Before anything else, I want to say thank you to the many readers who wrote last week to offer their condolences on the loss of my cousin Julian. My family and I have been surrounded in love and support. It means the world to all of us. Thank you.

Among the reasons I wish my father was still alive is that I know how much he would delight in observing me coming to appreciate lessons he offered—and that I resisted in my youth, when, like plenty of others, I was convinced I knew everything better than he did. There are small things, like waiting to run the dishwasher until you have a full load. There are bigger things, like the chart he once drew for me plotting left- and right-wing political views on the horizontal axis, and democracy and autocracy on the vertical—a reminder of the limitations and imperfections of political parties, political systems, and human beings.

While my dad wasn’t one to say, “I told you so,” he did like quoting a line from Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner’s “The Two Thousand- and Thirteen-Year-Old Man” (sequel to the original and a favorite in our home): “We mock the thing we are to be.” Yep.

In my teaching these days, I find the phrase “hold it lightly” coming up a lot. A classic image in Buddhist teaching is holding a quail: if you hold the bird too tightly in your hands, you’ll crush it. If you open your hands too much, it will fly away. So, be like Goldilocks: Hold it just right. That is, hold it, but hold it lightly. Don’t cling—but also, don’t necessarily fully let go either.

I find that image applicable in so many realms. It’s helpful in my meditation practice, where my aim is to be gentle with my mind, body, feelings, and sensations. It’s helpful in relationships of all kinds, from family to customer service reps. It’s helpful in text study (which is, after all, another kind of relationship) where I find it reflects another image I’ve long taught, that of a game of tetherball: If the text is the pole and the reader is the ball, then you want to stay tethered, but you also want some dynamic tension in the rope—otherwise there’s no game.

Two Hasidic teachings on one of Parashat Shoftim’s most famous lines, “Justice, justice shall you pursue,” (Deuteronomy 16:18) reflect this sensibility of holding lightly. First, the Sefat Emet:

“The Torah writes ‘pursue’ (tirdof). This is because it is impossible to arrive fully at the ultimate reality of truth within this world of falsehood (Alma D’Shikra). Therefore, one must always pursue justice—to know that one has not yet reached perfect truth. Rather, when one pursues justice in this world, one attains it in its complete perfection in the World to Come. And this is what is written: ‘…so that you may live and inherit [the land]’—which gestures at the World to Come, a world that is entirely life.”

The Sefat Emet reminds us, first of all, that while truth is indeed the ground of reality, it’s also impossible to arrive at fully in this world. Thus, the Torah tells us to pursue justice—which is founded on truth—so as to help us remember that truth is ever-elusive. So, hold it, but hold it lightly. Keep some healthy humility even as you pursue what is true and right.

Which brings us to Rabbi Zev Wolf of Zbarazh (d. 1822), a student of the Ba’al Shem Tov, who offers a related teaching on this verse:

“The Evil Inclination (Yetzer Hara) has many ways to trap a person in its net. Just as it uses schemes to entice the human heart toward wickedness, so too does it sometimes entice a person toward excessive righteousness—so that one will try to be an absolute tzaddik. Against this, the Torah warns us: ‘Justice, justice’—justice in moderation— ‘shall you pursue.’ Do not practice excessive piety, for sometimes this too is among the tactics of the Evil Inclination. ‘Do not be overly righteous’ (Ecclesiastes 7:16).”

Both of these teachings emphasize the point of holding, but holding lightly: pursuing truth, but recognizing that we can never fully grasp it; judging but not becoming judgmental. In this season of Elul, we might extend it: Holding ourselves and others accountable, while also making room for grace and forgiveness. And in this increasingly violent world of political and cultural polarization, we might also apply it to our bigger conflicts.

All of that work begins in our own hearts and minds. May our preparation for the coming New Year help us do it together.

For Reflection & Conversation

• How easy or hard do you find it to hold things lightly? Are there certain things that are easier or harder for you to hold lightly? If so, why? What might it feel like to soften your grip? What might it feel like to hold on a little tighter?

When folks ask me these days, “How’s your mom?” my answer is still, “She’s the world’s best Alzheimer’s patient.” But her world definitely feels like it’s shrinking. We’re approaching a decade since she was diagnosed. While she has blessedly been spared the kind of major personality change many dementia patients can experience, our conversations don’t have much room to roam. We stay close to talking about the meal that will be served next on her floor, what I’m up to today, and, when I visit, listening to music together.

At this stage I often get the question, “Does she still recognize you?” That’s hard to answer. She definitely doesn’t recognize most people, though she is totally friendly to them and excited to welcome guests. She can still access key conversational scripts like, “Where did you grow up?” or “What do you do for a living?” And she answers most statements with something like, “Oh, that’s terrific!” or “Isn’t that great?!” (You can take Happy largely out of the world, but you can’t take the happy out of Happy.)

As for whether she recognizes me in particular, I’ve concluded that we’re in this kind of nether zone where it’s just kind of hazy. She knows that if she presses a button on her speed dial, she can find a person on the other end of the line whose name is Josh, and she can tell me that that person is her son. But it’s not always clear when I visit that, in her mind, the person visiting (me) is the same person as on the phone a few minutes before.

For me, by far the most important practice has been letting go of expectations. I just try to follow her lead and respond with what I sense she needs and not get caught on what logic might be operating in my brain. Once I’ve let go of the idea that she thinks of me as “my son Josh” in the same way you or I might utter that phrase, I find it’s much easier to focus and do the mitzvah I’m here to do. It’s not about me—it’s about her.

All of that has led me to reflect more on the nature of memory and consciousness. We know these days that, even in healthy folks, memory is a really tricky thing. In its own way, this part of my life seems like it’s commenting on some of the questions swirling around AI: What is hallucination, what’s true, and when does that matter?

Anyone who has tried to sit with mindful awareness of their thoughts for even a few minutes will likely agree that consciousness is quite a mystery. What is it to be lucid? What does a healthy memory or consciousness look like? It’s not so simple.

A story is told of Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Rabinowicz of Peshischa (1766-1813), “Hayehudi Hakadosh,” the “Holy Jew,” when he went to visit his teacher, Yaakov Yitzchak of Lublin. He found the rebbe distraught and asked why he was so low. “I have transgressed the negative commandment, ‘Be careful lest you forget YHVH your God’ (Deut. 8:11),” he answered. “For one brief moment I allowed my attention to slip and didn’t give my full consciousness to the existence of the Holy One.”

The Yehudi Hakadosh responded, “We find taught in the Mishnah (Peah 6:6) that if one forgot a sheaf of wheat in the field, it is normally considered to be lost—the owner can’t go back to get it but rather has to leave it in the field. But if it is so large as to be two seahs [about 24 liters], it is not considered forgotten. Why? Because something that is good is not forgotten—if one forgets it, they will immediately remember it. ‘Forgotten but in the end remembered’ is not considered forgotten. So too in your case: You have not transgressed the commandment, for you immediately remembered.”

The rebbe replied, “You have brought me back to life.”

Perhaps the most basic gesture of mindfulness meditation is this: Set an intention, e.g. to be mindfully aware of your breathing. Try to do that. And then, when you inevitably notice that your attention has wandered, gently bring your attention back to your intention. Rinse and repeat.

Years ago, my friend and colleague, Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell, changed my life when he pointed out (in our online Gift of Awareness introduction to Jewish mindfulness meditation course) that this process is the very same one we practice during the High Holidays: it’s teshuva. We set a kavana, an intention. We miss the mark (chet, sin, literally means missing the mark, as in archery). We become aware of that and remember our intention (zekhira—remembering). At that moment, we have the opportunity to return to our intention (teshuva means return).

Like I said, a life-changing teaching.

Making such a choice is often lubricated by an underlying posture of hesed, compassionate love, for ourselves—or for whoever we may seek to be in relationship with. That is what I hear in the Yehudi Hakadosh’s words to his rebbe: Your intention is to be present and aware at all times. Inevitably, you will miss the mark. Given that this is hardwired into our human system, I think we can understand the teaching to be that it is neither possible nor healthy to imagine that inevitable human forgetfulness is outside the scope of Divine compassion.

Maybe it’s not an accident that my own mindfulness practice has deepened so much precisely in these years of my mother’s dementia. On pretty much a daily basis, I find myself living in that basic teshuva pattern: intention, miss the mark, notice, return. For her and for me, I find that holding it all lightly is essential. I try to notice and let go of impulses to judge either of us harshly or reactively. In doing so, hopefully I help make room for both of us to remember the love and compassion that’s never forgotten.

For Reflection & Conversation

• What does this reflection evoke for you? Are there relationships or aspects of yourself to which you’d like to bring more compassion? What, if anything, gets in the way of doing so? Who or what might help you to soften or dissolve those barriers?

Years ago, when I was a rabbi on a college campus, I found that one of the most wonderful parts of my job was when a student would come to me with a crisis of faith. “College costs so much,” I would tell them. “If it doesn’t provoke at least one serious crisis of faith, you should ask for your money back.”

I said this, in part, because of my own experience as a student. In college, I lived across the street from the Hillel building. I have always been an early riser. Put those two facts together and it was easy for me to be a mainstay at morning minyan. I went dutifully every day for my first three years.

But in the fall of my senior year, in a moment I can still feel in my kishkes, I found myself davening, reciting the shemona esrei, the central prayer of the service, and I felt the bottom fall out from underneath me. Whoosh. Like Diana Morales trying to be an ice cream cone in Mr. Karp’s class in “A Chorus Line,” I realized that I felt nothing. With the passionate morality of a college student, I judged myself a hypocrite, put down my siddur, wrapped up my tefillin, turned and walked out of the room. I didn’t come back for weeks.

Decades later, I can still remember the profound feeling of estrangement of that moment. This practice, which had been such a home to me for years, suddenly felt foreign, and I felt out of place.

Eventually, I would come to recognize that experience through the work of the scholar Sharon Parks, whose book Big Questions, Worthy Dreams was and remains enormously influential to me. “To become a young adult in faith,” Parks writes, “is to discover in a critically aware, self-conscious manner the limits of inherited or otherwise socially received assumptions about how life works—what is ultimately true and trustworthy, and what counts—and to recompose meaning and faith on the other side of that discovery.” Emerging adulthood, she suggests, is a period marked by “transformations by which we may become fittingly at home in the universe.” (I note here that in both the phrases Big Questions and “at home in the universe,” Sharon seems to have seeded ideas that would become quite central to my own meaning-making and work in subsequent years—for which I am grateful.)

As I have gotten older, I have also come recognize that this cycle continues. While the stage of young adulthood might have its own particular contours, we continue to recompose our experience of home—what Parks and I would both characterize as faith—at every stage of life.

The Ninth of Av is centrally about the loss of home. Eicha, “Alas, lonely sits the city once full of people,” opens the Book of Lamentations. Jerusalem is described as “without ones to comfort her,” Judah “gone into exile,” the Jewish people “without a resting place.” Where once they—we—had experienced these dimensions of home, the profound destruction of this day has shattered that to pieces.

Rebuilding, reconstituting home, is a physical act, of course. The return described by the Psalmist, “When YHVH brought back those who returned to Zion” (Psalm 126), which we traditionally sing every Shabbat—that is undoubtedly a physical return, a geographic and material recomposition of home.

But/and: It is a spiritual return as well.

In Parashat Vaetchanan, Moses forecasts that “YHVH will scatter you among the peoples.” But, he says, “from there you will seek, and you will find YHVH your God, if only you search with all your heart and soul.” (Deuteronomy 4:27-29). Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa comments, “This is finding yourself. For you should know that you do not need to search for YHVH anywhere except inside your own heart, for divinity is within it. ‘And from there you will seek’—first, search there, in all of Creation, and you will find that the Holy One is in your heart, if only you will refine the traits of your character.”

One of the lessons of Tisha B’Av, perhaps, is that if we don’t pay attention to the home for divinity within our hearts, our physical homes can become empty, something like an idol. A synagogue without a soul is just a building. Jerusalem without life-affirming character traits is a hollow shell. A Jewish body mouthing words without feeling or connection is unfulfilled.

Which brings me back to my story. How did I find my way back to minyan—and start to recompose that sense of home? I tried studying Maimonides’s 13 Principles of Faith with a rabbi, but that didn’t really help. I read books, to no avail. Ultimately it was a conversation with a friend who wasn’t actively Jewish. “You know where you come from,” he said to me. “That is an amazing inheritance.”

What he was really saying to me was this: Focus less on the externalities for a minute and listen to your heart, and you’ll recognize you have a home. You might need to change things a bit—some rearranging, some redecorating, maybe even moving to a different house or a different neighborhood—but you have a home.

On the Jewish calendar, we’ve begun our ascent from this low point of dislocation and homelessness towards the renewed relationship with home we are to experience in the sukkah. May these weeks be ones of reflection, repair, relationship, and renewal—for each of us individually, and for all of us together.

For Reflection & Conversation

• When, if ever, have you felt your faith really challenged? What did it feel like? Who or what helped you navigate it? How, if at all, did it lead to a different understanding of home for you?