Yom Kippur Morning 5775/2014 "I'm a Jew! Star of David!"

(Take kippah off head and hold it, look at it, look at the Ark, look back at the kippah)

What a beautiful concept. And a beautiful object.

I feel blessed as a rabbi to be able to spend so much time near this Ark.

I am grateful to Sol LeWitt for giving us this vibrant, living piece of art as the focal point of this sanctuary.

And what a fantastic idea – to transfer the concept to a kippah, so that folks can carry this colorful Ark with them out into the world and feel the pride of being Jewish, and being a member of this congregation, that Stephen Davis, our Temple president, likes to describe as, “ancient and cool.”

Such a blessing.

And yet, the events of this past summer cause some questions to arise when I look at this symbol now. Or when I look in our gallery at Bill Farran’s beautiful depictions of old Eastern European synagogues, after which Sol LeWitt modeled this building – synagogues that are all gone now, mostly destroyed by acts of anti-Semitism.

Our Jewish identity.

Is it a blessing? Or is it a curse? Is it a badge of pride? Or….a target.

(put kippah down)

This summer, it has been hard to not feel like we are all walking around with targets on our heads. It was terrifying to witness the anger and the anti-Semitic rhetoric spewed at demonstrations on the streets of Europe, and elsewhere, in  response to the war between Gaza and Israel.  In a Jewish suburb of Paris, a kosher grocery and a Jewish-owned pharmacy were torched. A synagogue near the Bastille in central Paris came under attack while its congregation took refuge inside. Demonstrators were heard chanting, “Death to Jews.”

We also had our own, comparatively small, acts of vandalism on our synagogue grounds this summer. While there was no overt anti-Semitic message associated with the vandalism, you still have to wonder, why a synagogue? And was it only a coincidence that it took place at the height of the Gaza war?

I consider myself lucky. For most of my life, anti-Semitism has not been a big issue. I grew up identifying as a Jew mostly for positive reasons – Shabbat and the holidays were warm, celebratory times in my family. Synagogue was my second home; I developed a deep love of Hebrew and Israel;  and Jewish values of social justice have always been at the core of why I’m proud to be who I am.

 My family lost many people in the Holocaust, including my maternal grandfather’s entire family. This is certainly a large part of my Jewish story as well.  But perhaps because I’m one generation removed from the horrors of Europe, my identity was not primarily shaped by the message, “we survived, and therefore you must continue to be Jewish!” For most of my life, being Jewish has been about blessing.

  

Of course, there was anti-Semitism in York, PA, where I grew up. I remember an incident in which someone had stuck the head of a pig to the door of the local Conservative shul.  And the Country Club of York did not admit Jews until I was in my twenties.

 I was also rudely awakened to the reality of Arab anti-Semitism when I spent a month of college living in Amman, Jordan. There, some very nice, well-educated Jordanian college students informed me, when I mentioned the Holocaust, that they had been taught that the Holocaust was a lie. When I shared with them that a good portion of my own family had been murdered in the death camps, they were horrified and embarrassed. Jordan was also the first place I had ever seen fresh new copies of the medieval anti-Semitic pamphlet, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, for sale at the corner grocery store, translated into Arabic.

These experiences were very painful and lonely for me, as I was the only Jew on my study program. But I had hope back then that this ignorance would be wiped away, when there was finally true peace between Israel and its neighbors; when Israelis and Arab could finally build bridges and relationships with each other. Unfortunately today, as we watch extremist Islamist groups sprout all over the Middle East, I don’t have much hope of that happening any time soon.

This summer I experienced, and I’m sure many of you felt this, a more visceral fear of anti-Semitism than we typically experience as American Jews. We witnessed how very close to the surface the hatred lies, and how when a particular group, this time, the Palestinians in Gaza, is feeling threatened, how their fear gets projected not only onto Israel, the state, but onto the Jewish People as a whole.

In fact, I don’t believe that the anti-Semitism we witnessed this summer was really about Israel. As one French rabbi, Salamon Malka, explained,  “the Israeli assault in Gaza, with its mounting toll of Palestinian civilian deaths, has given an anti-Zionist cover to attacks against Jews, spread on the streets and on the Internet by an angry fringe of France’s Muslim population.”[1]  According to Malka, anti-Zionism has become a way to cover a much more deeply rooted problem of anti-Semitism, a problem that has nothing much to do with the state of Israel.

And in fact, anti-Semitism as a phenomenon usually has much more to do with the perpetrators than about anything Jews have ever done. Psychologically, anti-Semitism is typically about the perpetrator’s own feelings of self-loathing, fear and powerlessness being projected onto the blank slate of, “the Jews.” For the anti-Semite, “the Jew” is not really a person – it is a projection of his or her very unpleasant feelings

We saw this back in April, when Frazier Glenn Miller, a white supremacist, shot and killed three people at the Jewish Community Center and the Village Shalom retirement home in Overland Park, Kansas.  He didn’t seem to care so much that he was actually killing Jews.  In fact, his victims turned out to all be Christians who were using those Jewish communal facilities. Miller was clearly motivated by profound hatred and fear and wanted to evoke that feeling in all of us. But in the end, it didn’t really have much to do with real Jews or Judaism.

So then, how do we respond to this complex dynamic of anti-Semitism?

Typically, the initial reaction, is to hide. A few weeks ago, a Jewish couple living on the Upper East Side, was attacked by a mob carrying Palestinian flags. After the incident, Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, the principal of Ramaz, an Orthodox day school  in that neighborhood, had to develop a response. His first instinct was to suggest that parents speak with their sons about covering their kippot with baseball caps and tucking in their tzitzit when they walked in the neighborhood. I don’t blame him for that initial feeling of wanting to hide. But after some thought, Rabbi Lookstein retracted his advice, saying that there is another way. He came to the conclusion that, in his words, “We have to stand up here in New York and say we are who we are, and this kind of behavior by people who try to terrorize others should never be allowed…. Our answer to anti-Semitism has to be that we stand up like exclamation points and not bend over like question marks.”http://www.jta.org/2014/09/02/news-opinion/united-states/manhattans-ramaz-school-clarifies-advice-on-concealing-kippahs

I agree with Lookstein. We should not see ourselves, this kippah, as walking targets. Rather, it can be a symbol of pride in who we are. We should not have to hide. And when we stand up, we can actually influence people and bring about change.

 I don’t know whether it was pure naivete or the fact that I grew up feeling very safe as a Jew, but when I was living in Jordan for that month, I never once considered hiding my Jewish identity. Of course, there are places and times when it probably is the safe thing to do. But most of the time, our identity as Jews, or as family members of Jews, can be a powerful tool to build bridges and relationships with other people. In sharing my family’s experience of the Holocaust with those Jordanian students, I broke down some very thick walls of fear and ignorance. By being Jewish exclamations points out in the world, we can do a lot to educate people about real Jews and real Judaism, to crack open the lies of anti-Semitism, and to even bring some healing.

Our Torah portion for this morning also brings us some healing responses to the experience of anti-Semitism.

Our People are gathered to ratify the covenant with God before we finally cross over into the Promised Land. Moses addresses us there, saying, “You stand this day, all of you, before the Eternal One, your God –the heads of your tribes, your elders and officers, everyone in Israel, men, women, and children, and the strangers in your camp.”

One very important way to respond to anti-Semitism or to other experiences of being attacked is to gather together to support each other and to know that we are not alone. Even when there are not particular incidents to which to respond, just having a community and being a part of it can help us to find sanctuary in a world that can sometimes feel hostile.

But this is not a “circling the wagons” kind of gathering. The Torah portion says that we gathered together – even with the strangers in our camp. Especially in response to anti-Semitism, it is critical to build relationships with allies and neighbors who are not Jewish, in order to raise awareness, and to educate everyone, including public officials, that anti-Semitism is not only a Jewish problem.

The shootings in Kansas City showed us how we truly are all bound up together – Jews and Gentiles. We are even more interwoven these days, as so many marriages and families are composed of Jews and non-Jews. We see from this how hate for one group is really just hate, and how very much we need each other.

As we stand on the edge of the Promised Land, Moses declares, “I have set before you this day life or death, blessing or curse; choose life, therefore, that you and your descendants may live – by loving the Eternal your God, listening to God’s voice, and holding fast to the One who is your life and the length of your days.”

Anti-semitism is probably not going away. Some individuals, some communities and institutions can change. In fact, my father, who was a rabbi in York, PA for 35 years, recently conducted a Jewish wedding at that same Country Club of York that used to exclude Jews. The chair of their board is now a Jewish doctor, believe it or not. Yet, we know that the curse is still here in our world.

So, the Torah teaches that we have a choice. We can choose to see our Jewish identity as a blessing or a curse. As something to hide, as something to display defiantly, or, even better, as something actually worth celebrating!

Something I love about those woodcuts of the Eastern European synagogues in our gallery is that it is not only a memorial to what was lost – it is not only about mourning our victimhood. What I see out there is a celebration of a rich heritage, a celebration of Jewish communal and spiritual life that we want to perpetuate for its own sake.

Today we worship in a wooden synagogue, inspired by those old Eastern European synagogues. And in our synagogue, we do not have to gather out of fear. Here, in this building that evokes both the ancient and cool, we can choose life and blessing. Here, we can choose to be Jews out of love –love for something larger than ourselves – love for Torah, love for Jewish values, love for community and connection and justice.

This synagogue is not only a refuge, and it surely is not a hiding place. And in fact, in this place, we are a very diverse group of people. Yes, we need to do what we can to increase our sense of physical safety – by improving the lighting and installing security cameras. But this place should never become a fortress. We should always be a living, vibrant, open place of spiritual community for all. Our kids need to know that to be Jewish is a blessing, and it should lead us to BE blessings in the world.

I believe our kids DO know this. The other day, Trina Shipuleski and David Shilling’s son Jonah ran in the front door and headed straight for this Ark. “I’m a Jew! Star of David!” he cried! (by the way, happy birthday Jonah!)

Our Star of David  - on this Ark, in this ceiling - is not a target, and it is not only a badge of pride. But it is a portal. It draws us close to what is holy. And it beckons to us to look outward and upward, beyond our own history, beyond our own suffering, to something higher – to life, and to blessing.

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[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/29/world/europe/gaza-conflict-seen-sparking-anti-semitic-attacks-in-france.html?_r=0

Kol Nidre 5775/2014 Embracing Impermanence

Earlier in our service we heard the beautiful music of the Kol Nidre prayer. For centuries, this melody has spoken deeply to our people, of the mood and message of Yom Kippur. The melody is what has remained important to us, much more so than the words. Because if you look at the words, you’ll see that this prayer is really only a dry legal formula. We are declaring any vows that we make in the coming year to be null and void, if we are unable to fulfill them.

These words may have been meaningful in the time of the Inquisition, when Jews who forcibly took oaths of conversion to Christianity could secretly say the formula in order to remain true to their Jewish identity. Although the precise history of Kol Nidre is still unknown, it may have originally been used to nullify vows that a person made rashly or in jest. Once those empty vows were nullified, a person could then enter Yom Kippur, able to focus on asking forgiveness for more important transgressions.

But this year, the words of Kol Nidre spoke to me in a new way. They spoke to me of compassion for the fact that we humans live in a reality that is constantly changing, from moment to moment. This formula acknowledges that we may make a vow at one moment, but then the circumstances will change, and we need a mechanism of release.

These days, our vows are not typically legal declarations made in public. But sometimes we vow to ourselves, maybe in a moment when anger or some other potent feeling has a hold on us, to never forgive someone for something they did or said; or to never speak to someone again; or that a person will always be our enemy. The vows we make are often silent, sometimes even wordless, sometimes unconscious – they can happen in a moment, or over time. And then things change – we change – they change – our lives change – and we need permission, or we need to be urged –to release ourselves, to release others, to forgive, to let go of the vow.

Over the years, I have seen the impact these kinds of vows –or grudges – can have on individuals and families. I remember a young man whose parents divorced when he was in High School. The young man was so committed to holding on to his anger at his father, that more than 20 years  later, he didn’t attend his own father’s funeral.

I remember a wedding family in which the groom’s mother was barely in his life, even as his extended family on his mother’s side had always been present and supportive of him. But when the groom’s mother decided she was not going to attend the wedding, her entire side of the family decided they would not show up either.

Of course, there are circumstances in which family members must put some distance between each other in order to continue to live safe and healthy lives. Sometimes though, it is rash anger or hot ego that leads to vows and grudges. And when we hold onto these feelings, we not only cause suffering for those with whom we are angry, but we also cause suffering for ourselves.

We don’t give ourselves the joy of seeing our own grandchild get married, or to find the closure that a funeral, even of a difficult person, can bring. We deprive ourselves of opportunities for reconnection – and of the chance to see that people and relationships can actually change.

The Kol Nidre prayer calls upon us to ask ourselves what purpose our vows or grudges are serving. If they only serve our own sense of self-righteousness while blocking the way towards meaningful relationships, Kol Nidre allows us to release ourselves.

This prayer is just one example of how Yom Kippur confronts us with the impermanence of all things, including our feelings, and our very existence! Anger that we may feel very strongly in this moment can release its grasp in the next moment, if only we allow it. We need not cling to perceptions of reality, when that reality has changed. Forgiveness is possible – it can free us from the past and help us live more fully in the present.

The stark message of this day is: “Life is short.”

We face this truth as we recite that terrible litany of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer: “who shall live and who shall die; who by hunger and who by thirst; who by sword and who by beast.” We cannot control the fact that our lives are limited, and that death truly could come at any moment. We are impermanent beings – “Our origin is dust, and dust is our end. Like vessels of clay in the process of breaking, like withering grass, like fading flowers, like passing shadows, like emptying clouds, like blowing wind, like scattering dust, like a vanishing dream.”

And yet, the prayer tells us, our destiny is not permanently etched in stone. The decree can be eased through “teshuva,” repentance, through “tefillah,” prayer, and through “tzedakah,” acts of justice. In fact, I think the prayer is saying, if we can embrace our impermanence – if we can let go of our resistance to the fact that we will die. If we can let go of our fear that this all is temporary, then we find that we are free: to change, to forgive, to let go, to give – to live!

The Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh teaches:

We may be tempted to say that because things are impermanent, there is suffering. But the Buddha encouraged us to look again. Without impermanence, life is not possible. How can we transform our suffering if things are not impermanent? How can our daughter grow up into a beautiful lady? How can the situation in the world improve? We need impermanence for social justice and for hope.

If you suffer, it is not because things are impermanent. It is because you believe things are permanent. When a flower dies, you don’t suffer much, because you understand that flowers are impermanent. But you cannot accept the impermanence of your beloved one, and you suffer deeply when she passes away.  If you look deeply into impermanence, you will do your best to make her happy right now.

Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that love, justice, change, hope, caring, joy, gratitude – all these good human qualities are possible, because life is finite. And our Untaneh Tokef prayer teaches that all of these things – love, justice, hope, forgiveness – also help to temper “judgment’s severe decree.” These human qualities make this impermanent life a life worth living, a life God would want us to live. Impermanence is what gives us hope that the world can get better – it is what gives us faith that suffering can be transformed.

The prophet Jonah, whose story we read tomorrow afternoon, has a very hard time with this concept. The Ninevites, a neighboring people to the Hebrews, and an enemy, have sinned greatly. Their wickedness has become apparent to God, and God wants Jonah to go to Nineveh to proclaim judgment upon them so that they might repent. Jonah resists this calling and runs in the exact opposite direction, taking a boat to Tarshish. As we know, God catches up with Jonah, sends a storm which forces the sailors to throw him overboard, and then sends a big fish to swallow him and spit him out back on land. Jonah finally heads to Nineveh, and proclaims that Nineveh will be destroyed in 40 days. The people of Nineveh then put on sackcloth, sit in ashes, fast, and repent. God sees how they have turned from their evil ways, forgives them, and renounces the punishment.

This really, really bothers Jonah.

“O Lord!” he prays,“Isn’t this just what I said when I was still in my own country? That is why I fled beforehand to Tarshish. For I know that You are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, renouncing punishment.”

“Please, Lord, take my life, for I would rather die than live,” he begs.

While God is easily convinced to renounce God’s anger, to withdraw the punishment, and to give the Ninevites another chance, Jonah can’t stand it! He can’t stand that God is changing course here, that God’s punishment isn’t etched in stone, that God’s anger isn’t forever. God’s willingness to let go makes it very difficult for Jonah to hold on to his perception of the Ninevites as a wicked people, deserving of destruction. And so he would rather die than live to see this.

Then, Jonah leaves the city and finds a place to camp out. God provides a gourd plant to grow up over Jonah to give him shade. Jonah is very happy about the plant. But the next day God sends a worm which attacks the plant so that it withers. It gets so hot that Jonah begs for death yet again.

Whereas in the first instance, with Nineveh, Jonah can’t stand the impermanence of God’s anger, here Jonah can’t stand the impermanence of God’s comfort.

Boy, does Jonah suffer. And he causes most of that suffering to himself. He is so self-righteous about the Ninevites’ wickedness that his ego hurts when he witnesses God forgiving them. He is so anxious about the death of the gourd plant that he would rather die than find himself another source of shade.

God points out at the end that Jonah cared about the gourd plant which appeared overnight and perished overnight. So much the more so does God care about Nineveh, an entire city full of mortal human beings.

If Jonah could only open his heart to the reality of change and impermanence, perhaps he would not suffer so deeply. Perhaps he could even access some gratitude for the possibility of God’s forgiveness, and thankfulness for the life that he has in the moment.

Sometimes we resist change, like Jonah. Other times, it seems that circumstances will never change. And when change finally does come, if we can embrace it, it can feel like a miracle.

Until this summer, my mother-in-law Jacquie had not spoken to her sister Pat (my husband’s aunt) for the past 25 years. About forty years ago, Pat had married a man who was emotionally abusive, and he was very effective at manipulating Pat and isolating her from the rest of her family. The isolation was so complete that Pat and Jacquie’s mother had left Pat out of her will, fearing that Pat’s husband would take the money for himself. Pat was so angry that she did not attend her mother’s funeral.

Just this summer, Pat began taking steps to leave her marriage. Out of the blue, she contacted my mother-in-law to ask for help. Jacquie could have decided to close her heart to Pat. There was a lot of anger and hurt, and a lot of time and distance between them. But all of these years, Jacquie had actually saved the portion of her mother’s inheritance that rightfully belonged to Pat, in case there came a time when it would be helpful to give it to her. And so, this summer, she gave Pat that money so she could hire a lawyer, leave her husband and rent her own apartment. Jacquie also networked with Jim and myself, and we networked with some friends, to find Pat the best divorce lawyer she could.

On a recent trip to the West coast, Pat and Jacquie actually got together in person for the first time in 25 years. When the sisters saw each other, they started from the present and moved forward together anew, rather than dwelling on the past. Rabbi Alan Lew, a brilliant teacher of Judaism and mindfulness, wrote, “Forgiveness is giving up our hopes for a better past.”

We are each like a shattered urn, grass that must wither, a flower that will fade. And this can lead us to great sadness, great fear, and a deep desire to hold on. But Yom Kippur is here to urge us to embrace that impermanence. To see it as a gift that can liberate us. We have so little time – why spend it clinging to past hurts?

Another mindfulness teacher Ajahn Chah once said, “If you let go a little, you’ll have a little peace. If you let go a lot you’ll have a lot of peace. If you let go completely, you’ll have complete peace.”

As the Kol Nidre instructs us, when we release our clenched fists and examine the vows we are gripping, the grudges we are holding, the anger or the fear we are clinging to, we will see that truly, our hands are empty. So let go. And when you do, you’ll find that there is so much more space, so much more openness, so much more peace.

Rosh Hashanah morning 5775/2014 Gazing Beyond the Abyss

There is Hagar: we see her sitting in the wilderness, weeping. Her mistress Sarah has banished her, fearing that Ishmael would usurp Sarah’s son Isaac’s inheritance. Abraham – Hagar’s master – Ishmael’s father – sent them away, with only a skin of water and some bread. And now the water is gone, and Hagar can’t bear to watch her child die of thirst. She lifts up her voice and weeps. And God opens her eyes. She looks up and sees a well of water. It was there all along.

There is Abraham: we see him up on the mountain. His arm is raised, the knife in his hand. Isaac, his son, is bound on the altar beneath him. He is about to sacrifice his own son. But an angel calls out to him, stopping him at the last possible moment. Abraham looks up and sees a ram caught in the thicket. It was there all along.

Vayera – “and it was seen.”  This is the name of the Torah portion assigned to this day of Rosh Hashana.

“And it was seen.”

What did we see this year – in our own hearts, and out there in the world?

How might we have we averted our gaze, and from whom?

How might we have looked directly at reality, eyes unobstructed?

In what ways have we been blind to what was there all along, waiting to be seen?

The Torah portion assigned for this day is itself very hard to look at. We have Abraham and Sarah banishing one of Abraham’s sons, Ishmael. And then we have Abraham brought to the verge of killing his other son, Isaac. These are not fun stories – they are violent and sad, and in the case of Abraham’s almost sacrifice of his son, very hard to understand. Every year I try to find a way to not have to talk about this Torah portion – it is so difficult and so dark – and every year, it reappears in front of my eyes. I can’t seem to make it go away.

But perhaps this is precisely the kind of story we should be wrestling with today, this day when we are supposed to take a magnifying glass to our own lives and the world and see what is really there. Because we know that this is really hard. Hard not to look away, especially when what’s there is sad or painful or broken.

  

As many of you know, over the past several years I have been studying and practicing mindfulness meditation in a Jewish context. Part of mindfulness meditation is to regularly sit still and quiet and watch the mind, noting what is there –whether pleasant or unpleasant. One of the most challenging aspects of this practice is to stay with the unpleasant when it arises. Whether it is doubt or anxiety, anger or sadness, the mind will typically try to flee the unpleasant. Instead of staying with that unpleasant feeling, the mind will do things like make plans to fix the unpleasantness, or start blaming myself or blame someone else, or find something more pleasant to think about, or find some reason to stop sitting – maybe go get something to eat or get something accomplished! I have found though, that when I can notice the unpleasant and then just allow myself to sit and feel that feeling, it eventually fades away – it is only a temporary visitor.

Over the summer as the cycle of violence escalated in Israel and Gaza, I had many opportunities to watch how my mind handles unpleasant thoughts and feelings.  For the first couple weeks of the hostilities, I found myself obsessively scrolling through Facebook, reading article after article, analysis after analysis, hour after hour. After too many late nights of this, I found myself emotionally and physically fatigued. This was not a wholesome way of dealing with the unpleasant!

It’s interesting, because I was not avoiding knowing about what was happening. But by watching Facebook, I was actually avoiding watching my OWN experience of what was happening – the fact that I was feeling scared, angry, sad and anxious.

And I was not alone. During the period when the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers’ bodies had not yet been found, a congregant admitted that she had been checking Facebook and newsfeeds every time she had a spare moment during her work day, and then into the night. What helped her to stop this cycle was a memorial service that we held at the synagogue. She shared that having a delineated time and space set aside to pray, reflect and feel helped her make a choice. Even though she couldn’t actively do anything to solve the situation or make it go away, she also didn’t have to obsess about it anymore.

I too found that after being still and looking right at my thoughts and feelings about the situation, whether in preparing and delivering sermons, leading that memorial service, or facilitating a dialogue about the situation, I felt free of my Facebook obsession.  After sitting with and looking at the heaviness and the confusion, after talking about it, singing and praying about it, allowing my heart to break and tears to flow, I was no longer overwhelmed, and the impulse to distract myself melted away.

Many of us try, whether intentionally or unconsciously, to avoid sitting with our own brokenness. We cover over the pain or confusion with consumption and busyness. Or we look away from the brokenness to our Facebook feeds and other forms of distraction.

Our sacred calendar is therefore so very wise. It gives us this Season of Awe to practice quieting down, reflecting, and sitting with whatever arises when we look back at this year. We are invited to do teshuvah – to turn, with compassion, towards the un-whole. And for a delineated time, we get to know the unpleasant pieces of our lives – whether it is regret, jealousy, fear or pain, loneliness or grief.

Perhaps the stories from Torah and the music and the prayer can even allow our hearts to break open. Over the years, folks have shared with me, usually sheepishly, that they often find themselves crying in synagogue services, and they don’t know why. There are so few times and spaces in our lives when we feel safe letting our hearts break. This can be one of those places.

In our Torah portion, when Hagar runs out of water in the desert, she can’t bear to look at her child as he suffers – so she casts him a distance away, under a bush. But then she lifts up her voice and begins to weep – she allows herself to be with her pain. This is the moment when transformation occurs – God immediately enters the scene and opens her eyes. Now that she is seeing clearly, she realizes she has a choice – she can retrieve her child, drink from the well, and find a way forward.

“Vayera” – and it was seen.

When the broken pieces of our minds and hearts lie out in the open we are no longer overwhelmed. We can see clearly and are free to examine the pieces. Having done so, we know our thoughts and feelings for what they are – temporary visitors. Change - choice – teshuva, turning– is now possible. 

Another scene, earlier in our Parasha, that always breaks my heart, is when Abraham sends Hagar and their young son Ishmael off into the wilderness. Sarah orders her husband Abraham to banish these outsiders, to protect Isaac’s inheritance. And God backs her up. Separation is necessary for the future of both Isaac and Ishmael’s peoples. Abraham knows this, and God assures him that Ishmael, like Isaac, will be the father of a great nation.

The Torah tells us that, “the matter distressed Abraham greatly.”[1] 

Nevertheless, Abraham gets up early the next morning, takes some bread and a skin of water, and gives them to Hagar. The Torah tells us, “He placed them over her shoulder, together with the child, and sent her away.”[2]

Abraham knows what he has to do. At the same time, he knows that he is causing great suffering, and this distresses him. It is so hard to watch.

“Vayera,” “and it is seen.”

It is striking that the Torah would tell the story in this way. The text clearly intends to evoke empathy within us as we watch Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael away. Remarkable - that we read this story, about the suffering of non-Jews precisely on one of the most important days of the Jewish year. Hagar is in fact from Egypt, the land of our people’s mythic enemy. Precisely now, as we look within ourselves and reflect on our actions and experiences in the past year, our tradition asks us to gaze closely at the suffering of the enemy.

The past summer I felt this tension that Abraham is feeling - the pull between knowing what you have to do to protect yourself and knowing that it will cause others to suffer.

As we learned of the murder of the 3 kidnapped Israeli young men and then watched Hamas shoot rockets as far as Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, it was clear to me that Israel had to defend itself and that this could not continue. The towns in southern Israel such as Sderot and Ashkelon had been living under fire for years already, and now a huge segment of the population was running for cover and spending way too much time in bomb shelters.  This time it really hit home: two of my cousins were wounded in the first week of the ground invasion and ended up in a hospital in Beersheva. The ophthalmologists are fighting to save Ishay's eye, and

Yoav is undergoing physiotherapy for a leg injury and was told that it will take a year to get back to good health. Israel clearly had to do something, and I did not feel the need to apologize for Israel’s response. 

At the same time, I felt like I was staring into the abyss.

And Abraham reached out for the knife to slay his son.

The death and destruction that the Israeli airstrikes caused in Gaza was horrifying to watch. It was painful to look directly at the fact that they were killing hundreds of innocent civilians, so many of them children. We cannot avert our gaze from the reality of that suffering.

When I look back at the Gaza war this summer, I understand that this is what it means for the Jewish people and the state of Israel to have political and military power. We can finally defend ourselves. But when we spill innocent blood in our own self-defense, our hearts cry out. And the world, and perhaps we too, hold ourselves to an impossible standard. Like Isaac, we are bound so tightly. We are in an impossible position -  trying to protect ourselves and act morally when the enemy uses children as human shields.

And yet, at the last possible moment, God stays Abraham’s hand. Abraham lifts up his eyes, and there is a ram caught in the thicket. At that last possible moment, Hagar lifts up her eyes, and there is a well of water. Perhaps Hagar and Abraham are teaching us something here – that there is another way. Both of them are caught up in what they think is the only way – they are only seeing one way forward – lifting the knife, casting the child away.

My mindfulness teacher, Rabbi Sheila Peltz-Weinberg, was in Israel this summer during the rockets and the sirens and the airstrikes. When she returned, she reflected with me, that the most confused state is the state of war. War is the ultimate state of not seeing clearly.

Perhaps Hagar and Abraham are teaching us that if we would lift our eyes and see clearly, we would see that we do not have to give over our children or other people’s children to a cycle of violence and retribution. There is a way back. There is a choice. We have done it before. We can see our enemy, talk to our enemy, and yes – someday – perhaps at the last possible moment - make peace with our enemy.

Our rabbis teach us that the well and the ram were both created at the beginning of time, on the eve of the seventh day of creation – at the last possible moment of creation. That moment also happens to be the eve of the very first Rosh Hashanah.

Sometimes, we have to bring ourselves to the very edge of the abyss, into the depths of confusion, of striking out and striking back and casting away before we can see clearly. But the answer has been there all along. All we have to do is lift our eyes out of the abyss, and it can be seen. And then we can grab the ram by the horns, take a long drink of water from the well, stop sacrificing our children, and bring what we all need – some wholeness, some peace.

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[1] Genesis 21:11                                                                                                                                                                                                           

[2] Ibid. 21:14