Kadima Blog

In the Face of Shock & Horror

11/22/2024

At the beginning of this week's parasha, Sarah dies. A midrash tells us that indeed Sarah died at the moment she was told that Abraham, her husband, took their son Isaac and sacrificed him as an offering.

You might be saying “but wait – Abraham didn't sacrifice Isaac in the end!” And, according to most, you'd be correct. But, in this particular midrash, the character known as Samael who, according to the midrash is the messenger/angel who ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, was angry when Abraham did not follow through. He tells Sarah that indeed Abraham did kill their son, and this results in Sarah dying of shock and horror. The midrash tells us that Sarah wails like the shofar before she dies.

Returning us to shofar six weeks after it roused us on Rosh HaShanah, perhaps we can still hear its piercing cry in our soul. We have the opportunity to reset the ways these last few weeks have left us in shock and horror and rededicate ourselves to choosing life. How can we reground ourselves as locales of protection, support, reason, aid, and care in the context of these past few weeks and the outlook of what may be ahead?

May we ward off any attempts to confound us with misinformation, as Samael did to Sarah, and may we find ways to connect and ask ourselves and one another what we need and what we can offer for the time ahead.

Shabbat shalom,
R’ David
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PS- Kadima will be closed next Thursday and Friday so we will not have a newsletter next week. Mark your calendars for many events in December to ground ourselves in community:

Shabbat Morning Service on Sat, 12/7, 10am-12pm – Sign up here to read Torah
Defining Ourselves: Zionism & Antizionism on Sat, 12/14, 10am-12pm – Sign up here to share your journey
Community Meeting & Pre-Chanukah Party on Sat, 12/14, 5:30-9pm – Contact Chelsea with questions or agenda items
Kabbalat Shabbat Service & Potluck on Fri, 12/20, 6:30-8:30pm – reach out to R’ David to help out
Chanukah Geogroup House Parties, 12/25-1/2 TBA – Contact R’ May to get your geogroup organized

PPS- December is a season when Kadima relies on tax-deductible contributions. Consider making a meaningful gift in the coming month and asking friends and family to contribute to Kadima as well – a good time to direct IRA distributions our way! We have already raised 20% of our December goal of $25K – you’ll hear more from us in December, but we wanted to give you a head start! Contact Ashley with any questions about your giving history or general financial inquiries.

From Where Does Our Help Come?

11/15/2024

Like this week, parashat Vayera has so much going on. This week has had so many chapters, each day bringing new outrage on one hand and “what did you expect?” on the other. Facing more and more evidence that the federal government would not just offer less support than ever, but would be an active antagonist in our daily lives.

One might ask: from where will our help come?

And you wouldn't be the first Jew to ask this question. Psalm 121 reads “I lift my eyes to the mountains; from where will my help come?” Indeed, with little else to turn to, one might be left looking to the mountains for help this week as well.

This line from Psalms is mirrored in this week's parasha as Abraham twice lifts his eyes. At the very beginning, Abraham lifts his eyes arguably out of pain from a self-inflicted wound. Maybe an imperfect metaphor for the whole of the US this week. After this self-inflicted wound, Abraham is grappling with the pain of this new reality and he looks up – perhaps wondering what could have been or seeking a balm or wishing there was a way to undo what has been done. And yet, when he lifts his eyes, he is quick to jump toward gracious hospitality for strangers, turning his pain into mutual aid as he lifts his eyes.

Later in the parasha, Abraham, walking with Isaac toward sacrifice, Abraham lifts his eyes. He has taken on the task he (hopefully) wants no part of, of sacrificing his son, Isaac. And he lifts his eyes maybe out of anguish, or perhaps hope that there is a way out of the situation. Not aware that a ram awaits to spare his son. If only there was a way out of this mess. He turns his anguish into hope against hope as he lifts his eyes.

Let us “lift our eyes” this week as well – perhaps an analogy to seek out the places from which our aid and support will come. Step one: face reality. Step two: figure out where to seek support and where to be support.

One answer is certain: community engagement can bring aid, hope, mutuality, and support. Stay tuned, stay in touch, stay engaged, and become a source of community for one another. From there will our help come.

See you tomorrow for Cafe Kadima?

Shabbat shalom,
R’ David

Texts For Resilience (hybrid)
Saturday morning, 11/16, 10:30-11:30am
After Cafe Kadima, join Rabbi David for an informal text study addressing despair and resilience.

Our Next Move

11/8/2024

Parashat Lech-Lecha comes to us this week with a familiar message: move yourself. Move yourself from your place, from your place of birth, from the place of your ancestors. Go.

And while you may or may not be one of the record number of USers looking to leave the country right now, I believe the Torah is not telling us to literally move to another land, but to move (the root of movement) ourselves away from where we have been and toward something else.

“But toward what?,” you might ask. Indeed. The wisdom of the parasha says that it is “a place that I will show you.” It is unknown to us who move, perhaps until we get there. Perhaps not even then because there is no ‘there,’ just the way toward it. The focus of the parasha indeed is the movement itself, not the place itself.

As we find ourselves unmoored, breathe into that unmooring and orient to this new reality. I invite us to perceive this unmooring as exactly the first step needed to move from a place that is no longer working toward a more connected, more interwoven, more just reality-to-come. Let us find one another and together move toward a place we can indeed show one another. We are worth fighting for.

Shabbat shalom,
R’ David

Care & Exceptionalism During an Election

11/1/2024

Parashat Noah can teach many lessons. If you were informed by a trusted source (in Noah’s case it was G-d) that a problematic future was coming soon (a flood!), you too might take action to prepare yourself and your family to be safe. The Torah does not tell us the timeframe between when G-d tells Noah about the flood and when the flood comes, but we have to imagine that a decent amount of time passed if Noah constructed an entire ark 300 cubits long and 50 cubits wide!

Let’s say he had a month. Two weeks. Four days. In fact, various midrashim say he has anywhere from five to 52 to 120 years. However long he had, he maybe had just enough time to only build an ark for him and his family, but maybe he also could have also mentioned the upcoming flood to a neighbor or two – knocked on their door, called or texted, even. Perhaps there is something he could have done to help others with an impending flood on the way. (To be fair, some midrashim say he took so long to build it in order to create a spectacle and inspire others to inquire and take action.)

But he might have been disincentivized to bring others in. He was told by G-d, after all, that he was the only one worth saving. That G-d’s covenant will be with him alone, as the only righteous one of his generation. What a mind f*ck it can be to believe that we are the only good one, the only one(s) worth saving. Building an ark for just yourself and your family is sometimes all you can do, but it can also be a result of avoiding the probability of a foreseeable problem one could have addressed better in community.

There is a flood coming. And we all matter. Please do what you can to secure the safety of yourself and your family. And, please also do something that brings connection, collaboration, and inspires action in your neighbors. Knock on doors, call, text. If we are to believe we are the only righteous ones, we will be alone in this flood. But if we are to find out for ourselves, and see if the ark can be built by more of us for more of us, we might avoid the flood altogether. Maybe the trusted source was wrong.

Shabbat shalom,
R’ David

PS – While electoral politics is not the only way to make change, it matters. In case my illusions above were not obvious enough, please vote and consider taking action to get out the vote on many many important issues and candidates this election.

Building Resilience and Working for Democracy

10/23/2024

This week we find ourselves back at the beginning of the Torah reading cycle, in year three of the triennial cycle. The first verse of this reading, Genesis 5:1, reminds us that Adam, the first human, was created in the likeness of the divine, but the Hebrew word is different than the one used in Genesis 1. D’mut, the word used in Genesis 5, is mostly used in Tanakh to mean physical resemblance.

It harkens to the idea in Judaism that there is an ideal: shel m’ala (of above), and a representation – something that tries to resemble that ideal: shel m’ata (of below).

It reminds us in this season that while there is an ideal of democracy, the democracy we deal in and muck through is often just a (sometimes messy) resemblance of that ideal. And Jewish tradition is clear: we work in the muck while trying to gain glimpses of the ideal. We deal with the way things are, trying not to despair that they are not (yet) the way we desire them to be.

As the Torah reading begins anew, let us work with this world, in the image of what it all can be, and work – and work, and work – to make that resemblance as close as can be now. To perhaps not complete the task, but not to desist from it either.

Blessings, persistence, and resilience to all us in the m'ata working toward the m'ala. May democracy increase and may the best choices be made, even when none represent our ideals most high.

Chag Simchat Torah Same'ach and Shabbat Shalom,
R’ David

A Time to Mourn

10/7/2024

If I am not for myself, who will be?*

Today, October 7, 2024 brings us to the first azkara/memorial of the Hamas attack one year ago. At Kadima, we lost our dear Hayim Katsman z”l collectively, and many of us have connections to one or many of the other 1200+ Israeli residents who were murdered or one or many of the over 250 taken hostage that day. In the year since, we learned retroactively about others we are connected to who were killed on October 7, or were killed while being held hostage since that day.

And if I am only for myself, what am I?*

The anniversary highlights that every single day since October 7 last year has brought carnage and devastation in Palestine and now Lebanon with over 46,000 dead in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon combined. Many in our community mourn individuals who have been murdered, fear the worse for those still missing perhaps under rubble, long for the release of the political prisoner, and demand an end to the horrid genocidal destruction.

If not now, when?*

Each human life is an entire world. Today is a day to mourn the loss of so many worlds. Let yourself.

Today is a day to mourn because so few of the last 365 days have provided the space to do so. So little time has been spent observing Jewish mourning ritual – it has been denied from us by the State of Israel’s reactive, ongoing, cynical, and shocking disregard for further life – so dissonant in part because the mourner’s kaddish is a prayer of the exaltation of life itself.

Allow yourself to mourn today, perhaps in the company of others or the flame of a candle, exactly because we hold life to be the utmost value. Protecting and defending life with all we have by continuing to work for ceasefire, an end to genocide, along with hostage and prisoner return must also mean taking time to honor and grieve its loss, showing that respect for the dead and comfort to the mourner are paramount mitzvot.

May all of their memories be a blessing and may peace be upon them. But also, may peace be upon those who still live – may, in these 10 Days of Awe, there be a return to sanctify and protect all life and may we have the resilience and stamina to continue to hold our people's leaders to it until and after they do. How can collective teshuvah be possible without it?

L’zichronot – in memoriam,
R’ David
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Italicized lines above come from the famous teaching from Hillel found in Pirkei Avot 1:14

October 06th, 2024

10/6/2024

The following was delivered by Rabbi David Basior at Rosh HaShanah morning services at Kadima on Thursday, October 3, 2024.

I’m not gonna lie, folks. The project of writing a dvar torah for Rosh HaShanah this year was hard. Harder than I have experienced in some time, and maybe the hardest in the dozen+ years I’ve dared to do such a thing. Ultimately, I realized, I have been grappling with an existential question for this season: is teshuvah even possible this year?

You can likely hear the battle with despair that I am having in even asking such a chutzpadik, such an audacious question this time of year. After all, the gates are open. And teshuvah, one of Judaism’s greatest gifts – available to us everyday of every year – is in this season exponentially supported, encouraged, and expected of us by our collective and communal focus on it for these holy 10 days of awe. We give teshuvah a good go on an individual level, strengthened by the fact that we are all up to some version of the same project, and that collective action, we hope, makes a difference.

But, when you think about the state of the world at this hour and our position to make change in it – or perhaps lack thereof, maybe I am not alone in questioning the feasibility of the teshuvah project this year?

I have defined teshuvah in different ways this and past years. Literally translating to return or response or repentance, it has a connotation of transformation, resiliency, repair, and the process of seeking and requiring forgiveness. And on an interpersonal level, I don’t mean to say these might not be as available to us this year as they are any other year – or any other day, even. This sort of interpersonal teshuvah is not only possible, but I believe it is necessary for us to try if we are going to have a fighting chance against the other, societal, collective wrongs that to me at least, are feeling so overwhelming.

There is not a single one of us – myself very very much included – who hasn’t harmed, messed up, ignored, avoided, dismissed…you name it and collectively, we’ve done it. Nine days from now on Yom Kippur we will take account together for all the things each of us did and call all of those individual actions things we all did. We are all responsible for each of them and for each other. And in a community of 300 or so justice-pursuing Jews and friends, that feels manageable to me, barely manageable, but manageable. Looking around I think I can say, yeah, I take responsibility for what we all did and have some trust that you are doing that too, with me in mind, creating a web of bonds that exponentially strengthens our ability to pull this off as a community.

Oh, if only, though, I could keep the bounds there. Sometimes, I’ll admit, that I dream about how much easier, on some level, this would be if we, the people in this room, were the only ones who called themselves Jews. Oh, how in some ways that would be easier.

But it is not reality, and I am ultimately both tremendously grateful and wholly responsible to that fact. So when I think about the web of bonds that exponentially strengthen our ability to pull off collective teshuvah as a Jewish people – when I think about that in circles bigger than this room, out to colleagues and neighboring synagogues and so called defense organizations and on and on, the web is clearly broken in some spots, has huge holes, even chasms between other parts, and is just too fragile between others where there is still some connection. Admitting that our web, our collective teshuvah safety net, is too fragile and would be wildly ineffective for the kind of collective teshuvah that is needed now. We are not in any shape for this as a people, and I am in mourning over it. This year forces me to accept that reality that has likely been true for a very long time.

It is impossible to ignore that the difference for me this year is the State of Israel, or Der Judenstaat as Theodore Herzl called it in 1896 Germany. It is actually a bit unsettling and uncomfortable for me to admit that what Israel does, how it behaves, and what happens to it affects me and my Jewishness and my ability to do Judaism. I’d like to think of myself as a diasporist – a Jew who does not center my Judaism in or around Israel, but instead where I am, where I call home, my corner of the Diaspora, under the Ashkenazi Bundist principle of do’ikayit – or “hereness,” so eloquently brought back to the fore of progressive Judaism by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz in 2007. Do’ikayit is the principle of investing in wherever we are as Jews, in solidarity with others who are there and investing in it too, to make the here and the now continuously better and more just.

But, as a Diasporist on October 7, 2023, I did not know exactly what to feel, how to react when hearing about Hamas’ attack while I was setting up for our Simchat Torah celebration that morning. Was this news different from hearing about a violent attack anywhere else happening to anyone else? And was this happening to Israelis and residents of Israel or was this happening to Jews and those who reside with Jews? And why did this distinction of narrative seem to matter to me?

In attempting to find answers, I feel lucky to have found a written interview with our very own Professor Devin Naar, chair of the University of Washington Sephardic Studies department (who, two years ago gave Kadima Rosh HaShanah morning dvar torah with his partner Andrea). In this 2020 interview with Jewish Currents editor-in-chief Arielle Angel about Sephardic identity, Angel asked Naar about the Ashkenazi idea of do’ikayt. And while he spoke about his resonance with it, he also named some of its limitations. He believed that the inclusion of other approaches might serve our US-justice-pursuing-Jewish framework in how we define ourselves in relationship to the “here” that we find ourselves in relationship to the land and/or State of Israel. After all, do’ikayt came to us as an immediate response and parallel track to Zionism, as the Bund first convened itself in 1897, which eerily happened on October 7 of that year.

Speaking of another possible approach, Naar brought up the work of Edgar Morin (originally Edgar Nahoum). Naar has called this renowned thinker and author who turned 103 this July “a philosopher, resistance fighter, communist, and Paris-born son of Salonican Jews.” Morin, as Naar writes “considered his family’s multiple affiliations across the generations—as Salonican, Sepharadi, Jewish, Turkish, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French—not as a symptom of irremediable alienation, but rather as a promise of ‘multi-rootedness.’”

Morin’s multi-rootedness could be another way to understand our relationship to Israel and perhaps Jewish identity writ large vis a vis place – less the binary of “here” and “there” which do’ikayt operates within, and more as Naar says, “by saying that there can be multiple ‘heres.’” That a Sephardi experience of multiplicity and inter-cultural cosmopolitanism can help us realize who we are outside of the pitfalls that both Zionism and Diasporism operate within.

As a Jew of Ashkenazi ancestry myself, who has some under-researched genealogical origins in Spain before the 400 years my Basior ancestors spent in Poland, this Sephardic perspective is comforting and helps me grapple with my own mulit-rooted identity generally, but also how and why I have been unsure and unsettled, to say the least, on and since October 7.

It helps me with the fact that for me, Israel – visiting there, working there, falling in love there, learning there, briefly raising a child there, having friends and distant family there, is a part of the Jewish identity I forged for myself and my kids over the last two and a half decades. I cannot deny it and find liberation and ease in accepting it. I do not mean to set up some standard as so many Jewish leaders and their red lines do. No Jew must have these lines on their resume in order to be authentic nor valid as such. As a rabbi myself, let me underscore this. But I do. I do. And operating in justice-pursuing Jewish community makes that truth complicated and at times feel contradictory. I am still working it out.

So what is this dvar, I asked myself a hundred times this month? Is it a lesson in historical sociology? A talk of despair toward hope? A transparent account of where I am at this New Year in the hopes that others might relate or at least be inspired to find a way to transparently account for your own? Turns out, yes to these. Stay with me.

While I am working out my relationship to the communal fractures which, as far as I can see it, cannot escape the effects of hundreds of years of European Christian and Civic antisemitism including Christian Zionism and including the Nazi Holocaust; nor the 100+ years of colonial history of European Jews in Palestine inspired to address the above; nor the hundreds of generations of indigenous history of Palestinian, Arab, Sephardi, and African and Asian Jews in, and in-and-out, of the land that is Israel/Palestine; nor the hundreds of generations of indigenous history of non-Jewish Palestinians, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, and more. It is real and it is all part of the knot in my insides that has tightened this year. And I am probably leaving some out. And I am sorry every time I do. Morin’s mutli-rootedness, through Naar, his messenger, gave me space, at least, to breath in the fact that as someone who is rooted here, I am indeed, also rooted there. That ‘there’ is one of my ‘heres’ and there are many other ‘heres’ as well.

Which, it turns out, provided the necessary cushion this Elul, to address my despair. My former teacher in Jerusalem, Rabbi Avital Hochstein recently published an article that caught my attention. I was comforted to see another rabbi willing to admit that teshuvah might be in jeopardy in this season. In her article “Can We Envision a Different Future?” she wrote “the events of October 7 may have…undermined our ability to do teshuvah (repentance). Without a belief that things can be different and for the better, the very foundation of teshuvah crumbles.”

Two weeks early on Rosh HaShanah, Rabbi Hochstein brings the Book of Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, the megillah or the special reading for Sukkot. Focusing there, she highlights verse 11:2 in her article and at first, it perhaps sounds ominous. It reads:
תֶּן־חֵ֥לֶק לְשִׁבְעָ֖ה וְגַ֣ם לִשְׁמוֹנָ֑ה כִּ֚י לֹ֣א תֵדַ֔ע מַה־יִּהְיֶ֥ה רָעָ֖ה עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
Ten chelek l’shiva’ v’gam lishmonah ki teida’ ma yihye ra’a ‘al ha-aretz
“Distribute portions to seven and also to eight, for you cannot know what misfortune may occur on the earth.”

The pshat, or simple understanding of this verse might be: prepare for the calamities that very well might happen. Put your resources in various places, diversify your portfolio, to take precautions for we do not know the when and the what of the harshness, evil, bad that could be coming. It implores us to be proactive and prepared. To not put all our eggs in one basket. And to take actual steps, this verse might be pleading with us, don’t sit back and wait thinking “I will deal with it if and when it comes” or “phsa, things will be okay.”

We don’t know. Today is October 3. Do you remember last year on October 3? October 4? 5? 6? As I went to bed last year on October 6, a Friday night, chag erev simchat torah and shabbat, I did not know what misfortune may occur on earth. And when I set up for our collective Simchat Torah Shabbat services the next morning, I was informed of the misfortune that had begun. That night I was informed of the misfortune that had befallen Hayim Katzman among 1200 dead and hundreds captured. That week, I learned of the misfortune that would be dealt out to the people of Gaza. The misfortune that has only increased and is still ongoing, even as more and more fronts of the atrocity of war are opened disregarding life along the way. All in one of my multi-rooted places of hereness.

Rabbi Hochstein reminded me that teshuvah is not possible when there is no hope, which here I will define as the presence of possibility. Reading the Ecclesiastes differently, we might find this presence of possibility, or at least uncertainty – not knowing – [happily] “for you cannot know what misfortune may occur on the earth!” This reminder that indeed we do not know might enable some part of us to release from despair. If despair is the certainty that calamity is upon us or right around the corner if not already here, then the author of Kohelet is also saying: stop your hubris! You do not know!

And here I felt connected to our Rosh HaShanah torah reading. Sarah, before mistreating and ultimately banishing Hagar, is eager to have a baby. She is quite sure it will not happen, a thought perhaps that would go without saying except that in the prelude to today’s ready, in Genesis chapter 18, her innate certainty is challenged by a guest in her own home declaring that indeed she will bear a child, and in G-d’s name, the voracity! Sarah famously laughs. And it is not completely clear in the text if she is scoffing to dismiss this impossibility or if some part of her is tickled by the joy, the possibility, the perhaps laden but unextinguished hope. In this uncertainty of promise, both of the text and perhaps in Sarah herself, speaks to the same uncertainty of calamity presented in the Ecclesiastes verse above. In fact, Sarah’s laughter becomes the name of her promised son – Yitzchak – but also the reason for the calamity to befall Hagar, echoed in Sarah’s questionable interpretation of Ishmael laughing at Yitzchak in our reading today.

Do you remember the last time you laughed?

I do. I have figured out ways to do it this year. Miraculously. Sometimes with a twinge of guilt, and sometimes with an attitude of resistance, and sometimes simply because I was having fun or something was funny. Each time it was a release and increased my health. Even the times I felt guilty for doing it

So here we are, on the precipice between the year that has now been with the certainty of the perfect tense, the past. What was once sheer possibility, blank pages of our year, became full and is now sealed. And another year, full of the same uncertainty, the same promise, but also the same worses that could happen, is not yet written. Not at all sealed. And we dwell in these 10 days of charting paths, aiming our bows, refining our trajectories. Both 100% promise and 100% no guarantee. And as I enter these days I find myself surprised. Perhaps teshuvah is possible.

Ecclesiastes and Genesis together open us to this season. Let us prepare ourselves for what could be, certainly, but let us also find possibility – liberation from the despair of any false certainty of what misfortune will befall us next. In these 10 days of elevated unpredictability, there is space for teshuvah. Space for action. Space that holds cynicism at bay and allows us to be partners in the continued creation of the world. No judgment if you find yourself unable to dwell there, but I do dare us all to peek and question what we think we know. Such uncertainty could breed the possibility which might beget action and bring about teshuvah. It just might make you laugh, and I invite you not to feel guilty if you do.

L’shanah tovah, u’metukah, v’chalukot u’ltzachek – toward a year of good, of sweetness, of proper planning, and the laughter of surprise hope.

Staring down a Year

9/27/2024

Reflecting on the past year is our job as Jews this time of year. This ancient practice is asked of us in the name of repairing where we were off, what we got wrong, where we caused harm. And it is also how we prepare to do even better in the year to come.

And for me it has been hard, if not impossible, to separate how the Yamim HaNoraim this year mark a year from October 7, when along with Hamas’ brutal surprise attack on Israelis, Hayim Katzman z"l was among the murdered. And, these Yamim HaNoraim also hold the anniversary of October 8, when the Israeli military began its sadly predictable brutal retaliation. With this retaliation ongoing, in the last week it has escalated in scary ways.

With the escalation in Lebanon, I remember that some of Kadima's first press in our early years highlighted Kadima members standing up and speaking out against the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Many Kadima founders have pointed to that activism – being a Jewish voice against Israeli government actions – as what brought them into Kadima in the first place.

A definition of Teshuvah is “return,” and indeed here we are again. The Rambam (Rabbi Moses Maimonides) wrote in 12th century Egypt that the highest form of teshuvah is being in the same or a similar situation and acting differently. And yet here we are again. And again. And again.

It gives me pride to be in community that is full of people willing to persist at being change agents and prophetic voices despite a seemingly immutable situation. To continue to work for change when decades go by without much of it, it can be easy to feel hopeless. And yet we act.

As we “return” this season, may we collectively find the strength, courage, creativity, will, and support to do something different for a change.

Shabbat shalom… and shanah tovah u'metukah!
R’ David

Violence & Teshuvah this Elul

9/20/2024

These High Holidays, we will have the opportunity to hear from many community members about this moment and how to be in it together as Jewish community.

On our way to that, this Shabbat morning we have the opportunity for learning and discussion on the topic of violence and teshuvah.

Rebecca Mather, Jewish Family Service’s Domestic Violence Outreach & Prevention Coordinator for Project DVORA will be our guest teacher this shabbat morning to delve further into the possibilities and limits of teshuvah upon having experienced and also having done violence unto another.

In this week's torah portion, the Israelites are told what to recount upon bringing their first fruits to the Temple:

“The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed heavy labor upon us.” (Dvarim 26:6)

As Jews, our origin story is one of violence being done to us. And in many ways Judaism is about facing, healing, and transforming the violence done to us, in the name of refusing to turn it on anyone else, ever again.

May we work this Elul to face the violence that has happened to us – collectively and individually. May we work to ensure that we as a Jewish people are no longer acting out what happened (happens!) to us onto others. May this season give us pause, reflection, and reason, to act toward a world without violence any longer. Together.

I hope to see you this Shabbat, onsite or on zoom.

Shabbat shalom,
R’ David

We Must Not Be Indifferent

9/13/2024

I spend a lot of time checking-in with people. It’s kind of a thing I do. Staff meetings, one-on-ones, committee meetings, colleague gatherings – in the course of a day, I likely ask and answer “how are you doing” at least a dozen times.

I love giving space for this. It feels important in a society that doesn’t leave a lot of space for evaluating how we feel about something and sharing what we find. For the past many many months, though, the answers to this question have become fairly standard: “I’m tired.”

Indeed.

How could we not be? Perhaps you have even yawned since opening this message.

Tired, I have been hypothesizing, is another word for “numb.” Don’t get me wrong: I believe every single one of us when we say we are tired. This is often my answer too and it is certainly true that I feel tired. But I want to move away from any way in which I have become numb.

This week’s torah portion has a useful reminder in the words often translated as “you shall not be indifferent.” (Dvarim 22:3) The Hebrew words themselves could also be translated as “you will not be able to conceal yourself/hide” with a connotation that “you will be unable to avoid responsibility.”

This is not telling us how we will or will not feel – it is telling us that responsibility is not something we are able to avoid. No matter how much we might want to ignore a situation, it is telling us that we matter, and we are responsible.

So, as we continue in the month of soulful accountability/cheshbon nefesh, let us find space to interact with that which we might hope to ignore. Let us realize our responsibility where we may have avoided it. Let us know that this is Jewish and we have the company of Jews all over the world, throughout time, working to realign ourselves in this season.

For more on accountability, resilience, and community in this season, register for High Holidays with Kadima here.

Shabbat shalom,
R’ David

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