ON WRITING, AVOIDANCE, AND SHOWING UP FOR EACH OTHER

Somewhere in the space between reluctance to commit and the sense of being too busy, I have found a million other things to do besides write to you.

But when I articulate for myself what this work is all about, I know: it is about being a conduit for God’s love. Which is unconditional, a form of grace, and has nothing to do with reluctance to commit, or being too busy, or the million ways in which we hide from one another and from Him. Her. It. Whichever pronouns suffice to point to that sense of Greater Than All Of This, Always. That’s what I mean when I say God. But theology is for another time. After all, this is my way of initiating (resurrecting?) “On My Mind,” which has lived on the website as the Rabbi’s Blog, and until now has been the landing spot for my sermons and teachings.

At first, it was a sense of priority: get to know several hundred families. That was the most important thing when I began two and a half years ago. I gave myself eighteen months. (If you’ve never taken me up on my open office hours, it’s still a thing. Click here to schedule time together.) As I prepared for the High Holidays last summer, I had a plan: beginning with the new Torah cycle, I would share Torah weekly—maybe a video, maybe written, maybe both. (Would that the sermon was still that forum; I do hope that one day we will get to that place, where coming together weekly on Shabbat mornings will feel compelling and holy to more of you. It does to some of us already, and those I get to see each week—and even each morning, some of us, at daily minyan online—get what I mean. But I’ve come to realize—not without sadness—that for the rest of you I’m going to have to reach out beyond that medium.) So yes, I thought, I’ll do what many of my rabbinic colleagues do, and not only write a weekly d’var torah for services, but also create something that goes out to everyone and anyone who wants to read and/or watch it.

So, B’reshit. In the beginning. Those opening words of Torah, the first parasha, that first weekly reading of the Torah cycle. That’s where I thought I  would start, when this idea germinated last summer. Get through the High Holy Days, Sukkot, and then as we begin the Torah over again I’d be off and running. 

We read it on the morning of October 8.

War. At that point, a terrorist attack and hostages taken and the Jewish people shattered to its core. Israel not yet striking back, not yet mobilized to retrieve those taken, still counting the missing and the dead and unsure who was which. Those first weeks-turned-into-months tipping us over the edge from the comfort zone we’d been in to a discomfort zone of anxiety, fear, sadness, uncertainty, worry, grief, despair. The writing I’ve managed to send out since then has centered around all of this. Too much else to do, holding so many people with hurting hearts. Good thing we spent those eighteen months getting to know each other. 

But now it’s time to expand out. To go ahead and nourish us with Torah of all sorts. I’m not sure exactly what it will look like. Sometimes, it will be the weekly Torah reading; other times, it will be movies, or what’s on my mind with the kids or life in general. I don’t know yet. What I do know is that we need more Torah, more teaching, more wisdom, more spiritual succor. We crave it, now that the shock has taken root in our bones, the shock of this war and the resurgence of anti-Semitism; the shock of the culture of this country in this election cycle and culture-shift—but also the shocks and aftershocks to this congregation of a generational shift in leadership. 

Two and a half years into my tenure as your rabbi, there are still a million things that keep me from reaching out in this way. But if I push myself to articulate why I want to write to you at all, it is this:. Because I want to be in relationship with you. And in order to do that, we have to show up for one another.

So this is me trying a new way of showing up. In return, I hope you’ll try new ways, too. Because I love you, and God loves you, whatever that might mean to you. And if you don’t know, or are surprised to hear a rabbi saying those words which have come to sound Christian or just empty—well, good. That gives us something to talk about over our next cup of coffee, our next email exchange, the next time you push yourself to show up in this relationship with me, with Oheb, and with the Jewish people.

THANKSGIVING, GRATITUDE, AND WHATSAPP

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.

HOW DO YOU KNOW?

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.

INTO THE UNKNOWN: LECH L’CHA IN A POST-ELECTION WEEK

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.

THE ONE YOU FEED: ELECTIONS AND ANXIETY

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)

Build It and They Will Come

The story of Noah and the ark has something for everyone: there are cute animals for the little ones, a lesson in architecture for older readers, and some bawdy details for adults…. as well as a couple of serious issues of respect for one’s elders and by way of midrash, respect for the earth.

However, it’s those cute animals that most often become the focus. Pass a preschool classroom and you might hear a chorus of “bahs” and “moos” when Noah is introduced. Modern interpretations of the Noah story, introduce the issues of women — where are Noah’s female relatives in this story? And the notion of extinction, ecology and saving the earth. Noah’s wife Naamah becomes a heroine, as important as Noah.

Here’s a selection of books from the vast number of retellings of the Noah story. Most are versions for children although the story has also been novelized for teens and adults. Some of kid lit’s most famous authors and illustrators have created their own versions of Noah’s ark.

Bartoletti, Susan. Naamah and the Ark at Night. Naamah sings a lullaby to quiet the frightened animals.

Coplestone, Lis. Noah’s Bed. Noah doesn’t sleep alone on the ark.

Krensky, Stephen. Noah’s Bark

Lunge-Larsen, Lise. Noah’s Mittens. A pourquoi story that tells the origin of felt for mittens.

Sasso, Sandy Eisenberg. Naamah, Noah’s Wife. We know almost nothing about Noah’s wife. Sasso fills in the details with this modern midrash.

Singer, Isaac Bashevis. Why Noah Chose the Dove. Why the Dove? Read and find out.

Blake, Sarah, Naamah. A novelization of the story of Noah’s wife.

Lloyd-Jones, Sally. Old MacNoah Had an Ark. The Noah story set to the tune of the familiar nursery song.

Pasquali, Elena. Mrs. Noah’s Vegetable Ark. Tells of how the world was replanted.

Spier, Peter. Noah’s Ark. Classic, almost wordless version of the story.

Lyons, Erica. Counting on Naamah.

Napoli, Donna Jo. Storm. A novelization of the flood story by an award-winning YA writer.

Reid, Barbara. Fox Walked Alone

Kol Nidre 2024 Address

 The jarring notes of the shofar — they have always mesmerized me. 

I can recall being a child attending the youth services at Temple Israel in Great Neck, marveling at the talent of the individuals capable of creating these sounds from an animal’s horn. But, if I stepped back, I would reflect that it has always been how that sound resonated to me — as a wake-up call. It commanded me to listen, pay attention, and then, maybe, take action to improve myself in the coming year. So, it has been with the Jewish people. The shofar has represented our “clarion call” to act, even in the darkest times. 

Recently, I came across a meaningful story that perfectly brings this idea to life. In the darkest days of the Holocaust, a prisoner in Auschwitz did something extraordinary: he miraculously hid a shofar from his captors, risking his life for this simple symbol of our faith. He could have focused on his survival alone, which would have been understandable. Of course, he must have known that keeping such an item, a ritual symbol of Jewish practice, put him at great risk. But that is precisely what this man did. In fact, the account states that not only did he secret away this Shofar, but he actually used it – he blew it in the practice of our holiday tradition. 

We have all heard the shofar – it does not make an inconspicuous sound – so why would he do such a thing? Why would he take that risk? During an inhumane death march, in the most brutal of winter conditions, as he was near death, he made a fateful decision — he passed the Shofar to another prisoner. 

That other prisoner was Chaskel Tydor. Chaskel could have abandoned the Shofar, focusing only on his survival. But he too chose a different path. He clung to it. Through unimaginable suffering, Chaskel carried the Shofar with him until liberation. 

I think in a time when we were powerless against our ruthless oppressors, even the smallest defiant act to preserve our Jewish identity was worth it. It demonstrated the simple fact that the Jewish spirit refused to be broken. These 

men of great courage chose to preserve a symbol of their Jewish traditions – I would say – not in spite of the risk, but because of it. It was a statement to the world: We are still here. Even in the shadow of death, our traditions live on. Our faith endures. 

Chaskel’s and this Auschwitz victim’s story is our story—the story of a people who refuse to be broken. And this story is not an anomaly. Our history is dotted with countless accounts of Jewish people practicing their religion in the face of persecution, refusing to abandon their faith despite the risks. 

I have been blessed to travel around the world, and in almost every destination, I have borne witness to once-thriving Jewish societies that are today but a shadow of their prior vibrant selves. Whether it is the site of the Krakov Ghetto, the Jewish quarters of Rome, Morocco, or Prague – each has revealed a common thread. There are always accounts of the Jewish people who risked everything to practice their religion… in secret. These quiet acts of resistance preserved their faith and dignity, even as they faced unimaginable suffering… and as one society perished, new ones could be established that carried our traditions to the next generation. L’Dor V’Dor 

This unbreakable devotion to our religion is one of the most powerful forms of resistance. Being Jewish—proudly Jewish—and continuing to live our traditions, valuing our Jewish identity, has been at the core of what has allowed us to survive as a faith, time and time again. 

October 7th – unbelievably, a year ago, was another clarion call. In the aftermath of that day and since then, Jews across the world have stood up—proud, defiant, and resilient. I read that, in the two months following October 7th, sales of Stars of David rose by 450%. This didn’t surprise me because that moment inspired me, too. For the first time, I felt compelled to wear a Star of David to publicly and unapologetically display my Jewish pride – my Jewish identity. Thank you, Richard Wasserman and my Oheb friends for an incredible gift! 

And this year has challenged all of us. The Jewish people are facing one of the most profound existential threats since the Holocaust. Around the world, anti-Semitism is raging. Jews are targets of physical attacks, and Jewish institutions are under constant threat of terrorist events. It is hard to be a Jew today. 

But here’s the point: practicing Judaism and staying connected to our community is our act of resistance. In a world that would have us forget who we are, to live as Jews is to resist. 

Victor Frankl, an Austrian Holocaust survivor, once said, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space, we have the power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” This power to choose our response has been our strength for centuries. 

This power to choose our response has made this past year bearable. Thankfully, each of us at Oheb knows we have been part of a larger response. None of us was alone. Over the past year, we have come together as a community to share our stories, to grieve, to comfort each other, to learn from each other, and occasionally disagree on difficult topics, but always in the spirit of how our local synagogue can be the bedrock of our Jewishness. 

So, what does it mean to practice Judaism today? Some define it as traditionally keeping the Sabbath, observing kashrut, laying tefillin, daily prayer, and so on. But I want to add a bit more to that definition. Practicing Judaism means showing up and being part of this community in whatever way speaks to you. This Yom Kippur let’s recommit to our Jewishness and define its practice in whatever way is most relevant to each of us

To practice may mean… 

  • Volunteering at the Bobrow Food Pantry, packing bags on a Wednesday evening, or distributing food on Sunday morning. 
  • Joining us for First Fridays—even if life makes you late, just come for dinner. 
  • Attending one of our wonderful adult education programs -—like the four-part series Rabbi Treu just taught on the Elul holidays. 
  • Bringing your young children to our top-notch Zeman School, led by our amazing Gavin Hirsch, which is now tuition-free due to the generosity of Arthur Schechner. Park your car and stick around for bagels and shmoozing – that is the practice of Judaism 
  • Joining a committee to help plan a fundraiser (please save the date and show up for our big one on December 7th), run a social event, or work on a social action initiative. 
  • Being part of the Sisterhood or Men’s Club . 
  • Attending one of our spiritual and uplifting Saturday morning services, led by our creative and inspirational clergy – Rabbi Treu and Cantor Kissner. 
  • And yes, to practice is to financially support Oheb Shalom so that we can continue to deliver the diversity of offerings that connect with our congregants – spiritually, educationally, and socially. 

So, Practicing Judaism means being engaged with our Oheb Shalom community – in whatever way you choose. 

I would be remiss in not noting that while we have been blessed, truly blessed, to add so many new families into our congregational home over the past few years, and there is undoubtably a new sense of vibrancy here at Oheb, the financial pressure on synagogues around the country, including our own, is real. This keeps me up at night. Because I know—that without a strong, local synagogue, we risk losing something vital for each of us—not just here but for Judaism as a whole. We can’t rely on always having our local synagogue serve us if we do not actively support it. And, we risk missing the opportunity to connect to the next generation, like a Steven Alexander (who you met on Rosh Hashanah), who has the potential to be impacted by our Oheb community. 

As we hear the clarion note of the shofar at tomorrow’s Neilah services, please consider my charge to you: 

Get out of your comfort zone. Engage in at least one new way at Oheb Shalom this year. Twenty-five years ago, if you had told me I’d be standing here as president, giving these remarks, I would have laughed – seriously! And yet, here I am. Hineni—I am here. And if I can do this, I know every one of you can engage more deeply, in ways big or small. 

So, let’s get uncomfortable together. As Victor Frankl said, we have the power to choose our response, and our growth and freedom lie in our response. Our Jewish identity is being threatened, and this can feel paralyzing if we let it — Let’s choose, together, to further strengthen this wonderful synagogue and our community, to make it even more vibrant, as our collective act of resistance. 

L’Shanah Tovah to you and your families. May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life, and may the year ahead be one of health, happiness, and peace—for us, for Israel, and for Jews around the world, and may our hostage come home. 

Thank you. 

OUR ONE PRECIOUS LIFE

To watch this sermon, delivered on Yom Kippur 2024, click here.

If I am honest, I want more than my one life. It’s just the truth. I remember sitting outside in the yard as a young girl, five or six, looking up close at the leaves on a branch, or a caterpillar. There’s a picture of me, kindergarten or so, doing something intense-looking like tying a string on a branch or something that brought me up close to the branch, the leaves. Maybe I’m remembering the picture more than the moment. I feel the love of my parents taking that picture. They are getting older. I am so blessed they are still here, and full of grief too, knowing they won’t be forever. I mean, I hang out with you guys, that’s part of what we do together, we bury our most precious loved ones, together. (And also the less precious loved ones, too, let’s be honest.) We grieve, that’s my point. And we anticipate the grief, that’s so much of the pain we all carry. I’m no different in that regard than anyone else, even if I get to sit here in the fancy chair.

I thought about what I wanted to say today, what sermon I wanted to give. And then I remembered something I’d heard on a podcast, or maybe I read it, that we no longer have the interest in or capacity for oratory; that all we really want is sound bytes. I thought of the Red Zone, how we don’t even sit through a whole football game anymore, instead we watch 4 games simultaneously but just the good parts, and also we have a screen on our laps featuring something else altogether the whole time. So I thought about it, and then I thought: what if I don’t? What if I give sound bytes, along the way—and that’s what I’ve been doing, teaching, giving drashot along the way, getting in what I think is important for us as we go.

What are we doing here? What is this all about? What is at the heart of the matter?

Forgiveness. Compassion. Kindness. Course-correcting so we don’t find ourselves off by one degree our whole lives and then discover that instead of landing in LA you’re in the Pacific Ocean—for those who were with us last night —the lesson from the world of aviation, that if you’re off just 1 degree you won’t get where you thought you were going, especially if you travel for a long time. So we are who we are, and maybe we can’t really change who we are but we can course-correct. Chet, after all, sin, is not actually sin in the Christian, Western World sense. Chet in Hebrew, the word that gets translated as sin, is more like missing the mark. In archery or cornhole. You aim for here and you end up over there. Not because you weren’t trying but because we’re not perfect. Because we need to practice a whole lot to stay on course.

Dear God, help me give this kahal what they need to course-correct this Yom Kippur. No, that’s not quite how I mean it. Dear God, help us course-correct this year. We’re not off by a lot, maybe just one degree, most of us. Help them sit with me, help me bring them along as I just draw up a chair and talk. Pray, I mean. Which is just talking, talking to you, talking to God. I could teach them there’s a fancy name for it, hitbodedut.  How that word means “alone”—the Hasidim invented it, the Baal Shem Tov, a few hundred years ago, I mean he didn’t invent it but he gave it a fancy name or maybe his followers did, because they needed a way to reference that thing we do. That thing where you find yourself talking to God. When you’re out up close to the branches of the tree, tying those strings on the leaves or whatever. Or when you’re up at night all alone in the kitchen, wondering what happened to everyone you love. And then you’re talking to yourself, which is also talking to God. I could just sit here and pray-talk, show them that the siddur, the mahzor, all this liturgy—which I treasure, which is our treasure —that’s only the half of it. 

Yeah, I’ll share with them out loud some of what’s in my heart. Let that be enough for today. Let it maybe help ease someone out of thinking that the rabbi only prays in Hebrew or singing these words. I love praying that way too. It can be very deep, very holy. But this, this is good too.

If I am honest, I want more than my one life. It’s greedy. “Not enough time, for all that I want, from you.” “If I could save time in a bottle.” “Time keeps on slipping, slipping slipping, into the future.”

We are dying. All of us. Every day we are living and dying all at once. From the minute we are born. Life is finite. That’s really at the heart of all of this, Yom Kippur stuff. We won’t live forever. So—make the most of it while you can, while we here. That’s what the fasting is all about, and the wearing the death shroud, this kittel—in some shuls everyone wears them, not just the clergy—we will be buried in this. It’s like we’re in hospice today. No eating, no drinking. No ice chips, even. The body wasting away. But then when we don’t die—when we get through this day—we are reborn. Every single day, actually, reborn over and over and over again, every breath, every morning, after afternoon. Today—please God we should live another afternoon—reborn with the knowledge that it’s not going to last forever so we have to cherish it, and don’t waste ourselves on holding anger, on fighting and self-righteousness. 

That’s the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is that our fists have been clenched so tight this year. I want to share with them, with you, the exercise Krista Tippett shared this summer, that she got from a retreat in France, from a dharma talk where the monk invited everyone to clench a fist with one hand. So yeah, let’s do that, everyone try this: make a fist. And then try to move to force that fist open with your other hand. Notice that the fist only clenches tighter—this natural reaction to force. And then I invite you to try too a counterintuitive approach: cradle the fist with your other hand. How wonderful, that the fist naturally relaxes a bit, softens. 

A sea of clenched fists. A metaphor for the world right now. No, my friends, we don’t need to beat ourselves up anymore today. No more clenched fists holding tighter and tighter. We need softness, tenderness. Sweetheart.

I read something recently—it was a Yom Kippur sermon from a few years ago, by Rabbi Amy Bernstein whom I don’t even know, but her Torah is so beautiful, and she wrote about how we live in a world with dishwashers, microwaves, and jet engines, time ought to feel more expansive and abundant… But this is nobody’s actual experience, we don’t feel like we have more time because of the washing machine, and then she quotes some writer I don’t know named Malcolm Harris who wrote, “life accelerates, and everyone grows more impatient. It is somehow more aggravating to wait two minutes for the microwave than two hours for the oven.”

I love that line. “It is more aggravating to wait two minutes for the microwave than two hours for the oven.” We used to be able to wait days for letters from friends and now if my browser takes more than 4.5 seconds to refresh I’m beside myself. And underneath that, behind that aggravation, I think it’s deeper. It’s like whatever we are doing, there’s this sense that there is something else at least as wonderful to be done. Like we know there’s just not enough time, because—we only get this one life. And mine is more than halfway done. 4,000 weeks, the book, remember when that came out? Oliver Burkeman. Do the math, the average lifespan, that’s all you get. If we’re blessed with the average lifespan, we get 4,000 weeks, that’s it. So do the math, that’s not so many more weeks. We want more. I want more. For me, for all of us. But we don’t get it, we don’t get to choose, so we clench our fists, fighting against death and fighting one another and just fighting. 

This is the heart of the matter: to live knowing we are dying, right here, right now. Choosing life every minute. By softening the grip.  

One of my teachers, Jon Aron, shared with me a story that maybe I’ve shared before, I don’t remember, the story of a Buddhist monk on an airplane. How he’s on the plane traveling back from California where he’d been teaching to his home in Sri Lanka, they’re out over the Pacific Ocean and the plane suddenly take a deep dive and the announcement comes on to put the life vests on and the oxygen masks drop and there’s smoke, the engine is on fire. Everyone freaks out, they’re screaming and crying and praying and this monk he’s sitting next to the window and he looks out and sees—the most beautiful sight. Bright orange flames against the bright blue sky. And he just sits appreciating the beauty of that. Like here he could be panicking because he might be about to die but instead just experiencing what is, the panic and sadness but also the beauty, seeing that something beautiful is also happening. And then the story goes that they make a water landing, and the inflatable slide-ramp comes out the exit door and it’s his turn and remember he grew up in a monastery, he’s been in training since he was a child and he’s never actually been on an inflatable slide before. So the story ends with him laughing and enjoying the ride off into the water. That’s it, to be able to know that at every minute we’re living and dying, we don’t actually know if this is it, can we laugh and appreciate beauty and enjoy the ride while it lasts? 

My friend Anne told me that the purpose of the Kol Nidre prayer, the one we sang last night that all of our vows are null and void, is to help us let go of the life we promised ourselves and instead pay attention to the one we are living. Because life, in Hebrew, is always plural. Chaim. “I have lived many lives, some of them my own…” (Stanley Kunitz) Always plural because there’s so much to it, more than one, plural, no one to speak of it in the singular even. 

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
(Mary Oliver)

B’rosh hashanah yikatevun
U’vyom tzom kippur yachetamun.

I guess that’s it for now. Thanks for listening, God, friends. Thanks for choosing this life, this day, over and over and over again, as long as it lasts.

SHOWING UP FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE

To watch this sermon, delivered October 3, 2024, click here.

Sebastian Junger is now an accomplished journalist but he had just graduated college when he decided to hitchhike across the country. He had never been west of the Hudson River, having grown up in a Boston suburb where people’s homes were set behind deep hedges, and neighbors hardly interacted. And they didn’t need to—nothing ever happened that required collective effort. Anything bad was handled by the police, fire department, or town crews. The sheer predictability of suburban life left him hoping, oddly, for something like a hurricane or tornado—anything that would require people to band together to survive.

He was heading to California and had made it as far as Gillette, Wyoming, where he found himself standing by a highway one cold October morning. Standing there waiting for a truck or car to pick him up, he noticed a man walking up the on-ramp towards him—wild-haired, wearing a dirty old union suit, and carrying a black lunch box. Though the man didn’t seem threatening, Sebastian was nervous. He was alone, and had with him in his backpack everything he owned, for the moment, including a week’s worth of food. He didn’t mind sharing but he didn’t want to get robbed. The man walked right up to him, looked him and up and down, and asked:  “How much food do you have?” Sebastian hesitated. He didn’t mind sharing especially with someone hungry but he didn’t want to get robbed and that seemed like what was about to happen. So he lied, saying, “Just a little cheese.” The man replied: “I’m out of work today, so I won’t be needing this.” The man handed his lunch box to Sebastian, saying, “You need more than a little cheese to get to California.”

Sebastian thought about that man for the rest of his trip. For the rest of his life. It wasn’t just the man’s generosity. It was the fact that he had taken responsibility for Sebastian, a stranger, in a way that made Sebastian feel part of his tribe. (Sebastian Junger, Tribe)

Tribe.

What a year, for us, for this tribe. Can you believe, I stood here one year ago, and preached… laughter? This year was a lot of things, but it was mostly not very funny. Not the kidnappings, the rapes, the murders, nor the deaths and suffering of innocent civilians caught in the cross-hairs of war. Not the campus protests that made many Jewish students feel unsafe and Jews everywhere wonder what happened. Not the anti-Semitism so many of us—our children and grandchildren—have encountered this year, often for the first time in our lives.

This year has been anything but funny.

This year has forced us to confront the unsettling reality that we might not have proven our worth to the world in the way we thought we had. For decades, we’ve shown how our Jewish values make us good citizens, generous philanthropists, and humanists. We’ve been excited to embrace tikkun olam—repairing the world—as the mission of the Jewish people. And we should be proud of that. But now, we face another question, one that feels more urgent: How can we show up for ourselves? How can we show up for the Jewish people?

In 1789, at the dawn of the French Revolution, Count Clermont-Tonnerre stood before the National Assembly. What to do with the Jews in a nation newly formed on the principles of equality, freedom, and secularism? Until then, Jews had few rights in France, or anywhere else in Europe. We were largely confined to ghettos, barred from owning land, excluded from many professions. We could not become craftsmen, join the military, hold public office, or into any profession requiring a university education. In the Arab world—yes, the Arab world—things were better, but across Europe, this was the standard. 

It is against that backdrop that the Count made an impassioned speech. “Il faut tout refuser aux Juifs comme nation et tout accorder aux Juifs comme individus.” “We must refuse everything to the Jews as a nation, but grant everything to the Jews as individuals.” This statement shaped the way the Western world would view Jews for generations to come. Jews could be accepted as individuals—citizens of France, Germany, or America—but only if we left our “nationhood” behind. Yes, we would be freed from the ghetto—but not truly free to be Jews. The bargain was summarized by the Yiddish poet Judah Leib Gordon: “Be a man in the streets and a Jew at home.”

For centuries, we internalized this bargain. In exchange for access to education, jobs, and social acceptance, we learned to downplay our Jewish identity as a collective. Last spring at the Anti-Defamation League Conference, I sat among 20-somethings who pointed out how often we say, “I’m Jewish, but not religious,” or “I’m Jewish, but not Zionist,” as if we need to qualify our identity. In past generations, Jews converted as a way of leaving the Jewish community; today, we don’t need to convert to another religion, we simply leave by disassociating, by saying “I’m not really Jewish” or “I’m Jewish, in a way that I perceive will be acceptable to you.”

The bargain has worked beautifully, in so many ways. Here in America, we have found affluence and influence at levels rare in our 3,000-year history. We have thrived, welcomed into every sector of society.

But what this year has reminded us is that we are still a people, a nation. When Jewish Federations of North America organized the March for Israel in Washington last November, they expected about 60,000 people. Instead nearly 300,000 Jews and allies showed up. That day was one of the most moving and powerful of my life, to be standing as a proud Jew in our nation’s capital surrounded by am yisrael. I think of the teens and college students donning Jewish star necklaces, and the way so many of us have worn Bring Them Home signs around our necks all year long. I think of sitting in my office with Allison (I changed her name), a mom of a Zeman student and a toddler. She sat on the couch across from me, crying. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” she said. “I’ve never cared about Israel at all, it’s never been something I think about.” How she went on to organize a Jewish women’s gathering, the first time she ever thought she’d want something like that. I think of the way we have come together with our neighboring synagogues, setting aside whatever squabbles we have because finally, we get it: together is all we have. 

My friends, we have outgrown the bargain. It’s time to show up not just as individual Jews but as Jews for Jews, Jews for the Jewish people, to reclaim our pride in being part of this ancient, resilient nation.

So how do we do it? How can we show up for our people? We who are here, and not on the front lines; we who can send donations and love but cannot physically be there right now; we who are mostly not students on college campuses and not professional activists – how can we, as individuals, show up for the Jewish people?

After writing more drafts of this sermon than I care to count, I realized only a few days ago that I needed to give this sermon now, here, at the end of our service this morning. Because of the Alenu.

The Alenu was written for today, for Rosh Hashanah, at least 1,800 years ago and perhaps even further back, for that moment we chanted it together in musaf, in full prostration. Many of us know the first part, alenu l’shabeach la-adon hakol, because of the melody, which is about 200 years old, and because we sing it at the end of every service. Why? Why was the alenu plucked from Rosh Hashanah to be recited every day? It was moved because it’s the statement of who we are and what we do. Alenu—the word means “it is upon us,” “we must.” We must fix the world, l’taken olam—this is where the phrase tikkun olam first appears. Right here! It’s our job: l’taken olam, heal the world, it is upon us.

But we cannot bring about healing for the world without first strengthening ourselves. The tikkun olam part is, after all, the second paragraph of the prayer. The Alenu begins with us, with the Jewish community. 

Showing up for the Jewish people doesn’t mean closing ourselves off to others or abandoning our commitment to tikkun olam. On the contrary, we are called to care for ourselves, just like the flight attendants remind us to put our own oxygen masks on first. When we give tzedakah, according to Jewish law the poor in one’s family receive priority over the poor of one’s city, and the poor in one’s city receive priority over the poor far away. This is not selfishness—it’s wisdom. We start with our own and from there, help everyone who needs us.

So – how? How do we make this move, from caring for ourselves to caring for the world?

With the most Jewish of actions—mitzvot. A mitzvah is often translated as “good deed” but it’s actually much richer than that. A mitzvah is something we are obligated, as Jews, to do. The word comes from the root tzavta, which means connection. A mitzvah is an act that brings us closer to others. Good intentions are good, but they are not mitzvot. A mitzvah is more than a creed; it is a deed.  Some mitzvot are ethical (“love thy neighbor”) and others are ritual (“light candles on Friday night”). Some fit into the overall ethical code of humanity (“thou shalt not kill”) and others are quite particular to the Jewish people (“blow the shofar”). Baruch atah adonai eloheynu melekh ha-olam asher kidshanu—when we do mitzvot kidshanu, we connect, we become holy, WE, in the plural, even when we each act on our own.

Today, I invite us each to take on a mitzvah. This year, I’m asking us to go deeper—not just to show up intellectually, or at home in our tents, but out in the world, with one another, for our people. At the end of the service today, Cantor Kissner and I will stand by the doors to greet each of you and there we have baskets. Inside the baskets are slips of paper, each containing one mitzvah. As you leave today, take one slip from the basket. This is your mitzvah for the year 5785, your way of showing up for the Jewish people. It doesn’t matter if you’re Jewish or not. All of us here today, every person in our families, is part of the Jewish community and is integral to Oheb Shalom and the fabric of the Jewish people. 

And here’s the thing: when we do these mitzvot, we will be showing up in small concrete ways for one another. We will be delivering meals to one another for shiva. We will be inviting one another to sit at our tables on Shabbat. We will be making minyan together even if we have no clue what that is or what to do.  Oheb Shalom has grown over the past three years and nearly one third of our congregation is new. Doing mitzvot for and with one another is how we will be here for one another, getting to know one another and deepening this community. Because showing up for the Jewish people isn’t an abstract concept. It is right here, right now. Strengthening the Jewish people from this very sanctuary and from here, the world.  

Don’t like the mitzvah you chose? Take another. Already doing the one you picked? Swap it, or take this as a sign to deepen it. You could also decide that whatever you pull is meant for you and go for it. Unsure what to do once you’ve chosen? Good! That means we’ll need to ask each other for help, which is also a way to show up for one another and the Jewish people.

Showing up for the Jewish people is not about closing ourselves off to the rest of the world. It is not about insisting we are better than anyone else, nor is it about hiding and pretending we are anything but who we are. We are Am Yisrael, the Jewish People. The world needs us. We need one another. Let’s show up.

As the Alenu teaches, it is upon us. Alenu. We must.

A Wealth of Holiday Books For Kids

Quite some time ago when I first became involved with Jewish libraries, there was not much to choose from in the way of modern secular literature, especially for children.  K’tonton was alive and well; the All-of-a-Kind-Family were doing what families do; there were a few laughs as the Chelmites stumbled through life; folktales were here and there.

However, the production values of most children’s books was low; the majority of books were published by a handful of Jewish publishers and had little appeal outside the Jewish world.

Interestingly enough, some of these early books were incubators for soon to be famous “kid lit” stalwarts like Maurice Sendak who did the pictures for Good Shabbos, Everybody, published by United Synagogue.

There was no Kar-Ben,  Milk & Honey, Kalaniot,  or PJ Library.  Secular publishers produced few Jewish books. The internet wasn’t around to provide sources for telling stories

Choosing children’s books for a Jewish library was a challenge. Book selection primarily meant buying everything unless it was terrible.

And then came an explosion. Kar-Ben Books published quality (mostly) books with Jewish themes, interesting stories, with a modern look and set the pace for secular publishers to let loose scores of authors with books on Jewish topics, some of which, like Hershel and the Haukkah Goblins,  have become classics in public libraries  and have won scores of awards.

Now choosing books for a small Jewish library takes time and care because there are so many worthy books out there from niche publishers like Kalaniot and Apples & Honey to major publishers like Greenwillow, Lerner, and  Candlestick. These books use Jewish themes in original ways and in modern settings. They address the realities of today’s Jewish life, including nontraditional Jewish and emerging Jewish communities and families with multi-cultural characters and situations. But modern books also reinterpret old stories including traditional folklore and fairy tales with characters like the Big Bad Wolf.

Here are a few choice items for the Elul holidays; find them in the synagogue or public library.

Barash                    Is It Rosh Hashanah Yet? (series)
Cohen                    Engineer Ari and the Rosh Hashanah Ride (series)
Ho                            Two New Years
Rubinstein           Once Upon an Apple Cake (series)
Basseri                   A Turkish Rosh Hashanah
Kimmel                  Gabriel’s Horn
Kimmelman       Sam and Charlie (and Sam too!) (series)
Sherron                  Big Bad Wolf’s Yom Kippur
Novit                       Three Jumps to Sorry
Jules                       The Hardest Word
Vo                            The Outlaw
Berkowitz             The Moving Box Sukkah
Matua                    Mixed-up Mooncakes
Halpern                 The Stars Will Be My Night Light
Nambi                    The Very Best Sukkah
Hyde                       Shanghai Sukkah
Kohuth                  Who’s Got the Etrog?
Ofanansky           The Patchwork Torah
Fishman                On Sukkot and Simchat Torah

Reflections on This Time of Year

The poet T.S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month, a quote often taken out of context.

But I think that in the cycle of the year, September may be the cruelest month. Although it is a month of beginnings for those who never seem to shake the shackles of a school schedule, often coincides with Tishrei which marks the start of our religious year,  and is beautiful with full greening of the trees and bursts of color from the dahlias, marigolds and mums, the month is also the last gasp before the slow decline to winter.

I stand on my small balcony and admire the dahlia plant which started very small and now overflows its pot. The tomato has grown, escaped its cage  and is covered with flowers in a final bust of life before the frost. The basil is fragrant  but is trying desperately to flower and seed to give itself life for another generation. However, a few brown leaves appear here and there to reinforce the reality of its short life. Only the hearty oregano and rosemary act as if they might live forever.

Like the garden, the spiritual year cycles and if one is introspective enough, one can seize the opportunity to fend off those browning leaves and be like the hearty rosemary that finds a way to survive winter’s frost.

But introspection can be cruel as we look back on our failed attempts to reach emotional and spiritual goals.

Like the tomato which flowers and fruits until the end of its life and the basil which remains fragrant even as the leaves brown, we never stop trying to reach our emotional and spiritual goals.

For a selection of books for this time of the Jewish year and Jewish gardening, check out the display in the Jacobs Library including Alan Lew’s This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: the Days of Awe As a Journey of Transformation, an indispensable guide to introspection.

NOTE: The library catalog is always available for browsing on this website.

Having trouble? Email library@ohebshalom.org.