Do you know what you were doing 100 days ago?

I think I do. Here’s a hint:

If an airplane takes off from JFK heading to Paris and is 1% off course… the plane will end up in Spain or England instead. It’s the 1 in 60 rule, highlighting how even a small deviation in course can result in significant errors over long distances.

Jog any memories? Maybe not (unless you’re a pilot). Give up? It was one of the factoids I shared over Rosh Hashanah… 100 days ago.

Happy New Year, my friends… again! The Mishnah teaches that there are four new year’s days in the Jewish calendar. The rabbis were on to something. Seems to me that living double-calendar lives (as Americans living 2025, as Jews living 5785) gives us a great opportunity to check in on all those vows we made while the leaves were turning from green to gold… 100 days later, as we shiver in the ice and wind of winter.

Unlike the Jewish New Year’s season, which focuses inwardly on our character development and relationships, the secular new year tends to focus outward on things like exercise, financial planning, and training ourselves to like kale smoothies. January can be where the rubber meets the road for the character-development-type resolutions we made 100 days ago (and sealed 90 days ago at Yom Kippur), a chance to incorporate some course corrections as we dive into the good habits we often try to undertake come January.

So back to that 1%. It can be overwhelming, to live up to our greatest ambitions of self. But what if we make just a tiny adjustment instead? Just 1% is all it will take, to steer us on to a different course and land us at an entirely different destination.

One percent of 24 hours is… 12 minutes. What might you do differently for 12 minutes each day, that helps you course correct to the person you want to be?

Or maybe it’s not a time-bound thing; maybe easing your load (figuratively speaking) by 1% is what it will take for you to feel less stressed or less cranky… or more joyful?

Now here’s a wild coincidence (or a wink and nod from a Higher Power): the Talmud, too, has a 1 in 60 rule! It is most often invoked as part of the rules of kashrut (keeping kosher): if, say, you accidentally drop a glass of milk into the pot of chicken soup you’re making… how do you decide if you need to throw the whole thing away because it’s treyf (not kosher because of the mixture of milk and meat) or not? Turns out the magic ratio for deciding if it’s kosher is… 1/60!

How cool is it that the rabbis didn’t make it a clean 100%? How cool that “we’re doing our best over here,” quantified, comes down to… 1/60?

That rule is not the only place the 1/60 shows up. It is also invoked in a beautiful passage about extremes and small doses:

There are five matters in our world which are one-sixtieth of their most extreme manifestations. They are: fire, honey, Shabbat, sleep, and a dream. 

The Gemara elaborates: our fire is one-sixtieth of the fire of Gehenna; honey is one-sixtieth of manna; Shabbat is one-sixtieth of the world-to-come; sleep is one-sixtieth of death; and a dream is one-sixtieth of prophecy. (Talmud, Brachot 57b)

In other words: we could go to extremes and try for all or nothing at all. Or, when it comes to creating a good life, we could make little adjustments along the way that keep us on course. Our homes should be heated and we should light candles for Shabbat, Chanukah, aromatherapy, whatever – but not on fire like we are witnessing in L.A. right now. That is too much.

(In fact, it is too much to bear, and we would all do well to contribute tzedakah to help those who need it right now there. In particular, consider this fund to help the 100-year-old Conservative synagogue of Pasadena, which has burned to the ground, rebuild. To those with family and beloveds in the L.A. area, please let us know how we can support you and them.)

We should add 1% more sweetness (that’s the honey) and Shabbat (rest, family, spiritual renewal). We should get a little more sleep. We should nurture our dreams a little bit more. How much more? Just 1% more. 

One hundred days ago, we thought about taking on one new mitzvah, each of us, to help the Jewish people. How’s that going? Whether you took one of the slips of paper from the basket on the way out of the sanctuary that day or chose one of your own, have you formed it as a habit? If you have no clue what I’m talking about, you can reread my Rosh Hashanah sermon here or rewatch it here… or skip to the punchline, which is: what one mitzvah you can do to step up your game as part of the Jewish people?  

Ten days into 2025, 100 days into 5785: who do you want to be this year, and what 1% change can you make to your habits to become that person? I’d love to hear your answer. For me, I continue my commitment to connection. I write these emails as part of that commitment, and I love nothing more than to hear from you. If you’ve never hit reply… but you’ve gotten this far… send me a little note! (My kids’ guidance counselors used to do that to get students to read to the end. So I’ll try it, too. The 18th person who writes me back gets… a little treat from the Miriam Sisterhood Gift Shop that I’ll choose for you. Or forget the bribe, and let your response be part of your 1/60 mitzvah move for today.)

One hundred days from now, I hope we will find ourselves that much closer to reaching our goals – the inner-focus ones and the outer-focus ones, too. I hope that we’ll have developed the habits that help us stay on course. I hope we’ll have a little more honey and fire (the good kind), sleep and Shabbat and dreams. 

After all, 100 days from now, it will be Passover.

Last week, I found myself walking into Prospect Presbyterian Church in Maplewood. Rabbi Allie Klein, a colleague from TSTI, had given me a lift to the regular meeting of the SOMA Interfaith Clergy Council. The meeting itself was both deeply wonderful and nothing extraordinary: a group of colleagues sharing life updates since the last time we’d gathered, commiserating on the grind parts of our jobs, and planning our work together in the coming months and years. Normal interfaith stuff.

What was remarkable, though, was what happened when Rabbi Klein and I actually entered the church: nothing.

We parked across the street, walked across the front walk, opened the door, and… walked in. Then we turned to each other and almost in sync said: that would never happen at a synagogue.

There was no security guard. No locks on the door or even a doorbell to ring. We just…walked in. We had apparently entered from someplace far from wherever a receptionist might be seated (if there is one), so we wandered the halls on our own until we came upon our assembled colleagues sitting in the appointed meeting room.

The reality that churches don’t need to do security the way synagogues do is one question to raise. More interesting to me, though, is the symbolism. The guard at the door, the locks on the gates—what does that do to us as a Jewish community?

It is meant, of course, to literally keep dangerous people out. In past generations, Nittel Nacht—Christmas Eve—was a time of terror for Jewish communities living in Christian lands. There is a reason we lock the doors and post guards, and it’s largely the residue of centuries of intergenerational trauma. More recently, though, Christmas Eve was a threat not of physical danger, but of assimilation. The rush to be accepted by mainstream American culture meant that many Jewish families chose to do less Jewishly and more “American”—including the trappings of Christmas, at least the secular parts like home decorations and gifts. (In Soviet culture, the tree part was solved by making it a “New Year’s Tree” since all religion was outlawed. Ironically, many families from the former Soviet Union now have New Year’s Trees; even in Israel, Father Snow is known to visit Jewish families in his red hat and sit by the tree.)

This year, though, things felt different. The chance to light that first candle on Christmas Day changed the conversation. This year, I’ve watched as many Oheb families and friends in the broader community have been able to celebrate both of their traditions. The either/or became a both/and in a way that felt authentic and real.

I’m becoming increasingly passionate about interfaith work. It feels like one of the few places where I can make a difference—where it might really matter to the Jewish community, to our safety, and to our future. The more cross-cultural relationships we can muster, the better it will be for all of America, the Jewish community included. That’s why I’m traveling at the end of January to Israel with a group of interfaith clergy leaders through the Federation’s Jewish Community Relations Council. I’ve also been participating in a group of Black and Jewish leaders—most of whom are not clergy—coming together regularly for dialogue and dinner. It took two years for trust to develop and for real, hard conversations to emerge. The group is still figuring itself out. Because…well, it’s hard to know what to do with the reality that we are not all the same. Which brings me to the question this Christmas-Hanukkah overlap raises: how do we hold our particularity as Jews in ways that feel good, helpful, and holy?

To push it further: what if either/or is no longer a helpful question? What if the question is—how do we hold both and still be good, authentic, committed Jews? At Rosh Hashanah, you were handed a slip of paper with a mitzvah on it…how’s that going? Who are you as a Jew? How have you deepened, done more, shown up…such that Christmas is not a threat, because you are secure in your own house?

In other words: what if we forego stationing security guards and locks at the entrances to our hearts and see what happens if we just let it all wander in and find a place? Is that so threatening to us that we can’t try it and see where it leads? Can we trust that we will take our place as Jews in an interfaith community not trying to change us, but welcoming us with unlocked doors, traveling with us to Israel, in dialogue and also…in family?

Last night, I stood with SOMA town leaders and my Jewish clergy colleagues in Spiotta Park, lighting the chanukiah with the gathered crowd. A public project in fulfillment of the mitzvah of pirsumei nisa (publicizing the miracle of Hanukkah) by lighting the lights where all can see them. As I listened to South Orange Mayor Sheena Collum talk openly about supporting the Jewish community during this time of war and rising antisemitism, I was deeply grateful. What a miracle it is to celebrate Hanukkah publicly in safety and security. We may have security guards posted at our doors and spend countless hours and dollars keeping ourselves safe (and thank you to those who serve on Oheb Shalom’s Security Committee for all of your work and dedication to our communal safety). But at this time of kindling lights during darkness…of sharing sacred days with other faith traditions born from Judaism but not necessarily looking to harm us…we might lean into the miracle of Jewish survival. In lighting candles with our children, grandchildren, and broader communities, the real miracle is right here in us.

Meirav Leshem Gonen, whose daughter Romi, 24, is still being held in captivity in Gaza, wrote this week:

“This year, lighting Hanukkah candles seems more important to me than ever before. This year’s candle lighting is a reminder that light will grow when we agree to accept everyone’s colors and when we understand that our differences strengthen us more than our similarities. That diversity is what truly helps us grow and makes us better, braver, and stronger—not sameness. That every color is needed to illuminate our strength as a people of Israel, as free nations, and signals to all of us, and to many peoples, where the good side of history lies and where true light resides.”

May your Hanukkah be filled with light—within and without.

For logistical reasons related to parenting obligations and medical appointments, I spent a few days earlier this week in the city, revisiting one of the particular oddities of city life: babysitting a fortuitous parking spot during street cleaning hours. It was my day off (Tuesday), and I’d hunkered down with my Tanakh (Bible), the line between business and pleasure being rather porous when it comes to Torah study. As it happened, I was sitting just outside Ralph’s Coffee, the café housed inside one of the cluster of Ralph Lauren stores that make up the blocks around Madison and 72nd street.

This made for some rather interesting people watching. There was the line that formed, and really only got longer, never shorter, during the 90 minutes of my vigil. Watching this group of very chic adult women (mostly) in their 20s and 30s, waving at someone or something in the storefront window. Also, I’m watching the event flow of the line forming outside, noticing my assumption that it must be tourists, or are they locals? Wondering what they were doing with their time standing in line for $15 cups of coffee. Watching one couple in particular trying to decide just how to angle their cups of coffee on the stoop next door for the perfect Instagram shot. And then noticing my own noticing and my own judginess. Which spellcheck tells me is not a word but it is. You know what I mean.

L’havdil: one of my favorite teachers, Kochin Paley Ellison, wrote a while back about being in Absolute Bagels (another NYC iconic food establishment) when a disturbed and agitated man entered, shouting loudly and demanding a bagel with cream cheese. He described how very calmly one of the men working behind the counter asked him, “What would you like, sir?” and very calmly and compassionately prepared his order for him. How as soon as the agitated man had been served and eaten, he calmed down. How sometimes we rush through all sorts of judgments in our places of discomfort or fear (this man is dangerous! He doesn’t belong in a bagel shop! He is inappropriate! Do something! Get him out!) and we forget to be compassionate. But that actually sometimes all someone needs is to be served a bagel and cream cheese like they asked. Sometimes we’re just hungry and a little agitated.

A few hours later I found myself walking through Central Park, on my way to my next appointment. I cut through the Ramble, and came across the most awe-inspiring rock formation. It stopped me in my tracks. And what did I do? I pulled out my phone and took a picture of it.

And then I laughed.  Because here I am judging other people for snapping their coffee and bothering to stand in line for a particular experience, and then what did I do? I stopped in my own tracks and busted out my phone to take a picture… of a rock.

Why do we care about what gives one another pleasure? Why do we – I – come so quickly to judgement, just in watching the world through my own eyes? What is so compelling about assigning value to what we appreciate, and depreciating the value of what others enjoy, or perhaps even treasure?

It’s amazing, actually, the way stopping to take a picture of something might be an expression of wonder, delight, appreciation, gratitude. Perhaps that’s overly generous. Perhaps for some it’s a “look at me” thing, a vying for attention in a selfish way. But maybe… it’s not. Maybe it’s a way of expressing joy and wonder.  

Jacob probably would not have taken a picture of his brother Esav, even though – as we read in this week’s parasha (Vayishlach) – they hadn’t seen each other in twenty years. Jacob fled all those years ago after tricking his aged, blind father to give Jacob the blessing Isaac intended for Esav; he and his mother (Rebecca) looked at each other and realized now was a good time to get out of town and maybe go find a wife someplace or something, very far away from an enraged and perhaps violent brother. Two decades later, Jacob is the father of twelve sons and a daughter, a wealthy man with many wives. He has much to lose, when he hears that Esav and 400 armed men are approaching him and his family as they travel unprotected through the desert. It is in that moment that he utters one of the most beautiful prayers in all of Torah: “I am unworthy of all the kindness that You have graced me with. With my staff alone I crossed this Jordan River, and now I have become two camps. Save me, I pray.”

In other words: humility. Katonti, Jacob says: it is translated (by NJPS) as “I am unworthy” but it literally means “I am small.” I am small in the face of all of the grace of God’s world. The cups of coffee. The creative people putting up displays in storefront windows that make us stop in our tracks and want to take a picture, it is so special. Boulders and brothers, even the ones we’ve been fighting with since the day we were born. All of it a form of grace, all of it something wonderous and wonderful. Israeli singer Yonatan Razel put the verse to music after his child recovered from a serious illness. It’s the big things like that but also the little things. It’s the ayin tovah, cultivating “eyes that see good.”

We see the world through our own two eyes (or hands or ears or whatever parts of our bodies allow for us to experience the world). Where we judge, let us admire. Where we externalize, let us internalize. Where we feel fear, let us feel grace. May we be granted good parking spots and walks in the woods, and whisper a prayer for salvation and wonder through it all.

A father is weeding the family garden with his young daughter. They are bickering. “If I can stop whining,” the daughter says to her father, “you can stop being such a grouch.”

This is the story Martin Seligman tells as the moment he realized his psychology research into depression was all wrong. His five-year-old daughter’s rebuke made him realize how his orientation was all wrong, that focusing on the way other people grouse doesn’t help them or you. That’s when the lightbulb went off and he founded the Jewish-adjacent positive psychology movement.

Thanksgiving. A day to collectively stop whining and being so grouchy, and orient ourselves around thanks-giving. Giving and thanks, inextricably linked as we know they must be.

But why make it a one-day thing? As positive psychologists teach, focusing on developing nurturing character traits such as gratitude enhance our well-being in profound ways. So, get this: the weekend of Thanksgiving this year coincides with Rosh Chodesh Kislev – the start of the month where we celebrate light in the midst of darkness, and the surprise of miracles, culminating in Chanukah beginning on December 25. For families celebrating Christmas and Chanukah, the coincidence is perhaps helpful. For all of us, it is a reminder that all religious traditions are the pointing-towards that which is indescribable and larger than life itself.

It is all too easy to lose our orientation to gratitude and light in the daily unfolding. Our culture, in this moment, likes to focus on anxiety and grievance; gratitude and joy become counter-cultural in a way. Maybe that is starting to shift. I hope it is. Maybe we can help it shift, even as we work to make the world into the place we want it to be, to fill it with justice and love and kindness and sincerity. And maybe we can get there by taking this time, from Thanksgiving weekend to Chanukah, to do that.

Several years back, one of my most fun, and nourishing, spiritual practices was a daily gratitude group. Four friends and I commited to emailing each other every day a train-of-thought list of things we were grateful for. We tried not to get stuck, repeating the same things every day. We tried to look for new things to add to the list. We found the smaller, more specific, we got, the more we got out of it. We found that the discipline of committing to one another was important. We found that reading one another’s lists was just as meaningful as writing our own.

I’ve long thought about resurrecting that practice. So here goes, and I hope you’ll join me.

I hereby invite you to commit to a daily gratitude practice, stretching from this Thanksgiving weekend through Chanukah. Begin today, if you like, or Saturday night/Sunday, which is Rosh Chodesh Kislev. We won’t pretend it’s a forever thing; in fact, making it a finite, temporary activity lends it a power of its own. Tell me something is forever, and I run the other way. But just a few weeks? Well, I can do anything for just a few weeks. As the the months of our seasonal-affect-disorder kicks in, where we feel the shortening of the days and distance of the sun, it will be good to light one another up in this way. Yes, we will light lights during Chanukah; how can we use these weeks now to prepare by lighting some inner lights of our own?

I’ve created a WhatsApp group for Gathering Gratitude. Every day, post a train-of-thought list of what you are grateful for. Try not to repeat the same things every day. Try to find new things to brighten your eyes and vision. If you’re not a WhatsApp person, or it feels too public that way, make it a private journaling practice by designating a notebook just for this practice these next few weeks. If you go that route, drop me a note so I can support you along the way.



That’s it. It’s nothing fancy or difficult. But by the time we get to Chanukah, we will have kindled in ourselves the light of gratitude, of giving thanks each and every day. We will have shifted our inner orientation a bit, and in that way set ourselves to kindle lights of warmth and light and love when Chanukah, and our darkest days of winter, arrive.

This invitation is for anyone and everyone to join in. The Oheb Shalom community is diverse and there is every reason to think that our shared gratitude practice will only deepen by inviting friends beyond the Oheb circle, too. That these weeks map onto our Christian family and friends’ practice of Advent feels auspicious. That is, after all, the essence of Thanksgiving: a day when we remember the mythic sharing across tribal, ethnic, and religious lines the blessing of being America. A day when that mythic sharing can reinspire us to do the same and to pursue justice and peace in a country founded on the premise of diversity and giving thanks for our blessings.

I close with a Thanksgiving blessing, that you might use at your Thanksgiving table today. It was written by Rabbi Naomi Levy (Talking to God):

For the laughter of the children,
For my own life breath,
For the abundance of food on this table,
For the ones who prepared this sumptuous feast,
For the roof over our heads,
The clothes on our backs,
For our health,
And our wealth of blessings,
For this opportunity to celebrate with family and friends,
For the freedom to pray these words
Without fear,
In any language,
In any faith,
In this great country,
Whose landscape is as vast and beautiful as her inhabitants.
Thank You, God, for giving us all these.  Amen.

The alarm interrupted a dream about my son (Jonah) surprising me at home. In the dream he wasn’t feeling well and decided to come home from college for a little TLC. The dream made me smile; it felt comforting, somehow.

Later in the day, I texted him. “I dreamed about you last night,” I wrote. “That you weren’t feeling well.” “That’s amazing,” came the response. “Because I’m sick.”

The coincidence made us laugh. It also made me wonder.

Just a few days after Jonah was born, the pediatrician asked us, “What’s he like?” We had no clue how to answer the question. New parents, we were in a sleepless stupor of complete shock. He was a baby, an actual human whom we loved more than life itself, who depended on us to keep him alive, and we had no clue. We were in over our heads, that much was clear. Sensing our panic, the doctor smiled. “Just trust your instincts,” he said. “You’ll be fine.”

Instincts?! Our pediatrician – not an alternative-medicine, holistic-homeopathic guy, but an old-school MD – was telling us that our best hope was our instincts?! We agreed on our way home that we – and our newborn child – were in some very deep trouble.

So now here it is, all these years later. Jonah turns 21 this week. And somehow… those instincts are still what it’s about. Kicking in at some subterranean level, to have me dreaming about what’s going on with my child even when he hasn’t actually told me what’s going on. How does that happen? How does that work? Is it real, or a coincidence?

On Wednesday night, the Bible discussion group kept coming back to the question: did these stories really happen? Is there evidence? Is it history or legend? Accurate, or fables woven long ago and handed down as history? It was a repeat conversation in some ways of the ones we had around Pesach (Passover), too: did the Exodus really happen? Were we really slaves in Egypt?

Causing me to wonder aloud with you all: why does it matter so much? Why does this question keep nagging at us? What is our need for veracity with our stories, our history, these texts? Is it the flotsam of the “fake news” era, a defensive posture protecting our authenticity as Jews? Perhaps it is born of some nagging insecurity, that if we don’t have a historical claim to realness then… we aren’t real, valid, or worthy?

I wonder: what if we shifted our question away from “is it true?” What if we become like the Velveteen Rabbit, made real not by proof of fact, but by the depth of our love? Like, if it were all made up – if the whole Torah and our most ancient history is “fake news,” chas v’shalom – but we still lived it and loved it for three thousand years, or two thousand or one thousand… wouldn’t that be enough? Enough to justify our own attachment to the stories, the teachings, the morals? Do they also need to be true to matter to us?

What if part of what matters is our instinct? I would posit that that, too, is a form of truth. That our instincts are also real. Go ahead, Google the psychology studies, they’re there; and laugh as you do for wanting data-driven knowledge about the non-data-driven knowing. Intuition is part of how we know things as Jews and as humans. As Jews, our instincts urge us to learn the stories, live the rituals and values, and pass them on to the next generation. As parents, as friends, in our casual interactions with strangers around town as well as in our most intimate relationships, we do best when guided by our instincts. Sometimes we get a “gut feeling” that turns out to be exactly right. Sometimes we have a “sixth sense” that gives us information we need. Sometimes we dream something, like I did just days ago, and sometimes we think of someone just as the phone rings, because they were thinking of us, too; our instincts and subconscious connecting us faster than our fingers can get to the phone. 

There is more than one way of knowing. Knowledge – דעת da’at in Hebrew – has many layers. We can know something intellectually. We can also be filled with ru’ach hakodesh, the holy spirit, to know something in a different way. In the Talmud (BT Sanhedrin 11a), the bat kol, or divine echo, is described as a subtle, intuitive “voice” that guides our decision-making. Elsewhere (BT Brachot), the rabbis discuss dreams as a form of communication with the holy spirit, often reflecting intuitive insights about one’s life or the future. In the daily liturgy, as part of the weekday Amidah, we ask for “grace to receive wisdom, understanding, and knowledge” (chochmah, binah, and da’at). Barukh atah adonay, the blessing concludes, chonen hada’at. Blessed are You, who graces us with da’at – knowledge. Not just the kind you go to school for, but the deeper, wordless kind. 

I share this as a reminder to trust your gut and to work on that, as part of your psycho-emotional-spiritual toolkit.  There is more than just what we see or know with our eyes, or by logic, reason, and book-learning. There is also what we know in our kishkes. Truth matters – and right now that feels like a super important value to keep repeating over and over, to ourselves and our children. Some things really did happen and others did not, and our ability to honor the difference constitutes the bedrock of civilized society as well as our own integrity. But there are some aspects of life which depend not on that kind of knowing, but on the other kind. On intuitive knowing. Like parenting, like friendship, like showing up for one another with big hearts. Like making decisions and feeling good about them. Like reaching for faith and hope and brightness to shine us through our days. For all of these, we need more than just intellectual knowledge. We need to know that our instincts are a form of grace. We need to honor that our work as humans, part of it, is to come closer and closer to hearing the whispers of the ruach hakodesh, the holy spirit, in our dreams and in our hearts.

P.S. Part of how I work on intuiting is through meditation, song, and prayer. That’s why Cantor Kissner and I are leading a renewal-style Shabbat morning experience tomorrow and regularly over the next several months. Click here for the line-up of when we will be doing what tomorrow morning at Soul Refresh.

I’ve told the story before: of a woman who, as part of a long illness, found she could not eat. Every day of her convalescence, the hospital staff would bring her fresh milk and other nourishing foods but the idea of drinking even the tiniest sip disgusted her. One day a friend came to visit, and seeing the untouched milk asked if she could drink some. Watching her friend drink with gusto that which she abhorred, the woman realized: we are all so profoundly different. What tastes awful to me, is delicious to her.

As simple as this story is, I have found it helpful this week – as I did when I first shared it, after Roe v. Wade was overturned and I watched as some people celebrated and others wept. Here we are again, it seems: some people elated and relieved with the outcome of this week’s election, and others grieving and anxious about what the future holds. What tastes awful to some is delicious to others. And if we thought those tastes were delineated across state or county lines, or if we thought that it was just our own families or friendships that bear this complicated dynamic of political difference – well, we now know it’s not. The election results prove what a mixed bag of values and ideas we are. I know I’m not the only one whose nephews and nieces (all six of them, from both sides of the family!) posted very different reactions on Instagram than my own children had to the election news. 

They are good, kind, fun, wonderful, menschy kids and teens, my nieces and nephews. The news tastes different in their mouths than it does in my own children’s – who are also good, kind, fun, wonderful, and menschy. Family is hard, community is hard, and democracy is hard, because in all of these groups we agree to live with our differences. We agree that the work is worth it. Pluralism is predicated on honoring differences including the ones that taste the worst in our own mouths. 

The parasha this week is the opening of Abraham’s story. Lech l’cha, the opening words, mean “Go to yourself.” Go, get going, for yourself, into yourself, to you. It is God’s call to Abraham, and to us. It is literal – Abraham (still Abram, actually, at this point in the story) is to leave one place and travel to a new one; but it is so much more than that. As Israeli journalist and Torah scholar Sivan Rahav-Meir put it: When Abram hears this call to get going, he has no idea where he is headed. We know he is going to the Promised Land, and we can picture Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Ben-Gurion Airport, the landscaped neighborhoods of friends and family. But none of this exists yet, and moreover – Abraham has never been there. He is journeying into the complete unknown.

Which is where we are, too. Like Abraham (and Princess Elsa, in Frozen 2) we have never been here before.  Whether we voted for our President-elect or not, whether we are excited about his policies or find them abhorrent – we are in a new phase of American life and American history. We are also in a new phase of Jewish life and Jewish history. More than a year into this war, its geopolitical consequences are only one layer of what we witness as we follow the news of, for example, last night’s pogrom in Amsterdam against Israeli athletes and fans, or whatever crops up each day for Jewish communities around the globe. While antisemitism is thousands of years old, this particular moment (“globalized intifada,” some are calling it) with its particularities is new. We can learn from history, but are going to live through this new moment in new ways because we have never been here before.

As humans, the unknown is frightening. We are designed to hold fear around change and difference. It serves us well sometimes, and sometimes it does not. I’d like to suggest that right now, it does not. I’d like to offer us instead two qualities that Abraham brought with him into his unknown: faith and kindness.

Faith: Abraham lived among people who believed in many gods, and he believed there was only One. His faith was bold and he was not afraid of it or where it would take him. We may disagree with our neighbors and families about the best course for this nation. We may be convinced that our values and vision and ethics are correct and theirs is not. What sorts of faith can we nurture in ourselves now that can help us in this moment? Is it a faith that we are all acting out of best intentions and highest ideals? That even the most distasteful people and leaders have something to teach us or to offer the world? Might we cultivate faith in the goodness of humanity? Most famously, Abraham modeled for us faith in a Higher Power that has a plan. A plan that we can’t see or hear or understand and has not been shared with us. Abraham’s faith was tested over and over again throughout his life; so too our faith is tested, perhaps especially in moments like these where we may feel bewildered. Faith is faith because it is not about proof or logic; it is about recognizing the clenched-heart feeling of fear and taking a deep breath and saying: the sun came up this morning, the world will keep turning, it will be okay.

Kindness: Abraham’s kindness mirrors in so many ways the ways we might be kind in this moment. Abraham opened his tent to those who appeared on his doorstep (flap?) and shared his food. He risked his life to rescue his nephew Lot when taken hostage. He worried for Sarah’s safety and took action to keep her, and him, safe. He made peace treaties with his neighbors. Over and over again he sought God’s help in creating shalom bayit, a peaceful home marked by smooth relations with his family. Abraham’s kindness is for us to emulate. It, too, is an antidote to grief, fear, anxieties of all sorts. Because when we are kind to others, that kindness spreads. We create the world we want to live in, a world where people care for one another. It helps others, but it also helps us.

Faith and kindness will be our guides as we step into the unknown. Abraham and Sarah will be our companions, along with all of the stories our ancestors gave us as an inheritance to accompany us on our journeys. The news of the day is going to taste differently for each of us. But as a Jewish community, we can continue to create for and with one another the sanctuary and solace we seek through faith, through kindness, and through Torah.

A snippet of a phone conversation yesterday with a friend:

Me: Hi, how are you?
Friend (a bit down): Y’know, I’m okay.
Me: What’s going on?
Friend: The elections. I’m so anxious.
Me: That’s why I watch very little of the news.
Friend: Yeah, well, I’m a politics junkie. I can’t help it. I doomscroll.

Sound familiar? Yeah. If not you, surely someone in your household or life. For months-into-weeks now we have been ramping up. Every headline an all-caps shout about who might win, how close the race is, how the future of the nation depends on this particular election in ways that are unique and unprecedented. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe that is true, or maybe that idea keeps us hooked on the news. Election-related stress is now as much of a news item as the actual election. We’re stressed out hearing about how stressed out we are. And then… national attention is focused on our community’s voting patterns: is one candidate or party better for Israel, or the Jewish people here in the US? How do our answers to that question align or misalign with the rest of that candidate or party’s stated agenda and values? How do we activate our activism in positive ways to influence the outcome of an election we are super anxious about? How do we vote our conscience this year? And will it, and us, ever calm down?

I’m not a politics junkie, I’m a life-of-the-spirit junkie. All week, I’ve been gearing up to write this blog, my first since the fall holiday marathon ended and I turn my attention back to other things. I’ve been wondering: what can I say that is spiritually helpful to us right now? What is really at the heart of the matter?

What is at the heart of the matter is that – as the Native American fable has it – we each have two wolves inside of us, and the one you feed is the one that grows. In Buddhist terms, as taught by the late Thich Nhat Hanh, it is the idea of inviting positive seeds. “We each have many kinds of ‘seeds’ lying deep in our consciousness. Those we water are the ones that sprout…[and] nothing exists without its opposite.” So if you have a seed of anxiety, you have also a seed of calm. If you have a seed of despair, you also have a seed of hope. When we focus on the seed that will nourish us, it naturally grows.

In Jewish thought, this idea is taught through the framework of the yetzer hatov (good inclination) and yetzer hara (evil inclination). “Who is strong? One who conquers their inclination.” This teaching in Pirke Avot (4:1) emphasizes inner strength as the ability to control our impulses and habits – including our addiction to the news, to doomscrolling, and most of all of allowing ourselves to feed our own despair and anxiety. “A person should always incite the good inclination (yetzer hatov) against the evil inclination (yetzer hara)” (Talmud, Brachot 5a). The yetzer hara will always be there, “crouching at the door” as God says to Cain in last week’s parasha. “But you can master it” (Genesis 4:7).

This next week will be full of temptation to despair, to worry, to anxiety. We can choose to feed that in ourselves, doing ourselves harm as well as doing our part in making that the air we collectively breathe in this cultural moment. Or we can choose to nourish something else. We can choose to water the seeds of calm, of looking for the good in every situation, of hope. If we choose that for ourselves – the yetzer hatov – then we will shape this cultural moment for the better, helping others feel that tov, that goodness, too. In fact, I think I just came up with my new favorite translation of yetzer hatov: positive vibe. We can choose that, create it together, if we want to.

I close with a reminder, one that I think may get lost in the frenzy this year. The reminder is that our living in a democracy – while stressful, to be sure, and full of problems – is a blessing. This country, with all it suffers, is a blessing, in so very many ways. Voting is a blessing. Few generations in the history of the planet have been blessed to be able to participate in any way in the rule of government. In that spirit, I share a meditation to be recited before (or after) voting, composed by Rabbi Lev Meirowitz Nelson:

May it be Your will, at this season of our election, to guide us towards peace.

By voting, we commit to being full members of society, to accepting our individual responsibility for the good of the whole. May we place over ourselves officials in all our gates…who will judge the people with righteousness (Deut 16:18), and may we all merit to be counted among those who work faithfully for the public good.

Open our eyes to see the image of God in all candidates and elected officials, and may they see the image of God in all citizens of the earth.

Grant us the courage to fulfill the mitzvah of loving our neighbors as ourselves, and place in our hearts the wisdom to understand those who do not share our views.

As we pray on the High Holidays, “May we become a united society, fulfilling the divine purpose with a whole heart.”

And as the Psalmist sang, “May there be shalom within your walls, peace in your strongholds. For the sake of my brothers and sisters and friends, I will speak peace to you.” (Ps. 122:7-8)