I dedicate my Torah learning this week to the blessed memories of Dolly Parton and Tim Curry who both taught me to be more myself.
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Last week, I wrote about tokhecha—the Jewish practice of telling one another difficult truths and inviting one another toward repair.

I wrote about the importance of not hiding.

About the courage to say, “This is what I experienced.” About learning to hear, “This thing you did hurt me,” without immediately getting defensive. About constructive confrontation, and about the particular ways our Pacific Northwest and progressive Jewish cultures can sometimes make us very good at avoiding conflict while calling it kindness.

And then I spent much of the weekend reading Alan Morinis’ With Heart in Mind, including a chapter called “Loving Rebukes.”

Well.

There is nothing quite like reading about how to give and receive tokhecha immediately after writing about how we ought to do it.

Morinis' title got me thinking about the difference between being willing to give and receive tokhecha and actually coming to want it.

There is a difference between thinking, Okay, I suppose I should be willing to hear difficult feedback. And thinking, I want people in my life who will tell me what I cannot see about myself. The second is much harder. And, perhaps, much more powerful.

Today is Friday, the 15th of Elul. We are moving steadily toward Rosh HaShanah. Toward the rest of our lives, as we now have the power to align and realign them.

And our haftarah this week begins with a beautiful invitation:

קוּמִי אוֹרִי כִּי בָא אוֹרֵךְ וּכְבוֹד יְהוָה עָלַיִךְ זָרָח׃
Kumi ori, ki va orech; u'khvod Adonai alayikh zarach.
Arise, shine, for your light has come; the glory of Adonai has risen upon you.

If that line sounds familiar, it may be because it is referred to every Friday night in the second half of L'cha Dodi: Ki va orech, kumi ori – your light has come; arise, shine – and then in the same stanza: kvod Adonai alayikh niglah – the glory of Adonai has is revealed upon you.

The clear easter egg (let me know if you have a non-Christian hegemonic way of describing a hidden reference) in Lcha Dodi to Isaiah 60, and therefore this entire season (and this entire season to Lcha Dodi and therefore every shabbat) is rich, clever, and quite powerful. It is just one example of the concept of sh’ein mukdam u’me’uchar baTorah – there is no before and no after in the Torah, and, even more broadly, all of Jewish time and practice.

The Jewish calendar keeps giving us opportunities to practice.

Every week, Shabbat asks us to stop and to notice where we are. To let go of some of what we have been carrying. To remember who we want to be. And to reconnect—with ourselves, with one another, with the rhythms of the world, and with whatever we understand as d/Divine.

Perhaps L'cha Dodi is one small way we practice Kumi ori: not waiting until everything is resolved before we allow ourselves to encounter light.

Because Isaiah immediately complicates that beautiful opening verse telling us that darkness shall cover the earth in the very next line of the haftarah.

The light does not arrive because the darkness has disappeared. The light arrives in the midst of it.

And this connected to “Loving Rebukes” for me. The teaching is not simply that we should become better at giving rebuke in loving ways. It is also about becoming the kind of person who can come to want tokhechah. I can recognize that even difficult words may contain something I desperately need to hear. I can learn to love it.

That is a much harder practice because, of course, not every rebuke is true. Sometimes someone else's criticism tells us more about them than it does about us. Sometimes people project their own wounds, fears, expectations, or desires onto us. Sometimes what someone calls tokhechah is simply anger. Sometimes it is even an attempt at control over more than at relationship with.

We need discernment.

But sometimes someone is telling us something we need to hear. And if our first response is always defensiveness, we may never find out which is which.

So perhaps the Elul practice is simply to pause and ask: Is there something here for me? Not: Are they right about everything? Nor: Did they say it perfectly?

Just: Is there something here for me?

And if there is, Loving Rebuke suggests that we can become grateful for the opportunity to see what we could not see before.

We might become better at bringing our best selves into alignment with our highest purposes.

We might even learn to see the light in others when they offer us difficult truths – perhaps especially when they do.

That requires humility. It also requires compassion – for ourselves as well as for the person speaking. Because being accountable for harm does not require believing that we are bad people.

We are human beings. We will hurt people. We will be hurt. We will misunderstand one another. We will sometimes get it wrong. And we will sometimes have the opportunity to do something different.

That is teshuvah.

And this week we (re)learn that teshuvah is not a once a year practice. It is a weekly practice all year long. There can be regularity in this for us, and as my neighbor and Kadima member has been telling his kids for years: “Practice makes progress.”

Every Friday night, we can enter Shabbat for all the reasons that pull and push us toward it, thank G-d, but also because we need to breathe, to notice, and to reconnect.

We need to remember that our relationships are more important than whatever arguments, conflicts, annoyances, and disturbances are getting in the way. We need to remember that we are more than the worst thing we have done or the worst thing someone has said about us. And so is that person who might currently feel like a thorn in my side instead of a rose in my view.

This is part of why I have been making an Elul-to-Ne'ilah playlist this year. It keeps changing as I do. Some songs help me grieve. Some help me wake up. Some help me soften. Some make me want to dance. Some remind me that I am not alone. That there is work to be done. Feel free to add the songs that do it for you and we can jam together.

Because eventually the summer will end. The year will end. My time as Kadima's rabbi will end. But we can keep jamming together.

And because there are things in our community that need to be grieved. Things that need repair. Things that need to be said. Things that may need to be forgiven.

There isn't infinite time. But there is still time. And every week, Shabbat comes again.

Kumi ori: Arise. Shine. Not because the darkness is gone. But because it isn't. Because there is light that only you can bring.

The time is always right – Elul, High Holidays, each shabbat, or each week in preparation for Shabbat – to find the light within ourselves and to look for it in others. Tradition says it is there. May there be time long enough to notice it.

Shabbat shalom and continued Shiva d'Nechemta tovah,
R’ David

Last week, as I wrote about Elul, I suggested that we might read the month backward: envisioning the people and community we hope to become, and then working backward to ask what we need to do today to move in that direction.

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei, gives us another way to think about that practice.

A verse that caught my attention comes at the beginning of chapter 22 of Deuteronomy, as Moshe is relaying laws around finding someone else’s lost animal:

“…so too shall you do with anything that your fellow Israelite loses and you find: you must not remain indifferent.”

The Hebrew for “you must not remain indifferent” intrigued me: לֹא תוּכַל לְהִתְעַלֵּם / Lo tukhal lehit'alem.

In its most literal sense, it means something like: You are not able to conceal yourself.

Translating from the original Hebrew offers more texture. While many translations want this to be about how we feel toward one another, the actual words tell us what not to do, not what to feel.

Do not hide.

But it actually says more: you are not able to hide.

I physically gasped when I realized the full meaning of this.

Gulp.

Here I am. Seen. And fully a part of all that is happening around me.

While this was strangely startling, I also experienced some freedom in imagining this perspective as a truth. Freedom to choose what to do next now that I know hiding is not even possible.

And I think that is part of what this season is asking of us.

The Shiva d'Nechemta, the seven weeks of consolation between Tisha B'Av and Rosh HaShanah, is enacted most visibly through the seven haftarot of consolation. But the Torah readings keep moving along too. As Rabbi Alan Lew z"l writes about this season, the Torah and haftarah are carrying us along related paths toward the Days of Awe.

We are being asked to do two things at once: to practice teshuvah – the sacred art of repair and repentance – and to practice tokhecha – the sacred practice of telling one another difficult truths and inviting one another toward repair.

And, as such, I am making two lists this week.

One is a list of people I need to apologize to.

The other is a list of people I think need to apologize to me.

The first list is uncomfortable, but in some ways it is straightforward. I can do something about it. I can write to someone and say, “I was wrong. I am sorry.” I can ask what repair might look like. I can begin the work of teshuvah.

The second list is harder.

Because the people on it may or may not be thinking about apologizing to me. They may have a completely different understanding of what happened. They may not remember. And even if they are making their own list of people they need to apologize to, I may not be on it.

What then?

Thank G-d for the obligation among our people to do tokhecha.

I first learned about tokhecha long ago, but my excitement about it swelled when I began leading a white men’s group at my rabbinical college.

As a person carrying white male privilege, I came to understand that if I wanted to have meaningful relationships with other white men – and with everyone who isn't a white man, which is to say, everyone – I needed to not only be good at giving tokhecha, I needed to be great at inviting tokhecha and at receiving tokhecha.

And, my G-d, is this easier to write than to do.

I needed to become not only someone who could hear, “This thing you did hurt me,” without getting defensive, but I needed to be someone whom others felt they could freely and, as lovingly as possible, offer that feedback to. I needed to learn that being a good person and having caused harm are not mutually exclusive. And that when I have done hurtful or harmful things, I still deserve a degree of compassion.

As I often do when I want to learn something deeply, I signed up to teach it.

The foundational teaching about tokhecha in Torah comes in Leviticus 19:17, which we will chant together on Yom Kippur:

“You shall not hate your kin in your heart. You shall surely do tokhecha [hokhe’ach tokhi’ach] with your neighbor, and do not bear guilt because of them.”

The obligation to do tokhecha appears right in the middle of a command not to hate someone in your heart.

The Torah seems to understand something about human relationships that can be easily forgotten when we veer toward strong, visceral emotions:

Silence is not always kindness.

Sometimes we avoid difficult conversations because we want to preserve a relationship. Sometimes we avoid them because we are afraid of conflict. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we are “letting it go” when really we are storing it somewhere inside ourselves.

And sometimes we do the opposite: we speak from the heat of anger, saying what needs to be said but in a way that makes it almost impossible for the other person to hear.

Tokhecha asks us to find another way.

Constructive confrontation.

These days, we sometimes use the language of calling in and calling out. I find both useful, because tokhecha can involve some of both.

Calling someone in says: I care enough about our relationship to tell you what I see, and I believe there may be a way through this together.

Calling someone out says: Something harmful is happening. It needs to be named, and it needs to be interrupted and stopped.

Sometimes we have the privilege of choosing between those approaches. Sometimes power, safety, or the seriousness of the harm means we don't.

Jewish tradition does not pretend that every relationship is equal or that every confrontation can be gentle. But where relationship is possible, it repeatedly asks us to pursue accountability without humiliation, and truth without abandoning the possibility of repair.

The rabbis were under no illusion that this was easy.

In Arakhin 16b, Rabbi Tarfon wonders whether anyone in his generation knows how to receive tokhecha. Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria wonders whether anyone knows how to give it.

We are not naturally very good at this. And we maybe haven’t been for centuries.

The Talmud goes even further in Yevamot 65b:

“Just as it is a mitzvah for a person to say something that will be heard, so it is also a mitzvah for a person not to say something that will not be heard.”

Tokhecha is not a license to unload. It is not “I have a right to tell you exactly what I think without regard for you, dear community member.”

It is a practice of constructive confrontation: saying what needs to be said in service of relationship, with enough care and attention that it might actually be heard.

And I think this is particularly important for us in the Pacific Northwest, in progressive communities, and in Jewish communities shaped in part by assimilation into a culture that often prizes politeness above almost everything else.

We have plenty of reasons to push against that.

Politeness is not the same thing as kindness.

Avoiding conflict is not the same thing as preserving relationship.

Jewish tradition does not ask us to be nice. It asks us to be present, responsible, and in relationship.

If doikayt – the Diasporist practice of being fully present where we are, centering the current location of our lives – is part of what we mean when we say Hineni – here I am, ready to do the work – then perhaps there is nowhere else to go. Nowhere to hide.

Unable to hide.

Turns out we may each just be a significant and meaningful part of what has happened, is happening, and what could still happen next.

For Kadima, I think this matters enormously.

If we are truly engaged in Reconstructing Kadima Together, then reconstruction cannot simply mean deciding what structures we want in the future. We have to overcome that which may be unspoken between us. We need to know where we stand with one another in order to know what we need to change.

That requires teshuvah.

And it also requires tokhecha.

It means creating a community where people can say, “This is what I experienced,” without immediately being told that their experience is wrong.

It means being able to hear, “This is how your action affected me,” without assuming ill intent.

It means being willing to say things because we care enough about one another – maybe enough about Kadima too – to try.

And it means being willing to invite feedback as well.

I can make a list of the people I believe I owe an apology to. I can make a list of the people I believe owe me one. But I cannot make someone else do the teshuvah that is theirs to do.

What I can do is decide whether I am willing to open the conversation.

And this is where I am finding myself this week of this Elul: with lists I have made, with messages I have started drafting, and with no guarantee about what will happen when – or if – I send them.

Perhaps that is part of the practice.

Tokhecha is not a perfectly crafted statement in which I get to write both sides of the conversation. It is an opening.

I don't exactly know what will happen when things open up. I don't know whether the other person will understand, agree, apologize, or even want to have the conversation.

But I do know this:

I am not able to hide myself.

Neither are you.

Neither are we.

So perhaps this is our practice for this week: not to fix everything, not to make ourselves ready for Yom Kippur, but simply to become a little more willing to be here – to see, to speak, to listen, and to stay in relationship with what we discover.

And perhaps this is why I am drawn to another teaching from the Talmud that we may return to later this season. In Yoma 86a, Rabbi Chama bar Chanina points to the words of the prophet Hosea: אֶרְפָּא מְשׁוּבָתָם אֹהֲבֵם נְדָבָה / Erpa m’shuvatam; ohaveim n’davah: “I will heal their backsliding; I will love them generously.”

The Hebrew word Hosea uses for backsliding, m’shuvatam, comes from the same root as teshuvah: turning, returning. Even when we have turned the wrong way, the possibility of returning remains. And the response imagined by the prophet is not rejection, but healing and love.

I know that may not be where we are yet. But reading Elul backwards, it is where we could aim to be, as soon as is collectively possible – bimheira b'yameinu.

This week, our work might be to stop hiding. To investigate what is true through courageous and constructive confrontation and through humble and active listening.

Nearly half of these seven weeks are behind us. We cannot hide. Here we are. 

While the bad news might be: we have work to do; the good news is: there is work we can do. May shabbat provide fuel for the work ahead, and may we do the work with imperfection and grace.

Shabbat shalom and continued Shiva d'Nechemta tovah,
R’ David

A couple of nights ago, the Perseid meteor shower reached its peak. It happened to coincide with the first day of Rosh Chodesh Elul—the 30th of Av, the last day of a month that has carried us through the deep brokenness remembered on Tisha B’Av and toward the consolation, possibility, and love of Tu B’Av.

And now we are on the second day of Rosh Chodesh Elul and the first day of the month of Elul. We are, quite literally, between things.

There is a piece of Jewish wordplay about Elul that I love. Read forward, the month is Elul. Read backward, it becomes lulei—לוּלֵי—which means “if not,” or “had it not been,” from Psalm 124.

I have been thinking about what it means to read Elul backward.

In some ways, that is how I have approached this whole period of transition at Kadima. I started at the end. Once I knew I would be leaving, I could look forward to an envisioned, lovely last day and work backward to each today, mapping a trajectory toward how I hoped things might go. From that vantage point, I could see more clearly what I needed to do next at each step.

Upon reflection, I realized that I learned how to do this long before I knew it was Jewish. When I was a student at the University of Florida, I took a class called Advanced Management with Dr. Michael Schwartz, of blessed memory. I laugh at how simple and how impactful his class was, remembering that his primary textbook was Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

One exercise he led us in has stayed with me for decades. He asked us to imagine our lives twenty years in the future. What would a life well lived look like? Then we worked backward: fifteen years, ten, five. Until finally, he asked:

What will you do this week that puts your life on that trajectory?

I didn’t know it then, but that exercise was part of what eventually led me back into my Jewishness and to Judaism itself, and, almost exactly twenty years later, to rabbinical school.

This is what I think Elul asks us to do: read our lives backward. Not to get stuck in the past, but to let the life we hope to have lived clarify what we do now.

Rambam writes in Hilchot Teshuvah that human beings have reshut—the capacity to choose. We are not simply carried along by circumstance or destiny. We have the ability to choose the direction of our lives. Jewish tradition gives us practices throughout Elul to help us remember that.

We hear the shofar.

Not just once, but traditionally almost every day of Elul, and then on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur.

The shofar interrupts ordinary life and asks us to wake up.

In Sephardi communities, selichot—prayers of repentance and forgiveness—begin at the beginning of Elul, sometimes in the middle of the night or very early in the morning. The tradition is not simply telling us that we have something to regret. It is asking us to get up and pay attention.

Teshuvah is not just regret. Teshuvah is the possibility of resetting a trajectory.

We may or may not be ready to wake up. After all, the world is terribly hard. Horrible, terrible things have happened that leave unhealed, stubborn wounds. Horrible, terrible things are happening right now. There are good reasons to not want to wake up yet.

That’s okay.

Elul is an invitation—an open invitation to an open house—not a mandate to perform spiritual readiness, now, now, now. Come when you truly can, and stay as long as you’re able. And if you choose not to come yet, we will miss you and be lacking because of it. We will want to know why you were unable to come, so that anything we can do to make it more welcoming, more accessible, more cozy, we will do.

But know that it may not be perfect. It may not be just right. It may be hard. It will likely involve some work.

Thank G-d.

Something that has awoken me to the importance and ephemeral nature of this season is the knowledge that something dear to me is ending. There is grief for me in that.

The end of summer. The end of a Jewish year. The end of having “young kids.” The transition of relationships. The end of a chapter of my life. The end of an era for a community I love.

I am leaning into the idea that my grief is an acknowledgement that something has truly mattered to me.

And since the public announcement that I am leaving Kadima was sent, I have felt a surprising freedom in how I lead. At the first in-person gathering I led—this past week’s Shabbat in the Park—I felt completely present. I noticed people I didn’t already know and made a point to connect. I felt prepared. I was, frankly, on my game. I have experienced myself in other work tasks, meetings, and Torah study lately as having more clarity and precision.

Part of what changed is that I know the end is near.

When I stopped imagining that I had an unlimited future in this role, I became more present to the time I actually have. There might not be another opportunity. That has made each conversation, each moment, matter more.

And in a little over five weeks, Yom Kippur will ask us to do something similar. Jewish tradition treats Yom Kippur as a rehearsal for death: fasting, white clothing, vidui, and the repeated confrontation with the question of who we are and how we have spent the time we were given.

The rabbis teach: Repent one day before your death. We don’t know which day that is.

So: today, then.

That isn’t meant to frighten us. It is meant to clarify. The knowledge that we will not be here forever can make us more fully here now.

It has for me in this season.

And perhaps that is the work of Elul. We look backward so that we can see the trajectory. We notice where we have been going. We allow ourselves to grieve what is ending. We envision where we want to go. And then, when we are ready, we choose a next purposeful step knowing it will not take us to a rigid “there.” It will be our wholehearted contribution to the creation of the tomorrow we wish to live in.

That is also part of the work of Reconstructing Kadima, together. We don’t yet know exactly what Kadima will look like five years from now, or ten, or fifty. We don’t need to know. But we can begin by envisioning the community we hope to be and working backward.

The practices we choose now will become the trajectory of the future we collectively create.

We don’t control everything that happens to us. We don’t get to choose the past. We don’t know the future.

But we do have reshut—choice.

We can choose our next step.

So, may I suggest an Elul practice this year that feels true to the Torah of my life at this moment: Start at the end. Work backward. Then come all the way back to now. What present action best sets up your future self to live in that vision?

And if you aren’t ready to do that yet, that’s okay. The shofar will sound again tomorrow.

For the open invitation of Elul has come. Onward.

Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Elul Tov,
R’ David

PS — An inspiring offering that accompanied me as I wrote this week’s dvar Torah was the brand new Ways of Awe, a fabulous new High Holidays podcast from Kadima’s very own Maia Brown and Shelby Handler. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and save the date for a local community celebration on Saturday, September 19, 7pm at Jack Straw Cultural Center! Shkoy’ach and chazak u’baruch!

PPS — Shabbat in the Park was so fun last week! For the 30ish folks who came, it was so lovely to be with you, your delicious potluck items, and the oys you released and the joys you brought us all into. Here are a few pictures below for your enjoyment. I want to apologize to anyone who had trouble finding us (we were between the playground and the wading pool at some reserved tables). In the office, we have made an effort to ensure that exact park locations get communicated in the future – save the date for Elul Havdallah on 8/22 in Woodland Park and a bonus Shabbat in the Park on 9/4 in Volunteer Park!