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.

New life experience: watching as someone steals your packages off your front stoop. Not a thing when you live on the 15th floor, as we did until last year. I didn’t have this new life experience, but other members of my household did, and then had the additional new life experience of working with the police to identify the thief (who was having, as it turned out, a pretty unlucky day and had already been caught by the time our incident was reported, just minutes after it happened. I guess wearing sweats during a heat advisory and working in broad daylight didn’t work out so well for the blending-in part of the job). That’s not my point, nor are the root causes of why someone would steal, which invites us to explore compassion in equal measure as we strive to maintain a civil society. My point is this: the South Orange Police Department was on it. I mean, they had already found the guy by the time we called, and in working with them, their level of professionalism and expertise was clear. 

The next day, the power on our street went out. A nuisance, but also sort of an adventure, especially as it was Tuesday, my day off, and I was in the middle of cooking large quantities of brisket for the freezer of a friend who lives alone and is undergoing surgery soon. Again, not my point. My point is that we reported the outage along with our neighbors, and after a few hours, PSE&G figured it out. Lights and AC and oven back on.

Day three: the street paving crew showed up to fix the potholes on our block. To be clear, the entire street needs a new surface, and we were told that we’re on the list for 2026. Which on the one hand is nuts; how can our towns be backed up by years on such things? And on the other hand: wow, that’s amazing, they have a system and are working through it, and in the meantime are providing the temporary fix of potholes repaired.

Here’s my point: there’s a whole lot that really works, and a whole lot of real live people in our very towns who work to make things work. 

And yet, we walk around filled with anxiety and dread, watching election season unfold, despairing over government and country. At the state level, in a week in which our own senator was convicted; at the national level, watching debates and national conventions; at the international level, following the news from Israel, Ukraine, and now France, among others. Yes, there is a lot to be anxious about. I do not diminish that or disregard that sensibility. We have a lot to fret over. But too often, we lose the ability to see the good mixed in. To see all that is working.

Too often, in other words, we lose the ability to feel gratitude. We have trouble even seeing, much less naming, that which is going well.

I once heard a dharma talk in which the teacher (whose name I no longer remember) pointed out that every time he emerged from months of retreat at the monastery, he was struck anew by the headlines in the newspapers. The economy on the brink of failure! The government about to collapse! Or some other doomsday titillation. How is it possible, he thought, that every time I come back out into the world, we are always on the cusp of some terrible disaster? He went on, in this particular talk, to say: every single person alive right now is here because someone had enough compassion to care for them. Someone got up all night long when each of us was an infant, to feed us, to clean us, to soothe us. And this is happening all the time, every day and night, always, in the whole world. Every day there are people who get into fast-moving trucks to race to help people in medical need or to extinguish fires. But you won’t see the headline: “woman got up every two hours to care for a child” or “firemen did a great job last night.” All that works, all the kindness already here with us, is reduced to background noise until we stop noticing at all.

Modah* ani lefanekha: I am grateful before you. These are the words Jewish tradition invites us to recite every day, first thing in the morning when we wake up. Some say it right as they open their eyes, or when they get up out of bed. I often say it when I first leave my house in the morning – something about leaving the cocoon and encountering the fresh air brings the words to my lips. The line is an orientation, a way of setting an intention: no matter what else creeps into my day, my heart, I hereby orient myself around gratitude and finding the good. Looking at what is working, starting with my own being alive today. I am grateful before You. Or, I am grateful before you. Either way. I am grateful.

Is it terrible that there are people who steal in the community? Yes. Are police officers always perfect, impartial, correct in their judgment calls or actions? No. Does the economic system which undergirds how we run electricity have major problems? Absolutely. But is there a whole lot that works every day, for which we should be grateful, for which we might cultivate a sense of gratitude, which we might even put into action by thanking the good people who show up to work every day to serve us? Yes. 

I am grateful for all of that. I am grateful before you. I am grateful before You.

Some Modeh Ani resources:

• Cantor Kissner and I have a Modeh Ani playlist going on Spotify, which we wanted to share with you. Rock on.
• Here’s a link to an all-English-transliteration version of the traditional prayer in video form.
• Andhere it is in slow, learn-with-me-syllable-by-syllable Hebrew for those learning or thinking about learning Hebrew
• And finally, for those who don’t use Spotify, here’s at least one fun musical version you can find online.

*Modah in the feminine, modeh in the masculine

When the kids were little, we used to take them to visit my in-laws for July 4. My (very wonderful) parents-in-law live in Brighton Beach, just a few blocks away from the beach and Coney Island boardwalk fun. The real highlight, however, lay in the opposite direction. As dusk turned to dark, we watched as dozens and then scores of simultaneous fireworks shows would bloom and burst before our eyes. It would start slowly – at first, while it was still light, just one or two firecrackers from a distant lot. Then, more would join – a small show at a park lasting several minutes – “Look, there, to the left!” “Over there, straight ahead!” We could see from a distance the beachfront shows off towards the coastline, and the big show on the Hudson River, depending on the year. All far enough below or out toward the horizon so that the noise would not reach us. But in the siren-pierced cityscape of Brooklyn, what would unfold was the magic of thousands of people celebrating the holiday in backyards and parks, on street corners and rooftops. Some right up close and others far away. Some displays were professional – from that perch you can see far off the Manhattan skyline, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and the Atlantic shoreline – but those were outnumbered by the smaller, home-grown variety. All colors, all shapes, no coordinated timing. Just lots of people doing their own thing, in their own way, but also together, a celebration of country and freedom and expression and exhilaration of all sorts.

There is something about that image that I find deeply moving: the image of all those exuberant, short-lived sparkles lighting up the sky and then dying out, each having their moment. Each lit by someone or a group of someones, each with its own story and flavor. None particularly spectacular on its own and also each spectacular on its own. Watching from a distance, we would be filled with the sense of greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts, the sense of being part of or at least witnessing something grander than what anyone on the ground could grasp.

There is wonder to this story, and exhilaration, and awe. There is also humility, the knowledge that each of us is nothing more and also nothing less than a spectacular firework brought to life through the imagination and dreams of others. Each of us has just a short time here, to delight and light up the darkness, to provide others with a chance to come together and express wonder and joy. It’s not going to last long. And we won’t really know if we are a starburst or a sparkler, green or red or gold, until it’s happening and nearly over. We won’t know who was watching, what forces were whispering blessings and oohing and aahing over us from afar.

In his collection Tales of the Hasidim, published in 1961 but collected from the decades before that, Rabbi Martin Buber shared the story of the Rabbi Simcha Bunem, an 18th century Hasidic rabbi. It was (by now famously) said that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. One was inscribed with the saying from the Talmud: “For my sake the world was created.” On the other he wrote a phrase from our father Abraham, from the book of Genesis: “I am but dust and ashes.” The trick, he taught, was knowing which slip to take out when.

As this country wakes up to its 248th Independence Day, we need all of it: the exuberance, the excitement, the celebration. The sense that each of us is here for a brief bright moment and so we must vote and march and advocate for all the holy things that need to happen l’taken olam, to heal the world, that the world should be a little brighter because we were each here. And also: we need that sense of distance, of watching something larger than us. We need to remember that our little explosions are after all not very much in the grand scheme of things, and that when we feel anxious or overwhelmed it’s not all on any one of us. This week, in the aftermath of the presidential debate and watching hurricanes move in and wars continue, we need to remember that part, too.

In the early 20th century, there was a movement to make July 4 “safe and sane.” That was literally the name of the movement: the Safe and Sane Movement. July 4 had become dangerous from all of the fireworks and Roman Candles and cannonballs and other explosive-related celebrations; tetanus from the shrapnel from the fireworks and other explosives killed thousands of people each year. (The mayor of Chicago, for example, issued an executive order in 1903 that prohibited not only fireworks and gunpowder, but also “the placing upon the car tracks of any street railway… any torpedo, bomb, or other thing containing any substance of an explosive nature.” Apparently, that was a thing. In case we thought modern gun control issues were without precedent.) I imagine many of us would agree that this movement to return our nation to safety and sanity would be apt in this moment of national life, too. Beyond the national, though, or perhaps riffing of it, of what it does to our insides: I turn to the personal. The inner world we each secretly hold. May you be safe. May you be sane. May you shine bright, burning and delighting all around you. And may you sparkle, knowing you are part of something much larger, something made brighter because of you are here. At Oheb Shalom, in the Jewish community, in this country which has been so good to the Jews these 248 years, in this world.

It only took until Tuesday.

It wasn’t the Mint Oreos that Naomi brought home from Target, though they didn’t help of course. Or the invitation to join the girls for ice cream in Maplewood. I mean, “choose life,” right? (Deuteronomy 30:19). After all, the vow was not even about sugar.

I made this vow last Shabbat morning, at services. There we were reading about the nazir, and we decided that the real power of the vow made by the nazir is that it was temporary. That he would refrain from something for just a while, and then be done. What, we wondered, might we take on that would serve us well emotionally and spiritually, as a temporary vow? What might we refrain from for one week that would serve us well in some way?

My vow was not about Oreos or ice cream, though given my sweet tooth it could have been. My vow—since you’re wondering—was about refraining from feeling angry at myself for one week. When I run late, when I don’t get to call people back or return their emails, when I give in with a little too much abandon to that sweet tooth. What might it be like to refrain for one week—not from those habits, but from self-recrimination?

That’s what only took until Tuesday. I suppose my public confession is pretty ironic. I’m publicly self-recriminating myself for not privately refraining from self-recriminating myself. Please laugh with me.

Which brings me to the headline of the week: did you see that archeologists found 2,000 year old tefillin in Israel?! You know, those little black boxes that get strapped to the forehead and arm with black leather straps, with the shema and some other lines of Torah inside. You know, that the Chabad guys will sometimes try and get (Jewish-seeming men) to try on. The ones that I and a number of Oheb congregants do lay, solo or when attending weekday morning minyan.

The headline was not actualy about their discovery. The headlines were about the 2,000 year old tefillin not being dyed black which is the only way they are made today, per Jewish law.

What does this have to do with refraining from negative self-talk and temporary vows, though? Well here’s a cool factoid: there are four Torah passages written inside those tefillin boxes. Inside the arm-box, they are all written on one piece of parchment. But on the head-box (get this): each one is written on a teeny tiny piece of parchment, and inside the box are four compartments, and each parchment gets its own little chamber. One compartment in the arm box, four in the head.

We either do something or we don’t. Eat the Oreos, put on the tefillin, say the kind thing or the nasty thing. One compartment on the arm tefillin. But what goes on in our minds is much more complicated. We struggle with the different ideas in our minds, the different voices in our heads. We want to do something but shouldn’t. We did something and regret it. We vow to refrain but the habit is too strong. We are always in a conversation with ourselves.

There is something inspiring about those 2,000 year old tefillin in this context. That they were likely not dyed black is cool evidence that Jewish law morphs over time (I’ve always thought a feminine or queer version would be patent leather, at least, or some bling). That our ancestors wore tefillin, made tefillin, hid them away with their precious texts and objects, is mind-blowing. We are the inheritors of a people who have played with how to be human, how to live a good life, how to struggle with the different voices in our heads and make the best decisions for ourselves. (That they were living in the Land of Israel, at this moment when so many people like to call Jews “colonizers,” also feels important.)

Somehow tefillin became out of vogue with progressive Jews. So yes, as your rabbi I am putting tefillin back into the conversation for us as a community. But more than that: I’m wondering, how does Jewish wisdom help us struggle with our own selves? What are the ways our inner conversations maps onto Jewish practice and ritual?

How might our most ancient Jewish practices—tefillin, prayer, coming together at minyan during the week and/or on shabbat, showing up for one another in caring community and friendship—help us live up to that sense of being b’tzelem elohim, worthy and beautiful and wonderful creatures made in the image of God?

I have no plans to stop the Mint Oreos or ice cream. I also will keep playing with refraining and indulging, laying tefillin and praying, and most of all being with you all in this work of being human, being Jewish, and using all of that toward a life of wisdom.

Maybe because of the images from Rafah all week, maybe out of a sense of being misunderstood, or maybe because of the opening lines of this week’s parasha*, I am going to take a risk, and share with you a few pages from my diary. The entry is dated October 29, 2023. I share it out of a sense of wanting to be in this with you all – setting aside the recent verdict for a minute to remember what the headlines were all week until then.

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