar Judah ben Saul ibn Tibbon, who was famous for being a translator of Jewish texts from Arabic into Hebrew, and for being a physician, wrote of the most famous ethical wills. In his will he wrote: “Avoid bad society, make thy books thy companions, let thy book-cases and shelves be thy gardens and pleasure-grounds. Pluck the fruit that grows therein, gather the roses, the spices, and the myrrh. If thy soul be satiate and weary, change from garden to garden, from furrow to furrow, from sight to sight. Then will thy desire renew itself, and thy soul be satisfied with delight.” He wrote a great deal about the importance of books and of learning. This excerpt from his will recalls to me the days of going through my dad’s belongings. His library was the most daunting task. His books were sacred to him and I’ve kept many of them. In fact, we now have a bookcase in our home library filled just with his books. Having been raised in that mentality, books are immensely sacred to me.

We are the “people of the book”, and as such, our books are not only holy, they’re also our lifeline and our birthright. At the root of our people is our relationship with our central book, the תנ”ך/TaNaKh or the Jewish Bible. We focus on the תורה or the Five Books of Moses most of the time, but the תנ”ך is composed of 24 books. This Saturday night and Sunday morning, we’ll read the words of the saddest and darkest, איכה/Eicha/Lamentations. This book, which was written about the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE by the Babylonians, begins with the profound question of איך/Eich/How. How did this happen? How tragic is this? How profound is this loss? How do we move forward? How??? How??? How??? In our grief, we’re often stuck with questions like “who,” “what,” “where” and “when.” We are often stuck with the hurt of the “why.”

It’s when we begin to unravel the “how” that we begin to grieve and we begin to live. The “how” is not the mechanics of how someone died, or how a tragic event occurred, but it’s the “how” of how are we going to move forward? It is the “how” of how did someone live their life and how can it still impact us. It’s the “how” of how do we continue to find meaning in a world that’s so painful for us to live in. Our answers to these, and other questions, are found in the words and testaments of those who came before us. The answers are found when we look for our loved ones in all we do. Our grief is not overcome by this but rather managed. Our grief is still immense and still unresolved, but when we find our loved ones lives as a guiding light, we find ourselves able to see HOW we can continue to go on.