“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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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). 

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.

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. 

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."

Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, of blessed memory, writes in her commentary on Shir HaShirim, or Song of Songs, (Toward a Holy Ecology) that “the holiness of the Song lies in its vision of wholeness; the interconnected, inviolable relationships that underly the health of the whole earth. The Song’s gardens - both the woman’s garden and the many floral, forested, fruiting, and perfume gardens are integrated whole systems. They can especially be appreciated when compared to the parched landscapes and the barren women whose stories drive many of the Torah’s narratives…The sumptuous floral landscape of the Song, promising a world that will flourish, diversify, and blossom forever, is a testament to wholeness.”

The government shutdown formally ended this week, but it's been the longest one in U.S. history and its effects will be felt for quite some time. Over recent weeks, the administration has tried to use this shutdown to enact permanent reductions in the government workforce and has petitioned the Supreme Court not to fund SNAP benefits so that low-income people can eat; all of this feels callous and cruel. The extreme lack of generosity that is informing public policy -- this impulse not to take care of people, not to pay them, not to feed them -- flies in the face of every religious value we hold dear as Jews and as decent human beings.

This week we read “The Binding of Isaac” (Akedat Yitzchak), one of the most enigmatic ethical puzzles in the Torah. That rabbinic name for the story brings us right to the point of moral tension. Abraham, on God’s orders, has brought his son Isaac up a mountain, and has bound him in preparation for ritual sacrifice. A heavenly voice ultimately stops him from going through with it. But even though the two walk away from the scene alive, the binding haunts them and later readers through the ages.

Over the last few weeks, I've been enjoying the show Long Story Short on Netflix -- it's probably the Jew-iest cartoon I've ever seen! The show features the many colorful characters in the dysfunctional Schwooper family, delving deep into their relationships with one another, their personal decisions and professional lives. To me, the most compelling and interesting aspect of it is that each episode takes place across two different years, such that the story-arc of every installment follows the characters across the decades from childhood to adulthood, the content tied together thematically. (The New York Times review of the show, published this August, referred to this as "time travel, family style.") This structural frame enables creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg to probe how the themes, tendencies or conflicts that manifest in an early chapter of the characters' lives tie into what's to come later, thus linking the personality quirks and odd (and usually comical) situations that manifest later in adulthood to key developmental moments. My brain has enjoyed the puzzle of trying to figure out how the disparate narrative pieces fit together, and understand what makes this family tick.

Having moved through the finish line of our fall holiday marathon with Simchat Torah earlier this week, we now arrive at Shabbat Bereishit, where we begin our cycle of Torah anew. The work we have done throughout the holiday season -- to connect ourselves with our community and our people, our tradition and values, and our highest aspirations for our lives in this New Year -- culminates in a great reset.

As American Jews, we see time through bifocals. One lens, moving through the Jewish calendar, and another lens tracking the secular common calendar. It is obvious that holidays belong to their respective domain - Rosh Hashanah forever on the 1st of Tishrei, while Memorial Day is always the last Monday in May. 

A few weeks ago, I stood above the Ballard Locks. My two kids and I watched the salmon leap in their enchantingly awkward dance towards home. We cheered them on. But then, the salmon scattered, and a plump seal swam through their midst, looking for what we would learn was probably a fifth or sixth breakfast that day. My son was horrified. “I’m so afraid for the salmon. The seal will eat it,” he said. I looked helplessly towards a nearby nature guide, who calmly and gently said, “The seals and the salmon are in an ancient dance, doing what they’ve always done. The salmon swim home, and the seals eat some of them. The problem now is that because we humans have changed the way back upstream, the salmon have only a small opening to get through, so the seals just hang out there. We’ve made it extra easy for them to snack. But still, it doesn’t seem to be a big problem.” I’m not sure Ami was convinced, but we turned back to watching the age-old performance play on.

Many of you heard Rabbi Jonah’s story on Rosh Hashanah about the chassidic rabbi – Rebbe Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk – whose students thought that things felt so perfect inside their room that perhaps the moshiach had come and the world had entered a messianic age. The rebbe got up and walked to the window to look out and see, and then came back to the table to confirm that sadly no, the moshiach had not arrived. It still stinks out there. 

As we embark on the High Holidays tonight, I want to focus us on the theme of generations. 

The Torah portions for this holiday of Rosh Hashanah convey intense anxiety about generational continuity. Tomorrow’s reading begins with this issue: “Vadonai pakad et sarah ka’asher amar, va’ya’as adonai l’sarah ka’asher diber. Vatahar va’teiled sarah l’avraham ben liz’kunav.” “The Eternal took note of Sarah as was promised; the Eternal did for Sarah as had been spoken. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age.” In these opening lines, the text has already set up a central challenge:  Abraham and Sarah are old – will there even be a next generation?! Of course, Abraham goes on to have two sons – Ishmael and Isaac – but the worry about continuity doesn’t stop here.