The other day I listened to a talk by one of my favorite teachers of mindfulness, Gil Fronsdal, about the war in Israel and Gaza. I listen to Gil’s meditations and short talks several times a week. I’m drawn to the clarity, simplicity, and depth of his teaching. I find that practicing with him early in the morning, or while I’m walking the dog, is helpful.

Like his previous talk on the war last fall, in this talk I was impressed and gratified to hear Gil acknowledge and embrace the humanity of everyone who has suffered, is suffering, and continues to suffer because of it: Israelis, Palestinians, and all of us who care about and are connected to them. There were, predictably, some things I might have phrased differently, or some places I found myself disagreeing. But on the whole, I found it good and helpful.

Towards the end of the talk, Gil said something that has stuck with me. I’ll paraphrase: A lot of people approach me with demands–to sign this or that, to condemn this group or that group, to “stand with” these people and “stand against” those. And Gil said (quoting now): “I don’t operate that way.” He didn’t say this with an edge, but just matter of fact. Instead, he said, he responds to requests, invitations. Demands just won’t work.

I’ve been lingering on that line for a couple of weeks. On one level, it reflects a commonplace among meditation teachers (imagine me speaking in meditation teacher voice now): “And now, if it’s comfortable for you, the invitation is to… gently close your eyes” or “allow your awareness to settle on the breath” or whatever the next part of the practice is.

This is actually such a common expression that we joke about it sometimes at work. It’s foundational to mindfulness practice, the notion that we are all free to enter and leave the practice as we like. We are here not because anyone is forcing us, but because we have decided to be here and do this in this moment–and we can decide in the next moment not to. We have free will, and no one can take that away from us. Thus we shouldn’t presuppose that we or anyone else is bound to do anything. And so, no demands–only invitations and requests.

This is one of the places where Judaism as a mindfulness practice can get complicated. Why? Because at the heart of a life of Torah is the concept and experience of mitzvot, traditionally translated as commandments. Biblical and Rabbinic teaching is suffused with the idea that the Divine commands or demands of us to obey these rules–and will reward us for doing so and punish us for acting otherwise.

This approach works for some people, but it doesn’t work for others. For me, this orientation was particularly useful as a young person, as my fear of being judged–by others, by what I understood God to be, by my own conscience–helped push me into study and behaviors that created a groove in my heart and mind: Shabbat, kashrut, praying, hours and hours learning Hebrew, Aramaic, and our people’s extraordinary textual tradition. I felt good about how I was spending my time because I felt I was living in alignment with what I understood that God commanded me to do.

But at a certain point, that stopped working so well for me. I found something missing in my inner life, as though I were performing a set of roles rather than genuinely living in a way that integrated my outer actions with inner sensations. And that led me, over many years, to studying Hasidut, experimenting with new forms of prayer, and eventually to IJS’s Clergy Leadership Program (applications are open for our next cohort–please share with rabbis and cantors you love!) and into the practice I engage in, teach, and help develop today.

I bring all this up because the name of this week’s Torah portion, Tzav, invites us to reflect on this question of the meaning of mitzvah (tzav is a verb form of the noun, mitzvah). Rashi, citing the midrash, observes that tzav connotes zerizut, alacrity, as if God is saying, “Perform this commandment right away–bring energy to it, don’t dilly dally.” That fits well within a framework of externalized motivation: Get this done quickly so that you can earn the reward (and avoid the punishment). A mitzvah, in this context, continues to be (or at least seems to be) a behavior that a Higher Power commands us to do, backed up by overwhelming force.

But there are other ways to understand mitzvah. The Hasidic masters, drawing on the Zohar, routinely play up the aspect of mitzvah as connection, e.g. mitzvot are the means by which “The Ineffable [expresses] desire that we connect, embrace the Divine, through holiness” (Sefat Emet Bo 1874–there are many more examples). This framework does not necessitate jettisoning the notion of mitzvah as duty or obligation. But, for me anyway, it has the effect of wrapping that heavy notion of commandedness in a softer envelope of love (or, perhaps, the harsher approach is the package, and the love is the soft center; or, really truly, neither is inside or outside–they’re both deeply intertwined). As I’ve continued on my own spiritual and religious journey, that has been profoundly important and helpful.

This approach can get tricky for me, though, if it leads me to experience mitzvot as entirely voluntary. I’m not willing to say that everything is an invitation, because I believe that I, and we, have moral, ethical, and spiritual duties and responsibilities. I can’t, with a straight face, understand Torah, halakha, and Judaism as simply a response to a series of invitations; it is also a response to a set of demands.

Yet I think Gil Fronsdal is right: Demands are not always, or perhaps even often, effective. Why? Because so many of us experience our lives as a set of choices we make, grounded in freedom of thought and action. So the notion that God or a politician or an activist on social media demands of me that I espouse this position or take that action–can be experienced as a categorical error: Who gives you the right to tell me what to think or do? It would be far more effective to engage in a good faith conversation and enable both of us to speak, listen, and make up our minds.

This is an experience I think a lot of folks have run into vis a vis mitzvot and Judaism. Yet if we can ground simultaneously in an understanding of mitzvah as both commandment and connection (imagine popularizing the phrase, “Mitzvah means connection!”), I think we can open up a rich and deep relationship with Torah, Jewish life, and the Holy Blessed One. That is what I’m trying to do in my own life, and it’s what we try to do at IJS all the time. If you’re not already on that journey, I hope you’ll consider joining us (no, actually–I’m demanding that you join us; just kidding.)

Josh’s Friday Reflections
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When my son Toby was seven or eight years old, we watched the Revenge of the Sith, the third of the Star Wars “prequel” movies—the one that tells the story of how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader (spoiler alert, I guess—but, really?). In the climactic scene, as Anakin is about to battle his master Obi-Wan Kenobi, his eyes are yellow with rage. He has been overtaken by anger. He shouts at Obi-Wan, “I hate you!” At this, Toby turned to me and said—in the way that only a sweet 8-year old who goes to a school with a strong social-emotional curriculum can—”Ooh, hate is such a strong word!”

It may sound trite to say, but I think it’s actually remarkable that, in my 47 years, I have been blessed not to experience hateful rage very much. The vast, vast majority of my experiences have been characterized by emotions and states that are peaceful, nonviolent, and even loving. But perhaps because of that, I can vividly remember the moments when rage has been present—both the rage of others that I’ve witnessed and rage that has arisen in me and caused me to lose control. In the former case, they are generally moments that have caused pain in me even through the mere fact of observing them; in the latter, they are, uniformly, the moments in my life I most regret.

We think of Purim as a happy holiday, filled with costumes and yummy things to eat. But the truth is, at the beating heart of this holiday is a story of rage, hatred, fear, generally poor emotional regulation, and the consequences those strong negative emotions can have when channeled into violent, state-sanctioned power.

The word heima, rage, forms a throughline of the Purim story. It appears six times in Esther: When the king becomes angry that Vashti won’t come (1:12) and when that rage finally subsides (2:1); when Haman sees that Mordechai won’t bow to him (3:5 and again at 5:9); when Esther reveals Haman is out to destroy her and her people (7:7) and when his rage subsides after Haman is hanged (7:10). In each of these cases, a powerful man experiences something that upsets him—something that seems to undermine his sense of control and self-worth, perhaps—and he is unable to control his anger. There is something childlike and petulant about these incidents, something reminiscent of that young Anakin Skywalker who can’t manage the strong sensations of pride, feeling wronged and unloved (and, in Anakin’s case, probably abandoned as well).

And like Anakin Skywalker, in each case in Esther, the powerful man, whether Achashverosh or Haman, flies off the handle into a literally murderous rage and then codifies that rage into state-sanctioned violence: killing the queen (and then, grotesquely, effectively kidnapping and imprisoning the young women of the empire until he found the one who most pleased him—all under cover of law); ordering a massive, state-authorized pogrom on the Jews and constructing a state-authorized gallows for Mordechai; killing Haman by the lawful order of the king. In case my point isn’t already clear: this is not a children’s story.

Instead, I think it is at least in part a story that comes to help us reflect on questions about rage and power (and gender: see Rabbi Jericho Vincent’s incredible new rendering of the Megillah for more). Such questions are, of course, always present, whether we are aware of them or not, whether we like to acknowledge them or not. One of our key developmental tasks in childhood and adolescence is learning how to modulate the strong negative feelings we can experience that might impel us toward anger, rage, and violence, and instead make calmer, wiser, more peaceful choices. And the Megillah is even astute enough to layer in the ways in which the experience or threat of violence can itself have traumatic impacts on a collective group, which can then lead to their own imagined or enacted revenge fantasies (this is the story of chapter 8).

Jewish mindfulness practice is all about disrupting this escalator of reactivity and instead increasing the space between stimulus and response. It is about cultivating da’at, attentive awareness, as evidenced in the pivotal line Mordechai writes to Esther: mi yodeah im la’et kazot higaat lamalchut, who knows—who has da’at, is mindfully aware—but perhaps it was precisely for this moment that you attained the throne!

Esther, of course, is the character who has the most to fear—”if I perish, I perish.” Through what I take to be a practice of mindfulness—what is she doing for those three days of fasting and praying if not creating more space between stimulus and response?—she overcomes that fear to make an enormously courageous, history-altering choice. Unlike her husband the king, she does not seek to dull her pain through drinking, partying, and carousing. Unlike Haman, she is not so conceited that she can only think of herself. As her name implies, she is, perhaps, concealed even from herself, but she ultimately emerges as an exemplar of mindful self-awareness that grounds her courageous speech and action.

This Purim, when so many of us are living with fear and trauma; when our media ecosystem thrives on prompting our most reactive behaviors; when too many are acting in ways that seem anything but mindful, wise, or courageous—may we renew our commitment to our spiritual practice for the sake of reducing suffering, healing pain, and fostering peace.

Josh’s Friday Reflections
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Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.

One of the main reasons Natalie and I moved to Skokie eleven years ago was so that our children would have other kids to play with on Shabbat afternoon. We had previously lived in Evanston, which had a wonderful but very small shomer Shabbat community. There were basically the same few kids, and no one else at our children’s grade levels. When Toby came along, we realized we wanted a different experience and moved three miles west.

At this point, Toby is old enough that most Shabbat mornings he finds me at shul to tell me that he’s hanging out with his friends and classmates all afternoon and he’ll be back in time for havdallah. Which is exactly what we wanted. Like his older brothers, he has a group of friends his age who can spend time and play with one another. Normal, healthy developmental stuff–and a good validation of our decision back in the day.

Yet as you no doubt know, friendships and childhoods that look like this are becoming rarer. Teens are spending less time hanging out with their friends–a trend facilitated by social media and accelerated by the pandemic. The same is happening with adults, as the Surgeon General discussed in a recent report on the epidemic of disconnection and loneliness affecting the country–an epidemic that has profound consequences for our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

We’re wrapping up the Torah portions that recount the building of the Mishkan. One of the sometimes overlooked features of this story is the role of friendship, specifically that between Bezalel and Ohaliav, the two master builders. Now, you may actually be scratching your head: “Betzalel–him I’ve heard of. Who is the Ohaliav character?” He was Bezalel’s chief helper–or, as my own friend and rabbi, Ari Hart, pointed out recently, his buddy. These were two friends–really, two of the only friends (not blood relations) that we see in the Torah. They shared in the work together, inspired one another, dreamed, thought, created, and labored with each other. They were friends.

It makes sense to me that the Torah would choose to highlight two friends at the center of the creation of the Mishkan, as the word for friend, chaver, is related to a word the Torah itself uses to describe putting together the Mishkan, l’chaber. Like the Mishkan or the clothing of the high priest, a healthy friendship reflects the interconnection between distinct individual parts within a larger whole. Each part is unique and important, and each also contributes to the total project, the greater communion of the friendship.

Rava, one of the great rabbis of the Talmud, quoted a folk saying: O havruta o mituta. Literally translated, the phrase means, “friendship or death.” I think a perhaps more accurate rendering might be, “Friendship is the essence of life.” Why? Perhaps because, unlike familial ties or contractual responsibilities, a friendship is a relationship characterized by freedom. We choose our friends. And because of that, a friendship is its own, particularly special, kind of love–freely chosen, much like the freely-given offerings that provided the raw materials for the Mishkan.

Jewish spiritual practice can often be thought of as something we do on our own–meditating or journaling or praying. And yes, much of our work is internal, taking place in zones to which only we have access and that cannot really be shared with others. But/And: so much of our spiritual labor can only, frankly should, be done in the company of friends–spiritual friends, friends with whom we can practice, friends to whom we can open our hearts, friends who are, in the truest sense of the word, a havruta. May we all merit to develop, maintain, and grow such friendships.

Josh’s Friday Reflections
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Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.

I travel frequently for work. My checklist of things to do before I leave home includes not only packing undershirts and a toothbrush, but also emptying the compost bin that sits next to our sink. I seem to be the member of my family who can stand the smell the easiest. So before I get in the taxi to the airport, I dump the compost into the larger bin outside.

I therefore think about the compost with some regularity. On the one hand, I feel good about it: We’re diverting waste from the landfill; we get soil back in the spring; we’re contributing to a larger movement. On the other hand, there’s a little perversion that creeps in when I clean out the fridge: “Ooh, that lettuce I bought last week that didn’t get eaten–awesome, it can go in the compost!” But, of course, it would have been better to either eat the lettuce or not buy it in the first place.

The existence of the compost bin can thus provide a subconscious crutch for overconsumption. While it mitigates some problems, it doesn’t address the basic questions of desire and sufficiency operating in my mind and heart when I’m at the grocery store or standing in front of the fridge thinking about what I want to eat. Those questions are still mine to work through.

These issues are on my mind this week because at the heart of Parashat Vayakhel is a story about sufficiency and saying, “Enough.” Making good on the Holy One’s invitation for everyone whose heart is moved to contribute to the construction of the Mishkan, Moses invites the Israelites to do just that. But not only do they bring–they keep on bringing, to the point that the craftsmen come to Moses to tell him they’re being overwhelmed.
“Moses thereupon had this proclamation made throughout the camp:
‘Not a single man or woman should make further effort toward gifts for the sanctuary!’ So the people stopped bringing: their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done.” (Ex. 36:6-7)

In his Mei Hashiloach, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner interprets this passage spiritually: “In truth, one does not know the root of their heart—if they are truly giving. The test of this is, if one is asked one time to donate for a new mitzvah, then they can give abundantly, but after they have grown accustomed to this mitzvah they then close their hand from giving. From this it is understood that they are not giving from their roots, for if it came out of their roots they would not refrain from giving.” In the case of the Mishkan, the rebbe says, the Israelites kept giving again and again, manifesting that they were truly giving from the roots of their hearts. Hence these verses should be read as praising them.

Now, this would be a good place for me to make a fundraising pitch. (Sure: If your heart is moved, please do donate to IJS!) But/And: I think the larger point is one about the spiritual practice of discerning and knowing our hearts–in our giving, our consuming, our making, our selling. The Torah invites us to consider that, just as there is an economy that exists between the grocery store and the compost bin (or the trash can), there is likewise an economy within our hearts–impulses, either genuine or manufactured through advertising, of need, desire, and craving; stirrings of generosity, openness, and sufficiency.

In an age characterized by consumerism, impulse purchasing, and life-threatening levels of waste, mindfulness practices are more important than ever. They enable us to walk through the grocery store–or Amazon–with stronger, wiser hearts that are less susceptible to the manipulation of desire. And in an age characterized by isolation, division, and epidemic levels of loneliness, our practices likewise help us to cultivate connection, compassion, and resilience. These are two sides of the same coin, two parts of the economy of the heart that, with practice and dedication, can become the economy of the world too.

Josh’s Friday Reflections
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Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.

On Monday night, for the first time since before I had children (meaning at least 21 years ago), I went to the opera. Not just any opera, but the premiere of a new production of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino at the Met–a production that lasts four hours and involves a huge cast and elaborate sets. And, because it was opening night, there were a lot of people decked out in their finery. It was a scene.

Yet what made this night so memorable was the singing–and especially that of the soprano, Lise Davidsen, who was making her Met debut in an Italian opera. This was a big deal, as Davidsen, a Norwegian-born star in the opera world, is known for her work in German pieces (Wagner, Strauss). But Italian opera is a different animal, and there was a lot of anticipation about how she would do.

Suffice it to say, she brought down the house–both with her aria before the first intermission and then, most memorably, with her rendition of Pace, pace, mio Dio in the final act. And that was when the moment I’ll never forget unfolded. You see, unlike in virtually any other Western performance art form, opera not only invites the audience to applaud mid-performance, after every solo (jazz does this), but, because it’s a theatrical performance, there’s a pause in the action when that happens (something that doesn’t happen in jazz). While most of the time the applause runs its course and the show goes on, occasionally something magical can happen.

That’s what happened on Monday: Davidsen’s performance was so immediately appreciated and beloved that the audience clapped and clapped, hooped and hollered, yelled “brava!” and “bravissima!” for what seemed like an eternity. Even the conductor and the orchestra started applauding. And Davidsen, trying to remain in character, simply couldn’t ignore it–she ultimately had to break character and acknowledge the reality of the moment with a smile and a hand to the heart. Only then could the performance go on.

It was that breaking character–breaking through the “fourth wall” of the performance–that made the moment indelible in my memory, and probably in that of the several thousand other members of the audience, because it is such a rare thing to witness. Performers and audience alike are so committed to maintaining that imaginary wall; it is a fundamental part of the experience of theater and music, ceremony and ritual. We invest spaces like theaters and symphony halls–and synagogues–with an artifice that allows another world to come into being. When we break that wall, the experience can be jarring, just as it can also be magical.

The story of the Golden Calf is a counterpoint to the story of the construction of the Mishkan that it interrupts. And while its most fundamental lesson, of course, is to be ever mindful of the possibility of idolatry, some of our tradition’s most insightful, even radical, interpretations see significance not only in the people’s construction of the calf, but of Moses’s smashing of the tablets of the law in response. As Rashi, quoting the Talmud, famously says in his very final comment on the Torah at the end of Deuteronomy: “The Holy Blessed One agreed with Moses’s action, as it says, asher shibarta (Ex. 34:1), which implies that God said, ‘Yishar koach,’ Good work breaking the tablets.”

I wonder if we might think of these two breakings–the breaking of the tablets and breaking character/breaking the fourth wall–as partaking of or expressing a related impulse. In the case of Lise Davidsen, the moment demanded that she break the fourth wall in order to acknowledge her own humanity and that of the audience, which wanted to express their love and appreciation for her singing. In the case of Moses as interpreted by the Talmud, the Holy One recognizes that the moment called not for standing on ceremony, but instead for the expression of emotion–disappointment, anger, rage–of Moses’s gesture; or, perhaps, on an even deeper level, the moment called for a lesson that nothing, not even words of Torah written by the finger of God, should become an idol, immune to the realities of the world, and thus the tablets had to be broken.

How do we discern what the moment calls for? That’s one of the reasons we practice. Through our mindfulness, we hopefully become aware of the overt and subtle ways idolatry operates in our hearts and minds: in the things we cling to, in our inability to live with uncertainty, in our stubborn desire to maintain an impermeable, unbreakable fourth wall between the lives we live and the stories we tell ourselves about them.

We don’t seek to break the fourth wall all the time, of course, or even most of the time. In both opera and in Torah, those moments of breaking are meaningful only because they are rare. But I would suggest that one of the reasons we practice is so that we might  know when those moments have arrived–and that we might have the courage to break those idols when they do.

Josh’s Friday Reflections
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Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.

As I’m regularly privileged to do, I spent part of this first week of February with 50 rabbis and cantors, some of the 530 alumni of our IJS clergy cohort programs, during our annual Hevraya retreat in Simi Valley, California. First and foremost: We were all okay with the weather. Thankfully, the American Jewish University’s Brandeis-Bardin Campus, where we have long held this retreat, is at a high enough elevation to avoid major flooding. While there were some travel delays, everyone arrived safely. And given all that these spiritual leaders have been holding for themselves and their communities in recent months, it didn’t take long for the weather to become an afterthought.

During this retreat, I found myself reflecting on a talk I listened to recently by one of my favorite teachers, Gil Fronsdal, about the meaning of “retreat.” Gil suggested that the word is a bit of a misnomer, because the label “retreat” suggests that the experience is a pulling back from what’s normal: Our normal world is full of hustle and bustle, but on retreat we do something different, live at a slower rhythm, engage more deeply with ourselves and the world. And while that’s true, Gil suggested that a better label might be “return”–because the truth is that our actual normal is that slower, deeper reality. It’s the fast-paced, surface-level life before and after the “retreat” that we should see as the unusual setting. When we go on retreat, we’re really returning to our truest nature.

The rabbi in me was immediately drawn to this notion of return as teshuva. Every year during Elul and Tishrei, we make a special effort to return, as it were, to our factory settings: to reconnect with what we know to be our deeper nature, the go back to the intentions we know we really have. Throughout that intense period of teshuva, it can feel like we’re on a kind of retreat, and at the end of it we’re remade and reborn.

Yet we don’t have to wait for Tishrei, as evidenced by the retreat/return we held for those spiritual leaders this week. For so many of them, this time has become a sacred period of reconnection, renewal, and rebirth. It’s truly one of my greatest honors and joys that these holy souls trust us to create and hold the container for them to do that returning.

At morning services on Tuesday, Rabbi Hannah Dresner, one of our wonderful alumni, shared a beautiful teaching about Parashat Mishpatim from the Hasidic master Rabbi Yehudah Leib Alter of Ger’s Sefat Emet (Terumah, 1895). At the end of the Torah portion, Moses ascends into the mountain, where he will stay for 40 days and 40 nights while he receives the Torah. The Sefat Emet picks up on the number of 40 days, which in the mind of the Talmudic sages is the same amount of time it takes after conception for a fetus to be formed in the womb. Putting the two ideas together, he teaches that during his sojourn on the mountain (which was enveloped in cloud, suggesting to the midrashic imagination a womb-like experience), Moses “received an entirely new form”–that is, he was literally transformed, renewed, reborn. And further, through the study of Torah, all of us have a share in Moses’s experience–we can experience our own renewal and transformation too.

I wonder if we might understand this transformation and renewal as of a piece with the return we experience on retreat or during the fall holidays. I wonder if we might think of it as available to us not only through those intensive experiences but even on a weekly basis (Shabbat) and a daily or even moment to moment basis through our mindful return to our intention. As we say in our liturgy, the Divine “renews creation each day.” Likewise, we can, through our practices, experience that renewal, that return to our factory settings, in every time and place.

In some of my recent morning meditation sits, I’ve noticed a feeling of sadness and grief arising. Yes, of course, there’s plenty of cause for sadness and grief in the world and amongst the Jewish people. But this grieving was coming up from a different place. It’s some anticipatory grieving around a subtle but significant shift in the life stage my wife and I are going through as our middle child prepares to graduate high school and leave home.

In one of those mysterious poetic rhymes in which life can sometimes speak, my children–21, 18, and 11–have almost precisely the same spread in age as my brothers and I (I’m the youngest). And I’m finding echoes of the feelings of loss that I experienced when my two older brothers had flown the coop and it was down to just my parents and me at home. But this time, I’m approaching that point as one of the parents, aware of all the memories of these now-grown children in this house we’ve lived in for the majority of their lives. While I am happy that both my older boys are making their way in the world–and that we can still look forward to the company of our wonderful little one for a few more years–I get why there’s some grief making its presence felt. The shape of home is shifting, and that’s hard.

Home, its shape-shifting, and even the undertow of the powerful emotions surrounding it, is a theme in Parashat Yitro–though I think we sometimes have to look for it a little. But when we do, it’s right there beneath the surface. Look right at the beginning: “So Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses’ wife, after she had been sent home, and her two sons—of whom one was named Gershom, that is to say, ‘I have been a stranger in a foreign land’; and the other was named Eliezer, meaning, ‘The God of my father was my help, delivering me from the sword of Pharaoh.’ Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought Moses’ sons and wife to him in the wilderness, where he was encamped at the mountain of God.” (Ex. 18:3-5) Rashi, quoting the midrash, paints a scene wherein Aaron, when he first greets Moses on his way back to Egypt from the burning bush, asks him, rhetorically, “We’re already grieving so many people in Egypt; why add to the number?” So Moses sends his wife and children away–a moment, one imagines, of painful family separation, of grieving and loss, of shifting the dimensions and feelings of home.

Home is also present in the Ten Commandments: the mitzvot of honoring parents (#5), honoring marriage (#7), focusing our attention on what is present in our homes and not coveting that which is over the fence (#10)–and the ways we can imagine or have experienced the transgression of those commandments–all of these tap into the strong emotional currents surrounding the nature and shape of home.

I’m fond of saying that I think spirituality is our capacity to feel truly at home in the universe. And in this sense, perhaps the most powerful teaching about home comes not in any of these moments that I’ve mentioned, but in the mitzvah of Shabbat: “For in six days YHVH made heaven and earth and sea—and all that is in them—and then rested on the seventh day; therefore YHVH blessed the sabbath day and hallowed it.” Like the Creator, for six days we label and separate, calling things heaven or earth or sea, this name or that home, home or not-home. All that naming connotes both standing in relationship with and standing over and against the world–at home in the world, but also not fully at home in it at the same time. On Shabbat we rest from all that, from the constant work of naming and labeling and separating. We allow ourselves to feel deeply, truly at home–in the world, in our houses, in our relationships, in ourselves.

Yet Shabbat doesn’t only happen every seven days. Shabbat consciousness is actually available to us every seven hours, every seven minutes, every seven seconds. That, in many ways, is the whole point of Jewish spiritual practice. When we can cultivate it and allow it to take root and grow within us, we can respond to the shifting shapes and tones of home more wisely and graciously–because we can sense that, on the deepest levels, we’ve never really left home at all.

In a casual conversation the other day with my dear friend Marvin Israelow, our board chair at IJS and someone nearly 30 years my senior, I shared with him that one of the many blessings of my job is being in the presence of so many people who are “doing aging well.” He asked what I considered aging well. I considered his question and responded that I thought it included a few things: Getting clear on what’s really important to you, developing the ability to share that openly with loved ones, and living your life that way (and it doesn’t hurt if you’re blessed with the health and means to do so).

Marvin is an exemplar of this, as are many of the people who serve on our board and in our broader community. That’s not an accident, of course–one of our founders, Rabbi Rachel Cowan z”l co-wrote, with Dr. Linda Thal, the book Wise Aging, and for several years IJS even ran a program to train facilitators to lead groups working through the book together (and some of those groups continue to meet to this day). People at what developmental theorists call the generative stage of life more frequently tend to have the time, capacity, and interest to engage in mindfulness and spiritual practices. If you’ve ever been to our daily online meditation sit, you’ll see the proof.

One of the reasons I felt prompted to share my observation with Marvin is that my own life, like most other people’s, I expect, has been a mixed bag of examples of aging. My grandfather did aging really well–lots of hobbies and interests, travel, writing moving letters and reflections on Torah at our bnei mitzvah and weddings. My mother, his daughter, did too–singing in choirs, volunteering at the symphony, writing her own reflections, sharing directly her thoughts and feelings. My dad, however, didn’t do as well. I always felt he struggled to adjust to life after children, as we had been the center of his life for so many years. While he cared deeply about family, he often struggled to express it with ease.

That difficulty was manifest at the end of his life, as, despite my noodging for many years, my Dad didn’t get around to buying burial plots. I don’t fault him–that’s a hard thing to do, and I can totally understand how it happened. Yet it led to the scene in his final days–again, a scene which I expect many others have experienced–of me standing in the hallway outside his palliative care room on the phone with the synagogue about acquiring a spot in the cemetery.

When I shared this with Marvin, he told me that one of the great gifts his own mother had given him was, several years before her death, talking with him about her wishes for her funeral and ensuring that all the arrangements were in place. As part of her own aging well, Marvin’s mom wanted to make sure that, when the time came, her family would not be preoccupied with figuring all of these things out on the spot and could be more present with their loss and with each other. Pretty amazing.

Amidst all the hubbub of leaving Egypt, the Torah offers us the image of Moses running around looking for Joseph’s bones in order to fulfill the promise Joseph made the Israelites swear–that they would bury him in the land of Israel (Ex. 13:19). There are many beautiful midrashim on this moment, some of which draw a comparison between the box (aron) that carried Joseph and the box (aron kodesh) that carried the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Within that second aron were not only the intact tablets but the broken pieces of the first tablets that Moses smashed.

The Torah thus offers us a window into the deeply intergenerational nature of the Exodus: the commitments we make to one another that extend beyond our lifetimes; the wisdom of our ancestors we carry with us, metaphorically and, in this case, literally; the ways in which elders help to liberate their descendants and descendants help to liberate our ancestors. The Seder, of course, is a quintessentially intergenerational conversation.

But I think the larger point is that that conversation between generations is not only meant to happen once a year over the matzah, but in an ongoing process that happens in gestures large and small, day after day, moment after moment. Initiating those conversations, living with that quality of awareness and intention, is, at root, what I think it means to age well. May our practices help us do it.

For the last decade or so, my family’s winter vacation has been a time to get together with my wife’s sister and her husband. She’s a diplomat, so they’re often stationed in interesting places (and have free housing to offer us). And when they’re not in a foreign country, we have a chance to go to other interesting places together: skiing, warm weather places, places where we can rent a house and just hang out for a week.

While we were on vacation this year in Toronto (their hometown–we made it a bit of a family reunion), my brother-in-law had occasion to be walking through a public spot when he was “tefillinned”–that is, he was approached by Chabad Hasidim who asked, “Excuse me, are you Jewish?” and when he said, “Yes,” proceeded to ask if he had put on tefillin today and, if not, would he like to do so.

This has happened to me many times before, and I imagine it may have happened to you or someone you know. (In the halakha or Jewish practice that Chabad follows, tefillin is a mitzvah to be observed only by men, so that likely affects your experience in this case.) There are whole subcultures built around stories of wrapping tefillin with Chabad shluchim (emissaries), both earnest–stories of the power of putting on tefillin for the first time, for instance–and humorous (e.g. funny rejoinders).

My brother-in-law asked a question I’ve heard many others ask too: Why tefillin in particular? There are plenty of other practices the Lubavitcher Rebbe could have chosen to further the outreach and engagement campaign he thought was so important. Why this one?

Many of the answers have to do with protection: Tefillin have traditionally been thought to serve as a kind of amulet (the infelicitous English translation, phylacteries, comes from the Greek “phulassein,” to guard–hence, for instance, prophylactic). The Rebbe launched the “Tefillin campaign” shortly before the Six Day War in 1967, a moment when many Jews sought safety in the face of impending catastrophe. Tefillin provided a valuable spiritual response.

But I think there’s a deeper significance reflected in the first mention of tefillin, which comes in Parashat Bo. It appears at the very end of the Torah portion–which has focused exclusively on the story of the Exodus and the rituals the Israelites will engage in to remember it. Tefillin are part of that commemoration, too: “And this shall serve you as a sign on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead—in order that YHVH’s teaching may be in your mouth—that with a mighty hand YHVH freed you from Egypt” (Ex. 13:9).

There’s a powerful, basic teaching present here, one that the Hasidic tradition emphasizes and that more modern liberatory approaches do as well: The Exodus from Egypt is not only an historical event, but an ongoing reality in our lives. Every moment we are confronted with constriction–in thought, in spirit, in breath. And every moment we have the potential to leave that constriction through mindful awareness and attention. That practice is a whole-body practice: It includes the sense organs of the head, the brain, the heart (where the tefillin box of the arm is meant to rest), and out into our hands and outer limbs. In every moment, with our entire bodies, we can be leaving Egypt. The tefillin, which extend from the crown of the head to the tips of the fingers, symbolize that and even make it something we can feel and touch.

Finally, I think a reason the Rebbe wisely focused on tefillin is that, despite its ubiquity in Orthodox circles, it can feel like a strange and out of reach practice for many Jews. Yet as Chabad has made clear–and as liberal movements have likewise shown through their embrace and expansion of tefillin-wearing beyond only men–tefillin can be a powerful aid in one of the most fundamental aspects of Judaism as a mindfulness practice: that, on the most intimate, personal levels, liberation is always possible, the Divine is always available. If we can practice that, with or without our tefillin on, then we are truly leaving Egypt.

When I first started at IJS just about four years ago, one of the good pieces of advice I received was to hire an executive coach. Robin Bernstein, who had served as our interim executive director before I started, stood out to me as a perfect person to support me in that way, and thankfully she agreed to do so.

During our weekly sessions, I would share my latest ideas on this or that opportunity, and we would talk through the ins and outs of making them happen. It became a long list, and our time together was regularly marked by the challenges I faced of leading an organization through adaptation and change–on top of the challenges of pivoting and responding to the pandemic. Robin’s guidance was extraordinarily valuable during that tumultuous time.

At one point, Robin gently called my attention to my… hmm… kind of peripatetic nature, and my occasional predilection to take action before necessarily fully considering an idea. (I’ll cut myself a little slack: It was the beginning of the pandemic and I was brand new. But still, she was right.) She suggested that I might benefit from having a focus phrase in front of me to encourage me to take a beat. I went on Etsy and found a banner with the word “Pause” on it. If you’ve ever been on a zoom call with me or seen me host our Daily Sit, you’ve seen it. It’s right there, reminding me all the time to breathe, center, and take the time to choose a wise and mindful response.

In the synagogue I attend, we read the entire Torah portion every week. And one of the things that strikes me every year encountering parashat Vaera is where the pauses the reading are placed. Normally, the breaks in aliyot (Torah reading units) come at natural spots: paragraph markings or other obvious transitions. Yet in Vaera, several of the aliyot end in what feel like unnatural places. The fourth aliyah ends at Exodus 8:6, in the middle of the second plague (frogs)–and even in the middle of a sentence that Moses is speaking to Pharaoh. Likewise, the fifth aliyah creates an unnatural pause mid-plague (swarming insects) and in the middle of a sentence God is speaking when it ends at 8:18. Same with the sixth aliyah, which ends awkwardly at 9:16. Given that this isn’t the way the tradition normally does things, I’ve long wondered why our custom developed in this way.

The answer I’ve come up with is that each of these unnatural endings share something in common. Here are the three verses in question:

Ex. 8:6 (conclusion): “that you may know that there is none like YHVH our God.”

Ex. 8:18: “But on that day I will set apart the region of Goshen, where My people dwell, so that no swarms of insects shall be there, that you may know that I YHVH am in the midst of the land.”

Ex. 9:16: “Nevertheless I have spared you for this purpose: in order to show you My power, and in order that My fame may resound throughout the world.”

Rather than end in a place we might expect–say, the end of the plague–the placement of each of these verses at the end of the reading creates an unnatural pause that serves to highlights knowledge and awareness of the Holy One as the ultimate aim of the plagues and the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. It’s as though the Torah wants to remind us that this isn’t only a story about physical or political liberation; it’s ultimately a much deeper story than even that. It’s a story about genuine freedom from oppression and suffering, which comes about when we, and all beings, can live with the awareness that, to slightly paraphrase the prophet Isaiah, the world is filled with Divine presence. If and when we can truly live with that consciousness, then no form of Mitzrayim–physical, political, or spiritual constriction–will be able to oppress anyone anymore.

To me, this is simply an elaboration on the truth that Judaism is, fundamentally, a mindfulness practice. These pauses in the Torah reading are of a piece with the pause we take weekly on Shabbat, and the pauses we take daily, hourly, and moment-by-moment, to re-ground ourselves in the reality of the Divine presence that permeates creation. Those pauses help us to respond wisely rather than reactively, to live intentionally rather than mindlessly. It takes work and commitment (and a nice sign from Etsy doesn’t hurt, either). But that’s precisely why we are here, for ourselves and one another.

I finally watched “Barbie” this week. I was on the plane, heading home after an intensive four days of work, too exhausted to do much of anything else. So, the movies. 

The other night our middle son, Micah, had a basketball game. We always try to light Hannukah candles together as a family, so we waited for him to come home. We wound up lighting the hanukkiah after 9 pm. (They won the game, btw–and he even had a three-pointer.) Natalie and I take fire safety seriously, so we wanted to make sure the flames were out before going to bed. So I decided to sit by the candles as they burned down.

As I sat there gazing at the flames, I realized that so many of the Hannukah teachings and practices I’m familiar with focus on lighting the candles, kindling the flames: observing the light, the idea of creating light in the darkness. Even the way we tell the story about the miracle of the oil has to do with its lighting (“It’s a miracle they found any oil!”) and the duration of the burning (lasting for eight days).

But that evening my attention was more drawn to the dying of the flames, the way they burn brightly and then, as they get lower and lower, diminish into a hushed presence. You don’t know exactly when they’re going to go out, but you can sense it’s coming–in a similar way to an animal or a person who is clearly in the process of dying. And then, suddenly, the flame is gone, a wisp of smoke rises up, and with it the smell of a candle snuffed out wafts into the air and lingers for a while.

We tend to like beginnings. They convey hope and a future. Perhaps for this reason we follow the custom of Hillel, to work our way up from one lonely candle on the first night to the majestic display of eight candles on the last. Our tradition opted for this position rather than that of Hillel’s great rival, Shammai, who argued that we should start with eight candles and work our way down to one.

In a poem she published the other day, Rabbi Jen Gubitz explores an alternative history of Hannukah:

What if Shammai was right?
What if
Each night
We go to light
And there is more darkness in our hearts
Than the night before?

What if we are not like Hillel
Cannot see the light increase
Cannot strike the match
Or have run out of wax and wick?

What if the wickedness
Of the world
Or the pain in our soul
Casts dark shadows
On the glimmering lights?

What if the miracle
Is the single flickering flame
On the last night
While the world
Tries to snuff you out?

I found Jen’s poem to be a poignantly honest expression of the Hannukah many of us have had this year–one that feels filled with more loss and heartbreak and darkness than we’ve felt in a long time, perhaps ever. What if, indeed, Shammai was right?

But I also want to end on a hopeful note, and for that I look to the Torah portion. Specifically, I look to a wordplay that happens in the Hebrew. In verse 53 of chapter 41 of Genesis, the Torah writes, “the seven years of plenty came to an end.” The opening word of this verse is וַתִּכְלֶ֕ינָה, vatikhlena, “they came to an end.” It comes from the same word that marks the completion of the six days of creation at the very beginning of Genesis, vayekhulu.

Now comes the wordplay: The next verse reads, “and the seven years of famine began.” The first word is וַתְּחִלֶּ֜ינָה, vatchilena, “they began.” The two words sound almost identical–but they mean precisely the opposite of one another. One is an ending, the other a beginning.

While the meaning of the text could have been conveyed in many different formulations, the Torah, through this exquisite little move, seems to go out of its way to gesture toward something else–a poetic expression, perhaps, of the reality that every ending is, indeed, a beginning; or, put differently, what we believe to be endings and beginnings are illusions. This is, in so many words, exactly what Joseph tells his brothers in next week’s Torah portion: “God sent me on ahead of you to make you a remnant on earth” (45:7). What they thought was an ending was, in fact, a beginning.

We are constantly living through endings and beginnings. Some are hopeful, some are painful, many evoke a jumble of feelings. As the final candles in our hannukiot burn down and those wisps of smoke ascend heavenward, may our practices help us live through every moment of transition (which, in reality, is every moment) with ease, wisdom, and peace.

This coming Saturday night marks the fifth yahrtzeit, or death anniversary, of my father, Lou Feigelson z”l (pictured above with my mother during the dancing at our wedding; it’s a favorite picture.)

While professionally my Dad made his living in real estate and property management in our hometown of Ann Arbor, at his core he was a teacher. Like so many children of Jewish immigrants from eastern Europe in the mid-twentieth century, he was a product of public schools who commuted to the local public university (Wayne State). He was a Boy Scout and went to summer camp, which expanded his world beyond the Detroit of his youth (it was at a Fresh Air camp, Camp Tamarack, that he met my mom). And I think those two forces, school and camp, always remained, in his mind and heart, places and ideas and forces towards which he felt enormous gratitude, responsibility, and joy.

As I’ve mentioned before in this space, my Dad was our Boy Scout troop’s scoutmaster. One of the things I remember learning from him at an early age was how to run a patrol or troop meeting: having an activity for the scouts when they showed up that set the theme for the learning to take place, transitioning into an opening ritual, running a more identifiable period of teaching-and-learning, creating an opportunity for them to apply their newly-acquired knowledge in a fun and engaging way, review, recognition, closing. I probably learned that from him at age 11 or 12. It was only years later, in my own work as an educator (my brothers are attorneys; one of us had to go into the family business) that I came to realize that Dad had taught me what teachers would recognize as a “set induction.” He was teaching me to teach.

There is a poignancy, of course, to marking my father’s yahrtzeit on the third day of Hanukkah. The holiday is now, and for the rest of my life will be, bound up with remembering him. Which is frankly lovely, as Hanukkah was a holiday my father took seriously. Every morning he would clean out the previous night’s wax and get the candles ready for that evening so that they would be ready for us, as though they were reminding us all day, “It’s Hanukkah!” as we passed by them. Lighting the candles was a serious mitzvah for him.

And every year Hanukkah, and now my father’s yahrtzeit, comes as we read the stories of Joseph, a child separated from his father. While, thankfully, the circumstances were dramatically different (and my older brothers are good guys), like many other young people, I left home at age 18, about the same age as Joseph was sold into captivity in Egypt. And like many others, including Joseph, the years of my young adulthood were marked by looking for mentors and surrogate parental figures. (For Joseph, Potiphar and ultimately Pharaoh are two such people; mine weren’t quite so dramatic, but they were very important people in my life.)

The writer Sharon Daloz Parks, who was an important mentor to me as a young professional, wrote an illuminating book on the period of young adult life called Big Questions, Worthy Dreams. The book explores what Parks sees as the key task of young adulthood, namely to “become fittingly at home in the universe, moving from authority-bound forms of meaning-making anchored in conventional assumed community, through the wilderness of counterdependence and unqualified relativism, to a committed, inner-dependent mode of composing meaning.” This then points towards “a still more mature faith–an engaged wisdom grounded in the conviction of interdependence, seeking communion with those who are profoundly other than the self.”

I think that’s one way we can understand the story of Joseph, who, through a long period of suffering and searching and journeying, moves from a sheltered, privileged, even arrogant posture of his youth into a more mature, adult posture as an adult. He acquires a hard-won wisdom. Like his father and uncle, about whom I wrote last week, Joseph, like his brothers, grows up. And in that process of maturation, he and his brothers become shaped into characters who ultimately seem to understand their interdependence, the inextricability of their lives together, their mutual responsibility toward one another, as best evidenced, perhaps, in Judah’s poignant line describing the relationship between Benjamin and Jacob: “Their souls are bound up together” (Gen. 44:30). In this, they echo a lesson of Hanukkah, which invites us to recognize our mutuality and interdependence, to learn to kindle fire responsibly, to reflect and nurture the lights in our lives and the world.

In the last five years, as Hanukkah has become bound up with remembering the death and life of my father–as the yahrtzeit candle flickers and glows amidst the Hanukkah lights on the third night–the holiday has become richer and deeper for me. It’s easy for Hanukkah to be a children’s holiday, and thank God for that. But like all our holidays, its practices are ones that can help us grow bigger and wiser. This Hanukkah, when so many of us so deeply need it, may we kindle our lights within and without, may we deepen in both joy and wisdom, and may our practice lead to the light of redemption and peace.

Like so many others, I’ve been struggling for words since October 7. “Ein milim,” “There are no words,” is the phrase many Israelis have used to greet one another. For me, it feels like this time has tested the limits of my ability to formulate words, that language is insufficient to reflect and express all the thoughts and emotions I’ve been having.

Regular readers will have noticed that I’ve been preoccupied with questions of speech and silence in the last eight weeks, for this very reason. Judaism is, if nothing else, a tribute to the magnificent possibilities of language. It’s probably why silence feels so immediately countercultural to so many Jews–even though Judaism has a rich tradition of teachings and practices of silence, many of which we teach here at IJS.

But we’re living in a moment when, especially thanks to social media, we may judge ourselves–and we are certainly judged by others–about both our speech and our silence, the words we say or write and the ones we don’t. In the last two months, I have received my share of critical feedback for personal or organizational statements that, in the eyes of the reader, failed to say what needed to be said–on behalf of Jewish Israelis, Arab Israelis, Palestinian Arabs, Jews confronting antisemitism, Muslims confronting Islamophobia, the kidnapped, the soldiers, the innocent civilians. Feedback has come from everyone from strangers to former students to close relatives. As a result, I have felt acutely aware of and careful with the words I’ve said and written—and with those I’ve left unexpressed. I have felt a kind of sensitivity, an intense critical gaze, peering over me and judging me both for the letters on the page and the spaces in between them.

To be sure, I’ve gotten much more positive feedback than negative. And I appreciate every piece of feedback, whether affirming or critical, as it’s a gift that enables me to learn and grow. But if, as the great leadership theorist Ron Heifetz teaches, leadership is the art of letting people down at a rate they can absorb, then–and I’ll say this on behalf of my fellow Jewish communal leaders–our speech acts today feel like an acute lesson in its limits. Language doesn’t seem capable of communicating all that we want and need to express. It often feels like I’m groping around in the dark, looking for words and expressions I can’t quite find, waiting for the sun to shine and illuminate them for me.

Parashat Vayishlach brings us to the climax of the story of Jacob, so much of which takes place at night. As Avivah Zornberg has noted, Jacob is a creature of the dark, the night: He steals Esau’s blessing from his blind father, Isaac, who lives in a kind of perpetual nighttime; his dream of the ladder connecting heaven and earth takes place at night; his own deception at the hands of Laban, resulting in his marriage to not only Rachel but her sister Leah too, happens at night; it’s at night that he paints Laban’s flocks, and it’s in the darkness that he flees Laban with his family. Now, as he prepares to encounter Esau, he is again awake in the middle of the night, making preparations.

It is notable, therefore, that Jacob’s famous wrestling match with the mysterious man/angel takes place as the sun is about to rise: “And he wrestled with him until the break of dawn” (Gen. 32:25), and “He said, ‘Let me go, for dawn is breaking,’” (v. 27). After the angel leaves, the Torah notes that “the sun rose upon him” (v. 32). Rashi picks up on a perhaps unusual detail in the Hebrew in this last verse: viyzrach lo hashemesh, literally “the sun shone for him.” Rashi seems puzzled about the word lo, for him. His first interpretation is that this is idiomatic, the way we might say that “the sun was shining on me” to mean that something good happened for us: “When we reached such-and-such a place, the sun shone on us.” In this case, it comes to say, perhaps, that the sun shone upon him and he was healed of the injury he sustained in his fight. Or, Rashi offers, that just as the sun had set when Jacob left home (Gen. 18:11), it now rose to greet him as he returned.

But perhaps the Torah is gesturing at the idea that, after a lifetime of living in the murkiness of the night, Jacob finally experienced the light that comes “seeing the Divine face to face” (v. 31), of arriving at not only a physical but a spiritual home. Perhaps Jacob is finally at home with himself—and thus prepared to encounter his twin brother not from a place of fear or lack, but from a grounded sense of abundance: “To see your face is like seeing the face of God,” he tells Esau. “I have everything” (33:10-11)—I am content, I am not afraid, I can embrace you wholeheartedly.

Despite the Rabbis’ midrashic and Talmudic interpretations, I think the plain meaning of the story is that Jacob and Esau both mature into a posture of generosity. They are willing to give one another the benefit of the doubt, to be charitable in both their speaking and their listening. We don’t know what might have led Esau to that, but we can see that, for Jacob, it comes about after the profound inner work that allows the shadows of the night to emerge into the warmth and clarity of sunshine. That’s something I’m working on for myself as a I read and listen to the words of others, and I hope it’s something you’re working on, too. As we make our way through our own long nights, we need all the help we can get. May we support one another on the journey toward the dawn.

I recently heard a podcast interview with Benjamin Wittes, the editor of a blog called Lawfare that I read every now and then. Wittes was talking about the role of context in determining the meaning of speech acts according to the law. He cited the following example: If an insurance salesman says to me, “You have a beautiful house, it would be a shame if something happened to it,” we can understand that as a perfectly normal thing to say. But if a mob boss says the same thing to me, we would understand that as a threat. That is to say, words often don’t have absolute meaning. Rather, we have to understand the context in which they are uttered in order to discern the meaning they convey.

I’ve been thinking about this issue of words and context a lot lately, in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war. There has been, of course, a great deal of public discussion of the meaning and context of the words, “From the river to the sea.” Likewise, we encounter questions about the context in which references to Amalek are invoked, or  the meaning of words like “humanitarian pause” or “ceasefire.” At the rally on the National Mall that I attended on Tuesday, I found myself thinking about how messages that are directed internally to the Jewish community are understood by people in other communities—or how words directed internally within other communities are heard and experienced by our own, given our particular stories and experience. Words like “Never Again” can evoke different emotional responses depending on our own history, who is saying them, where and when.

There is perhaps nothing Jewish tradition does better than consider the possible meanings of words. Torah, in its broadest meaning, is understood not only as the Five Books of Moses, but the thousands of years of interpretation of those books—and of the further interpretation and discussion of those interpretations. For Jews, the work of making and interpreting and understanding language is the holiest thing there is. It is what we mean—or, perhaps more accurately, one of the things I think we mean—when we say, as the Mishnah does, “The study of Torah is equivalent to all the other mitzvot put together.”

Parashat Toldot contains one of the murkiest, most mysterious passages in the Torah: Jacob’s deception of his elderly, blind father, Isaac, in order to steal his brother Esau’s blessing. One of the ways we can understand this story is as a reflection on the complexities of language and interpretation. We can read the story as the struggle of Isaac to understand clearly what is happening—and of Jacob to discern how to behave. As readers, we sense Isaac’s profound challenge: He seems to know something is off in this situation, as reflected in his repeated attempts to verify the identity of Jacob (who he thinks, and wants to believe, is Esau). We can sense Jacob’s struggle to carry out the task. And we can even sense the struggle we, as readers and interpreters, have in discerning the meaning of the story—this last perhaps most clearly when Isaac asks, “Who are you, my son,” and Jacob replies, “I am Esau, your firstborn.” Rashi, unable to live with the idea that Jacob lied so directly, strains credulity by parsing the verse, “I am, [and] Esau is your firstborn.” In the context of the story, such an interpretation is incredible. In the context of Rashi’s larger project, and his theological and ideological commitments, it’s understandable. Context is key.

One of the values I find in mindfulness practice is that it invites, even demands of me to pause and consider the context of words—both words I speak or write and words I hear or read. As I shared recently, I’ve been referring a lot lately to the Buddha’s five principles of right speech (and right listening): Are these words true? Are they timely? Are they gentle? Are they beneficial? Are they spoken with goodwill? Wartime is, almost by definition, one in which our capacity to create space between stimulus and response is reduced. Our world of social media, which is designed to feed and feed on our reactive impulses, intensifies that reality even more.

All of which suggests to me that we need to double down on our practice, to insist on more space and time in evaluating the words we see and hear, and the contexts in which we see and hear them, and crafting the words we put out into the world and the contexts in which we do so (and, it should go without saying, to reduce our time on social media).

So much depends on our words. A few words uttered by Jacob in this week’s Torah portion have an enormous effect on his own life and that of his descendants—right down to today. May our practice help us communicate wisely and listen with clarity and resilience.

Twenty-five years ago, right out of college, I lived in Jerusalem for a year. While I grew up with a very strong Jewish identity, I didn’t receive the kind of Jewish education that would allow me to study Talmud in the original Hebrew/Aramaic or to walk into a beit midrash and know what all the books on the shelf were, much less how to open them up and study from them. In college I met people who did have that kind of education, so I decided to spend my first year after graduation acquiring it. That took me to Jerusalem.

My mom had a friend from Ann Arbor whose son was my age–he went to the high school across town, so we didn’t know each other–and who was also spending the year in Jerusalem. His name was Chris, and his family was of Palestinian Arab ancestry. Chris had studied to be a journalist and had an internship that year at the Jerusalem Times, an English-language Arab newspaper. Our mothers suggested we meet. We did, and we became friends.

Chris spent a couple afternoons a week tutoring students at Bethlehem University in English. He invited me to join him and I was excited to go. These were the heady days between the Oslo Accords and the second intifada, the days of od yavo shalom aleinu. Transportation wasn’t difficult, though it did require bringing my passport along for a ride on a bus line serving the Arab community that left from just outside Damascus Gate. An Israeli soldier boarded the bus to check everyone’s papers on the return trip. I made the journey several times.

These were still the nascent days of email and well before social media, so I confess that I’ve fallen out of touch with the people I met then, including Chris. But a few memories stand out a quarter-century later, memories I find stirring in me these days.

The first is that, while I felt safe enough to go, I did not feel safe enough to identify as a Jew. The rest of the time I lived in Jerusalem I walked around wearing a kippah and flowing tzitzit. But as I approached Damascus gate, I took off the kippah and tucked the tzitzit into my pants. As soon as I got off the bus on Derekh Hevron, on the edge of the Jewish neighborhoods of south Jerusalem, the kippah went back on and the tzitzit came back out.

Related to this, I remember an encounter with a young woman at the university. At one point she asked me, “Are you Arab?” I told her I wasn’t, but I didn’t tell her I was Jewish, either. “Amazing. You look like an Arab.”

I remember disembarking from the bus and walking down the hill toward my apartment, the sun beginning to set over Jerusalem. And I remember feeling, even in those more hopeful days, this indescribably melancholy feeling: My bus ride had been less than ten miles; genetically, it seemed, I could pass for an Arab (and of course she could pass for a Jew); and yet these two societies felt worlds apart.

The story of Abraham prompts me to reflect on some elements of my own story here: the passing (in the form of Abraham trying to pass off Sarah as his sister); the so-close-yet-so-far nature of the relationship between Ishmael and Isaac and their descendants; questions of speech and silence, of honesty and something less than it; questions of fear and courage.

While Parashat Vayera contains the Greatest Hits of the story of Abraham–welcoming the angels, standing up for the people of Sodom, the Akedah–there’s a little story nestled within it that often gets overlooked. It comes just after Hagar and Ishmael are rescued in the wilderness and before the Binding of Isaac. It’s the story of Avimelech and Abraham resolving a land dispute. Set against the backdrop of their previous history, which involved deception and the threat of sexual violence, it’s all the more remarkable: Abraham and Avimelech are able establish a kind of working trust of each other. “The two of them made a covenant,” the Torah says (Gen. 21:27) and “Abraham resided in the land of the Philistines for many days” (v. 34).

Our work at IJS is not that of policy, so it seems far out of my lane to comment on military or political strategy. And in the fog of war and the age of quick takes and misinformation, I find myself doubling down on the importance of listening, discernment, and what I’ve come to call the silence of presence. Yet one clear thing I’ve found arising for me over the last few weeks is an increasingly urgent reminder of the foundational nature of mindfulness practice for peacemaking–both within ourselves and between each other.

Peace is made possible by, among other things, our capacity to be aware of, honest about, and yet not necessarily governed by our emotions. This is the bedrock of resilient listening. When we can practice mindful awareness grounded in compassion; when we can practice setting wise boundaries while grounding ourselves in love and interconnection; when we can practice tikkun hanefesh, repair of our own hearts and spirits, then and only then can we possibly begin to create the conditions for honesty, coexistence, and peace–the conditions for genuine tikkun haolam. 
 

When I was little, I remember I would usually wake up and come out to the kitchen to find my mother sitting there with her coffee, reading a book or the newspaper. She would often have a notebook beside her, and whatever she was reading was marked up with sticky notes. In later years, the books and sticky notes weren’t there as much, and I would find her with just the coffee. I asked her about it once, and she told me that she loved the quiet time in the morning, before everyone else was up. It was her time to be alone, to listen, to think.

Like mother, like son: My best writing time (the time I’m writing this, in fact) is invariably early in the morning before anyone else in the house is around (and with coffee, of course). Most mornings I come downstairs, feed the dog and the cat, put in my earbuds and do a meditation sit. It’s my time to be quiet, to be alone, to listen, to think, before the rest of my household, the rest of the world, wakes up.

I’ve grown to cherish this time, especially these days, because of the quiet, the silence. Perhaps that’s because, like many others, I’ve been preoccupied with questions of silence and speech of late: Who is speaking up, and who is being silent? The phrase, “their silence is deafening” is all over the place. I see accusations of sinful speech or silence a lot right now: This university president or that corporate executive was silent–they didn’t say anything, or they said something but were silent about something else, and that makes them a moral failure. This is the stage we’ve reached in the current crisis.

Particularly in the age of social media, I think a lot of us feel like we have to speak. Since I was a child, I’ve been taught Elie Wiesel’s words about silence always aiding the oppressor, and so I feel a moral duty to speak. I feel Professor Wiesel’s quiet, intense moral gaze looking over me and asking, in his powerful whisper of a voice, “Josh, are you remaining silent?”

Yet Elie Wiesel was also a Hasid, and he knew the value of silence. Sama d’ukla mashtuka, silence is a balm for everything, says the Talmud (Megillah 18a). I imagine, if I were having a conversation with him, that he would have reminded me that there are multiple kinds of silence: Silence of absence, yes, but also silence of presence. There is a silence of fear, and there is a silence of courage. There is a silence that communicates disconnection, and there are silences that embody deep relatedness. And there is the silence of gestation, of creation, of possibility: The silence of the early morning, the silence that comes before the Creator says, “Let there be light.”

One of the things that makes the story of Abraham so intriguing is the seeming inconsistency between when Abraham speaks and when he is silent. Most famously we have his speech in protest at God’s planned destruction of Sodom (“Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” Gen. 18:25) and his silence when commanded to sacrifice his son (22:2-3). These both come in next week’s Torah portion. But we find intriguing moments of speech and silence this week, too: his plea on behalf of Ishmael (“O, that Ishmael might live by your favor!” in 17:18) versus his silence at God’s very first command, to leave everything he knows behind and go to an unknown land–and versus his deceitful speech, which is a kind of absence-through-speech, with Pharaoh (repeated with Avimelech next week) to say that Sarah is his sister and not his wife.

I’m of the last generation to come of age before the internet and social media. (We still learned how to use a card catalog in school.) Perhaps that conditions me to try to recall what life can be like when we don’t feel the constant need to make statements, to speak, when we can create room for silences of presence, silences of possibility. I don’t presume to have a full answer to the problem of speech and silence right now, and it seems to me Abraham, too, was unclear. In some moments, speech is appropriate; others call for silence. And, as Abraham shows us, sometimes, perhaps much of the time, we may not get it right. Perhaps that can help us be a little more gentle with ourselves.

By way of conclusion, I want to share that I’ve found myself going to a core Buddhist teaching in the last few weeks as I’ve been reflecting on these questions of speech and silence, the practice of shemirat hadibbur or mindful speech, namely the Buddha’s five principles for right speech. These are often formulated as questions, and I find they can be useful both as I’m contemplating my words and as I’m listening to the words of others:

1. 1. 1. Are these words timely?
      2. Are they true?
      3. Are they gentle?
      4. Are they beneficial?
      5. Are they spoken with goodwill?

Jews are a people who love language. We love words. We believe the world was created through an act of speech, and our tradition conceives of every subsequent act of speech as an act of profound power–to create and nurture, to hurt or destroy. In this time of so much pain and difficulty, and in this age of so much speech, I think we could all benefit from more mindful silence for the sake of more mindful, creative, and life-sustaining speech.

On Monday morning a headline crossed my newsfeed: A six-year old boy in suburban Chicago had been brutally stabbed to death by his family’s landlord. His mother was severely injured while trying to protect him. 

The story was tragic. What made it even more significant was that the boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was, like his mother, from the Palestinian community. While the landlord was–I hate to say it, thank God–not Jewish, the authorities are treating the murder as a hate crime because it seems the landlord was activated, in part, by the Hamas pogrom in Israel on October 7.

I live in the Chicago area, and I knew right away that, if possible, I wanted to attend the boy’s funeral. I felt called to go for a few reasons: As an American, I’m heartbroken and outraged that this would happen to any family, or that anyone would feel unsafe because of who they are; as a parent, I’m shattered at the family’s loss; as a Jew and a Jewish leader, particularly in the present moment, I wanted the family and the larger Palestinian community in Chicago and the United States to know that I bear witness to their pain. If there is anything we should be able to come together on, it is that the death of children is unspeakable sorrow. We should be able to show up for one another for that. And at a time when I feel so powerless to help my own people in Israel, this act of humanity and bridge-building felt like a small concrete action I could take.

I went with a few colleagues. As we approached the neighborhood where the mosque was located, it was evident this was a huge event. Traffic was backed up. We had to park on a side street and walk ten minutes, along with hundreds of others streaming toward the mosque. The mosque filled up, and the crowd spilled outside into the parking lot. It felt like thousands of people were there.

Since I went, some have asked me whether I felt unsafe. The answer is no. In fact, I was warmly welcomed as an honored guest. Dozens of people came up to me to shake my hand and thank me for coming. A few of us hugged. Everyone I spoke with seemed to share the sentiment that what the vast majority of people want is simply to be able to raise their families and live in their communities in peace. That felt like a small glimmer of hope.

Parashat Noach is, among other things, a story of violence, terror, survival, and rebuilding. As I referred to in my post last week, it is part of the Torah’s larger meditation on the fraught nature of siblinghood, the profound difficulty humans seem to have in living together in peace. And, in the concluding story of the Tower Babel, it offers ground for reflecting on the values and complexities of languages and cultural identities–dynamics that were all present in the moment, that are all present now. There is a reason we read this book again and again: “hafoch bah v’hafoch bah, ki hakol bah–turn it and turn it, for all is within it.” 

After the flood, God promises Noah not to destroy the world again and establishes that the rainbow will serve as a sign of that commitment. Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav (Likkutei Halakhot Shabbat 7:70) comments that the rainbow (KESHET) evokes the shofar blasts of Rosh Hashanah (teKiah, SHevarim, Truah). There are many ways we might interpret this connection: A call to repentance, a call to duty. What stands out to me is that both the shofar blasts and the rainbow contain within them a full spectrum: of emotion, experience, language, culture, people. They ask of us: Can we make room for all of that within our own hearts? Can we find a way to live with ourselves–and with one another? For that, at the end of the day, is the basic question of the covenant, whether it is the Covenant of Sinai or the Covenant of Noah. The stakes of these questions, as we are being so painfully reminded right now, are life and death.

I’ll conclude with a note about the kippah I wore (pictured): I generally only wear this kippah on Yom Kippur. On most other days I wear a black one. But at the funeral I wanted to make sure people saw I was there, that a rabbi showed up. I hope in doing so I was able to effect some modicum calling us all, inviting us all,  back to the demands, expectations, and possibilities of the Covenant of Noah. I hope I was able to perform a small act of kiddush Hashem, a sanctification of the divine name, in a time when that name has been so horribly desecrated.

May all our children know no more suffering, may our families and communities know no more sorrow.