Being Jewishly – Page 2 – The Metaphorager.

Home (not) Alone

A d’var Torah – sermon – I delivered at our synagogue yesterday morning. If you’re not into hortatory Jewish fuzzies, better skip it.)

My dad was born and grew up in Brooklyn, New York, long enough ago for him to have cheered on the Dodgers at the legendary Ebbets Field. My dad’s also the world’s greatest baseball fan – at least the greatest I’ve ever met. He can quote statistics, games, and players like a seasoned sportswriter. I once asked him why the Brooklyn Dodgers’ native stadium had such allure for his ten-year-old self.

He thought for a moment, smiled, and said, “It’s holy ground … and it was my second home.”

The concept of home is important to us. Be it ever so humble, it’s where the heart is, where you hang your hat, and there’s no place like it. A real home is wherever we feel safe to be our best, and even sometimes worst, selves.

Our Torah portion, Shemot, the beginning of Exodus, describes a similar-but-different kind of safety. We find the baby Moses tucked into a basket among the bulrushes of the Nile, escaping Pharaoh’s cruel edict of death for all Jewish first-born males.

The Hebrew word translated here as “basket” is “teivah.” There’s only one other teivah in Torah. It’s found in Genesis, in parashat Noach. There, teivah is translated as “ark” – yes, the one with Noah’s family and all the paired animals. The Talmud calls this juxtaposition – an identical word or phrase occurring in different verses – “gezeirah shava,” Aramaic for “similar verdicts.” A gezeirah shava exists to reveal the word or phrase’s deeper meaning.

So let’s explore this puzzling and holy ark-basket.

Both teivahs are containers. That one is large and one small isn’t as important as their function. For Noah, his pitch-caulked ark carried the world’s wildlife population. In Moses’ case, his pitch-caulked basket carried the leader of a spiritual revolution. Two boxes of life, each floating amidst swirling chaos, each protecting the seeds of new beginnings.

Our world at present can be fairly described as a swirling chaos. Politics, economics, technology, civility, culture, climate – everything seems to be spiraling into some very strange and very scary places. But a teivah can protect us long enough to gather our strength, cope, and continue.

Sonoma has a long-established and vital teivah that does just that. And though small, it contains multitudes.

There’s a Hebrew school. Sisterhood. Men’s club. Book clubs. Adult education. Social action. Care for our physically and spiritually beset. Annual and life-cycle celebrations. Study groups devoted to our most sacred texts. Occasional cooking classes. The welcoming warmth of authentic, heimishe Yiddishkeit. And worship services like these, where we can come together twice-monthly to ritually affirm our religious peoplehood.

Our little Anatevka-among-the-vines offers each of us a little hard-won and welcome shelter from the surrounding storm. So my questions to you today, especially as we enter our 30th year, are, “What’s your Shir Shalom shelter story? How does our do-it-yourself teivah give you strength and support?”

[pass microphone]

Thank you everyone. And thank you for helping each other keep our heads above choppy water – as our people have done for the past 4,000 years and counting. Shabbat shalom.

Round About

“One measures a circle, beginning anywhere.” – Charles Fort

The first chapter of the Book of Exodus tells a grim tale: “A new king arose over Egypt … and he said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.’ So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them … (Exodus 1:8-10)

This may be the first recorded instance of antisemitism. Sadly, it’s a pattern that repeated itself throughout the ensuing 3,000 years: a period of Jewish prosperity, followed by a host country’s regime-change, followed by Jewish victimization. We can be forgiven for being fed up and tired of it; after all, how much suffering can one people take?

It’s tempting to measure this apparently endless circle at its lowest point. But thinking of oneself and/or one’s tribe as a perpetual victim is neither healthy nor sustainable. It’s a shaky foundation on which to build an identity, and it reduces our multi-millennial history to a dismal common denominator. It doesn’t leave room for Jewish pride, Jewish celebration, or Jewish joy.

My copilot the therapist cautions survivors not to define themselves by the worst thing that ever happened to them. That doesn’t mean ignoring the trauma – which would only make it worse – but rather balancing it with a decent appraisal of our many, many achievements.

The Torah verses quoted above continue: “… But the more [the Israelites] were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out.” As the Yiddish proverb goes, “Jews are like eggs. The more hot water they’re in, the tougher they get.” Let’s hope we retain our toughness while remaining tender enough to pass on the best part of ourselves, and our people, to the next generation.

Restful Strength

WITH THIS WEEK’S Torah portion of Vayechi, we bid farewell for another year to the Book of Genesis and the saga of the Jewish people’s ancestral and tribal beginnings.

Whenever Torah students finish the weekly reading of one of the Torah’s five books, it’s traditionally followed by a rousing shout of “Chazak! Chazak! V’nitchazek! (Strength! Strength! And may we be strengthened!)” The idea is that intense Torah study can be wearisome, and we thus need a boost to get back to ourselves. But as we actually always finish the books on Shabbat, perhaps it’s also a call to fully enjoy the revivifying rest that only Shabbat can bring.

So as you light candles tonight (or do whatever you do to mark this most frequent of Jewish holidays), and whether or not you yet study Torah, remember to take a deep breath or three – and slip into some grateful and strength-giving peace. Shabbat shalom.

No Kidding

There is no word in Hebrew for ‘coincidence.'”
— Rabbi Yitzchak Zweig

Righteous Rage

THEY WANT US TO FEAR.

That’s not going to happen.

The 15 Jews martyred in Sydney are a cross-section of the Jewish world: Two rabbis. A Ukrainian survivor of the Holocaust. A pre-Bat Mitzvah girl. An Israeli. And ten others. All killed for the “crime” of being Jewish in public.

There are no words to express our shock, anger, and grief at this vicious and hateful turn of events, because you know them all anyway, because they’ve all been said before, again and again and again.

What I will say is this: We are not leaving. We are not cowering. We are not giving up our identity. We are who we are, as we’ve been for millennia, and will be – G?d willing – for millennia more.

We are an eternal people, and we will survive.

Deal with it.

Never Enough

AS A TEACHER of Jewish children and adults, it’s my job (and joy!) to soak up as much Torah as I can – in the broad sense of “Torah” as “the entire corpus of the Jewish textual tradition.”

Fortunately, there’s no end to it, which makes for some pretty challenging (and rewarding!) job security.

What dwells among those who study Torah together?

But Torah isn’t meant to be studied alone. As it happens, I am blessed (or, if you prefer, lucky) to be involved with a tightknit community of very learned and dedicated individuals, some of whom I’ve known for years, who continually teach me more than I can ever impart to them. Please allow me to introduce you.

The first group of Torah scholars hails from 2001, when my copilot had the great idea to study the weekly portion with our co-congregants on the Shabbat mornings that we weren’t studying with our rabbi once a month. We all met in our living room, and though many no longer walk this planet, others have taken their place, and the dozen-or-so of us now converse online (thank you, COVID) for ninety engrossing minutes every Saturday.

Around 2014, a handful of would-be learners commenced living-room meetings on Thursday mornings at the behest of RM, who wanted to study Mussar (Jewish ethical spirituality). Once again thanks to the pandemic, we shifted Zoomward for an hour on Wednesday mornings and collected a small number of fellow students. Though we’ve now worked our way back to Mussar, we’ve also tackled the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Ezekiel, as well as the pithy rabbinical wisdom of Pirkei Avot.

Then there’s the hourly dive into various texts with two veterans of the preceding collectives: Thursday mornings with RT (a wise and humble night-owl with whom I’m now learning one of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks‘ Torah commentaries), and TR (a brilliant and outspoken mathematician-philosopher with a taste for Maimonides) on Monday afternoons. For nearly two years, it has also been my great pleasure to study by phone for fifteen minutes on Wednesday mornings with BE, a hyper-articulate professional writer, as part of the ongoing program Partners in Protection. And just this past Wednesday, my longtime convalescent friend RR and I took up the weekly Torah portion – partly to learn, and mostly to take her mind off her poor health.

Our rabbis tell us that whenever people speak words of Torah together, the Shekhinah (Divine Presence) dwells among them. Whether or not that’s true, I do know what dwells among those who study together: joy. And isn’t that the same thing?

New & Then

(A recent sermon. Skip it if you like – you won’t hurt my feelings.)

THERE IS AN OLD STORY about a rabbi who was so engrossed in his Talmudic studies that he didn’t pay attention to the weekly Torah reading. When he was asked by his congregation to deliver a sermon, he ascended the bimah and said: “A good sermon should be about the week’s Torah portion. It should also be true and concise. I do not know what this week’s Torah portion is. That is the truth, and it is concise. Shabbat shalom.”

Not yesterday or tomorrow – but today.

Moshe Rabbeinu – Moses our Teacher – has a similar concise moment in this week’s Torah portion from Deuteronomy. The book is Moses’ recounting and personal perspective of the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. According to the 13th-century Torah commentator Nachmanides, our portion finds Moses wrapping-up the mitzvot – the 613 commandments incumbent on all Jews. Nachmanides says that Moses finishes this long and winding list with Deuteronomy 26:16-17, which reads: “Your G?d Adonai commands you this day to observe these decrees and laws; observe them faithfully with all your heart and soul. You have affirmed this day that Adonai is your G?d, in whose ways you will walk, whose decrees and commandments and laws you will observe, and to hear [G?d’s] voice.”

Notice the repetition of the phrase “this day” – “hayom hazeh.” In verse 16, G?d commands us to keep the mitzvot. In the very next verse, we affirm our willingness to do just that. And what is the upshot, the payoff? That we will hear – “shema” – G?d’s voice. Not yesterday or tomorrow – but today.

One understanding of this could be that doing the mitzvot will add a perception of the Divine to our lives. Keeping Shabbat, welcoming the stranger, paying our employees on time, and observing the festivals – including the upcoming High Holidays – might not bring us material success. But the mitzvot might benefit us in other, more subtle and transcendent ways. They help us become better people by keeping us mindful of the fragile interconnectedness of all things – and in turn, by making us more appreciative of life’s great and small miracles.

But that’s harder than it sounds. After all, keeping hundreds of commandments is a heavy responsibility. And having to keep them every day for the rest of our lives? Help!

However, one of our most famous Torah commentators proposes a solution. Rashi – wine merchant by day, devoted scholar by night – speaks to us from 11th-century France. He says: “The mitzvot should always seem as new to you as on the day you were first commanded to observe them” – this day!

Time can be experienced in two different ways. Sometimes, it’s linear – each day slipping from the future into the past. Sometimes, it’s cyclical – with different seasons bringing their own special blessing, including birth, life, death, rebirth. Jewish time is both linear and cyclical. For example, we celebrate the holidays in the same way every year. But each year finds us in a different physical, intellectual and spiritual place. We grow more mature and – we hope! – more wise, or at least more experienced.

But all we really have is “hayom hazeh” – this day, which has never been before, and will never be again. So my question today is, “How do you make your observances fresh and new, and meaningful to you?“

G?d’s Hamsters

(With welcome help from special guest star Ann Autumn.)

“The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.” – Samuel Beckett, Endgame

You can’t know who you are without knowing where you’ve been.

Mr. Beckett, most famously the author of Waiting for Godot, was not Jewish. By all accounts, though raised in a religious home, he identified as atheist. Yet the above quote could have been describing this week’s Torah portion, Devarim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22), the first parasha of the Torah’s final book.

Moses begins “his” book – a 14,294-word Mosaic monologue – by recalling in some detail the Israelites 40-year desert trek; i.e., the events of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.

In doing so, our greatest prophet reveals an important truth: You can’t know who you are without knowing where you’ve been. What do you see when you reflect back on your journey? As with Torah’s cast of characters from Genesis forward, along the way there have been others shaping your path – your malachim (“angels,” or “messengers”), your pharaohs, even the occasional stranger pointing the way. As someone once said, “I promise you that along your path you have been helped by people whose names you will never know.”

May we each and all continue forward, looking back when necessary, recognizing that – just as Deuteronomy takes us directly to Genesis – endings are also beginnings, and yet: we go on.

Talk Shop

DUE TO THE Hebrew calendar’s complexities, we sometimes double up on the weekly Torah readings. The first of this week’s two portions, Matot (Numbers 30:2-36:13), concerns the laws of vows. Words are supremely powerful in Judaism – after all, our Torah holds that G?d created the universe by speaking it into existence – and how we use them matters. Our words can hurt or heal, create or destroy, bring people closer or push them apart. As the saying goes, “With great power comes great responsibility.” May our words be truthful, kind, and uplifting, each and all when necessary – and don’t forget to add a little humor!

Reverse Coarse

(Sermon delivered yesterday morning. Feel free to skip it if Jewish resilience isn’t your thing.)

HERE’S A QUESTION: Why are we still here?

The traditional opening of any Jewish morning prayer-service, and also what Jews say upon first entering the synagogue, is “Mah tovu ohalecha Yaakov, mishkanotecha Yisrael.” The best-known translation is, “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling-places, O Israel.”

After all, we’re called the “stiff-necked people” for a reason.

According to tradition, the reasoning behind this practice is nuanced. It expresses the awe and reverence we should feel on entering the Beit Tefilah, the house of prayer. And given its origin, which we’ll examine in a moment, Mah Tovu marks the notional connection between Jews and the outside world.

As we learned by what our Torah reader just chanted, Mah Tovu’s first line appears in this week’s Torah portion. The wizard Bilaam was hired by King Balak to curse the Jews – but every time he opened his mouth, out came blessings instead.

Wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be great if the people who cursed us had a change of heart, or at least of tongue? Especially now, given our post- October 7th hellscape?

It takes great courage not to focus on the negative these days – to believe, as Jews have for millennia, that this world can and will be redeemed from oppression and darkness. To believe that if we work very, very hard for it, hate and fear will one day fade into memory. To believe that shalom – peace, harmony, and integrity – will eventually reign for all peoples everywhere.

We are too stubborn to give up this determined and well-ingrained optimism. After all, we’re called the “stiff-necked people” for a reason.

But times are scary and bad right now. That’s one reason why, instead of the traditional Mah Tovu, Shir Shalom’s services are beginning with, “Hinei mah tov uma naim, shevet achim gam yachad” – roughly translated as “How good it is, and how pleasant, for siblings to sit together.”

Because it is.

We’ve sat together during other scary and bad times: under the Egyptians, who enslaved us. The Babylonians, who destroyed our first Holy Temple. The Romans, who banned Torah study upon pain of death.

But I don’t want us to wallow in injustice and pain. I want to emphasize that despite the most unspeakable circumstances, we have always survived. More than that, we’ve thrived, serially outliving one oppressor after another, and another.

So my question is: What’s our secret? How is it that we continually overcome Jewish curses with Jewish blessings? Jewish misery with Jewish joy? Again: Why are we still here?

[pass the mic: the congregation’s dozen-or-so answers included “that we teach our children to be Jews,” “chutzpah,” “G?d’s love/covenant,” and “chicken soup.” One woman captured the general spirit by saying, “I am proud to be Jewish – and I wouldn’t want to be anything else.”]

Thank you, everyone. May we all have the strength to go forth and do likewise. Shabbat shalom.

Thirsty Work

What did Moses do wrong?

IN THIS WEEK’S TORAH PORTION, Chukat (Numbers 19:1-22:1), Moses disobeys G?d’s command to speak to a rock and thereby produce water for the thirsty Jews and their animals. Instead, Moses – perhaps in grief over his sister Miriam’s very recent death, or just fed up with the ever-complaining Israelites – twice wallops the rock with his staff. Abundant water does indeed flow forth but G?d, annoyed with Moses’ failure to sanctify his Boss in the eyes of the multitude, forbids him from ever entering the Promised Land.

Some say Moses’ mistake would have been a small thing in an ordinary person but huge for one of Moses’ stature; imagine the reaction had Moses spoken up rather than struck out! On the other hand, perhaps Moses had already had his time by getting us out of Egypt so we could receive the Torah, and G?d would have found some other way to keep him out of our then-undiscovered country. The Talmudic sage Ben Azzai tells us: “There is no one that has not their hour, and there is no thing that has not its place.” On this Independence Day of 2025, may we each find our own hour and place to help others quench their thirst for kindness and justice.

Where Are You?

(Sermon for Parashat Vayikra [Leviticus 1:1-5:26], 4/5/25.)

THIS WEEK’S TORAH PORTION, LIKE the entire book of Leviticus it’s taken from, asks: “How do we get close to G?d – and survive?”

Leviticus’ answer is excruciatingly detailed – so much so that it strikes fear into b’mtzvah students whose birthdays fall anytime during its reading season. But this third book of the Torah opens simply enough, with G?d having Moses tell the Israelites: “When any of you presents an offering to Adonai…”

Note the operative word: “when.” Not if, but when. The Torah assumes that our ancestors would do like their surrounding cultures, and worship their deity by sacrificing slaughtered animals on a flaming altar. So ingrained was this practice that if Moses and his charges could see us gathered here this morning, they’d wonder why we don’t offer animals like they did – as the Torah tells them to do.

In fact, the purpose of this “offering” is built into the Hebrew word that depicts it: “korban,” which shares its kuf-reish-bet root with the word “kiruv,” meaning “to draw near.”

There is something very moving about the idea of sharing an intimate meal with G?d.

The esteemed Torah commentator Rashi emphasizes that our portion begins by talking about voluntary offerings – not those brought to atone for a sin or other trespass. When someone felt the need for a spiritual boost for whatever reason, they would bring to the Altar whatever their means allowed – domestic ruminants, turtledoves, matzah, or even raw flour. If they wanted to express to G?d their gratitude, for example, their animal’s fats and organs would burn on the Altar, and its meat would be consumed by the worshipper and their friends and relations.

There is something very moving about the idea of sharing an intimate meal with G?d. It’s quite the contrast to the people’s attitude at the foot of Sinai in Exodus 20:16. There, they heard G?d’s voice and subsequently begged Moses: “You speak to us and we will listen; but let not G?d speak to us, lest we die.”

The word translated as “we will listen” is “nishma” – from the root shin-mem-ayin, or “Shema.” (Sound familiar?) Indeed, the concept of Shema is so important that we’re commanded to focus on it in prayer twice daily. That’s reminiscent of the twice-daily offerings burning on the Altar of the Mishkan (Tabernacle) – and later, the Holy Temple.

But the question remains wherever religious folk gather: How do we experience G?d, the Divine, the Holy One, or however you think of It? Through study? Prayer? Acts of kindness? Something else entirely? Let’s listen to each other, and hopefully learn a little something…

[PASS MICROPHONE]
The handful of replies included “In nature,” “Random moments of intuition,” and finally, “Just sitting in silence.”
[THEN]

Thank you, everyone, for your input and insights. Riffing on that last answer, the Sufi poet Rumi once said, “G?d speaks in silence. Everything else is a poor translation.” Shabbat Shalom.