One of my favorite jokes in the (heilige/holy) Big Book of Jewish Humor is the one about a man from Warsaw who is in Chelm on a business trip. As he walks down the street, he’s stopped by Yossel the chimney sweep.

“Zalman!” cries Yossel. “What happened to you? It’s so long since I’ve seen you. Just look at yourself.”

“But wait,” replies the stranger, “I’m—”

“Never mind that,” says Yossel. “I can’t get over how much you’ve changed. You used to be such a big man, built like an ox. And now you’re smaller than I am. Have you been sick?”

“But wait,” replies the stranger, “I’m—”

“Never mind that,” says Yossel. “And what happened to your hair? You used to have a fine head of black hair, and now you’re completely bald. And your mustache, so black and dapper. What happened to it? You know, I don’t see how I ever recognized you. Zalman, what has become of you?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you,” the man replies. “I’m not Zalman.”

“Oy,” replies Yossel. “You’ve gone and changed your name as well!” 

Aptly, you can find this tale on the internet as a case study of the humor trope “thoroughly mistaken identity.” Part of what makes it such a successful joke (you have to admit it’s hilarious) is that, like most really effective humor, it touches a deep vein in our human experience. In this case, that vein is perhaps the profound contingency of recognition. While “Zalman,” who is already traveling, does not seem to experience dislocation, Yossel invests everything into making this man into someone he recognizes. He’s so committed to that story that he never gives it up, even when “Zalman” tells him, “I’m not Zalman!” That is, Yossel is so invested in this stranger being Zalman that he denies both the truth (he’s not Zalman) and the most logical explanation for the man’s claim (the problem is in his own perception).

This issue of recognition came to mind earlier this week as I read the Book of Ruth over Shavuot. In the second chapter, Boaz spots a stranger gleaning in his field. This itself isn’t a problem–the produce that falls to the ground during reaping (leket in Hebrew) is specifically designated by the Torah for the poor. But when Boaz inquires of the young man supervising the harvest, “Who does that girl belong to?” he responds with more information than Boaz asked: “She’s a Moabite who returned with Naomi,” he tells Boaz. This immediately injects some tension into the scene, as leket is technically reserved only for the Israelite poor. (The Rabbis of the Talmud clarify later that the practice is to support the non-Jewish poor alongside the Jewish poor “for the sake of peace.”)

In one of the many moments of exemplary hesed in the book, Boaz tells Ruth that she is more than welcome to continue to glean in his field, that he has ordered everyone else to be good to her, and that she’s even invited to drink from the water that the workers have drawn. Ruth, seemingly overcome, falls on her face and says to Boaz, “Why are you so kind to me? You have recognized me even though I am a stranger!” (2:10) The English here doesn’t do it justice. The last three words of Ruth’s statement in Hebrew are pure poetry: l’hakireini v’anochi nochria. 

In many years of reading Ruth, I don’t remember these words jumping out at me the way they did this year. l’hakir—to recognize—and nochria—foreign woman or stranger—share the same letters: nun, kaf, and yod. And while they may not be technically related etymologically, they are undoubtedly drawn together here to point up the deep intertwining between them. Because what is that makes or unmakes someone as foreign, strange, different? Recognition or lack thereof. A stranger is a stranger until we realize, or decide, that they aren’t. With the act of recognition, we transform the unknown into the known. Boaz, holding the power of recognition in his word, brings Ruth over a hidden but no less powerful border.

Reading Ruth on Shavuot always comes at the time we read Parashat Naso, which, like the larger opening of the Book of Numbers, is concerned with establishing boundaries and distinctions: In the camp, between the tribes, down to the intimate lines that delineate trust and distrust in marriage (see: Sotah) and the ways we can make ourselves, temporarily, into a different kind of social-spiritual being (see: Nazir). Yet the story of Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz lingers in the background, like an earlier movement in a symphony. As we consider all these ways that structure is imposed, that story might prompt us to be sensitive to the ways in which those structures–who is in and who is out, who is a stranger and who we consider known–are made and sustained, and how they are undone and refashioned.

Naso culminates in a twelve-day official parade, with each head of tribe bringing an identical offering of riches to fully inaugurate the altar of the Mishkan. We can imagine the newspapers of the day covering the pomp and pageantry. Similarly, Ruth culminates by situating its heroes in a grand genealogy that links its protagonists with their eventual descendant, King David.

Yet I think both Ruth and our Torah portion also call us to look far beyond the headlines, to the more quotidian levels on which we live our daily lives. They ask us to consider, mindfully and reflectively, some timeless and timely questions: Who do we recognize and treat with hesed, and who do we call a foreigner and treat more harshly? What does it take for us to trust, and to earn the trust of others? And what might we do to bring about a world in which we can all feel safe enough to practice the hesed of our exemplary forebears?

On erev Shavuot 1993, a Volkswagen van pulled up outside our house in Ann Arbor. I was finishing my junior year in high school, and we were preparing for the holiday. An unfamiliar older couple exited van and came to the door.

I honestly don’t remember the interaction that followed, but the long and short of it is that this was my father’s brother Arthur and his wife Kate. They had driven from their home in Montana. Art was dying and he wanted to see my father before he passed away.

My Dad was the youngest of three children. And while my brothers and I knew our Aunt Marilyn, who moved out to California early in her adult life, we didn’t hear much about our Uncle Arthur. I remember seeing a small black and white photo of a young Lou (i.e. Dad) and his much taller older brother Art, who was wearing a sweater with a big S on it—for Michigan State, but that’s about it. We never really learned the story. It had something to do with Arthur’s being 11 years older than our dad, living in Montana (even more remote than California), and (probably, given the known family dynamics) having married Kate, who wasn’t Jewish. Like many other Jewish families of immigrant parents at that time, that could be the cause of a tremendous rupture. Now, as Arthur was dying, there was an attempt at reconciliation.

All I really remember of the days that followed was awkwardness. Arthur came to shul, and I remember feeling a mix of befuddlement, dislocation, and annoyance—which, as a father, I can now see as totally predictable teenage behavior. I don’t remember having a real conversation with him or Kate, just practicing a lot of avoidance. And I don’t remember really processing any of it with my Dad after they left after a couple days. But looking back, and having experienced my Dad’s death 25 years later, I can appreciate that even the act of welcoming Art and Kate into our home was a big deal for all of them. I’d like to think some repair occurred, even if it wasn’t obvious to me how.

I’d also like to think it wasn’t quite an accident that this visit took place on Shavuot, which is imbued with such a melange of valences and impulses. There is, of course, the inclusiveness of Shavuot. It is the day we read the Book of Ruth, a paradigmatic story of chesed, the force of loving connection that sees beyond boundaries (in Ruth’s particular case, the boundary of her status as a Moabite who is prohibited by the Torah from joining the Israelite people—but who, of course, does and becomes the ancestor of King David and the messiah). And this is the day when we re-experience the revelation at Mount Sinai, when, according to the Midrash, every person heard the voice of the Divine in a way custom-tailored to them. It’s a day for celebrating the multivocality of Torah, a day whose central observance is no more and no less than delighting in the overflowing storehouse of riches of our textual tradition, our inheritance.

Yet revelation is not only a happy event. It can, perhaps even should, be an overwhelming one. “All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they fell back and stood at a distance. ‘You speak to us,’ they said to Moses, ‘and we will obey; but let not God speak to us, lest we die'” (Exodus 20:16). There is disorder here, synesthesia: “they saw that which should be heard — something which is impossible to see on any other occasion,” as Rashi explains. He adds, “Startled, they moved back twelve miles, a distance equal to the length of their camp.” Revelation is not simply a warm embrace. It is that—and, in the same breath, something that pushes us back, causes us to recoil because it is so beyond the capacity of our human senses. It is a moment of both speech and silence, when everything—everything—is expressed through the utterance of the vowelless, noiseless aleph of Anochi, “I am YHVH your God.”

It’s easy to allow maamad har sinai, the moment of revelation, to be an abstraction, an idea. We can play with it as an intellectual exercise. We can read our texts and experience the delight of our minds lighting up at the stimulation. But a fuller engagement and reckoning will move us on many more and deeper registers as we experience contradictory gestures: both chesed and gevurah (unnboundedness and limitation), netzach and hod (strength and flexibility), all the worlds through which we have journeyed these seven weeks of the Omer. That journey has served as preparation for our encounter on Shavuot.

Every year before Shavuot we start reading the Book of Numbers, which begins with an instruction to Moses to take a census, counting the Israelites b’mispar shemot, according to the “number of their names.” The medieval Italian commentator Rabbi Obadia Sforno suggests that this unusual formulation suggests that each Israelite was counted not only by number, but with a recognition of their unique individuality. Perhaps there’s a Shavuot charge there for each of us as well: To encounter anew, through this moment of Revelation, the fullness of our existence in relationship with the Divine, with life, with one another, with ourselves—and, in the process, to tend what is broken, heal what is in pain, renew and redeem our lives and the world.

Last Friday our family experienced a mini ingathering of the exiles: Our oldest came home for the summer, our middle one returned from nine months on a gap year program, our youngest didn’t have a classmate’s b-mitzvah to attend. And so, for the first time since last summer, our whole crew was around the table for Shabbat dinner. However briefly (I left on a business trip Sunday morning), we got to feel a special sense of at-homeness that can happen when all the chickens are in the coop.

Of course, having everyone at home isn’t all sunshine, rainbows, and lollipops. Everyone needs to eat, and everyone has different foods they like or don’t like, so the regular “Have you had any thoughts about dinner?” text exchange my wife and I have (we try to plan, we really do) becomes that much more complicated (and expensive). There are negotiations about who gets the car, who will do the dishes, who will mow the lawn. As others who have returned to their childhood homes as adults might have experienced, there can be a bit of reversion to senior year of high school behavior patterns—among both parents and children. And yet, as others who have welcomed home adult children may have felt, I find it’s a wonderful problem to have (for a little while—and then it’s nice when they go back out in the world and do their things).

I write and speak regularly about the basic definition of spirituality that I’ve developed: It’s our capacity to feel deeply at home in the universe. While Shabbat in the physical home where I live is always a significant spiritual moment, I experience an even richer sense of being at home when the people I care about most are there with me. And I think they do too.

Perhaps in anticipation of the journey toward the land of Canaan that the Israelites will resume soon after we begin the Book of Numbers, the closing chapters of Leviticus offer some of the most stirring reflections on what it means to be at-home—not only on an individual level, but on the level of society. This is where we are instructed about the sabbatical year, applying the practice of Shabbat not only to our individual homes, but to the larger collective home: letting the land itself rest, releasing indentured servants, cancelling debts (in the Deuteronomic version, at least).

In addition, every fifty years comes the yovel, or Jubilee year. “Count off seven sabbaths of years—seven times seven years—so that the seven sabbaths of years amount to a period of forty-nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.” (Lev. 25:8-10) During this Jubilee year, not only does the land rest, and not only do the people rest, but something even larger happens: dror, liberty. Specifically, the Torah states, “It shall be a jubilee for you; each one of you is to return to his family property and each to his own clan.” Land sales are effectively cancelled, and everyone is to return to the plot of land from which their ancestors came. It is, in effect, pressing the reset button on society.

In his commentary on this passage, Rabbi Judah Loew (the Maharal of Prague, 1520-1609) explains why yovel is proclaimed not on Rosh Hashanah, as we might expect, but on the tenth of the month of Tishrei, Yom Kippur: “The Jubilee and Yom Kippur—the two are really one: For the Jubilee is the return of each individual to their original state, to be as it was in the beginning. And so too with Yom Kippur: everyone returns to their original state. As the Holy Blessed One atones for them, they return to their original state.” (Gur Aryeh Behar, s.v. “M’mashma”)

The Maharal highlights the idea that just as the Jubilee is a more potent version of the sabbatical—seven times seven years, a sabbatical of sabbaticals—Yom Kippur is also described (in last week’s Torah portion) as Shabbat Shabbaton, an even more concentrated version of Shabbat, as it were. What they share in common is that they are both moments of the deepest homecoming: Yovel in a physical and political sense, Yom Kippur in spiritual and social sense.

My colleague Rabbi Marc Margolius likes to say that Jewish mindfulness practice is about “microdosing Shabbat”—creating moments of pause and return-to-center not only every seven days, but every seven moments. I think that’s true. And, as we close the Book of Leviticus, I think the Torah reminds us that this practice is not only meant to help us feel at home in our bodies, minds, and emotions so that we can weather the storm; it’s ultimately directed toward a vision of social renewal and transformation in which all of us sense that we have a place, that we’re deeply at home in the universe, held in the embrace of the Holy One.

Last Thursday and Friday were, hands down, the best days in Chicago social media history. Why? Because, in the words of the ginormous headline in the Sun-Times Friday morning, the papal conclave had elected “Da Pope.” Robert Prevost, born on Chicago’s south side, became, overnight, Pope Leo XIV–and Chicago, where I live, was here for it.

The memes were flying: The Wiener Circle, one of Chicago’s many beloved (treif) sausage vendors, posted an image of their marquee: “Canes nostros ipse comedit” (translation: “He has eaten our dogs”). “Chicago produced a pope before a quarterback who throws for 4,000 yards” (a reference to the Bears’ long and miserable history of quarterbacks). “God bless Pope Leo XIV! Since he is from Chicago, I heard that of the 133 Cardinals that voted, he received 140 votes!” I saw an AI-generated image of the Pope wearing imaginary Chicago Bears-branded papal garments with the caption, “Popes from Chicago:1. Popes from Green Bay: 0. I rest my case.” It was spectacular.

While Chicagoans, understandably, are fascinated by the new pope (and fascinated isn’t the right word for it–it’s probably closer to the Yiddish term “schepping nachas”), I’ve noticed that people from all walks of life, whether or not they’re Catholic, seem to be really taken with the pomp and ceremony surrounding a papal election in general. The success of the movie “Conclave”–even many of the cardinals watched it as preparation, apparently–testifies to that.

Perhaps part of the fascination, for Jews at any rate, is that so much of the papal office seems to be drawn from our own kohen gadol, or high priest, as described in the Torah. Most notably, of course, he wears white all the time (even a white kippah!)–a white robe, a white sash, a white mitre. The office of pope seems designed to draw on the conception of the kohen gadol: the holiest person among holy people. So while we no longer have a high priest, my guess is there is something about seeing someone who taps into that same vein that touches us as Jews.

Parashat Emor opens with a description of some key rules for the kohanim in general, and for the high priest in particular: Who they can marry, how they have to cut their hair, who they’re allowed to bury (since, according to the Torah, contact with a dead body conveys ritual impurity). While regular priests are subject to pretty strict limits in all these areas, the high priest, predictably, encounters even greater constraints. Most notably, perhaps, the Torah instructs that the high priest “shall not go in where there is any dead body; he shall not defile himself even for his father or mother” (Leviticus 21:11). 

It seems important to point out right away that, in reserving this level of stringency for the high priest, the Torah throws into high relief that this is not an expectation for the rest of the Israelites, i.e. that we are not even remotely to think of ourselves as failures in comparison. If anything, I find myself experiencing some compassion for the kohen gadol at the idea that the ceremony of his office would prevent him from properly mourning for those he loves. 

Yet later in the Torah we find that there exists a mechanism where the rest of us can voluntarily take on some of these stringencies: the institution of the nazirite. The Mishnah notes the parallel: “A High Priest and a nazirite may not become ritually impure even to bury their deceased relatives. However, they become impure to bury a corpse with no one to bury it” (Nazir 7:1). While the Rabbis generally seem to frown on the practice of taking nazirite vows, the fact that the institution of the nazirite exists, and that it holds out a way for regular folks to experience the quasi-monastic life of a priest, seems like it’s meant to teach us something. 

Perhaps that something is the intuitive need we may experience for depth and significance in our spiritual practice. On its own, the way of the Torah is meant to be a meaningful spiritual path: we eat special foods (discussed later in Emor); we mark special time through Shabbat and the Jewish calendar (also discussed later in Emor); we hold our possessions lightly and share what we have with all who need it through the practices of tzedakah (the subject of next week’s Torah portion). When these practices become routine, though, we may feel a stirring toward something more, something deeper, something renewing. In ancient times, that may have resulted in taking the vows of a nazir; today it might lead us to go on retreat.

I wonder whether the collective fascination with the pope might reflect some of this too. Though our political leaders today might be a particular case study, I think it’s safe to say that such leaders have more rarely than frequently been our spiritual role models. Nor, for that matter, have many popes, or perhaps even high priests in their day. Yet we seem to have a natural thirst, a desire to project images of leadership that reflect holiness, sacredness, spiritual depth and significance. I think we do that because, deep down, a voice within us wants that for us. And I would suggest that the Torah reminds us that the act of projection may, in fact, be a distraction. As Moses himself reminds us at the end of his life: That spiritual significance we seek isn’t in heaven or across the sea–or, perhaps, in the guy in the white robes. “It is very close to you–on your lips and in your heart, that you may do it” (Deuteronomy 30:14).

My very favorite TED talk is by the Israeli conductor Itay Talgam. It’s called “Lead Like the Great Conductors.” In 20 minutes, Talgam shows clips of some of the greats of the twentieth century: Richard Strauss, Carlos Kleiber, Riccardo Muti (who is still alive and well, conducting here in Chicago and around the world), Herbert Von Karajan, and ultimately Leonard Bernstein, who was Talgam’s teacher and who he regards as an exemplar of leadership.

The talk closes with Talgam playing a memorable clip of Bernstein conducting the final movement of Haydn’s Symphony No. 88 using only his face. The lesson being: When you’re doing everything right as a leader, you should be able to simply get out of the way as the group does its work.

Along the way, Talgam draws a contrast with Karajan in particular, who was something of a rival to Bernstein—and something of a foil as well. Where Bernstein refused to change the last name that broadcast his Jewishness to the world, the Austrian-born Karajan joined the Nazi Party in 1934 to further his career. (Though we might also note that in 1942 he married a woman who was one-quarter Jewish.)

But the key difference Talgam highlights doesn’t have to do with their identity or politics, but with their eyes and hands. Talgam plays a clip of Karajan conducting Robert Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 with his eyes closed and with very fluid hand motions—which are hard to read if you’re a member of the orchestra. The message, as Talgam puts it, is this: “The real music is only in Karajan’s head. And you have to guess his mind. So you are under tremendous pressure because he doesn’t give you instructions, and yet, you have to guess his mind. So it’s… a very spiritual but yet very firm control.”

Talgam contrasts this with Bernstein, who conveys with his face, his hands, his whole body, that everyone—the composer, the orchestra, and the audience—is invited to share in the story and meaning within the music-making. Bernstein becomes a kind of conduit for all of that energy, not stopping it up with him, but letting it flow through him.

Now this binary is, of course, overdone. Bernstein was not a saint (see the Bradley Cooper movie), and Karajan is not a simple villain. But I find this basic message about leadership instructive.

There’s a story told about Rabbi Shlomo Hakohen Rabinowicz (1801-1866), founder of Radomsk Hasidism. At one point the rebbe traveled through the Jewish metropolis of Krakow, where he was greeted by a throng of the city’s Jews and its elders, including Rabbi Shimon Sofer, the chief rabbi of the city. They of course asked him to share words of Torah.

Rabbi Rabinowicz (also known as the Tiferet Shlomo, the title of his most famous work), said, “Any leader (tzaddik) who does not bring to their community a flow of blessing and material well-being is not a tzaddik, and is not fit to be a leader of the Jewish people… This was the sin of Nadav and Avihu: They only ‘brought their offering before YHVH,’ (Lev. 16:1, the opening verse of Parashat Acharei-Mot) but they didn’t create a flow of blessing and material well-being to the rest of the community.”

The story continues that Rabbi Sofer spoke up and asked, “Does the good Rabbi know what purpose Heaven may have had in mind in establishing a Chief Rabbi in Krakow?”

The Tiferet Shlomo paused to consider the question, then answered: “Does the Chief Rabbi think that he was appointed simply to answer questions about whether this or that pot is kosher? There are rabbis to answer such questions in every street and alley in Krakow. I will tell you: A Chief Rabbi was appointed in a great city such as Krakow in order to bring blessings, economic prosperity and good health to the community. That is what heaven wants.”

The crowd was silent, trembling at how their Chief Rabbi might respond. And then he did: “Thank God—now I am aware of a new duty of my office, one that hasn’t been written down in the legal codes, but that I will be mindful of from now on!”

Like the orchestra conductor, the Chief Rabbi confronts multiple approaches to leadership. I remember an interview in which the great violinist Isaac Stern said that a conductor should convey that she or he knows more about the score in their pinky fingernail than the entire orchestra does put together. That’s one way to do it: to lead through authority and intimidation. But, in Rabbi Rabinowicz’s formulation, that’s not a kind of leadership that is going to cultivate blessings—spiritual blessings or those of material well-being. A more elevated kind of leadership might be one in which leaders understand themselves to be temporary custodians of the responsibility to help those they serve to “secure the blessings of liberty,” as the United States Constitution puts it—to realize, individually and collectively, our potential as images of the Divine.

I would suggest this doesn’t only apply to leaders in positions of authority, but to all of us. As the great writer on education, Parker Palmer, writes: “What does it take to qualify as a leader? Being human and being here. As long as I am here, doing whatever I am doing, I am leading, for better or for worse. And, if I may say so, so are you.” All of us can and should strive to show up, to lead, in ways that increase the flow of blessing. It isn’t only the High Priest or the orchestra conductor or the chief rabbi who exercises leadership—if each of us carries within us a spark of divinity, then all of us are leading all the time.