A Discerning Eye

Sometimes, you want a short, pithy phrase to remind you who you are, what matters to you, and what you are trying to do in life. A tagline, mission statement, or mantra, anything that feels grounding and returns you to purposeful and meaningful activities. 

One of my favorite taglines comes to mind every time I sit down to prepare a d’var torah: “Close reading is an act of love.” Like a birder, I stealthily sit down in the presence of Torah and peer through the lens of text, context, interpretation, and imagination. I patiently but passionately ready myself for the subtle call, the flash of something unexpected, the wonder of noticing something new or the warmth of revisiting an old friend. 

This week it took until the very last verses of the parashah, summarizing a lengthy list of kosher and non-kosher animals, to find what I hadn’t yet known I was looking for:

These are the instructions concerning animals, birds, all living creatures that move in water, and all creatures that swarm on earth, for distinguishing between the impure and the pure, between the living things that may be eaten and the living things that may not be eaten. (Vayikra / Leviticus 11:46-47)

לְהַבְדִּ֕יל בֵּ֥ין הַטָּמֵ֖א וּבֵ֣ין הַטָּהֹ֑רL’havdil bein ha’tamei v’ha’tahor.To distinguish between the impure and the pure. 

This must be one of Vayikra’s taglines! Havdalah, if it is a familiar word, likely brings you to Saturday evening and the ritual we use to end Shabbat. It literally means “distinguishing” or “separating.” Here it is used simply to name the purpose of Vayikra’s instructions on kosher animals. 

But it isn’t simply about knowing that a cow is (generally) kosher and a horse isn’t. Once you learn that rule, you are unlikely to run into an edge case where you can’t tell if an animal is a cow or a horse! (For the parents reading, there’s a charming Bluey episode about precisely this dilemma.)

Rashi (11th century, France) clarifies that the goal of being able to l’havdil is “not that one should only learn the laws, but it is a command that you should know and recognize the differences and be expert in them… You shall distinguish between such an animal as is clean (permitted) to you and such as is unclean (forbidden) to you even though it is a clean animal per se, i.e., make a distinction between an animal which has been killed by cutting at least the greater part of each organ (the gullet and the windpipe) or whether it has been killed by cutting exactly the half of each organ. And how much difference is there between the greater part and the exact half? A hair’s breadth only.”

In other words, l’havdil means you have to see with a discerning eye and have discriminating judgment. The priestly book of Vayikra is certainly interested in the rules of kashrut and all the other practices it lays out, but it is also interested in teaching us to be close readers, to be people with heightened sensitivity to subtle nuances, whether we are gathered about a slaughtered animal, a sacred text, or a moral dilemma. 

So often, we contrast nuance with oversimplification. Those who know we need nuance in reading the political and moral situations of our time are often stuck with the lackluster tagline, “But wait…” or even worse, “But what about…” Meanwhile, those quick to conviction rush ahead, trying to get stuff done for good or for ill. 

But Vayikra’s approach to nuance is different.  It is a marriage of making slow and careful observations and taking a clear and courageous stand. A hairsbreadth may separate opinions, but we still need to distinguish between what we find true or useful, and what leads us astray. There are no shortcuts, nor should we just walk in circles. 

One of the great moral aspirations we are called to is to hone our judgment, to see more clearly what is “kosher” and what isn’t. 

Discernment is by definition not about obvious choices. When have you needed to discern something important (perhaps about a job or a relationship)? Who or what helped you refine your judgment? And of course I have to ask - what might your tagline be?

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Jay LeVine

Leaving Narrowness, Pursuing Hope

Passover, which begins tonight, revolves around the single most important narrative that we Jews tell about ourselves: the story of "yetziyat mitzrayim," "the going out from Egypt." Through songs and questions, four cups of wine, and a wide range of props and symbolic foods, we recall this story, probe it, and ingest it into the very fibers of our being!

Our story begins in Mitzrayim, which translates to Egypt but literally comes from the Hebrew word tzar, meaning narrow. Thus, the journey we make out from Mitzrayim is not only a past-tense escape from the land in which our ancestors experienced enslavement, degradation and oppression, but also -- in each and every generation (as the Haggadah reminds us) -- the path we take out from whatever narrowness and confinement may bind us. 

This year, given the state of the world, it feels easier than ever to tap into a sense of mitzrayim and constraints. We almost don't need the tears of the salt water or the bitterness of maror to jog our memories... there are countless examples of cruelty, subjugation, and wanton violence all around us, and all we have to do is open our eyes.

And yet, to do so -- to consider and taste the oppression -- wouldn't be enough! Passover calls on us not only to get in touch with the experience of mitzrayim, but also with the experience of journeying forth from that narrow place. The flip side of constraint is the expanse, where we come to taste freedom, release, and relief. 

This year, as we sit at our respective seder tables, I hope that we will also be able to tap into the breathing room that the wilderness offers us, and its accompanying gratitude, joy, and hope. Let's recline comfortably on pillows, pour wine for one another to remind ourselves that we are all free people, and expound creatively on the story. For as much as the seder is about tasting bitterness, it is also about sweetness, springtime, and new beginnings. Ideally, there's a playfulness and a live-giving energy in this holiday celebration as we consider what it is to be Jewish, even in -- or maybe especially in -- these harrowing times.

As I hope you already know, Kavana is here for all of it! We believe that meaningful community matters, now and always. This means that we are committed to showing up for one another in tough times, whether that means times of personal struggle, societal/global challenge, or both. We also commit to celebrating together, and to expressing Jewish life with curiosity, creativity and play. For most of all, the story of yetziyat mitzrayim is a collective narrative: one that counts on all of us being in it together, and making this epic journey through life by re-tracing our ancestor's well-worn path, out of constraints and limitations, and towards possibility, liberation and redemption.

Wishing us all a true taste of freedom and hope this Pesach. Chag sameach,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum

Anxiety on the Altar

What I love about the book of Vayikra, with its tedious and off-putting instructions for sacrificial offerings and its odd rituals for moving in and out of impurity, is that at the core of the book’s vision is an orderly system for living in relationship to the holy. Life is messy, scary, uncertain… and there’s something we can do to bring ourselves back into alignment, to know that we are okay, that we are enough, that we can make up for mistakes, and that we are meaningfully embedded in a web of life pulsing with sacred purpose. 

On the surface, this week’s parashah, Tzav, builds on that premise. While the first parashah of the book outlined the sacrificial offerings, this second one details the preparation of the priests, Aaron and his sons, the kohanim. 

But underneath the surface, something stirs. Right away, we have subtly unusual language:

וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר יְהֹוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹֽר׃ צַ֤ו אֶֽת־אַהֲרֹן֙ וְאֶת־בָּנָ֣יו לֵאמֹ֔ר זֹ֥את תּוֹרַ֖ת הָעֹלָ֑ה הִ֣וא הָעֹלָ֡ה עַל֩ מוֹקְדָ֨הֿ עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֤חַ כׇּל־הַלַּ֙יְלָה֙ עַד־הַבֹּ֔קֶר וְאֵ֥שׁ הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ תּ֥וּקַד בּֽוֹ׃

GOD spoke to Moses, saying: Command (tzav) Aaron and his sons thus: This is the ritual of the burnt offering: The burnt offering itself shall remain where it is burned upon the altar all night until morning, while the fire on the altar is kept going on it.

Usually God instructs Moses to speak with Aaron and his sons, or to relay that this is the instruction for how to do something. Here we have the language of command!

The ancient sages (in Talmud Bavli, Kiddushin 29a) pick up on this anomaly and say: אֵין צַו אֶלָּא זֵרוּז מִיָּד וּלְדוֹרוֹת, “Tzav implies enthusiasm/urgency immediately and for generations.” 

Why here, though? The medieval commentator Kli Yakar suggests that it is human nature to be sleepily lazy at night, and the strong word tzav, with its urgency, arouses enthusiasm amongst the night shift. 

But the urgency of tzav spreads beyond this context - by the end of the parashah we have yet another subtle anomaly (Vayikra 8:36). 

And Aaron and his sons did all the things that God had commanded through Moses.

Ramban’s commentary: Everywhere in this section it says ‘as’ God commanded Moses, but here, since Aaron’s sons added to the command [by bringing strange fire which God had not commanded them], it does not say it in this way, since they did not do as God commanded Moses. Rather, the verse states that they did all the things ‘which’ God commanded, and they further added to them “the strange fire” of which it said that God had not commanded them.

The urgency and enthusiasm that Aaron’s sons soak up at the beginning of their ordination warps the judgment of two of those sons. Nadav and Avihu offer strange fire “which had not been enjoined (tzivah) upon them” (Vayikra 10:1) and are themselves burnt up by divine fire. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks puts it, they die “because of an act of misplaced enthusiasm.” 

Now none of these commentaries use the word “anxiety”, but I think it is a plausible reading of the undercurrent of the story. As these newly minted priests prepare for their very first official act, they have been commanded to do so with enthusiasm, but one person’s enthusiasm becomes another person’s urgency. And urgency swiftly becomes anxiety. 

“There is a positive feedback loop between the two variables. A sense of urgency increases anxiety. At the same time, anxiety will tell you that everything is urgent. It treats your worries as imminent and inevitable even if they have a low probability of occurrence” (Psychology Today).

Perhaps Nadav and Avihu anxiously question their worth: Are they enough? Do they really belong in this priestly family? Ibn Ezra comments simply on their great error: “They thought they were doing something God wanted.” Sadly, they tried too much. 

As Rabbi Dr. Caryn Aviv says in her new book, Unlearning Jewish Anxiety, “If we overwork, overdo, and overcompensate, then we’ll feel included. No matter that it might come with a serious cost.”

What if we read Vayikra as a meditation on anxiety, and the story of Nadav and Avihu as a cautionary tale about one way in which it manifests - striving not from a place of sacred purpose but out of an anxiety that we are not enough? A later tradition suggests that only their insides were burned but not their external body (see Rabbeinu Bachya for example), and I cannot imagine a more shocking yet resonant way to describe burnout. 

We are lucky enough to get to explore anxiety through a Jewish lens with Rabbi Caryn Aviv on zoom tomorrow afternoon (you’re invited!), culminating with a sweet Kavana havdalah ritual. 

In the meantime, may Shabbat bring you deep breaths and a kind heart, and the undeniable awareness that you are worthy and enough. 

Shabbat shalom!

Rabbi Jay LeVine

The Power of Personal Invitation

We are living through an incredibly tough and volatile moment. This is a hard time to be an American, a hard time to be Jewish, and a hard time to be human! I hope you're all hanging in there.

As we navigate this swirl and seek groundedness, of course my instinct is to look to our Jewish tradition for guidance. And this week, as it happens, we are marking two important transitions (in addition to the first day of spring today, which is a lovely turning point in and of itself). First, the month of Nissan started just yesterday. Nissan is technically the first month of the Hebrew calendar year, and is the month in which we celebrate the festival of Pesach. Second, this Shabbat, we and Jewish communities everywhere will begin reading the book of Vayikra (Leviticus). Both Nissan and Vayikra usher us towards the pursuit of order in the face of chaos. Through both our Passover observances and the Levitical/priestly book of sacrifices, ritual helps us to hold large and unwieldy human emotions and experiences.

I'm struck this week, though, not only by the ritual aspects of Passover and Leviticus -- although of course it is true that both are known for their detailed rules -- but also by the fact that in each case, ritual acts are encased in an intimate encounter that features a personal invitation.

So many aspects of our Passover observance underscore this idea. The seder ritual is intended to be celebrated around the table, in intimate home settings. We pre-invite seder guests, and then also declare in invitation, "Let all who are hungry come and eat." The megillah associated with the Pesach festival itself is Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs -- the poetic biblical book that features a dialogue between lovers, a hide-and-seek kind of dance between the Jewish people and God.

When it comes to Vayikra, the rabbis find evidence of this theme of intimacy and invitation in the opening words of both the parasha and the book: "Vayikra el moshe," "And [God] called to Moses." One of many midrashim offered by Vayikra Rabbah opens with the statement that "Moses was called by ten different names..." This midrash then offers proof-texts for Moses's many nicknames, pseudonyms, and monikers, before continuing: "The Holy Blessed One said to Moses: As you live, from all the names that you were called, I will call you only by the name that Bitya daughter of Pharaoh called you when she said, 'She called his name Moses' (Exodus 2:10). Therefore, our text says '[God] called to Moses.'"

It's a beautiful midrash... one in which God sees Moses, not in the many ways that other people see and name him, but for who he actually is. God calls Moshe by the name given to him, intimately, by Pharaoh's daughter, way back in his infancy at the bank of the Nile River, when his leadership and redemption story was first set into motion. The entire book of Leviticus and all of its priestly rules are contextualized, then, inside of this personal invitation from God to Moses.

This theme of intimacy and invitation -- being seen and recognized, and specifically named and invited in -- rings true for me at so many different levels right now. On an organizational level, over recent weeks, one of the big projects I've been working on with the Kavana staff, board, and partners is the mining of the data from our community survey (back in the fall) and our focus groups (over this winter). In analyzing all of this Kavana data, conversations keep returning to the idea of the relational nature of our work, the importance of face-to-face encounters between human beings, and the power of personal invitations.

In a different way, being seen is something that I've (thankfully) felt in the wake of the awful attack last week on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan. In the hours and days immediately following, I received emails and text messages of solidarity and support from several elected officials (King County Executive Girmay Zahilay, King County Council Member Jorge Baron) and from fellow clergy members at some of our partner churches. SPD sent a patrol officer from the West Precinct to check in with our Kavana staff team and ask what kind of support might be helpful to us. Each of these reach-outs felt like an invitation to connection and relationship, and I was personally grateful for them (and am happy to be able to share about them with all of you).

In the face of the swirl of news and noise, I hope that you, too, will find your way towards rituals that ground you in tradition and supportive structure. The pathway towards all of these elements -- whether we're looking to Passover or to Leviticus for inspiration -- begins in a personal invitation that leads to enduring relationship and connection. 

Practically speaking, I invite you to join us at Kavana... whether for Shabbat services tomorrow morning or for a learning event next week. I hope that you are all making plans to celebrate the Passover holiday with others; I am so grateful to all of those hosts in our community who are walking the walk by opening up seats at their upcoming Passover seders to other guests from our community!

Lastly, as we move into Nissan and Vayikra, I invite YOU to be the one to reach out and extend an invitation from a place of seeing and care. Invite someone to take a walk and appreciate the spring blossoms together next week, or invite someone to share a meal with you and break bread together (whether leavened or unleavened!). One way or another, turn yourself into the host -- emulate God's call to Moses at the beginning of Vayikra -- and make or deepen a personal connection. 

In the face of a world that feels like it's careening out of control in so many ways, these threads of connection are something... or maybe, they are everything.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum

Animal Wisdom

I’ve been reading a book called What the Robin Knows, by Jon Young, and early on Young tells a story of a time when he was visiting with some friends and looking out a window while people were talking. He describes what he sees as follows:

Perched in a nearby tree was a robin, singing away. I couldn’t hear the song, but seeing its head flip this way and that - its mouth open, its throat moving, its body relaxed - I knew the bird was singing. I turned back to the wrentit, and just as I did, it flew up five feet, something over waist height. Now it was almost in my face, a few feet away. I could barely hear the chut! alarm, but I could see the pumping tail. This was the same bird that had retreated from me a few minutes earlier, so I concluded that something else had startled it even more. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the robin had quit singing and was rigid except for its tail, which was now also pumping in alarm. Let’s see… two alarmed birds in a suburban yard, one of them a ground dweller who has jumped up five feet - not ten, not fifty, but five…

When I turned to my new friend and said, ‘Hey, a cat’s coming,” he didn’t know what to make of my prediction. He hadn’t seen what I’d seen… I pointed down to the ground outside the glass door, where the cat would surely slink past shortly. When it did a few seconds later, my friend’s jaw dropped, but only because he hadn’t been following the story outside. Any thoughts about my psychic powers were erased by my real-world explanation of what had happened between the wrentit, the robin, and the cat.

There’s nothing random about birds’ awareness and behavior…

Most of us I imagine are still pretty impressed with Young’s ability to read the story the birds were telling. You could call it animal wisdom, meaning both the wisdom to know (at least in part) what animals are doing and why, and also the wisdom of the animals themselves who are constantly reading their own environments for threats and opportunities. 

This story came to mind when I read a commentary on this week’s Torah portion that centers on a kind of animal wisdom. Like a master observer who sees more than meets the eye, the Baal Shem Tov reads this verse and discovers within it a concealed message:

“So are Betzalel and Oholiav to make, and every person wise of mind, in them whom God has put wisdom and discernment (asher natan Adonai chochmah u’tvuna bahema), to know [how] to make all the work for the service of [constructing] the Holy-Shrine for all that YHWH has commanded.” (Exodus 36:1)

“Bahema” is a fancy way to say “in them”, but resembles one of the common words for an animal, behema. So the Baal Shem Tov reads here about the chochmah… behema, the “wisdom of the animal.” 

A later Chassidic writer, Reb Noson Sternhartz, elaborates: 

In holiness, this quality is exceedingly precious—namely, the quality of behemah (animal). That is, to make ourselves like an animal, as though we possess no understanding (da’at) at all. As [King] David said: “But I was brutish and did not know; I was like a beast with You” (Ps. 73:22). And as our master, teacher, and rabbi of blessed memory wrote on the verse, “all… in whom (bahemah) God bestowed wisdom”—that it is a great wisdom to make ourselves like an animal (behemah).

…And then, when we arrive at insight, we must know the truth: that we are still far from wisdom—in the aspect of “I said: I will be wise, but it (i.e., wisdom) is far from me” (Kohelet 7:23). For the essence of wisdom is to discern that wisdom is far from us, as our master of blessed memory wrote…

(Translation from Rabbi Sam Feinsmith of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.)

Reb Noson uses the animal as a metaphor here, contrasting a simple being of animal awareness with our busy, angsty, and imaginative minds. True wisdom, he suggests, requires reminders that we still have wisdom to learn, that a decisive, definitive knowing is still far from our grasp. We would do well to pay close attention and not assume we know more than we know. 

In using this metaphor, Reb Noson draws on centuries if not millennia of precedent in defining humanity in contrast to animals. Humans have consciousness (souls, intellect, whatever you will), and animals do not. It seems a defining trait of the human animal is in its self-perception as being more than animal in some way. So what’s shocking about Reb Noson’s teaching is that he says we should try to become more like animals, at least in one respect: a version of “beginner’s mind,” emptying ourselves of human clutter for the simplicity of animal awareness, so that we can be open to gaining new wisdom. 

Over the past century or so, we have steadily gained an appreciation for the intellect and consciousness of animals such as octopuses and crows, among others. We are not so tidily distinct from animals. But I appreciate the suggestion that remembering “the soft animal of our bodies,” as Mary Oliver puts it, has a place in our spiritual lives, and that cultivating our own animal wisdom can be a path to holiness. 

Shabbat shalom!

Rabbi Jay LeVine

Hurling and Shattering, Holiness and Hope

This week's Torah portion, Ki Tissa, tells a high-drama tale, and leaves us with lots to ponder.

Moses has already been up on top of Mount Sinai for nearly 40 days. Meanwhile, down below, the Israelites have despaired of him ever returning and instead have fashioned a giant idol -- a golden calf -- which they worship with sacrifices, food and drink, and dancing.

Back on the mountain-top, God fills Moses in that the Israelites have "acted basely" and that he needs to head down to see for himself. God continues (Ex. 32:10), "Now, let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them" -- threatening to wipe out the Israelites completely. Moses pleads and intercedes on behalf of the people, and he successfully convinces God to refrain from punishing them in that moment. 

But then Moses himself turns to go down the mountain, carrying the two stone tablets of the covenant. As he gets close enough to the Israelites' camp to actually see their calf and dancing (incidentally, the exact same "m'cholot"/ "circle dance" that Miriam had led the Israelites in after they'd crossed the split sea back in Ex. 15:20), Moses too becomes enraged! The text records that "he hurled the tablets from his hands and shattered them at the foot of the mountain" (32:19).

Reading this Torah portion this week, I am taken with the brazenness of Moses's act of shattering the tablets and want to pause here. The Torah itself is explicit about just how precious these objects are that Moses has thrown to the ground: "The tablets were God's work, and the writing was God's writing, incised upon the tablets" (32:16). We might expect God to be livid that Moses has directed his anger not towards the offenders but instead towards this precious divine gift, the symbol of their special relationship. (Truly, God often seems incensed by less... for example, we all know that Moses isn't permitted to enter into the promised land because of a different case in which he lost his temper and hit a rock.)

One famous midrash, however, evaluates this situation very differently. "And from where," it asks, "do we derive that the Holy Blessed One agreed with Moses's reasoning? As it is stated: 'The first tablets which you broke [asher shibarta] (Ex. 34:1). Reish Lakish said: The word asher alludes to the phrase: May your strength be true [yishar kochacha] due to the fact that you broke the tablets." (Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 87a)

In this interpretation, far from being upset about Moses's anger, God congratulates Moses -- literally, wishes him a "yasher koach" -- for having hurled the two tablets to the ground!

Although the midrash doesn't draw out the lesson any further here, I think Reish Lakish is positing that Moses's hurling of the tablets is not an impulsive act of anger but rather a purposeful act of alignment. After all, the Israelites have just violated one of God's first and most fundamental commandments: "You shall have no other gods before Me." Moses's smashing of the tablets puts him into emotional alignment with God (both of them being equally displeased with the Israelites). Furthermore, breaking the physical tablets helps them accurately reflect the reality of an already-destroyed covenant (similarly to how mourners' garments are torn at a funeral, to make their outsides reflect their inner/emotional state of being). While it would be easy to think that the shattering of the most sacred covenantal object is inherently bad, in all these ways it really can be viewed in a positive light.

Going yet a step further, the shattering of the first set of tablets is also helpful in that clears the way for something new to emerge. And indeed, it's only by virtue of their brokenness that Ki Tissa is able to move on to the themes of atonement and forgiveness, and tangibly to a second set of tablets (albeit a set carved by Moses's hand rather than by God's). In this version 2.0, the covenant has proven that it can tolerate rupture and repair -- and so it emerges stronger and more durable than the first, breakable set of tablets.

Finally, we learn (in Berakhot 8b) that "both the tablets of the Covenant and the broken tablets were placed in the Ark." This has always felt remarkable to me -- that as the Ark was carried through the wilderness for 40 years, as it accompanied Joshua into battle, and as it resided in the Holy of Holies of Solomon's Temple, we have the tradition that it contained both the shattered pieces and and whole tablets. On a symbolic level, we Jews are instructed to carry with us the evidence of our own mistakes, and the memory of our work of repair. Here, our tradition makes a bold assertion: that holiness resides not only in that which is whole, but also in that which is broken.

From this dramatic story, read through Reish Lakish's lens, some beautiful Torah emerges. Sometimes rupture is necessary and holy. That which has been broken shouldn't be discarded and forgotten, but rather preserved and carried, so that we can learn from it. The trick, of course, lies in knowing exactly where and how to apply this Torah. 

This week, unfortunately, I have no neat bow-tie to offer to this Dvar Torah; I feel that we are very much still inside a dramatic and sweeping story, inside the swirl of a period of great rupture. During my time in Israel two weeks ago, I sat with big existential questions about what it means to be part of the Jewish people at this moment in history, about the successes and failures of Zionism, and about the ways that our own stories of collectivity do and don't serve us. Just days after I landed back here in Seattle, Israel and the U.S. initiated a war against Iran which quickly spun into a wider regional conflict, with ripple effects in all directions, including the wedges it is exacerbating within the American Jewish community and between American Jews and Israelis. So much in our world feels like it is "breaking" and "shattering" in real time -- physical places, regimes, ideologies, relationships.

Only time will tell which aspects of this shattering will turn out to be positive in the long run. This week, then, I sit with more questions than answers. But, I take some comfort in knowing that our people have weathered dramatic moments before, and in recalling that sometimes shattering can be necessary and positive. I wonder aloud what newness will emerge from this fraught moment. Even when it feels like so much is shattering around us, I hold out hope that we might find holiness among the broken shards.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum

Torah Street

In Proverbs, a biblical book of conventional advice delivered with drama, Wisdom is personified as a woman. In the first chapter, she runs out into the streets shouting at “simpletons who love oversimplification, scorners who delight in mockery, and fools who hate knowledge” (Proverbs 1:22). I’m sure she has shown up at some of the same protests you have, marching in the streets full of indignation at the cruel and arrogant and existentially foolish behavior of so many in power right now.

When the rabbis read Proverbs, they identify Wisdom with Torah. While searching commentaries on this week’s Torah portion, I stumbled across an intriguing rabbinic tale about Wisdom / Torah in the streets, which I’d like to explore with you here (from the midrashic collection Tanchuma, Bechukotai 3:1).

“Wisdom shouts for joy in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.” (Mishlei / Proverbs 1:20)

Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachman questioned Rabbi Yonatan ben Elazar, when he was standing in the market. 

Rabbi Shmuel said to Rabbi Yonatan, “Recite one chapter (of Mishnah) for me.” 

Rabbi Yonatan said to him, “Go to the house of study, and I will recite it for you there.” 

He said to him, “Rabbi, did you not teach me (Proverbs 1:20), ‘Wisdom shouts for joy in the street?’” 

He said to him, “You know how to read (Scripture), but you do not know how to recite (Mishnah). What is the meaning of ‘Wisdom shouts for joy in the street?’ In the street of Torah. In the case of a pearl, where is it sold? In [its] street. In the case of jewels and pearls, where are they sold? In the known place. They are not brought to the owners of vegetables, onions and garlic, but rather to the place of merchants. Simply in [its] street. Similarly Torah is said in the street [of Torah], as stated, ‘Wisdom shouts for joy in the street; in the squares she raises her voice.’” 

And what is the meaning of “in the squares (rechovot)?” In the place where one amplifies (rachav) it. And where do they amplify it? In the synagogues and in the study halls. Therefore it is stated “in the squares she raises her voice.”

I like to picture Rabbi Shmuel eagerly asking his teacher to share some knowledge while they wait at the 3rd-century equivalent of a taco truck at the local farmer’s market. Only for Rabbi Yonatan to shut him down with what I can only imagine is a “sick rabbinic burn”: “You know how to read, but do you know how to recite?” In other words, you only think you know what that verse you cited means, but actually it means something else entirely! 

And then, this insightful advice: “Don’t try to sell pearls at the garlic stand…” 

The thrust of this story suggests that the proper place of Torah learning is at the beit midrash, where the physical structure of the building mirrors an intentionality about what takes place within it. Just like a shop is set up in a way conducive to its specific business, the “street of Torah” is a place designed for study, and by inhabiting purposeful space Torah study is amplified, or more literally widens. Strikingly, instead of being confined in place, having a proper place expands Torah! 

If you’ve ever had a reading nook, meditation corner, exercise area, special park bench, etc. where you could preserve intentionality in physical space, you know how potent a particular place can be. In contrast, spaces where a lot of different activities are happening invite disruption, distraction, and dissipation.  

But there’s a paradox in the story. By telling Rabbi Shmuel why he doesn’t want to teach Torah “in the streets”, Rabbi Yonatan ends up…teaching Torah! The lesson we learn comes from a marketplace conversation. What are we to make of that? 

And there’s another layer of paradox - this story was probably told as part of a sermon or lecture in a synagogue or beit midrash! 

And you, where are you as you read it? At home, a coffee shop…? 

What this little rabbinic tale generates is an awareness of the tidal push-pull of where Torah happens. Sometimes in the wide and deep spaces meant for Torah, sometimes in the spontaneous and unexpected moments of life, at the intersection of the street of Torah and the highway of life.

At Kavana, Torah is likely to be found joyously singing at our Song Circle or joining passionately at our Tzedek (Justice) Circle or sipping coffee deep in conversation at a farmer’s market, as well as unfolding expansively at our monthly Shabbat minyan. 

I’ll leave you with two questions for reflection:

Where do you most like to learn / engage with Jewish tradition?

Where have you been surprised to find yourself learning Torah or doing something Jewish? 

Shabbat shalom!

Rabbi Jay LeVine

Each of Us Has a Role to Play... What is Yours?

I am writing to you this week from Tel Aviv. Unfortunately, the Kavana-Mishkan group trip to Israel and the West Bank that we had envisioned for February didn't come together (we simply didn't have enough travelers to make it a go -- we'll have to try again). However, I decided to take advantage of this school break week to come with my own family, and we have spent time with relatives and friends, visited museums, archaeological and new cultural sites, and explored the complex political and social realities for both Israelis and Palestinians. It's been a packed and intense trip, and I look forward to debriefing it and sharing more of what I've experienced and learned with the Kavana community in future weeks. For now, I'll stick to the weekly Torah portion...

Parashat Terumah famously opens with God commanding Moses to collect all sorts of gifts from the Israelites: precious metals and stones, dyed yarns, oil, wood and skins. With these materials, God says, "V'asu li mikdash v'shochanti b'tocham," "Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them." In other words, this is a collective building project with a lofty goal: the Israelites are trying to achieve no less than making room for the Divine presence on earth.  

As we start reading into the text, though, we immediately encounter an oddity. Just as the Israelites' time at Mount Sinai is known for its blurred sensory experiences (e.g. "seeing the thunder"), a close reading of Exodus 25:9-11 turns up confusion about whether the commands to build the Tabernacle are to be understood in the singular or plural -- in other words, whether this is a project for Moses alone or for all of the Israelites, and who is to do what. We read:

כְּכֹ֗ל אֲשֶׁ֤ר אֲנִי֙ מַרְאֶ֣ה אוֹתְךָ֔ אֵ֚ת תַּבְנִ֣ית הַמִּשְׁכָּ֔ן וְאֵ֖ת תַּבְנִ֣ית כׇּל־כֵּלָ֑יו וְכֵ֖ן תַּעֲשֽׂוּ׃ {ס} 

Exactly as I show you (s.)—the pattern of the Tabernacle and the pattern of all its furnishings—so shall you (pl.) make it.

וְעָשׂ֥וּ אֲר֖וֹן עֲצֵ֣י שִׁטִּ֑ים אַמָּתַ֨יִם וָחֵ֜צִי אׇרְכּ֗וֹ וְאַמָּ֤ה וָחֵ֙צִי֙ רׇחְבּ֔וֹ וְאַמָּ֥ה וָחֵ֖צִי קֹמָתֽוֹ׃

They (pl.) shall make an ark of acacia wood, two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high.

וְצִפִּיתָ֤ אֹתוֹ֙ זָהָ֣ב טָה֔וֹר מִבַּ֥יִת וּמִח֖וּץ תְּצַפֶּ֑נּוּ וְעָשִׂ֧יתָ עָלָ֛יו זֵ֥ר זָהָ֖ב סָבִֽיב׃

You (s.) shall overlay it with pure gold—overlay it inside and out—and make upon it a gold molding round about.

Hopefully with my bolded indicators of singular and plural, it is clear how the text is toggling back and forth: that the pattern will be shown to Moses and then all the Israelites should make it, and that all the Israelites will construct the ark which then Moses alone (or perhaps the artisan Betzalel, later?) is commanded to overlay with gold.

Ramban, also known as Nachmanides -- a leading Jewish commentator and philosopher in 13th century Spain -- notes this phenomenon too, and offers the following commentary on these verses:

AND THEY SHALL MAKE AN ARK. The plural [and ‘they’ shall make] refers back to the children of Israel mentioned above. But afterwards Scripture states: And thou shalt overlay it, And thou shalt cast for it — all in the singular, as Moses is the leader of all Israel. It is possible that [in using the plural — and they shall make] God is indicating God's wish that all Israel should share in the making of the ark because it is the holiest dwelling-place of the Most High, and that they should all merit thereby [a knowledge of] the Torah. Thus the Rabbis have said in Midrash Rabbah: “Why is it that with reference to all the vessels it says, and thou shalt make, and in the case of the ark it says, and they shall make? Said Rabbi Yehudah the son of Rabbi Shalom: The Holy Blessed One said: Let all the people come and engage themselves in the making of the ark, so that they should all merit [a knowledge of] the Torah.” The “engaging themselves” of which the Rabbi speaks means that they should each offer one golden vessel [for the making of the ark, in addition to their general offering for the building of the Tabernacle], or that they should help Betzalel in some small way, or that they should have intent [of heart in the making thereof].

Ramban understands the text's back-and-forth between singular and plural as drawing attention to the complex interplay between a leader and a people -- ultimately, there should be alignment between them. Despite the fact that so many vessels of the mishkan are commanded to be built using singular language, Ramban takes the plural language of the command about the ark to underscore the point that everyone has a stake in this particularly holy project. 

In explaining how the Israelites were supposed to "engage themselves" in this collective construction activity, Ramban then shares a piece of ancient midrash that offers multiple possible pathways for how each of the Israelites might have chosen to engage. It turns out, according to him, that there were many more options than simply bringing different types of materials. The Israelites could "offer one golden vessel" (in other words, make a financial or material contribution), "help Betzalel in some small way" (that is, offer time, energy and labor), or "have intent of heart" (contribute emotional support). 

Reading Ramban's multiple pathways for engagement in this collective project reminded me of the powerful-yet-loose organizing model we've seen unfold in Minneapolis over the past couple of months. Writer and activist Rebecca Solnit re-posted the following words from a fellow activist a couple weeks ago, and these examples have stuck with me:

"One of the nuts things about organizing in the Twin Cities right now is that even the most long term organizers who've been here for decades can't keep track of all the resistance that is going on. There are so many self-organized crews just doing work that in any conversation with someone from another neighborhood, you might stumble over a whole collective of people resisting in ways you didn't think of. There's a crew of carpenters just going around fixing kicked-in doors. There are two truck drivers taking cars of detained people away for free. People delivering food to families in hiding. So many local rapid response groups that the number is uncertain... People standing watch outside daycares and schools..."

In this Minnesota example, too, we see a collective building project -- here, it's a particular vision of American society in which we hope to live. Here, too, we see that powerful engagement comes in ensuring that different individuals can all find ways to contribute their unique gifts and abilities in service of a greater goal.

This week's Torah portion provides us with a lens for understanding the big picture of what we're trying to do. Whether we are building the Mishkan or trying to improve and safeguard the society around us, our goal is always to take part in making this world a place where the Divine presence can reside. Despite the singular/plural confusion, and the fact that this could be construed as a job for only leaders, our long interpretive Torah tradition -- channeled to us here in the words of Ramban, as he cites an ancient midrash -- teaches that this is the work of all of us.

This week, I encourage you to think about which sacred, shared project(s) you believe in most fervently, and what contribution(s) you are willing to make in order to bring them to fruition. Each of us has a role to play in crafting our world into a place where God can dwell among us.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum

Muad Behavior: Harm, Habit, and Hope

Nestled in the list of rules (mishpatim) that give this week’s Torah portion its name, there are a handful of verses outlining restitution for harm done by an ox. 

If you are getting ready to zone out, consider this important fact, gleaned from a 2009 study published by Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Ireland entitled Cow-related trauma: A 10-year review of injuries admitted to a single institution: “Cow-related trauma is a common among farming communities and is a potentially serious mechanism of injury that appears to be under-reported in a hospital context. Bovine-related head-butt and trampling injuries should be considered akin to high-velocity trauma.”

Luckily, no underreporting cow-related trauma in the Torah! Yet another example of how ancient biblical wisdom anticipates modern findings…

“When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox is not to be punished.” (Exodus 21:28)

You may object - surely the owner of the ox should have some responsibility here, right?!

“If, however, that ox has been in the habit of goring, and its owner, though warned, has failed to guard it, and it kills a man or a woman—the ox shall be stoned and its owner, too, shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:29)

When an ox has no history or habit of harm, the owner has no responsibility, but in the case where a routinely reckless ox belongs to a heedless owner, and the worst comes to pass, that owner’s life is on the line too. 

The key here is habit and expectation. A cow with no history of harm is called tam (innocent). A cow who repeatedly has demonstrated aggression is called muad (forewarned). Our little dog Bilbo, unfortunately, would probably be a muad dog because we have seen him growl and nip enough times to expect it. Therefore, we are responsible for keeping him out of situations where he might - even accidentally - cause harm. 

Functionally, we excuse accidents caused by a tam animal, while holding the owners of muad animals liable for damages.

In the Talmudic discussion of this law (Bava Kama 26a), we learn something interesting: “Adam muad l’olam - a human is always considered muad.” In almost all cases, there is no presumption that humans wouldn’t cause harm, and therefore when a person damages or harms something, they are responsible for compensating the injured party. 

I’m interested in this phrase on a deeper level, though. What does it mean for humans to be considered categorically “forewarned as potentially harmful?” 

We could take it as a sober analysis of human nature’s dark side, akin to the sentiment that if someone says they want to harm you, you believe them, even without any past evidence of actual harm caused. In this view, cruelty can bubble up in a moment, and humans should always be interacted with cautiously, as if they have a habitual pattern of causing harm.

On the other hand, Jewish tradition also teaches that we should judge people on the side of merit (dan l’chaf zechut, Pirkei Avot 1:6), or in other words give people the benefit of the doubt. So, when accidents happen people are always liable to make amends, but when it comes to how we view each other’s essential character, the deeper truth is we trust until proven otherwise. 

So much for how we relate to each other. But how do we relate to ourselves as muad? Let’s return to the key for how we designate animals as muad: what habits do we observe? We humans are also creatures of habit, and in the Jewish ethical tradition of Mussar, if we want to build good character, deepen our spiritual alignment, and generally be the best self we can be, the key is observing our own habits, and then slowly and thoughtfully experimenting with them so that we grow in wise ways.

Poet Mary Oliver put it this way: “Our battles with our habits speak of dreams yet to become real” (from Long Life: Essays and Other Writings). Even the struggle with our own patterns embodies a form of hope. 

A person is forever muad. It is always worthwhile to look closer at our habits and what we expect of ourselves. To hold ourselves responsible. And to judge ourselves graciously, because the deepest truth is that to be who you are is a remarkable gift. 

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Jay LeVine

God is Everywhere. / Where is God?

This week's Torah portion, Yitro, is a big one! After Moses receives leadership advice from his Midianite father-in-law, the Israelites encamp at the base of Mount Sinai and Moses ascends the mountain where he receives the Ten Commandments from God. Between thunder and lightning, the blare of the shofar, and a smoking mountain, the revelatory moment of Exodus is certainly dramatic.

I've always thought that this -- the dramatic revelation -- was what connected the haftarah of Isaiah 6 to this parasha. As that text opens, Isaiah himself seems to be "tripping" and experiencing a revelation of his own in the heavens: 

"In the year that King Uzziah died, I beheld my Lord seated on a high and lofty throne; and the skirts of God's robe filled the Temple. Seraphs (fiery angels) stood in attendance on God. Each of them had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his legs, and with two he would fly." (Isaiah 6:1-2)

However, reading the two texts -- Exodus 20 and Isaiah 6 -- side by side this week, I noticed another interesting point of connection between them, in addition to their supranatural revelatory nature. In Exodus 20:21, we read: "b'chol-hamakom asher azkir et-sh'mi, avo eilecha uveirachticha," "in every place where I cause My name to be mentioned, I will come to you and bless you." This is a surprising statement for the Torah to make in the immediate wake of its emphasis on Mount Sinai as a special place: this verse explicitly claims that God will be present not only at the holy mountain, but everywhere -- literally "in every place."

Meanwhile, as the haftarah continues, the famous line of Isaiah 6:3 features angels turning and calling towards one another: "Kadosh kadosh kadosh adonai tzevaot, m'lo chol-ha'aretz k'vodo," "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts! The entire earth is filled with God's presence." Once again, we might expect Isaiah to be telling us, based on his own mystical vision, that one must journey through the heavens in order to encounter Divine beings. Instead, this quote hammers precisely the opposite point: that God's presence can be found everywhere.

Last Shabbat, I was fortunate enough to attend the Hadar National Shabbaton on the east coast. In addition to reconnecting with lots of folks with Kavana connections from many years ago (shout-outs to Ilana Mantell, Joel Goldstein, Rachel Jacobson, and a number of Jewish Emergent Network colleagues!), it was a pleasure to bask in a weekend of great davening, rich Torah learning, and vibrant new Jewish music.

On Friday evening, Rabbi Shai Held gave a Dvar Torah that has stuck with me all week, and which picks up on the Isaiah verse I've cited above. He considered the Kedusha of the Musaf Amidah, the call-and-response section of the "extra" standing prayer we recite on Shabbat day. The first line that the whole congregation is prompted to say is "Kadosh kadosh kadosh adonai tzevaot, m'lo chol-ha'aretz k'vodo," "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts! The entire earth is filled with God's presence." This, Rabbi Held claimed, is a firm assertion that the composers of the prayer wanted to make (echoing the one we've seen above in Parashat Yitro) that God is everywhere.

Next, he pointed out that it's possible to read liturgy so often that the words become rote and we can easily lose sight of what's surprising about them. Continuing, the very next line of the Kedusha features the angels asking one another "ayei m'kom k'vodo," "where is the place of God's presence?" -- in other words, where is God? Rabbi Held points out that this order doesn't feel at all logical; anyone who is paying attention would typically expect a question to be followed by an answer, rather than an answer followed by a question. The non-intuitive order of these two lines should guide us -- the reciters of this prayer -- to note the tension that exists between these two ideas: that God is everywhere, and also, that it can feel like God is absent (or at least we need to go searching in order to locate God's presence).

Last week, in his Kavana newsletter Dvar Torah about Parashat Beshallach, our very own Rabbi Jay LeVine argued that wherever there are binaries in our Jewish tradition, our goal is to engage in a "vibrant oscillation" between the two poles. Rabbi Held makes a similar argument to that here: that although it flies in the face of Aristotelian logic to assert both that God is everywhere and that we cannot locate God, our liturgy is set up to support us in entertaining both of these ideas and holding them both to be true simultaneously. 

Held's particular way of dealing with the disconnect between these two poles is to argue that the gap between them is the space where we human beings must operate. When what's happening in the world around us leads us to doubt or question God's manifest presence, then we must be the ones to reconcile and close the gap. In other words, it is incumbent upon us to manifest God's presence in the world. We do this by showing love and compassion to one another, through moral behavior, and through our fulfillment of mitzvot... essentially, by taking the Revelation from Mount Sinai and spreading it everywhere we go in the world. Only through our own human actions can we ensure that every place is a place of holiness, and a place where God's presence can dwell. 

The truth is that at this particular moment in time, God often feels quite far away from our world. It's easy to spot examples all around us of immorality and injustice, gross abuses of power, violence and violations of human dignity; it can be much harder to feel God's presence! In the face of this seeming absence, this reading of our Torah portion, haftarah, and the liturgy prompts us to ask ourselves the key questions: What can we do to ensure that Revelation -- that is, morality, Torah, and God's very presence -- is not relegated to the top of the mountain with Moses, nor to God's heavenly throne-room as in Isaiah's vision? How can we help ensure that godliness and divinity reach every corner of the world, such that God's presence is manifest "in every place"? 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum

The Vibrant Oscillation of Shaky Joy

“Serve God in fearful awe, and gilu bi’re’adah וְגִילוּ בִּרְעָדָה - rejoice while shaking.”Psalms 2:11

“Our moods do not believe in each other.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve been fascinated by Emerson’s quote for a long time, because when you are feeling something big, you enter an emotional world unto itself and it really can be difficult to remember that other states of being exist at all, let alone to imagine experiencing them once again. That is certainly true for difficult moments, personal or political, when gloom clouds over possibilities. But it is equally true of joyous and even calm moments, at least in my experience. 

I am constantly guilty of assuming that the inner and outer weather of today will be true tomorrow as well. If it is raining today, or I’m just a bit blue, or another awful thing happened in the world, my brain stealthily projects the trend forward. I’m startled when I wake up and don’t need a raincoat…

And when it is sunny in Seattle, I quickly get a little hazy on what it was like to wipe mud off my boots. (Of course, sometimes our habitual mindset never lets us really trust the sunshine, and we’re just waiting for the other raindrop to fall…)

It’s a strange thing being human! 

If there’s one thing the Jewish tradition teaches us, it’s that we have to pay attention to two things at once. Some prominent dualities include:

• Halakhah (law) and Aggadah (story)

• Written Torah (Tanakh) and Oral Torah (Talmud)

• Hillel and Shammai (the two great schools of rabbinic teaching)

• Yetzer haTov (altruistic inclination) and Yetzer haRa (selfish inclination)

• Olam haZeh (this world) and Olam haBa (the world to come)

• Kodesh (holy) and Chol (mundane)

• “Religious” and “cultural”

• Jews as a religion; Jews as an ethnic group

These are not binaries exactly, but dynamic fields generated by the partnership of two forces, a psychospiritual or metaphysical chavruta (the classic Jewish study pair). As Jay Michaelson writes: “the goal is not to attain some sense of balance but rather to transcend the binaries and engage in a vibrant oscillation between the poles...”

So even if our moods don’t believe in each other, we invite them to sit down and learn from and with each other!

In parshat Beshallach, several intense moods appear in the Song at the Sea (Exodus 15). The Israelites have fled Egypt, with the Egyptians in hot pursuit. Free on the other side of the sea, as its waves wash death and destruction down on the Egyptians, the Israelites sing. Intense fear, intense joy, intense everything. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg raises an important question: 

How is it possible to sing, to praise God for acting both cruelly and kindly? Indeed, this problem (of the relation between din and rachamim, hard-justice vs. mercy) is a central theme of the Song of the Sea.

The complex reality that is celebrated in the Song - death and life, suffering and joy, justice and mercy - transcends a simple split between 'us vs. them': the suffering and fear as the enemies’ portion, the joy and elation of the Israelites.

The [19th century Chassidic master] Mei HaShiloach says: "If there is no wisdom, there is no fear, but if there is no fear, there is no wisdom" (Pirkei Avot). The Sea symbolises fear and prayer, the dry land indicates strength and confidence, as in the mastery of Torah, which is Israel's strength. 

One knows one's prayer is answered if one can move out of prayer and into the study of Torah. Likewise, one knows that one's study of Torah is true if, together with the Torah study, there is a cry of prayer in the heart. For one must connect the two, prayer and Torah - fear and confidence.

This sort of prayer mood is worried, anguished, yearning, aware that something is wrong. 

And a Torah study mood is delight at being deep in the details of the divine word. It is the feeling of being on firm ground, and of feeling adventurous because you know where home is. 

Someone once said that prayer is when we speak to God, while Torah study is when God speaks to us. 

Now, while I appreciate the Mei HaShiloach’s confidence that Torah study is a core competence of the Jewish people, for many of us, Torah study is not a place where we may feel particularly confident. However, Rabbi Laura Rumpf helped me reframe what Torah study means here through a quote from writer Suleika Jaouad:

When you’re in a fearful place, the idea of charging forward without a trace of apprehension is intimidating. Such an expectation can immobilize you. And so, rather than moving forward and through, you remain stagnant, ruminating about something that may or may not come to pass… You just have to be one percent more curious than afraid.

The firm ground of moving forward may or may not be a realm of confidence, but it can certainly be a realm of curiosity for all of us. 

May the drama of the crossing of the Sea and the turbulence of life around us bring us into vibrant oscillation between praying with holy fear and learning with curiosity. Or in the words of the psalmist, finding a shaky joy at being alive, being ourselves, and doing what we are meant to do.

Shabbat shalom!

Rabbi Jay LeVine

Resisting Tyrants Since Pharaoh

My front hall closet is filled with an array of reusable grocery bags, but in recent weeks, I've purposefully been reaching for the one from T'ruah, a rabbinic human rights and social justice organization. On the side of the canvas bag, in bold burgundy letters, are the words: "Resisting tyrants since Pharaoh." Given everything unfolding around us right now, I'm drawn to the idea that within the long arc of human history, we've met Pharaohs before, and we know how to recognize Pharaoh-mindedness when we see it: the need for a leader to feed his own ego in order to feel powerful, and the cruelty and oppression that flows from there. I am comforted by the thought that our Jewish muscles instinctively know how to do the work of resistance, and that when we fight back against Pharaoh-ish tyranny, we are following in the footsteps of the many generations that have come before us.

This week's Torah portion, Parashat Bo, picks up in the middle of the Ten Plagues. The first seven plagues have already unfolded in a patterned repeat loop that goes something like this: Moses warns Pharaoh and God sends a plague; Pharaoh initially promises to release the Israelites until his heart hardens and he reneges; the situation worsens for the Israelites. Now, between plague #7 (hail) and #8 (locusts), something shifts, as a new element is introduced into this loop. Here's the opening verse of Bo, Exodus 10:1:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה בֹּ֖א אֶל־פַּרְעֹ֑ה כִּֽי־אֲנִ֞י הִכְבַּ֤דְתִּי אֶת־לִבּוֹ֙ וְאֶת־לֵ֣ב עֲבָדָ֔יו לְמַ֗עַן שִׁתִ֛י אֹתֹתַ֥י אֵ֖לֶּה בְּקִרְבּֽוֹ׃

Then GOD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them."

Above, I've bolded the words that represent the key change in the pattern, so that it's easy to observe. In addition to hearing about Pharaoh's hardened heart once again, now, for the first time, we see the same phenomenon unfolding in the hearts of Pharaoh's "servants" ("avadav"). This group of people -- which functions as a single unit in the text, but must have represented many individuals who were advisors and members of his court -- seems to be very aligned with Pharaoh; their hearts and Pharaoh's heart all simultaneously serve as the direct objects of a single verb, hichbad'ti ("I have hardened"). Chizkuni (a commentary by R' Chizkiya ben Manoach, of 13th-century France) notes this alignment between Pharaoh and the members of his cabinet:

"We have not found this formulation in connection with any of the previous plagues. The reason that God reacted so harshly was that after Pharaoh himself had confessed that he had sinned, instead of releasing the Israelites, both he and his servants continued to oppress the Israelites." 

In the final phrase of this comment, Chizkuni directs the reader to revisit Exodus 9:34 - a verse at the tail end of last week's parasha - and notes that indeed, Pharaoh and his advisors were both described as returning to their sinning and stubbornness in tandem. The key point Chizkuni is making is that the presence of Pharaoh's advisors at this point in the plague cycle is new, and indicative of a new level of oppression in Egypt: now it's not just Pharaoh alone, but Pharaoh plus all of his servants, who are aligned in their stubbornness and their oppression of the Israelites.

Continuing a little further into Parashat Bo, we soon encounter Pharaoh's advisors again, but this time, as we'll see, they take a different stance vis-a-vis Pharaoh. In the intervening text (and you're certainly welcome to read Exodus 10:2-6 for yourself), Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh and demand on God's behalf, "Let My people go that they may worship me," and they threaten that if Pharaoh refuses, God will cause locusts to descend upon the land of Egypt and cover the land, devouring everything and causing destruction to an extent never before seen. In Exodus 10:7, Pharaoh's servants re-appear, disagreeing with him somewhat and pushing back against Pharaoh's rigidity:

וַיֹּאמְרוּ֩ עַבְדֵ֨י פַרְעֹ֜ה אֵלָ֗יו עַד־מָתַי֙ יִהְיֶ֨ה זֶ֥ה לָ֙נוּ֙ לְמוֹקֵ֔שׁ שַׁלַּח֙ אֶת־הָ֣אֲנָשִׁ֔ים וְיַֽעַבְד֖וּ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֵיהֶ֑ם הֲטֶ֣רֶם תֵּדַ֔ע כִּ֥י אָבְדָ֖ה מִצְרָֽיִם׃

Pharaoh’s courtiers said to him, “How long shall this one [Moses] be a snare to us? Let those involved go to worship the ETERNAL their God! Are you not yet aware that Egypt is lost**?”

(**According to the 12th century Spanish commentator R' Abraham Ibn Ezra, the meaning of the final phrase of 10:7, "ha-terem teda," is "Do you first want it to become clear to you that Egypt has been destroyed?!")

In a nutshell, Pharaoh's advisors are telling him in this verse that he needs to make a concession and soften a little. Apparently, Pharaoh would have been willing to bring destruction upon all of Egypt to stick with his rigid no answer, but his advisors are not. These civil servants seem to have some sense of obligation to Egypt itself, and they are unwilling to see it completely destroyed on their watch; for this reason, they encourage Pharaoh to acquiesce to Moses and Aaron's demand to let the people go to worship.

And indeed, in the face of his own advisors' push back, Pharaoh backs down, at least in part. In Exodus 10:8-11, he permits Moses and the Israelite men (only) go to worship. Admittedly, this is not quite what Moses and Aaron had asked for -- as they had clearly wanted all of the people: young and old, sons and daughters, with flocks and herds, to be able to go; however, it is a significant concession... a crack that opens up for the first time for the Israelites, a small win on their road towards ultimate victory over the Egyptians and towards freedom from the constraints of Pharaoh's oppression.

Reading the opening section of Parashat Bo this week, I find myself reflecting on the relationship between Pharaoh and his advisors, which seems to be shifting in real time, right before our very eyes in these first 11 verses of Exodus chapter 10. Again, Pharaoh himself is undoubtedly cruel and oppressive -- and we already know this to be true from the first 9 chapters of Exodus. He treats the Israelites as objects or property, with no regard for them as human beings, and he acts in his own self-interest, from a place of fear, ever seeking to expand his wealth, power, and reputation.

The two verses I've highlighted above -- Exodus 10:1 and 10:7 -- showcase the subtle shift in Pharaoh's advisors' mindset. They act in two different ways: first, in total alignment with Pharaoh, hardening their own hearts and having God further reinforce their guilt and oppressiveness, but then, with increasing daylight between them, trying to counter or at least temper Pharaoh's worst impulses lest he bring down all of Egypt in his stubbornness. The intricacies of this relationship have me wondering about how Moses, Aaron, and God are fighting back against Pharaoh's tyranny... and what the role is of their noting and exploiting the lack of alignment between Pharaoh and his own servants/advisors. When Pharaoh is rigid to the point of engaging in self-destructive behavior, the fact that the advisors still respond to self-interest becomes a tool and a lever for change. I wonder what lessons we might be able to glean from this and apply today, as we seek footholds and cracks for change-making in the face of modern-day tyranny?

Today, I want to lift up that many of my colleagues -- rabbis, cantors, and faith leaders from a wide array of religious traditions, from around the country -- have converged on Minneapolis for protests and a march against the oppressive ICE presence there. Despite the frigid temperatures, they have showed up to exercise resistance in the face of a particular strand of tyranny. (Unfortunately my schedule here did not permit me to make a trip to Minnesota this week, but I assume there will be future opportunities; meanwhile, I'm happy to draw attention to their work and encourage you to be on the lookout today for media coverage of the faith leaders' march, among many other actions and protests.)

I know that many of us are struggling to make sense of this challenging moment, and especially to figure out what leverage we have -- it's certainly easy to feel powerless. But, I am heartened by the Exodus story that we've been reading over the past few weeks in our Torah cycle, and finding new details each time I look at it closely that feel relevant and helpful.

My blessing for us, heading into this Shabbat of Parashat Bo, is that we continue to discover inspiration in the foundational story of our tradition: the Exodus arc that takes us from oppression to freedom. May we find -- through the repeat loop of the Ten Plagues -- the courage to stick with our pursuits and values and try again and again, even in the face of setbacks. May we mine our tradition to find clues about how to do this work of resistance creatively -- for example, by exploiting the subtle differences between Pharaoh and Pharaoh's advisors -- in order to pursue productive paths towards justice and freedom. 

Indeed, we Jews are inheritors of a most awesome legacy! Our core purpose is to name the Pharaoh-mindedness we see everywhere it pops up in the world, and to resist and counter it with all of our being. "Resisting tyrants since Pharaoh" -- amen!

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum

Know Me By My True Names

The 20th century Israeli poet Zelda’s most famous poem follows a simple format: 

“Each of us has a name, given by…” The list includes God, parents, the mountains, our walls, and more. It is a rightfully beloved poem, and provokes curiosity about how and why we are known by one name or another. 

In the opening verses of parshat Va’eira, God gives us a surprising glimpse into the names by which God is - or isn’t - known. 

“God (elohim) spoke to Moses, and said to him: I am YHVH.” (Exodus 6:1)

Already the two most common names for God in the Torah are present. “Elohim” is the more impersonal way of referring to God, with el being the generic Hebrew word for a god in the Ancient Near East. 

“YHVH,” the unpronounced four letters of God’s personal name, are usually read as “Adonai - Lord,” and by some as “HaShem - the Name.” Despite the level of abstraction that those cover words imply, the four letters are much more intimate, the sound of breath and becoming and being. 

So within this concise and seemingly simple verse, the Torah moves us from the impersonal, generic aspect of God into the personal, intimate aspect of God. But why? What does Moses learn when God says, know me by this name?

The Italian medieval thinker Sforno suggests that God is establishing God’s grandeur before the miraculous retrieval of the Israelites from Egypt.

“I am the One Who maintains the entire universe alone. I have not only called it into existence, but I also maintain it, and there is no other prime cause which exercises any independent influence on any part of My universe… Unless I had given My consent no creature could continue to exist.”

There’s a lot in a name!

Within this understanding of YHVH we see the possibility of the laws of nature being undone through the plagues and parting of the sea, and we also see the impossibility of Pharaoh having any power at all, independent of God. When God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, we all witness how pathetic even the most “powerful” man’s pretense to power really is. It isn’t an even playing field, and that is one of the key points of the whole story. 

Of course, we need to pause and ask ourselves if we really think it is true that there are limits to the power of our leaders today. Consider two deeply troubling statements shared in the past few weeks:

After the capture of Venezuelan’s leader, Stephen Miller said, “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else…But we live in a world, in the real world… that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.” 

And President Trump (may that title be made great again), when asked if there were any limits to his power, said, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that could stop me. I don’t need international law.” 

Well. Pharaoh would be proud. What is idolatry if not the narcissistic worshiping of power?

What is tricky about today is that it seems plausible that might does make right. There are plenty of people whose lived experience tells them nothing otherwise. 

Which brings me back to another reading of what God means when God shares YHVH as a name to be known by. The Torah continues: 

“I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I was not known to them by My name YHVH.” (Exodus 6:3)

And the French medieval scholar Rashi comments: “It is not written here לא הודעתי “I did not make known to them”, but לא נודעתי “I was not known to them — I was not recognized by them in My attribute of “keeping faith,” by reason of which My name is called YHVH, which denotes that I am certain to substantiate My promise, for, indeed, I made promises to them but did not fulfill them [during their lifetime].”

I remember the first time hearing this story how strange it was to suddenly be told that the very first Jewish ancestors didn’t know God by the name that we use all the time, the specific and proper name of God (even if we don’t pronounce it). I felt a jarring moment of discontinuity with the past. But reading Rashi’s comment now, I suddenly feel a deep connection to those unruly ancestors of the book of Genesis. They too lived in a “not yet” time, where a promise opened up a vision of a different and better world, but it had not yet been fulfilled. 

For the story of the Exodus, God appears to out-Pharaoh Pharaoh, to overwhelm human strength with divine strength. Maybe that was necessary to humble Pharaoh (or more likely, those watching it all play out) and caution other humans who would claim absolute power for themselves. But shockingly it was not sufficient to inspire the Israelites for long. The same generation that witnessed God’s wonders quickly begin complaining, and even tried to replace God with a golden calf in a moment of weakness. They demonstrate that if you give an Israelite a promise fulfilled, they will demand another one (with a glass of milk and honey). 

Those first Jewish ancestors, however, knew God by the name El Shaddai, often translated into English as “God Almighty.” There are two plays on that word that speak to this moment. 

The first is another teaching from Rashi (on Genesis 43:14): He says that Shaddai actually should be read “sheh-dai” (as in dayeinu), “a God who is enough.” Rashi goes so far as to say this is the real meaning of the word! Within the scarcity and uncertainty of this season, to know God by this name is to cultivate a spirituality of sufficiency. We don’t need more power, we have enough already - if we are thoughtful and brave in using it together. 

Another reading of Shaddai takes it as an acrostic:

ש shin 
ד dalet
י yud
Shomeir delatot Yisrael.
Guardian of the doors of Israel.

This is the purpose of putting the word Shaddai on the mezuzah manuscript that we place in our doorways. And while it is helpful to have protection from the outside world, the purpose of a door is that it allows us out into the world… And to know God by this name is to keep opening to possibilities, not promises. 

God’s names, then, help us live with a “not yet” yearning, a confidence in enough-ness, and an openness to possibility in the face of authoritarian power. 

Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Jay LeVine

Be Like Moses: An Empathetic and Impartial Intervener for Justice

This week, we (and the Jewish people everywhere) read Parashat Shemot - and launch into the book of Exodus. The opening chapter-and-a-half covers lots of territory: first, the Israelites become enslaved and oppressed in Egypt, and then a courageous group of women -- both Egyptian and Israelite -- resist Pharaoh's orders. Baby Moses is born, hidden in a basket, and ultimately brought by Pharaoh's daughter to be raised to safety inside her father's palace.

Next, the text fast-forwards a couple of decades, picking up with Moses as a young adult in Exodus 2:11:

וַיְהִ֣י ׀ בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵ֗ם וַיִּגְדַּ֤ל מֹשֶׁה֙ וַיֵּצֵ֣א אֶל־אֶחָ֔יו וַיַּ֖רְא בְּסִבְלֹתָ֑ם

Some time after that, when Moses was grown, he went out to his brothers and looked on their burden.

Rashi, the classical 11th century French commentator, understands that Moses's act of "looking" must have been more than just externally glancing with his eyes. Drawing on the midrash of Exodus Rabbah, Rashi interprets: "He [Moses] directed his eyes and heart to share in their distress." Today, we'd probably use the word empathy to describe the way that Moses paused to notice the distress of others and to allow his own heart to stir him to action. This is a key trait, and one that sets him up well for leadership.

If we were to summarize the story of what happens next, we might recall that Moses observes an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave, kills the Egyptian, and then runs away. This is all true... and yet, it's only part of the story. Interestingly, the section of text that follows contains not one but three distinct examples of how Moses "looks on the burden of others" and then, from a place of empathy, takes action. Here is that text of Exodus 2:11-22, broken into three chunks for clarity about the three separate instances:

Example 1: "He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand."

Example 2: "When he went out the next day, he found two Hebrews fighting; so he said to the offender, “Why do you strike your fellow?” He retorted, “Who made you chief and ruler over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Moses was frightened, and thought: Then the matter is known!"

Example 3: "When Pharaoh learned of the matter, he sought to kill Moses; but Moses fled from Pharaoh. He arrived in the land of Midian, and sat down beside a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock; but shepherds came and drove them off. Moses rose to their defense, and he watered their flock. When they returned to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come back so soon today?” They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds; he even drew water for us and watered the flock.” He said to his daughters, “Where is he then? Why did you leave the man? Ask him in to break bread.” Moses consented to stay with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah as wife. She bore a son whom he named Gershom, for he said, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.”"

One of my favorite modern Torah commentators, Nehama Leibowitz, helps to make meaning of this tripartite narrative. (In case you're not familiar with her work, she was a prominent scholar who is famous for having ignited interest in Torah study in Israel throughout the 20th century. She taught at multiple Israeli universities, shared Torah commentary regularly on the radio, and created study sheets about the weekly Torah portion that were subsequently published in a multi-volume work of Torah commentary. She's worth looking up!)

About Moses's three applications of empathy, Leibowitz writes the following (in her volume Studies in Shemot, pages 40-41):

"Moses intervened on three occasions to save the victim from the aggressor. Each of these represents an archetype. First he intervenes in a clash between a Jew and non-Jew, second, between two Jews, and third, between two non-Jews. In all three cases, Moses championed the just cause...

Had we been told only of the first clash, we might have doubted the unselfishness of his motives. Perhaps he had been activated by the sense of solidarity with his own people, hatred for the stronger oppressing his brethren rather than pure justice. 

Had we been faced with the second example, we might still have had our doubts. Perhaps he was revolted by the disgrace of witnessing internal strife amongst his own folks, activated by national pride rather than the objective facts.

Came the third clash where both parties were outsiders, neither brothers, friends nor neighbors. His sense of justice and fair play was exclusively involved. He instinctively championed the just cause... Only when repeated championing of justice brings no reward can we be convinced of the unselfishness of the deed."

Nehama Leibowitz's commentary on this section of text helps to answer the question of why Moses is the one selected for the Torah's greatest leadership role. He is, of course, empathetic, and able to see the suffering of others, as we saw in verse 11. But even more, the verses that follow demonstrate that he is fair and consistent in how he analyzes the world around him. When there is injustice happening -- by anyone and towards anyone -- Moses has 1) the unique ability to see it clearly, and 2) the courage to intervene.

In our world, at this moment -- when we don't have to look very far in any direction to find aggression, oppression, or injustice -- it's easy to feel like we may need to make choices, and decide which fights for justice matter most to us. (For example, do we muster our energy to defend the Jewish community, or to address Jewish in-fighting, or to stand against injustice when we see it playing out in the broader world?) This reading of Moses's rise to leadership reminds us that all of these struggles are interconnected, and our ability to perceive injustice and stand against it anywhere helps us strengthen the muscle to do so everywhere.

This week, may the Torah's three examples of Moses seeing and intervening inspire each of us to cultivate a lens of empathy, to apply it impartially to the world around us, and to speak out and act to the best of our ability, using whatever tools we have at our disposal. May every small intervention we make pave the path towards a world of greater liberty and justice for all. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum

A Mixed Blessing

As we say goodbye to 2025, we also prepare to close the book on Bereishit / Genesis. This first book of the Torah contains within it the seeds for all things bright and beautiful, and all things evil crouching menacingly at the door. In other words, it is about the human condition. Ultimately, the story focuses on the family of Abraham and Sarah over four generations, recording faith and courage but also sorrow and strife. 

Again and again the key family characteristic seems to be the necessity of separation. Until finally, at the very end of the book, the family comes back together and forms the nucleus of what Jewish peoplehood means for millennia afterwards. We are composed of tribes with different temperaments and priorities, and still each “tribe” of Jews is connected - by fate as well as by choice. 

There is an aphorism in classic Jewish sources that contains the tiniest of variations: 

Kol yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh - All of [the people] Israel are arevim for each other. Kol yisrael arevim zeh ba-zeh - All of [the people] Israel are arevim with each other. 

What is this arevim? And who cares what preposition we use?

In context, to be arev means to be responsible for each other (morally), or a guarantor for each other (as when co-signing a loan). But the root arev can also mean mixture (by the way, this is the origin of the Hebrew word for evening, erev, when light and dark mix). 

Contemporary teacher Rabbi Reuben M. Rudman explored the significance of that slight variation in meaning, suggesting that “when la-zeh is used, it implies that the members of Klal Yisrael are responsible for each other. Each person is a separate entity who is expected to be a guarantor for the other members of the klal. When ba-zeh is used, it implies that all Jews are “mixed” together to form a single entity known as Klal Yisrael; what each person does affects the destiny of the entire nation.”

The book of Genesis is in part a meditation on the concept of arevut, responsibility for each other, and the peculiar suffering of unhappy entanglement. There are times when going your own way feels like a blessing, rather than enduring the friction of forced connection. But Genesis ends with a trajectory that honors the choice to remain entangled. 

First, Judah explicitly names himself as an arev, a guarantor, for his brother Benjamin (Genesis 44:32), after Joseph as the Egyptian official frames Benjamin and prepares to imprison him. Judah demonstrates the concern and responsibility that so few characters have been willing to take upon themselves, prompting Joseph to reveal himself and reunite with his family. 

And then, near the end of the story and near the end of Jacob’s life, he asks his son Joseph to bring Jacob’s grandsons Menasheh and Ephraim so he can bless them. Jacob deliberately crosses his arms, entangling them, so that the younger child gets the right hand (a sign of privilege usually reserved for the oldest). Despite Joseph’s protest, Jacob affirms his choice. Then “he blessed them that day, saying, ‘By you shall Israel invoke blessings, saying: God make you like Ephraim and Menasheh.’ Thus he put Ephraim before Menasheh” (Genesis 48:20). 

To this day, Jewish parents may bless their children with that language: May God make you like Ephraim and Menasheh. I’ve always felt confused by this choice, because we know next to nothing about them! Except this: The blessing they received included a complicated entanglement. And the blessing they offer us, through the lack of any stories about them fighting, is the possibility of a close and loving relationship nonetheless. 

The Chassidic master Noam Elimelech taught yet a third interpretation of the word arev, which has the additional meaning of “sweetness”. And so, “each person of Israel sweetens and makes pleasant one for the other.” 

Although it is not a traditional secular New Year’s Greeting, I’ll say it anyway: May you have a sweet new year.  

Shabbat shalom!

Rabbi Jay LeVine

Joseph and his Coat of Many (Pride) Colors

This Shabbat, Jews everywhere will read the climax of the Joseph story: the literal "big reveal." For the past couple of weeks, the Torah has followed his journey, from braggadocious teenager thrown into a pit by his brothers, through dreams and prison, to Pharaoh's second in command in Egypt. Now, his brothers have come down to Egypt seeking food at a time of famine, and they have passed his goblet test (to see whether they will protect Benjamin, their youngest half-brother/his full-brother). Joseph's identity reveal is an emotional scene -- for both him and his brothers -- as we see here in Genesis 45:1-4 and 14-15:

Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone withdraw from me!” So there was no one else about when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. His sobs were so loud that the Egyptians could hear, and so the news reached Pharaoh’s palace. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still well?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dumbfounded were they on account of him. Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come forward to me.” And when they came forward, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, he whom you sold into Egypt... He embraced his brother Benjamin around the neck and wept, and Benjamin wept on his neck. He kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; only then were his brothers able to talk to him.

Modern Torah scholars have compared this scene to a "coming-out": Joseph carefully tests the waters first before choosing the moment to reveal his true self to his family; the reader waits with bated breath to see how everyone will react to this surprising news; both the characters and the reader experience relief once Joseph's identity secret is out in the open.

But this coming-out aspect of his story is only one of many reasons why the Joseph narrative can be read in terms of queerness. Rabbi Irwin Keller writes: 

"Whether or not he was “gay” as we understand that in our generation, [Joseph's] narrative is a queer one. His role in his family; his role as substitute for his mother and ongoing embodier of her energy; his outsiderness in his family and in Egypt; the bullying he endures; his making good in the Big City; his taking control of his own narrative; and, unlike in a classic hero’s journey, his refusal to return home, instead bringing his problematic family to him, keeping them close but not too close... [In addition,] he wears unusual clothing. He is described as childlike at an age where he should not have been. His beauty is discussed in the text; and in several significant instances there are Hebrew phrases used to describe his appearance, emotion, garb or actions that specifically link him to noteworthy women elsewhere in Tanakh..." (Click here to read Keller's full article on the subject, entitled "Joseph's Womb: Gender Complexity in the Story of Joseph".)

Rabbinic readers of the biblical text also perceived something special in Joseph, in terms of gender and sexuality. In her article "(Gender)Queering Joseph: Midrashic Possibilities for the Torah's Most Extra Child," Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg focuses on Talmudic and Midrashic interpretations of Joseph, including one set of texts that talks about Joseph and his sister Dina having gender transitioned in utero(!), and another cluster that center around Joseph's make-up habits and fabulous clothing ("coat of many colors" can also be read as "princess dress" -- suggesting that perhaps his brothers' bullying had to do with not only their jealousy but also their disdain for his love of drag).

The Joseph story is an ancient one, of course, and it's hard to know how Joseph might have self-identified had he had today's colorful LGBTQIAP2S+ alphabet at his disposal. What I do know is that -- at the same time that we've been reading the Joseph story in our Torah portions over the last couple of weeks -- the queer community here in the US has been very much under attack. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced two proposed regulatory actions that would effectively cut off funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to young people, including a broad swath of "pharmaceutical or surgical interventions." In a separate action, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reportedly sent letters to multiple companies that sell chest binders, warning that they have "misbranded" medical devices. These moves are not yet binding law; still, they feel hateful and cause tremendous harm, regardless of their legality or ultimate enforceability. (A robust fight against these measures has already begun, of course. This week, 19 states have joined together to sue the Trump administration to block the proposed HHS rules, claiming that they are unlawful, and that they threaten access to healthcare for transgender youth, seek to intimidate hospitals and health providers into abandoning their patients or risking their livelihood, and are designed to strip states of their authority to regulate medicine.)

As a Jewish community grounded in core Jewish values, we at Kavana affirm that trans, nonbinary and intersex people are created b'tzelem Elohim -- in the image of the Divine. They -- along with every human being -- are deserving of dignity, respect, and safety. We will strive to build our own community as a place of full inclusion and belonging for people of all gender identities and expressions and all sexual orientations. We will stand in solidarity with the transgender and nonbinary youth who are most directly impacted by these recent actions, and with all who are being targeted by the administration's hateful rhetoric and political actions. (Keshet, an organization that "works for the full equality of LGBTQ+ Jews and our families in Jewish life," has written a Jewish pledge for trans dignity -- click here to take the pledge yourself and/or to learn more about their work. If you're so inclined, you're also invited to submit a public comment about the proposed HHS measures through the Human Rights Campaign, telling the government why this care matters to you and why these rules would hurt young people.)

Returning to the Joseph story: When he reveals his true identity, Joseph comforts his brothers, assuring them: "Now, do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me hither; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you." Joseph is accepting of what's happened to him, forgiving of his brothers, and seems to deeply believe that his lifetime has unfolded in accordance with a divinely-ordained plan.

Today, it's hard to know with such certainty that everything will work out for the best in the end, although I do hope that we, too, can find strength in Joseph's reassurance. Meanwhile, though, it is very much upon us to work on behalf of every Joseph -- every young person who doesn't conform to gender expectations and norms, everyone who has ever felt the need to conceal their true identity. May we create a community and a world in which every identity reveal feels as emotionally positive and loving as the story of Joseph coming out to his brothers, and in which every individual can let their true colors shine! 

Ken yehi ratzon (may it be so), and wishing you a Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum

Tending the Light Within

This Hanukkah, wishing each other happiness comes with an asterisk (thank you to my wife, R. Laura, for this language). As I write, Australian Jews are mourning at funerals for those murdered while welcoming the first night of Hanukkah on Bondi Beach. In our hearts, as well as in our history, Hanukkah wavers between a commemoration of violent struggle (the Maccabees won, back in the day, at least for a while), and a holiday of joyous re-dedication to deeper spiritual truths (as we ma’alin bee-kedushah, elevate in holiness through each new candle on the menorah). 

Even in Talmudic times, this holiday had an asterisk. 

The Sages taught: It is a mitzvah to place the Hanukkah lamp at the entrance to one’s house on the outside (Shabbat 21b).

The guidance is clear. We place the menorah where it can be seen, on the outside of your house. But…what if you live in an apartment or don’t have permission or access to put a menorah outside your building? 

If one lives upstairs, one places it at the window adjacent to the public domain.

Okay, if the goal is for the light to be seen from the outside, just put it in a window. Some of us do exactly that today. We “publicize the miracle.” 

But…what if that feels risky? What if you don’t want to draw attention to your Jewishness? Here comes the asterisk:

And in a time of danger, one places it on the table and that is sufficient to fulfill one’s obligation.

Note, this is not about discomfort with one’s Jewish identity. This is about actual danger. Rashi (11th century) suggests that the sages were referring to Persian law that restricted when lamps could be lit, but they were unlikely to search inside the home and find the menorah on the table. And surely there have been other moments in time when Jews brought the light inside to keep themselves physically safe.

The 18th century Chassidic teacher Rabbi Avraham Dov Baer of Ovruch, known as the Bat Ayin, offers a fascinating alternative understanding of what the Talmud is teaching us. 

The Bay Ayin starts by connecting Hanukkah to an archetypal story of generous hospitality:

And this is what the verse says: "And God appeared to Abraham at Elonei Mamre, and he was sitting at the opening of the tent as the day was hot" (Genesis 18:1). Meaning that he was doing the tikkun (the spiritual healing) of the opening (פתח petach) of the tent, and this is a hint to the aspect of the Hanukkah lamp, since its mitzvah is at the opening (פתח petach) of the house (Shabbat 21b), and also his house was wide open (פתוח patuach) to receive guests (see Zohar III:104a). And he was also converting people (see Bereshit Rabbah 39:14). 

There are a number of connections the Bat Ayin is weaving here, referencing various teachings in the Talmud, midrash, and Zohar. Here are the key points:

First, Abraham is at an opening, and keeping it open. 

Second, Abraham is actively receiving people into his community (understood here as bringing in converts). 

Third, this is a tikkun - a spiritual act with great significance for repairing the brokenness in all worlds, including the personal realm, society at large, and even the metaphysical layer of divine light shattered and scattered. 

And fourth, all of this is related to the mitzvah of Hanukkah light, because it too is meant to take place at the petach, where one’s home opens to the world. 

In essence, the Bat Ayin is teaching that when we light the menorah, we are not radiating it outwards but drawing in all that is in need of repair. We are gathering holy sparks, “receiving guests” (hachnasat orchim) and mending the broken experience of the world one person at a time. 

This is the normal mode of Hanukkah, when we open out into the world and do our work of building community in the messy public sphere with kindness and courage. 

The Bat Ayin continues, however: 

A person who is capable of dealing with all the material aspects in the market (read: the messy embodied world) with good intention (kavana tova) so as to raise them to holiness, as we explained above, this is obviously good, and this is the essence of the mitzvah of the Hanukkah lamp being outside. 

But in times of danger, meaning, when one fears to make oneself enter into the external aspects, into the physical things, in order to raise them, because one is not able to conquer one's evil impulse, then obviously one sets it on one's table. This means, be very careful in matters of one’s table: eat and drink in such a way that is for serving God, and not to satisfy one’s cravings, and so one habituates themself in all of the middot (soul traits), cooling the physical appetites, the desire for honor, and arrogance, and perhaps after that one will merit setting the Hanukkah lamp outside, as explained.  

In the world of gashmiyut, the material embodied universe we experience, there are dangers. This Hanukkah, we are forced to reckon with the danger involved in showing up to light a candle on a beach. One version of our story tells us to bring the light inside - or fight fire with fire. Both of these strategies have their place. Sometimes we quietly become Jews at home and citizens in the street. Sometimes we organize politically and even militarily to ensure safety. 

The Bat Ayin adds another dimension, though, reminding us that danger resides not only in the world but in our reaction to the world. 

In his ideal version of Hanukkah activism, we practice a form of hospitality he calls conversion - helping turn what is broken, harmful, and lacking into something restored, beneficial, and whole. He sees Hanukkah as a re-dedication to the spiritual act of transmuting evil into good, chaos into coexistence, misunderstandings into clarity that illuminates. 

But if we find ourselves being swept away by anger, anxiety, hatred, fear, selfish desire, or despair, we will struggle to be of true service to our higher intentions, our kavana. In those moments (and we all have them), there is a danger that we might bring about harm rather than healing in our interactions. So we turn inward, not to hide but to return to ourselves. Alongside tikkun olam, repair of the world, there is tikkun atzmi, personal restorative repair. 

Like Hanukkah, which every year returns us to one lone candle before we increase the light and holiness, we too have cycles of turning inward, strengthening, practicing, “doing the work,” and then opening up once more to the outer world where we have our part to do in the great work of mending. 

Shabbat shalom! And Chag Hanukkah sameach!

Rabbi Jay LeVine

Coincidence, Angel or Miracle

This week's Dvar Torah seems to have found me coincidentally... or at least, these specific verses appeared right in front of me at just the right time. I was assigned a Torah reading to learn for tomorrow's Shabbat Morning Minyan, which means that all week I've literally been staring at the same short section of lines, noticing their language and growing curious about them.

Parashat Vayeshev opens at the very beginning of the Joseph story. At the outset of this Torah portion, we learn that Joseph was the most beloved of his father's children and given a special coat as a gift, and see how he recounts his dreams to his brothers in a way that induces anger and jealousy in them. Then, Joseph's father, Israel/Jacob, sends him to go find his brothers who are out pasturing flocks. Here's what the text actually says about the events that unfold in this brief episode (Gen. 37:14-17):

"When he [Joseph] reached Shechem, a man came upon him wandering in the fields. The man asked him, 'What are you looking for?' He answered, 'I am looking for my brothers. Could you tell me where they are pasturing?' The man said, 'They have gone from here, for I heard them say: Let us go to Dothan.' So Joseph followed his brothers and found them in Dotan."

As you may have noticed in this passage, the "man" (Hebrew: "ish") who came upon Joseph in the fields is unnamed and anonymous. He is simply someone who appears in the right place at exactly the right time, and his presence becomes a critical domino in this saga of cascading events. If Joseph hadn't found his brothers in Dotan, they never would have sold him into slavery in Egypt. If Joseph hadn't been sold into slavery in Egypt, he would not have saved his entire family and set into motion the chain of events leading to the Exodus and all of Jewish history. In other words, we owe everything about our identity to this stranger-in-the-field.

Furthermore, you also may have noticed that the interaction between the man and Joseph is a strange one. Joseph never asks for help, never introduces himself, never even describes to this stranger how many brothers he has or what they look like. Traditional Torah commentators have also picked up on these details in the text. Regarding verse 15 above, Rashi (writing in 11th century France) cites two ancient midrashim as proof that the phrase "the man" must refer to the angel Gabriel (click here to see Rashi's comment and those midrashic references). Siftei Chachamim (a 17th century Dutch super-commentary on Rashi) builds upon this idea, noting that "the man" clearly knows too much to be anything other than an angelic being:

"This refers to Gavriel..." Yosef did not say to the man, “Do you know my brothers, and where they are pasturing?” Rather, he said [straight away], “Tell me please, where are they pasturing?” This shows it was an angel, [who assumedly knows]..." (click here to view the whole comment).

I am struck this week by how powerful a tendency it is -- and also, how normal a human experience it is -- to ascribe deeper spiritual meaning to seemingly ordinary or random events. Throughout the centuries, a long line of Jewish tradition supports us in reading this man who appeared in the field just when Joseph needed support as an angel: a being sent by God specifically to guide him to the place where he will find his brothers. Reading the text this way instantly transforms the Joseph narrative from a soap opera-ish human drama to a sacred story about God's hidden presence in the world.

Perhaps it's not a coincidence either, then that Parashat Vayeshev is always read on either the first Shabbat of Chanukah or on the Shabbat immediately preceding Chanukah (as is the case this year). When it comes to Chanukah, this same tendency is front and center! The book of Maccabees records the story of Mattathias and his son Judah who led a rebellion against the Seleucid Empire. Because this rag-tag band of Jewish rebels were so much the underdog, our tradition has long ascribed their military victory as a miracle, and as evidence of God's hand in history. The rabbis of the Talmud extend the miracle theme, spinning a second tale -- the famous one about the cruse of oil that was only expected to last a single day, but instead lasted eight, thus enabling the rededication of the temple (chanukat ha-bayit). Whether we're focusing on the military victory or the story of the oil, Chanukah thus becomes a holiday all about miracles!

I've always had some trouble wrapping my head around utterly supernatural miracles (the kinds that truly seem to fly in the face of the laws of nature), but, I quite love the idea that as Jews, we are primed to see the events that unfold in our lives as evidence of the Divine presence. Perhaps you can think of specific moments from your own life that fit this bill? Maybe, as with Joseph, an unnamed stranger once appeared in just the right place at just the right moment to point you in the direction you needed to go, or maybe in some small moment, a disaster was averted, you saw a "sign," or someone said exactly the words you needed to hear. Who is to say that what happened to you wasn't a miracle, or God's hand, or the angel Gabriel fulfilling a mission in the world?!

On this Shabbat of Parashat Vayeshev, may we find ourselves able to notice the unnamed characters who linger at the edge of our stories, and able to view our lives through miracle-colored glasses. With spiritual openness to the possibility of God's presence in our lives, may we find ourselves pointed in precisely the directions we need to head, in order to bring light into the world and fulfill our destinies.

Shabbat Shalom for today, and wishing you all a happy and miracle-filled Chanukah (beginning Sunday evening),

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum

Jacob the Fox

Once, when the leopard was making a scornful comparison between himself and the fox, claiming that he had a coat of varying and many-colored spots, the fox replied that while the leopard’s ornamentation was on his skin, his own was in the mind. And truly it was much better to be endowed with cunning brains than with a party-colored skin. 

Plutarch, Moralia (referring to one of Aesop’s fables)

Ya’akov Avinu, our ancestor Jacob, is a real heel. That’s what his name means anyway. He was born “holding on to the heel (ekev) of Esau; so they named him Jacob (ya’akov)” (Bereishit 25:26).  As his story unfolds, his character seems morally tepid at best, and he is downright deceitful and manipulative to many of his closest family members. 

And yet, he is also described as tam (Bereishit 25:27), a word which can range in meaning from “mild-mannered” to “morally perfect”. Ibn Ezra contrasts him to his brother this way: “Esau the hunter was constantly practicing deception, for most animals are trapped through trickery. Jacob was his antithesis, because he was a man of integrity.” 

Given what he know of how Jacob steals birthrights and blessings, manipulates livestock, bargains with God for protection, shows favoritism among his children, etc., it is a little hard to square the text’s assertion of his integrity with the text’s description of his apparently loose association with ethical concerns. 

One of my favorite midrashic attempts to reconcile the term comes from Avot deRabbi Natan, in which they assert that the “integrity” implied by tam means Jacob was born circumcised. He is born with a very specific type of wholeness, in which his body does not require the adjustment of circumcision in order to enter the covenant. When you find interpretations like this in the tradition, you know you aren’t wildly off base thinking the text is hard to understand…

In this week’s parashah, Vayishlach, Jacob yet again turns to a clever and cunning strategy. As his large family journeys to his home of origin, they hear that Esau is coming to greet them with 400 men, and Jacob understandably fears retribution. He devises a scheme of sending waves of gifts, and then splits his camp so that if the bribes don’t work at least there will be some survivors. By the end of this episode, however, “Esau ran to greet him. He embraced him and, falling on his neck, he kissed him; and they wept” (Bereishit 33:4). Although there are some who are ready to read Esau as hiding ulterior motives, the plain sense of the text is that Esau is just happy to see his brother again. He has forgotten old grudges, and only Jacob still carries around the burden of his past behavior. 

What are we to make of Jacob? The 20th century philosopher Isaiah Berlin once wrote an essay in which he explored an ancient Greek aphorism, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” The fox is clever and comes up with many tactics to find its food, while the hedgehog simply rolls into a prickly ball anytime it is threatened. Berlin uses these two animal archetypes to discuss great writers and thinkers, dividing them into hedgehogs who have a single coherent, all-encompassing vision or theory, and foxes, who are more eclectic and willing to engage with and incorporate diverse sources, even when they are contradictory.

Jacob is a bit of a fox, a trickster who evades expectations, a resourceful and clever ancestor. He is only tam on the outside, but within the tents of his mind he holds complexity, possibility, and fluidity. 

He may not always act in ways moral hedgehogs would prefer, but he is also uniquely among the forefathers capable of uniting all of his children (eventually, and tentatively, and still with tension, but truly) such that when we refer to the entire Jewish people, we say b’nei yisrael, the children of Israel/Jacob.

He is the first to bequeath a complex multiplicity rather than an ideological vision’s purity test (which had severed him from his brother Esau, and his father Isaac from his uncle Ishmael, and his grandfather Abraham from his great-grandparents and everyone who came before). 

Each ancestor asks us questions. 
Abraham asks us, What is true? What do you believe? 
Sarah asks us, What is possible that you may have given up on? 
Isaac asks us, What are you willing to sacrifice? 
Rebecca asks us, What are you willing to endure, and why? 
And Jacob asks us, What do you need to do to survive? And, what do we need to do to stay in this family and community together? 

Does Jacob have all the answers? Definitely not. After his night-long wrestling session with the man or angel, he walks away limping, with a new name “Israel (god-wrestler)” that simply reminds him and us that we will always keep wrestling with ultimate questions. But that is the way of the fox, always curious, always clever, carrying the burden of overthinking, and creating eclectic and invigorating communities where the possible is imperfectly practiced. 

Shabbat shalom, 

Rabbi Jay LeVine

What's in a Name: Thanksgiving Torah on Jewishness

As we head into the Shabbat of Thanksgiving weekend, I am feeling grateful for both my Americanness and my Jewishness, despite the fact that neither identity is particularly simple at this juncture in history.

In a box of family photos and artifacts, I recently came across a document that sits at the intersection of the two identities: my great-grandmother Esther's Certificate of Naturalization, from when she became a US citizen. The year was 1931 and she was 30 years old and married by that point, with children who were themselves US citizens. The certificate lists her former nationality as Polish, and her race as "Hebrew."

The term "Hebrew" or "ivri" is one vocabulary word for talking about Jewish collectivity. It goes back to Abraham, who -- when a messenger reports to him about his nephew Lot being taken captive -- is identified in Genesis 14:13 as "Avram ha-Ivri," "Abram the Hebrew." The "ivri" identifier has multiple possible meanings: it certainly could connect to the fact that Abraham is a descendent of Ever (on the genealogical list in Genesis 11). However, it's more commonly understood as meaning "one who crosses over," which refers to Abraham having originally come from the other side of the Euphrates river or -- according to midrashim -- having stood on one side (in belief) while the rest of the world was on the other.  

"Hebrew" was certainly the preferred term for talking about our ancestor's collective identity in the first couple of chapters of Exodus -- as there we find phrases like "Hebrew midwives" (Exodus 1:15), "Hebrew women" (Ex. 1:16), "Hebrew child" (Ex. 2:6) and "Hebrew nurse" (Ex. 2:7) in quick succession. In early 20th century America, "Hebrew" was a racial category used to talk about Jews. However, among the Jewish community, the preferred term would probably have been "Israelite." 

"Israelite" -- or "b'nai yisrael" in Hebrew -- literally refers to the descendants of Israel, and Israel, as we know, is the new name given to our ancestor Jacob in Genesis 32:25-33. There (in next week's Torah portion), Jacob wrestles all night with a mysterious being and in the end is told by this figure: “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel (Yisrael), for you have striven (sarita) with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” To be an Israelite, then, is to be identified as part of a group that wrestles... certainly with God, and perhaps also with humans.

Today, our community isn't likely to refer to ourselves as either "Hebrews" or as "Israelites." Since World War II, the dominant terms for describing our collectivity here in America would be "Jews" ("yehudim") or "Jewish" ("yehudi"), and we call our religious tradition "Judaism" ("yahadut"). All of these words stem from the name of Judah (Yehudah), one of Jacob's sons and the father of one of the twelve tribes of ancient Israelites. Eventually, Judah also became the name of the southern Israelite kingdom, which survived even after the Assyrian conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel, and so the surviving people became collectively known as "yehudim." The term yehudim appears many times in the Tanakh, including in II Kings 16:6 and frequently in the book of Esther, where Mordecai is first introduced as "ish yehudi," "a Jewish man."

If you have never stopped to think about what the word Jewish actually means, this week is the perfect opportunity to do so, as this week's Torah portion, Parashat Vayetze, is where we find the birth and naming story of Judah, our namesake.

You may recall the back story: that Jacob has fallen in love with Rachel, but ends up married to her sister Leah as well. In a family drama that features dysfunction and extreme sibling rivalry, the two sisters embark upon child-bearing as though it's a competitive sport. Leah gives birth first, to four sons in quick succession (literally, in four back-to-back Torah verses!). The first three fall into a pattern, where the name given to each new baby is a Hebrew language word-play that underscores her feeling of being unloved and the non-preferred wife (see Gen. 29:32-34):

Leah conceived and bore a son, and named him Reuben; for she declared, “It means: ‘Adonai has seen my affliction’; it also means: ‘Now my husband will love me.’”She conceived again and bore a son, and declared, “This is because Adonai heard that I was unloved and has given me this one also”; so she named him Simeon. Again she conceived and bore a son and declared, “This time my husband will become attached to me, for I have borne him three sons.” Therefore he was named Levi.

The arrival in Gen. 29:35 of Leah's fourth son, however, breaks the tragic pattern:

וַתַּ֨הַר ע֜וֹד וַתֵּ֣לֶד בֵּ֗ן וַתֹּ֙אמֶר֙ הַפַּ֙עַם֙ אוֹדֶ֣ה אֶת־יְהֹוָ֔ה עַל־כֵּ֛ן קָרְאָ֥ה שְׁמ֖וֹ יְהוּדָ֑ה וַֽתַּעֲמֹ֖ד מִלֶּֽדֶת׃

She conceived again and bore a son, and declared, “This time I will praise/thank Adonai.” Therefore she named him Judah. Then she stopped bearing.

The name Judah (Yehudah), in other words, is the only name in the set that isn't an expression of Leah's bitterness, but rather of her gratitude. 

Rabbi Shai Held shared a beautiful Dvar Torah on this topic several years ago, which he titled "Can We Be Grateful and Disappointed at the Same Time?" I highly recommend reading his whole essay here, but I'm happy to share this relevant excerpt here:

"Leah is disappointed, and as we have seen, she has every right to be. But she is also grateful -- despite the intensity of her pain, she, too, has her blessings... With the birth of Judah, Leah has discovered the awesome capacity to feel grateful even amidst her sorrows.

A Talmudic Sage makes a surprising, even jarring statement about Leah. Rabbi Simeon bar Yohai says that Leah was the first person in the history of the world who ever expressed gratitude to God (Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 7b). What could this possibly mean? Of course other people before Leah had offered thanksgiving to God... What makes Leah's gratitude unique? What is it that establishes her as the first truly grateful person? It is one thing to be grateful when everything is wonderful, when all of our dreams have been fulfilled and all of our hungers sated. But it is quite another to be grateful when life is complicated, when some of our most cherished dreams have remained painfully unrealized, when some of our yearnings are so intense that they threaten to burn right through us. Leah is the first person to feel and express gratitude even and especially amidst profound sorrow and enduring disappointment. 

Strikingly, the name Leah gives her fourth son, Judah, meaning "I will praise" or "I will express gratitude," becomes the name of the Jewish people as a whole. Who is a Jew? One who discovers the possibility of gratitude even amidst heartbreak. That is why we are given the name that expresses Leah's courage, and her achievement: a Jew is, ideally, a human being who, like Leah, can find her way to gratitude without having everything she wants or even needs."

I love Rabbi Held's assertion that our identity as Jews is fundamentally grounded in Leah's ability to feel and express gratitude, even and perhaps especially when we are also disappointed. Gratitude is not conditioned on perfection.

This feels like a great message to uplift on this particular Shabbat, of Thanksgiving weekend 2025 / 5786.  Here in America over the last few centuries, we have been identified at different times as "Hebrews," "Israelites," and "Jews." The meanings of all three words ring true: we have "crossed over" from one land to another, "wrestled" to get to where we are today, and we continue to follow the example of our foremother Leah, expressing gratitude, even as we strive to help both our people and our country live up to the blessings of their full promise.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum