Episodes
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Last week, I came across a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine. Kim Tingley, in her article “‘Nature’s Swiss Army Knife’: What can we Learn from Venom ?” writes about the incredible potential of highly toxic reptile and insect venom to provide pharmaceutical miracles. It turns out that reptile and inspect venom contains hundreds, even thousands of molecules, which each have the ability to act in powerful ways on the human body. In the aggregate, the venom can have disastrous consequences. But applied strategically and sparingly, these compounds can make a world of difference.
Take, for example, the wildly popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound. These drugs were created from research into a venomous reptile called the Gila monster which lives mostly underground in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. It’s a very striking lizard—typically they have a black head and matching black tongue, black legs, and a tiger-like pattern of orange and black down their back and tail. And they are highly toxic. If you Google them after shabbos, you’ll find a bunch of stories of people who have lost their lives to chance encounters on hiking trails or from bites from Gila monster pets.
Gila monster venom had been screened back in the 80s, but when gastroenterologist Jean-Pierre Raufman and endocrinologist John Eng re-screened it, they discovered a molecule that had been previously overlooked which resembled a hormone that regulates insulin in healthy humans. That molecule, which they called Exendin-4, is the basis for these weight-loss drugs which have so transformed the medical landscape.
Learning about this research and these medicines made me wonder—what would happen if we were able to look at the toxins in our lives with the same outlook? There is no universe where we would see all the misfortunes of our lives as helpful or even healing, but would it ever be possible to get to a place where we could see elements of the challenges in our lives as having blessed us with possibility?
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Dear friends,There is a fascinating paradox in our Torah reading this week.On the one hand, we've spent these last weeks reading about the trials and tribulations of our ancestors. In our Talmud class, we've discussed how loss, trauma, and pain shape their lives. We've seen how they suffer from dislocation, dashed hopes, and painful interpersonal dynamics. And yet, at the end of their lives, the Torah focuses not on the challenges they've endured but on the complete and total blessing of their lives. We are taught that each and every one of Sarah's 127 years was equally good. We are taught that God blessed Abraham in everything.How can this be? Is it possible that Sarah's years of infertility and strife were as good as the years she spent showering her son, Isaac, with love? Could it be that God's blessing for Abraham included dislocation, war, and the dissolution of the family he so yearned for?Or is it possible that the blessing and goodness that our ancestors experienced was less about what objectively happened and more about their adopted perspective?
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Missing episodes?
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What does Naftali Herstik, a pre-eminent cantor at the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem for 30 years, have in common with Bobby Allison, who was one of the greatest race car drivers in American history, who won 85 NASCAR races over 30 years? One is an all-time great cantor. The other is an all-time great race car driver. They both recently passed away. But they share something important in common in how they lived which speaks to one of the greatest mysteries of the Torah—the meaning of the binding of Isaac, akeidat Yitzchak, in our portion this morning.This terrifying story is famously incomprehensible. God commands Abraham to bind his own son Isaac and offer him up as a burnt offering. How could God command such a thing? How could Abraham have been prepared to do it? Perhaps the wisest word I ever heard about this story was from Rabbi Simon Greenberg, a great teacher at the Seminary, who taught rabbinical students: don’t even try to teach this story. It makes no sense. Teach something else. But then this summer, while in Israel, I had something of a breakthrough. I think I finally understand the meaning of the binding of Isaac. This story is about how parents and children are bound. Decisions of parents shape the lives of children. All of us are bound by our parents. Who they are, what they do, shapes who we are, what we do.
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We are plumb in the middle of two of the hardest stories in the Torah. Genesis 16:1-16 tells of Sarai’s continued inability to get pregnant, which leads her to assign her servant Hagar (literally the stranger) to Abram so that she might conceive a child with Abram who would somehow be reckoned as Sarai’s child.
When Abram and Hagar have relations, she gets pregnant right away. It does not go well. The two women hurt one another. “Abraham cohabited with Hagar and she conceived; and when she (Hagar) saw that she had conceived, her mistress (Sarai) was lowered in her (Hagar’s) esteem.” 16:4. Which led to: “Then Sarai treated her (Hagar) harshly, and she ran away from her.” 16:6. That was in last week’s reading.
This week tells the familiar story (the Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah day 1) of the birth of Isaac, which leads Sarah to direct Abraham to expel Hagar and Ishmael from their home into the wilderness. 21: 9-21.
Not Sarah’s finest moment: “Cast out that slave woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” 21:10.
There are 70 faces of Torah (shivim panim l’Torah), and these stories have been grist for the mill for feminist critiques, class critiques, racial critiques. It is a story about the patriarchy. It is a story about rich and poor. It is a story about white and black. It is a story about power imbalance. All of which is also true.
And tomorrow we are going to focus on a human question that affects us all: what does pain do to us? These stories yield four characters, and four different responses.
Lashing Out in Our Pain Hagar and Sarah do that to each other.
Self-Pity Hagar and Sarah both do that as well.
Bystander Abraham
The One Who Sees Me The angel of God
There is no shortage of pain in the world. How can we avoid the first three moves and emulate instead the example of the angel of God who sees the person before them.
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I have a friend who is a therapist. She tells the story that once, she had someone in her office who was really struggling. As he shared story after story of misfortune and sorrow, she found herself thinking, “oy, he really needs a therapist.” Then, the patient paused and asked her for her wisdom. “Oh no,” she thought, “I am that therapist.”
I’ve never felt this story more deeply. This week, I looked at the sermon schedule and thought, “oh no…I am supposed to be the rabbi.” How do you speak to this moment? Everyone is feeling this week so differently. For some people, this was an incredible week of miracles, and for some people, this week plunged them into despair and anxiety. What do you say to that? What do you say to this space where we are all processing it so differently?
I want to tell you a story today. It’s one of my favorite stories of all time and I hope you love it just as much. It’s about two rabbis. Now these two rabbis could not have been more different. Rav Baruch of Medzhybizh was a very distinguished rabbi. He believed every prayer should be said with decorum, proper pronunciation and annunciation; that prayer services should be thoughtful, reflective, quiet, studious, and proper affairs. When he davened, he would come into the sanctuary, and he would sit down with a straight back, and he would pray reverently and quietly, as would his students. They would do every prayer, with every word, until the end.
The other rabbi, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, was charismatic and emotional. He didn’t believe in doing things because you should do them one particular way, he believed in following his heart wherever it led him. He sang loudly sometimes, and quietly others; he believed you should move in a service, and you should dance– if you felt it, you should just get up and move and dance around the room. He believed in singing prayers loudly that he felt and maybe skipping some other words. He was all about the emotional experience of the prayer. By the way, when he came into a sanctuary he didn’t sit in one spot. He would start over here, move over there, he would dance over there, he would clap, he would sing– it was a lot of motion and movement all the time.
Now, Rabbi Yitzchak of Berditchev had one dream, and that is he wanted to share a Shabbat with Rav Baruch of Medzhybizh. So he sent him a message and said, “Hi, I’d really love to have Shabbos with you.” And Rav Baruch writes back, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s just not going to work. There’s no universe in which you come to my shul, my house…It’s just not going to be pretty, no thank you, let’s get together another time but not for Shabbos.”
But Rabbi Yitzchak was not to be deterred.
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A consequential week, in America and in Israel. How can Torah help us become better versions of ourselves? How can Torah help us become better citizens here and better lovers and supporters of Israel? This week we begin the Abraham story.Why Abraham? Why did God pick him? We know that God picked him, but we have no idea as to why. In his essay A Palace in Flames, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers three explanations based on three different midrashic traditions.One, Abraham was an iconoclast.
He fought against existing thinking. His friends, family and neighbors worshipped idols. He smashed idols. They are undeserving of our praise. He had the courage to stand alone.Two, Abraham was a philosopher.
He thought deeply and clearly about reality. With his powers of rational thought he understood that idols did not create the world.Three, Abraham was an activist.
He saw a world on fire, a world struggling with evil, and he was determined to be a force for justice and righteousness. He knew that God needed help, and so he answered with his trademark Hineni, I am here.Today we examine each of these three midrashic traditions with this lens: what does this midrashic tradition teach us now? Is one of these moves most urgently needed now? How would we translate Abraham energy—as an iconoclast, a philosopher, or an activist—into our world?
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On the morning of Kol Nidrei—Friday, October 11 to be exact—my colleagues and I were doing a Kabbalat Shabbat service with our youngest learners, our preschool children who range in age from 15 months to 5 years old. Yom Kippur was in the air. Kol Nidrei with all its solemnity, was in 9 hours. How to convey Kol Nidrei intensity to our youngest learners?
So I asked them: what is your favorite Jewish holiday? One hand after another shot up. The first young child answered: Halloween! The second learner spoke up: Halloween! And so it would go. Surprisingly, not a single child said Yom Kippur was their favorite Jewish holiday. No three-year-old said I just love Unetaneh Tokef. The clear choice for favorite Jewish holiday of our youngest learners is Halloween.
I have been thinking about their response, and while of course Halloween is not a Jewish holiday, in a deep way, they are right. Holidays are supposed to be joyful. What is more joyful than Halloween the way we practice it today? It’s about parents and children planning out costumes, walking the streets together in search of candy bars, and dividing the spoils at the end of the night. It’s about neighborhood and community. It’s about creativity. So many families really do up Halloween with intricate gothic scenes. It’s about fun. And of course it is about Heath Bars, Butterfingers, Snickers Bars, Kit Kats. All good stuff. Maybe our youngest learners are on to something.
There is only one problem. The Halloween so many of us observe, sweet neighbors giving sweet children sweets, works great for children. But in the real world adults face complexity. Joy does not come so easily for us.
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The biblical character Lot presents a unique challenge. He appears in three portions, Noach this week, Lekh L’kha next week, and Va-yera two weeks from now. He is a supporting actor in multiple chapters in Genesis: chapters 11, 12, 13, 14, and 19.And yet no one ever talks about him. We don’t mine his story. We avoid him.There is good reason why we stay away from Lot. The end of his story is gross, in fact doubly gross. Incomprehensibly, he offers his two virgin daughters to the rapists of Sodom in a bizarre attempt to protect the visitor/angels from being raped. After God destroys Sodom, and Lot and his daughters escape to a cave, those daughters get him drunk, sleep with him, get pregnant, and thereby create the nations of the Moabites and Ammonites.Yuck. The cringe factor of these two concluding Lot stories explains why we never talk about Lot.But Lot has a lot to teach us. What do we learn from the early and middle parts of his story that can help explain its unspeakable end? Lot’s story is a cautionary tale. What are its lessons? To answer these questions, we will consult an evocative and wise passage from Rambam's Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot De'ah, 6:1-2.
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The question always is, what’s next? And the answer is, let’s be together.
What’s next? This is a question that weighs on me in every facet of my life. My son Avishai, who many of you know well after his many years at Hebrew school here and around at services, for a long time would have the same question for us when we first woke up. “What’s for dinner?” And, truthfully, we hardly ever knew. It’s hard enough to keep of track of who is getting who to where they need to be when. So the thought of what any combination of us will be eating, 12 hours later, is impossibly daunting.
Despite our best efforts to have a routine for the five of us, we find ourselves taking it one day at a time, one hour at a time, one moment at a time.
My phone is constantly reminding me, what’s next. Meetings, appointments, commitments - I feel very busy. And when I speak to my friends in my age group and demographic, they also project as being very busy. We sometimes wear busy-ness as a badge of honor, proof that we are worthy of the blessings of life that we have been bestowed. And more often we use busy-ness as a shield, an excuse, for why we haven’t lived up to other commitments or why we haven’t stayed in touch.
“You know, the start of school is so busy, and then it’s so busy right before the holidays, then it’s really busy during the holidays, then it’s really busy right after the holidays then it’s really busy before break,” and so on. What’s next? I find that my contemporaries, and I would surmise, anecdotally, all people ever, are always keeping busy with the next thing. Asking, what’s next?
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How are we to understand the death of the leader of Hamas, and the mastermind and architect of October 7, Yahya Sinwar?
Does his death mean that an end to the war, and the beginning of the day after, is closer? Or should Israel’s military continue the fight? What will Sinwar’s death mean for our hostages? These questions are hugely important and above my pay grade.
Our question this morning is how do Jewish values help us interpret this moment?
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Sukkot
October 18, 2024
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When I was growing up, we spent a lot of time with my Grandpa Gene feeding the geese. My Mom kept a 50 lb. bag of birdseed in the car, and, even when Sir Grandfather, as he liked to be called, was not feeling well, we would drive to the pond, and he would sit and watch from the front seat as we tossed out birdseed to grateful honks. My grandfather also had this superpower. He could spot any flock of birds in the sky and would just know exactly the number of birds in an instant. He would look up and say 39 or 17 or 22 and we would start counting and a minute later, we would confirm his internal knowing.
I loved my grandfather, and I loved the time we spent together, but I did not love birds. My mom and sister spent hours learning the different names and calls and colorings of all the local birds, but not me. I did not want to learn more. If someone would say to me, “wow, that’s a beautiful bird—do you know what kind it is?” I would always say definitively, “yes, that’s a mongor.” If they really didn’t know, then I seemed smart, and we could move on to more interesting topics of conversation. And if they did know, well then, they would laugh, and then we could move on to more interesting topics of conversation.
When Eder was born, we named him after my Grandpa Gene. It’s funny, whenever I meet with soon-to-be parents and they want to talk about how to name their children, I always tell them that when you give your child the name of an ancestor, it’s more than a name. I share that according to Jewish tradition, each one of us accrues blessings in our lifetime that live far longer than we do. When you name a child after someone you love, it’s like giving them a spiritual trust fund. They get all the mitzvah points that their ancestor accrued during their lifetime, and they also earn their own mitzvah points with a great interest rate.
I believed in this Torah, but I didn’t fully get it. In my mind, by naming Eder after my grandfather, I was trying to create a link so that my grandpa could be connected to this little one even though they would never meet in real life. I wanted to create opportunities to talk about my grandfather and the qualities I hope Eder will emulate when he’s older. I never could have predicted what has actually happened.
Eder is 17 months old. He is just starting to express himself and to share his preferences. What does he love more than almost anything in the world?
Birds.
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One quiet Shabbat morning in August, a long-time member comes in and says, Rabbi, I turn 93 today. Can I have an Aliyah? I said of course. We’d love to give you an Aliyah. Just want you to know one thing. You are a youngster.
A youngster? I’m turning 93 today. How is that a youngster?
I pointed in the direction of a woman who was sitting with her children, grandchildren and extended mishpacha. I said we are doing an Aliyah today for that woman surrounded by her family because she just turned 103.
Without skipping a beat, he says: Is she single?
That’s what I want to talk about today. The good stuff. The lightness, the laughter, the loveliness, that have been so hard to come by this past year. There has obviously been a deep heaviness all year. And we are not done with that heaviness. The wars are ongoing. Our worry is ongoing. The heartbreak caused by Helene and Milton is ongoing. And yet, we are not wired to live in heaviness indefinitely. We cannot live in heaviness indefinitely. We crave hope. We crave uplift. Even now. Especially now. And so I want to talk about finding hope, but with a particular angle. How do we find hope when it sometimes feels like hope is gone? What can I do, what can you do, what can we each do to make our world a more hopeful world?
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Rabbi David Wolpe tells a classic story of speaking to a group of American Jews in Tulsa, Oklahoma at their JCC about God. He was trying to make the case that God loves them. But he could see that his words were not resonating. Being the seasoned speaker that he is, he decided to take a bit of a gamble. He stopped his prepared remarks and said: If you think God loves you, please rise. In the entire large amphitheater which sat hundreds of people, exactly one person stood up. So Rabbi Wolpe tried again. If you think God loves you, please stand up. Nobody else got up. Just the one man standing. At last Rabbi Wolpe turned to that man and said, Sir, you believe that God loves you? I do indeed, he said. What is your name? Oral Roberts.
Oral Roberts was a Christian televangelist. He was the only one in the Jewish Community Center that believed that God loves us. That lack of ease with God is built into our very name: Israel, the one who struggles with God.
This story happened years before October 7. If it were hard for Jews to connect with a loving God before October 7, how much harder is it for us to believe in God’s love after October 7.
As we approach the one-year anniversary of October 7, is there any God we can believe in?
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As the horrors of October 7th were unfolding, a common reaction was “ein milim,” no words. But it is not surprising that Hebrew poetry soon appeared that gave expression to the nation’s raw feelings and emotions.Our teacher Rachel Korazim, our member Michael Bohnen and Heather Silverman of California have recently published a moving anthology of those poems which they have translated to English. Their book, Shiva: Poems of October 7, is available on Amazon, and all royalties go to the Israel Trauma Coalition for their work with victims of that terrible day and its aftermath.This Shabbat morning, October 5, Michael leads us in a discussion of a selection of those poems. They cover a wide range of reactions to tragedy, including poems about:
• A voice mail message left on October 7• A depiction of terror• Challenging God• Praying for the return of a child taken hostage• Answering a child’s questions about death• A soldier emotionally impacted by his service returns home• A now sad poem of hope by Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s mom
View the poems HERE
But we think you would find the whole anthology a meaningful way to commemorate October 7 and support the work of the Israel Trauma Coalition.
See: https://a.co/d/5RoITJ8
A short, recorded introduction to each of the poems in the book is available HERE.“These pages take unimaginable pain and transmute them to art. The poems are powerful, important and remind us of the of the rawness and the resilience that poetry brings to our lives.” - Rabbi David Wolpe, Emeritus, Sinai Temple
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Years ago, I was talking with our preschool learners, 3- and 4-year-olds, about God. Not sure what I was thinking that day. I was a young rabbi, fresh out of the Seminary. So I turned to very young learners and asked: have you ever seen God? As you might predict, it did not go well. There was a long, awkward silence. Nobody raised their hand. Nobody said a word. I did not know how to get out of this jam. And then mercifully one child at last, sheepishly, raised her hand. I have seen God, she said. You did? You saw God? When did you see God? I saw God at Logan Airport when we came back from vacation. Logan Airport? Where at Logan Airport? In the bathroom. In the bathroom? How did you see God in the bathroom? I was on the potty. When I got up from the potty, God flushed my toilet.
How do we see what we see? How do we know what we know?
In his new book How to Know a Person, David Brooks offers the following thought experiment. Imagine that you are in a bedroom with your eyes closed. You are instructed to open your eyes and describe what you see. There is a chair, a bed, a desk, a window, a painting. If there were, say, ten people asked to describe the contents of this bedroom, would we expect that we would get a broadly consistent picture? After all, aren’t the people in this thought experiment just capturing objective reality? A chair is a chair. A window is a window.
But different people see differently. Different people see different things. The designer in the bedroom notes the interior decorating. The security specialist notes the window and the areas of vulnerability. The artist is focused on the painting. The personal trainer on whether there is an area in the bedroom for planks, burpees and pushups. We don’t only see with our eyes. We see with our whole soul.
This is our issue now. Whether it is the hard news of the day, or events in our own families, we may look at the same thing, but we see different things based upon our different experiences, beliefs and values.
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One fine August night, after I got home from evening minyan, I picked up the phone and called my sister Beth, who lives in Los Angeles, just to check in. Beth shared that one of her summer projects was to feng shui their house that she and her family had lived in for 50 years. Just that afternoon she was working on thecloset in her bedroom, one bag for goodwill, one bag for garbage, when she came upon a box in the bottom of her closet that she had not seen in years. She did not even remember that it existed. She opened the box, and itcontained old birthday cards. Determined to clear her home of clutter once and for all, she was preparing herself to throw out even these sentimental relics when she noticed that one of the birthday cards was in our father’s unmistakable handwriting.
Our father died in 1981. This card was very old. When she opened it up, it said simply: Dearest Beth, you are my rock. Happy Birthday, Love Dad.
So much for the feng shui. Beth took out her black marker and wrote on the whole box: family treasures! Never throw away!
You are my rock.
Those are words of love that have been offered throughout Jewish history. In the Torah Moses calls God hatzur, the rock.
When the founders of the State of Israel got together in Tel Aviv to sign Israel’s Declaration of Independence, they could not agree on whether God belonged in the Declaration of Independence. Religious Jews argued: how can we not include God? After 2,000 years the rebirth of the Jewish state is a miracle. SecularJews argued: how could we include God? The founding of the State was a secular impulse. In the end both sides agreed to put in Israel’s Declaration of Independence Tzur Yisrael, Rock of Israel. It would be a deliberate ambiguity. To the religious, the Rock of Israel meant God. To the secular, the Rock of Israel meant the Jewish people and Jewish history.
What would it look like for us to be a rock for the people in our lives? What would it look like for us, as we approach the one-year anniversary of October 7, to be a rock for Israel?
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