Rav Blair Nosanwisch

We all have bodies. We tend to think of our bodies in binary terms: healthy or sick, able or disabled, fat or thin, normal or abnormal. But as with most binaries, when we look closely at these claims we begin to see how these categories fail to truly capture our selves. I might appear healthy but also suffer from chronic illness. I might be called disabled but it’s the built environment that hinders my movement and not my body. I might appear thin and feel fat. Most binaries, however true they sound, are actually full of holes.

In the book of Leviticus, Tumah and Tahara (I’m choosing not to translate) is the defining binary. And “what makes us tam’eh ” and “how we can become tahor ” are the central questions. We are provided with a long list of things that will make us tam’eh: childbirth, skin disease, and discharge from sexual organs. Beyond our physical bodies, the very walls of our homes and fabric of our clothes are susceptible to tu’mah. It seems that the specter of tu’mah looms large for the ancient bodies with whom our texts are concerned. But as a modern reader I’m left wondering what Tu’mah actually is.

Parshat Tazria opens with the words:

דַּבֵּ֞ר אֶל־בְּנֵ֤י יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר אִשָּׁה֙ כִּ֣י תַזְרִ֔יעַ וְיָלְדָ֖ה זָכָ֑ר וְטָֽמְאָה֙ שִׁבְעַ֣ת יָמִ֔ים כִּימֵ֛י נִדַּ֥ת דְּוֺתָ֖הּ תִּטְמָֽא׃

Speak to the Israelite people thus: When a woman תַזְרִ֔יעַ (produces seed) and bears a male, she shall be unclean seven days; she shall be unclean as at the time of her menstrual unwellness.—

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch points out the connection between tazria – to yield seed – and tu’mah. The hi’fil form of the root זרע only occurs in two other places in the Torah – one of them being Genesis 1:11, the first herbage that G-d made was commanded to מזריע to produce seed, emphasizing that creation is designed with the potential to continually re-create itself.

What Rabbi Hirsch is implying is that Tu’mah is potential.

And in our parshiot Tu’mah (potential) is somehow resolved by bringing a hat’at, a sin offering. But what does it mean to resolve potential and why is it connected to sin?

In english, sin is a word full of judgement. It’s a word that triggers feelings of shame and badness. In Hebrew, as we are reminded at yom kippur, a חטא / het is not a binary good/bad act, it is missing the mark. It exists on a continuum of action, in time that continues to move forward and in realities that are continually birthed.

So when our parshiot connect Tu’mah and het / potential and missing the mark, I truly believe there is no final judgement being made. I’ll say it again because it is hard for us to internalize: there is no final judgement, good or bad, on potential energy.

A seed is a possibility, and het is a language for possibility that is moving in a direction. Direction can be towards degradation and it can be towards growth, but at no point have we ever fully arrived at one or the other. Growth and decay are intertwined and in nature they feed off of one another.

But we don’t only exist in nature – we also exist in culture. And in culture, we fear the truth of the universe, that life and death are interwoven and every moment is pregnant with possibility. So we might be inclined to say that sin is the tzora’at that goes untreated and consumes your walls in mold. Sin is avoiding going to the doctor because you “don’t have time.”

But what is so radical about our tradition is that bringing a hat’at is a ritual that tries to deal with the potential that is always there. The potential that isn’t necessarily morally bad or good, but that can lead towards hurt or towards healing. Bringing a hat’at marks a moment where you move out of potential and into intention, I’ve cleaned the walls, I’ve survived childbirth, I’ve healed from illness… these things, or things like them, will come again, but right now I’m moving forward.

Our Torah sees het as a fact of life. Everything that is born in this world is born of a germ/a seed/a possibility. To bring a hat’at is to take ownership of an opportunity to reorient

With every possibility there is an opportunity to repair.

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 38b) relates how G-d, when creating humans, was challenged by the angels on account of human’s destructive nature.

When history arrived at the time of the people of the generation of the flood and the people of the generation of the dispersion, i.e., the Tower of Babel, whose actions were ruinous, the angels said before God: Master of the Universe, didn’t the first set of angels speak appropriately before You, that human beings are not worthy of having been created? God said to them concerning humanity: “Even to your old age I am the same; and even to hoar hairs will I suffer you; I have made and I will bear; and I will carry, and I will deliver you” (Isaiah 46:4).

G-d knows our potential to grow and to destroy, and still G-d created us. “I have made and I will bear; and I will carry, and I will deliver you.”

We are not created Good or Bad, nor do we become good or bad. We are always potential. Religion, prayer, and community can (at best) be tools for checking in with our intentions, and beyond, G-d walks with us as we all learn to see that the project of humanity is to learn how to grow and how to connect.

וַיְהִ֣י ׀ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשִּׁשִּׁ֗י לָֽקְט֥וּ לֶ֙חֶם֙ מִשְׁנֶ֔ה שְׁנֵ֥י הָעֹ֖מֶר לָאֶחָ֑ד וַיָּבֹ֙אוּ֙ כָּל־נְשִׂיאֵ֣י הָֽעֵדָ֔ה וַיַּגִּ֖ידוּ לְמֹשֶֽׁה׃  וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֲלֵהֶ֗ם ה֚וּא אֲשֶׁ֣ר דִּבֶּ֣ר ה’ שַׁבָּת֧וֹן שַׁבַּת־קֹ֛דֶשׁ לַֽה’ מָחָ֑ר אֵ֣ת אֲשֶׁר־תֹּאפ֞וּ אֵפ֗וּ וְאֵ֤ת אֲשֶֽׁר־תְּבַשְּׁלוּ֙ בַּשֵּׁ֔לוּ וְאֵת֙ כָּל־הָ֣עֹדֵ֔ף הַנִּ֧יחוּ לָכֶ֛ם לְמִשְׁמֶ֖רֶת עַד־הַבֹּֽקֶר׃

On the sixth day they gathered double (lechem mishneh) the amount of food, two omers for each; and when all the chieftains of the community came and told Moses, he said to them, “This is what the LORD meant: Tomorrow is a day of rest, a holy sabbath of the LORD. Bake what you would bake and boil what you would boil; and all that is left put aside to be kept until morning.”

When I first started to observe shabbat with you all, back in 2018, I mentioned the practice of having two loaves of bread for your shabbat meals. This is a practice called lechem mishneh, and it comes from this very pasuk in today’s parsha. It is symbolic of God providing for B’nei Israel while they wandered in the desert. We represent this abundance on our shabbat tables each week. In the midrash Bereishit Rabbah, it says that this lechem mishneh, this double portion, was the blessing of Shabbat.  

There is an idea (from Rabbi Abraham Joshuah Heschel) that Shabbat is a palace in time. As modern people, we often focus on the restrictions that Shabbat demands (No writing! No cooking! No computing!), but when we only look at the restrictions, we can lose sight of the forest for the trees. The restrictions of shabbat are born of the desire to create sacred, differentiated time. In order to differentiate space, we have to draw some lines. A blank sheet of white paper needs to have lines drawn upon it in order to become a picture. When I’m speaking with my kids or even my own parents about observing shabbat, it can feel like it is all “don’ts.” Every day of the week we do X but on Shabbos we do not do that.  Framing it in that way focuses on the negative and loses sight of what is created from the boundary we draw. This, for me, is part of the blessing of shabbat. We create sacredness in time out distinction. 

The double portion, lechem mishneh, exists on another level – it is something we DO rather than something we do not. The blessing of the double portion in the desert was that the Israelites did not have to worry about their food for shabbat, it had already been prepared. It goes beyond the boundary of “do not cook on shabbat,” and reminds us that in order to fully observe the don’t, we have to prepare. The double portion in our own lives is symbolic of the work we put in advance in order to better and more fully appreciate what we have. Let us take a moment to pause and appreciate the blessing of being prepared. Whereas on every other day of the week, we are ruled by our needs – on shabbat we get to feel like we exist beyond our needs. Our desire for and enjoyment of food does not disappear, rather, it is met without our having to toil to do so.  Thus we are asked not only to not do on Shabbat, but also TO DO on the other 6 days of the week.

There is an important ecological principle baked into this blessing – to see it more clearly, I offer the story of Honi the Circle Maker from masechet Ta’anit. 

“One day Honi was journeying on the road and he saw a man planting a carob tree. He asked, “How long does it take [for this tree] to bear fruit?” The man replied: “Seventy years.” Honi then further asked him: “Are you certain that you will live another seventy years?””

What did Honi’s initial question (“Are you certain that you will live another seventy years?”) reveal about him? 

The story continues… “The man replied: “I found [already grown] carob trees in the world; as my forefathers planted those for me so I too plant these for my children.”

What does this response teach Honi? What does it teach us?

In both examples, the fig trees we must plant today if we hope to feed our children and grandchildren from them… and the meals we should cook next Friday so that we can feast on them next shabbat – there is an element of pre-meditation, of planning and preparation. We are asked to do something in the present for the sake of the future. This can feel nearly impossible when our lives are so full of demands. But the spiritual wisdom of taking time out of the present for the sake of the future is sound. It is good for us and good for the planet. I leave you with a blessing – may you find one small thing to do today that is an investment in tomorrow.

Last Monday night, I spent my first night serving as a chaplain, offering spiritual care to people who find themselves for one reason or another, in the hospital. I was on my way to a visit that I expected to be pretty “low key” when I got a page that a patient’s family member was in distress – could I come?

I arrived at this seated stranger, lowered myself to the floor in front of her, and asked what had happened. As she told me of how her beloved 30 year old cousin had been battling cancer for the past 9 months and then taken a very sudden turn towards death, she began to weep.  “Why him, why him, why him?” she pleaded and pleaded with God for meaning, for reason. 

I stood there trying to just hold her pain, her sadness and horror, and her question. Why him? after all? Why anyone? It is both a singular and universal struggle we confront in our human lifetimes – Why you? Why me? Why them? Why us? 

Many of us are in different phases of grief and suffering right now. Some have lost loved ones, others long hoped for plans have been abruptly changed. Some have lost autonomy and many have lost physical closeness to others. I have heard many of you, myself included, asking “why?”

 You do not turn to someone in the depths of their suffering and seek to answer such questions. In a sense, these questions will always be unanswerable. But overtime, the question will change.  “Why me,” will give way to “what am I in control of?” When I face all that I have lost, what do I still have?

Today we read from chapter 21 of Genesis. The story of this ancient family, our ancient family, is full of grief. With a sentence, Sarah casts Hagar out of Abraham’s house. Erasing her from their family.  Having only two hard won children, Abraham is distraught that his wife is telling him to expel one for the sake of the other. But he heeds her, and he sends Hagar and Ishmael packing. Into the desert, hungry and thirsty, they stumble. The scene is confused, Hagar weeps and moans, unable to care for her beloved, her only. The only thing she has at her disposal is to pray for a miracle. She leaves her son there, parched and starving. She throws her hands in the air, she calls out to God.

וַתֵּלֶךְ֩ וַתֵּ֨שֶׁב לָ֜הּ מִנֶּ֗גֶד הַרְחֵק֙ כִּמְטַחֲוֵ֣י קֶ֔שֶׁת כִּ֣י אָֽמְרָ֔ה אַל־אֶרְאֶ֖ה בְּמ֣וֹת הַיָּ֑לֶד וַתֵּ֣שֶׁב מִנֶּ֔גֶד וַתִּשָּׂ֥א אֶת־קֹלָ֖הּ וַתֵּֽבְךְּ׃

and went and sat down at a distance, a bowshot away; for she thought, “Let me not look on as the child dies.” And sitting thus afar, she burst into tears.

But a miracle does come. God hears Ishmael, not Hagar. This confusion stumps earlier commentators but makes sense to me. Hagar prays from desperation and a lack of hope – so overcome by her circumstance. Maybe Ishmael, insulated from dire prognostications as a child is wont to be, is able to call out to God from a different place.

וַיִּשְׁמַ֣ע אֱלֹהִים֮ אֶת־ק֣וֹל הַנַּעַר֒ וַיִּקְרָא֩ מַלְאַ֨ךְ אֱלֹהִ֤ים ׀ אֶל־הָגָר֙ מִן־הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וַיֹּ֥אמֶר לָ֖הּ מַה־לָּ֣ךְ הָגָ֑ר אַל־תִּ֣ירְאִ֔י כִּֽי־שָׁמַ֧ע אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶל־ק֥וֹל הַנַּ֖עַר בַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר הוּא־שָֽׁם׃

God heard the cry of the boy, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is.

Grief is real – grief is blinding. When we are inside of it, we cannot see beyond it and it would be reckless and inappropriate to ask someone to try. 

I have a few friends who live in California and I’ve spoken to them twice in the past couple of weeks. Each time, the fires that are raging are worse, wreaking still more havoc in their lives. Between COVID – where any socialization beyond their immediate family has to happen outside, and the fires – where the smoke and air quality forces them to stay inside, they feel frustrated, trapped, uncertain of when or if this will end.  The NYT daily podcast was reporting on these fires and how the people who lost their houses were immediately rebuilding in the same spot. They named the tension between the need for long term planning in the face of a problem that simply is not going away, and the fact that “The moment right after a fire happens is the worst possible time to push for a change” the reporter said. When people are in the grief of sudden loss, all they want to do is get back to the way things were. It is nearly impossible to ask people to see the bigger picture from that vantage point.

The power of the chagim is that they allow us to approach these unanswerable questions from a distance. The suffering and uncertainty we liturgize is, in a sense, abstract – hovering over us, possible, but God willing for most of us not real and present in the way it was for Hagar, or for the woman I visited in her cousin’s hospital room. If we are in grief, feeling sad, angry, confused… we are exactly where we need to be. And for some of us the chagim allow us to face the inevitable losses in life while holding strong to the ethos of personal agency. We don’t have to be flattened by the possibilities that lay before us, crying out “why?” Rather, we begin from the premise that we have control over our actions and our behavior.

The people of California, Oregon, and Washington must be in shock and grief right now. They are like Hagar and like the woman in the hospital – overcome with suffering and unable to cope.  We look on from the relative security of our coast and wonder “why” – is it global warming? Is it poor management of the ecology of the forest floor? Is it one politician, or another? Is it all politicians and all these things at once?

The truth is, none of these questions rebuild a house. And even if they did, rebuilding a house doesn’t necessarily mean you have rebuilt a home. Many of the problems we are facing in 2020 are what planners and policy makers have come to call “wicked problems,”  They are so complex, so intertwined with other conflating and conflicting causes and concerns, that there is no determinable stopping point for them. These wicked problems (of which I can think of a few that are plaguing me at any given moment) leave us feeling totally disempowered, wanting to stand at a distance, like Hagar, so that we don’t have to stand by watching the things we love suffer.

When Honi was in the hospital, at first I couldn’t make sense of the huge machines that were suddenly running his body, taking on the work of his organs. Why would God make him sick at all if God also created the humans who created the machines that could save him? But then I started to think about the machines as Angels. I never understood Angels before, but in that moment it became clear. Angels are every small step we take towards believing that something else is possible. Those small steps may add up to life saving technology, they may be the planting of a single tree that fixes carbon in our atmosphere for decades, they may lead us across our lawn to a conversation with our neighbor who has a lawn sign we disagree with, or to dig a well so that someone will have water when they need it most… Angels are what we make when we step towards our power and offer whatever small thing we can.

וַיִּקְרָא֩ מַלְאַ֨ךְ אֱלֹהִ֤ים … אַל־תִּ֣ירְאִ֔י כִּֽי־שָׁמַ֧ע אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶל־ק֥וֹל הַנַּ֖עַר בַּאֲשֶׁ֥ר הוּא־שָֽׁם

and an angel of God called to Hagar…“What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is.

Fear not, God hears you where you are. 

We can each take part in making Angels. What we have to do is take whatever small step we can in the moment when we are able, so that the angel is there for eachother when we are in need.

וַיִּפְקַ֤ח אֱלֹהִים֙ אֶת־עֵינֶ֔יהָ וַתֵּ֖רֶא בְּאֵ֣ר מָ֑יִם וַתֵּ֜לֶךְ וַתְּמַלֵּ֤א אֶת־הַחֵ֙מֶת֙ מַ֔יִם וַתַּ֖שְׁקְ אֶת־הַנָּֽעַר׃

Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went and filled the skin with water, and let the boy drink.

Our chapter ends with a seemingly disconnected encounter. Abraham reproaches Abimelech for the wells of water that were seized from him.  It got me thinking – maybe the well that saved Hagar in the desert was not a miracle in the sense that it appeared from nowhere, the miracle was that Abraham had been digging wells all along so that they would be there when they were needed most.

I know a lot of folks are really going through a lot right now.  I have really had you in my mind and heart, and I was thinking of you as I read this week’s parsha.  I wanted to let you know that I am going to “go there” with my words today, and though I do so from a place of hope and faith that exploring these sufferings can help us to frame or even move through them, I want to do so with humility, and acknowledge that it is for each individual to decide what you need and I can only offer thoughts born of my own experience.

 Every month since last June, Phreddy, Honi, and myself gather ourselves, some snacks, and toys, and make our way to the Children’s Hospital of NY a mere 20 minute walk from our apartment.  The day always starts with an echo cardiogram, where ultrasound technology is used to look at the progress of Honi’s heart since his surgery on June 19th. 

 The experience, increasingly unpleasant the more willful Honi grows, is non-invasive.  We watch the images as they move across the screen and try our best to look for the conditions we know he is supposed to be progressing beyond: “is that his narrow aorta?” “his leaky mitral valve?” “does it look like maybe his left ventricle is less enlarged than before?” It is, at best, a futile attempt of at understanding something scary that is ultimately beyond our control.

 The truth is, Honi is recovering, and unlike the existential fear we faced at the beginning of this process, we are now dealing in shades of wellness and not survival.  But we are forever marked by the chapter where we had to fear for his life, and no matter how much he heals, we will never entirely leave behind our fear.

In this week’s parsha, Metzorah, the priest in charge of purification visits the victim of tsora’at while they are ostensibly quarantined outside of the camp.  A metzorah, one who is suffering from the affliction of tsora’at, is often translated as a leper.  There is much argument that this is actually not the right “diagnosis” and what is likely more accurate is that tsora’at was a catchall term for any sickness/infection that manifested on the skin. For our purposes, I want to further abstract the metzorah as one who is suffering from an illness that isolates them. 

Illness, in general, is a deeply challenging experience.  It is something which we largely cannot control. It strikes our loved ones. When it strikes us our dignity and our autonomy are taken from us. It can result in isolation from loved ones and alienation from ourselves.  I know many of us here today have been touched through ourselves and/or our loved ones by suffering associated with illness and this Torah today is for you.

The metzorah in our parsha is in a difficult place.  Suffering themselves, they are cast out of the city to live in semi isolation.  They are, however, visited by the priest, who performs a weekly checkup on them not unlike the eco-cardiogram I shared about before.  Their role as physical and spiritual healers is to ascertain the status of the metzorah, are they still contageous or has the affliction passed and they can begin the purification process.  They are stuck in a liminal space between healed and sick, dead and alive.  And the Kohen is their sole visitor. 

Our suffering can isolate us, it can diminish us in our own eyes. It can keep up distant even from those who try to bring consolation. And for  caregivers and loved ones, it can bring up deep and painful fears of death and a realization of our own human fragility. Because of the physical and spiritual ways that sickness works on us, I think it is all the more instructive to look closely at the strange rehabilitation ritual that is proscribed for the metzorah.

The metzorah is to bring two live, pure (kosher) birds, along with cedar, crimson wool, and hyssop.  One bird is ritually slaughtered over a clay pot and then the cedar and hyssop (likely bound together by the crimson thread) along with the live bird, are dipped in the dead bird’s blood.  Then that blood is sprinkled seven times on the metzorah after which the live bird, stained with its fellow’s blood, is set free in open country. 

I know, there is a lot of blood, violence, and witchy stuff happening here. But stick with me for a moment. First I want to draw attention to how the two birds one living and one dead, embody the two possible fates of the person who is suffering from illness.  But I also want to consider how the live bird does not simply live, it carries the death of the other bird with it.  Though it is set free in the open (as the rabbinic commentator Bekhor Shor notes, to a place of life and growth) it is changed by its near death experience and it brings that experience with it into its future.  I want to spell this part out – the live bird has had a near death experience because of the randomness of it being chosen for live and not for slaughter.  And I want to underscore that this randomness also defines our own suffering. And for those of us who are touched by illness and death. We never leave the experience behind, though we may return to our lives.  We are forever changed.

Rather than leave you there, I want to consider one last part of the rehabilitation ritual.  The bundle of cedar and hyssop.  It is explained in midrash that these two plants are metaphors for great (cedar) and small/lowly (hyssop).  The fact that they are employed here is once again resonant with our experiences of illness, that seem to take us from our strength and bring us low.  But we are not left low by this transformation. 

 At Pesach time, the time of year when we collectively observe our people’s transition from suffering to redemption, the hyssop appears again, but without the cedar.  The hyssop, you might recall, is bundled together to serve as a brush, with which the doorposts of the Jews’ homes are painted with the blood of the Pesach sacrifice.  Again, a grisly image. Again, we are dealing with the threshold between life and death.  And again, the lowly hyssop plays a central role.  It is the lowness of the hyssop, it’s humility, that make it the right vehicle for transformation in both of these ritual moments.  For liberation is not without suffering, without the memory of suffering. But in this season, we recognize that we have all suffered, we have all been lost, at times, in the wilderness.  But when we look around, we see that we are not the only one flying with blood painted on our wings.

When we were in the hospital with Honi this summer, it was very hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that our son had been created absolutely perfect, his body was created in such a way that he was not going to survive for much longer, AND he had been created at a time in human history when we had the tools and technology to save him.

Sometimes I would look at the machines around his bed and think of them as angels, miracles that kept him alive and safe and protected for as long as they were nearby.

I have always been a bit of a skeptic when it comes to technology.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m as dependent on it as anyone else, but I have long paid for its conveniences with a healthy dose of guilt.  When I arrived at the hospital this summer, the foundations of my binary universe. Suddenly I had to use purell all the time, drink from sterile styrofoam cups, and give my son’s medicines and feeds through plastic disposable tubes. Suddenly technology, and modernity more generally, wasn’t just about convenience at the expense of mother earth, it was integral to my Son’s survival.

In this week’s parsha, beshallah, B’nai Yisrael departs from slavery and experiences a liberation that turns their world upside down. Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz explains how The individual who just emerged from the Red Sea does not know whether he is in a dream or in the real world; the whole world seems different to him This shock at having the world turned upside down, even for the sake of liberation, is no small matter. Not only do they have to learn to see themselves anew (as free rather than as slaves) but they also have to re-learn the world.  What had been a place where they toiled and extracted and built, often for the sake of others (and received their own sustenance consistently if not indirectly) is suddenly a place that they have a direct and inconsistent need from the land for survival.

According to the text, only one verse after Miriam’s song, they are already overcome by the fact that there is no water to drink:

וַיֵּלְכ֧וּ שְׁלֹֽשֶׁת־יָמִ֛ים בַּמִּדְבָּ֖ר וְלֹא־מָ֥צְאוּ מָֽיִם

And they went three days in the wilderness and they could not find water

וַיָּבֹ֣אוּ מָרָ֔תָה וְלֹ֣א יָֽכְל֗וּ לִשְׁתֹּ֥ת מַ֙יִם֙ מִמָּרָ֔ה כִּ֥י מָרִ֖ים הֵ֑ם עַל־כֵּ֥ן קָרָֽא־שְׁמָ֖הּ מָרָֽה׃

They came to Marah, but they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; that is why it was named Marah.

וַיִּלֹּ֧נוּ הָעָ֛ם עַל־מֹשֶׁ֥ה לֵּאמֹ֖ר מַה־נִּשְׁתֶּֽה׃

And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?”

The people have been given their freedom, but they seem to feel abandoned to a wilderness of survival. They look around them and see none of their basic needs being cared for. They worriedly kvetch “was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness??”

As the people’s panic and thirst mounts, Moses seeks help from God, who teaches him about a tree. This tree turns the waters from bitter to sweet, and the people eagerly drink the healed waters. There is a midrash that envisions Moses asking God, “why did you create brackish water in your world, a liquid that serves no purpose??” God replies, “Instead of asking philosophical questions, do something to make the bitter waters sweet.”

The same sentiment is plainly stated earlier in the moment just before the Israelites cross the sea, when Moses cries out to God on behalf of the panicked people, and God says, “why do you cry out to me?? Tell the Israelites to go forward!” God is saying in the most frank terms possible, I cannot do this for you! I have encoded your survival in the world but you must move forward.

Reading these words reminded me of my experience in the hospital.  I had wanted Honi to be saved, but I was terrified by the idea that we, humans, actually had the power to intercede. The thing that kept me from fully embracing technology is seeing the seed of destruction that it contains.  I could only engage with its flaws, I could only see it’s potential for bitterness. At the same time, I felt overpowered by it. I felt (and still feel) addicted to my phone, increasingly dependent on conveniences like online shopping, and more willing to “check out” than be present. These were the bitter waters.  But if I only see their bitterness, I miss their truth, which is that they are created by God and it is we who wield them – who can leave them to their bitterness or transform them into sweet.

HaEmmek HaDavar points out that from the plain sense of the encounter with the Etz, it must be that the tree that sweetens the waters is directly next to the bitter pool of water.  He says that this is the way of nature: כמו כל הטבע אשר במקום חסרון איזה פרט הכרחי לחיי האדם נוצר שמה איזה דבר אחר להשלים המחסור like in all of nature, in a place where something essential for the life of man is lacking, a different thing is created there to fill in the lack.

I believe that the Emmek HaDavar’s interpretation is instructive here.  As we imagine God’s miracles, we imagine them as separate from nature. Furthermore, we imagine our own genius as separate from nature (and often from God’s miracles). But this moment in our parsha serves as a reminder that God acts through nature, and thus we must be agents in the earthly sphere, we are the fulcrum upon which technology that could destruct can also be technology that saves.

HaEmmek HaDavar ends his explanation with the simple statement ומשה לא ידע ממנו “and moshe did not know from it.”  God had to be Moshe’s teacher about the plant medicine that God had already created and placed in the world. God has already shown us the medicine that we need in our time.  On this Tu B’shevat, we should be reminded that we are both capable and responsible for making the bitter waters sweet. But we are also charged with remembering that bitter is not bad – we actually need it in moderation, and sweetness too must be taken in moderation.  To imagine an upside down saved world would be easier than imagining our world with all its potential pitfalls, only sweetened. But that is the truth about our reality. God gives us brackish waters and sweet trees and it is up to us to be the agents of positive transformation.  May we celebrate God’s gifts and shape ourselves into shomrei adamah, guardians of the earth, for years to come.

At Hanukkah time we are always talking about miracles – whether of military victory or flames that burned for 8 days rather than one.  We can sometimes forget the smaller miracles that are made visible in the different light that candles cast.

Phreddy (my husband) recently reminded me that it is the moonless nights that allow us to see the most stars.  His comment elucidated for me how special it has been to gaze into the soft light of the menorah these past few days.  In Judaism we have another practice that involves a candle; checking for chametz before Passover. The search for chametz is to be done exclusively by candlelight, not by torch or by the light of the moon.  Only a single flame will do.

The Rabbis of the Talmud discussed what is so special about a candle, “You can hold a candle up in front of you, they say, while a torch’s light is so great that you cannot hold the torch up close to you and still be able to look beyond it.” It is the gentle glow of a candle which illuminates just enough that we can see what lies just beyond our vision, be that as literal as hametz or as ethereal as a new perspective.

My blessing for us this holiday season is that the Hanukkah lights remind us of the miracle of seeing with new eyes. May it be a season of discovery.

MIRACLES GREAT AND SMALL

There is a story in the Talmud (avodah zarah 8a) about Adam ha Rishon – the first human – who experiences the first ever documented case of seasonal affect disorder. As Adam watched the days grow shorter and shorter, he began to panic, imagining that the world was coming to an end.  With each successive day, with each decrease in light, he felt more and more sure that the world he knew was over. According to the story, he did something we all might be likely to do… he blamed himself. אוי לי שמא בשביל שסרחתי עולם חשוך בעדי וחוזר לתוהו ובוהו “Woe is me!!” he said, “Perhaps because I sinned the world is becoming dark around me and will return to chaos and disorder…”

But the world did not come to an end, and the impending darkness was not Adam’s fault.  Rather, after coming to the darkest point in the year, the winter solstice, the days slowly began to stretch themselves back out. And Adam began to realize that life was not over, rather, he was experiencing nature’s rhythms for the first time.

I relate to Adam ha Rishon’s story, because I too am prone to fear and blame when I feel like I am facing forces too great to understand, forces that seem to be beyond my control. So it was striking to me when I read this week’s parsha, Miketz, and saw a story that includes dire warnings about the future, but instead of fear and blame, we see the hero, Joseph, move swiftly into action.

Joseph is called up from prison as a last-ditch effort to interpret a dream of Pharaoh’s that has bewildered all the soothesayers of Egypt.  Joseph – with careful attribution of his interpretations to God – informs Pharaoh that his dreams are a message of seven years of famine that will decimate Egypt after seven years of plenty. Joseph tells Pharaoh that survival will be entirely dependent on Egypt’s willingness/ability to harness the plenty of the next 7 years so that they will last through the famine.  In other words, the produce of 7 years will have to last for 14.

Joseph’s ability to save Egypt from the famine reads like a remarkable example of effective governance. To imagine a leader who is visionary enough to coordinate this massive public work, without any noted uprisings, leaves me wondering, “how exactly did he do it??”  The text is quite ambiguous on that matter. It merely states: וַיִּקְבֹּ֞ץ אֶת־כָּל־אֹ֣כֶל שֶׁ֣בַע שָׁנִ֗ים “And he gathered all the food of the seven years [of plenty].”

The medieval rabbinic commentators were also curious about how Joseph managed to accomplish this feat, and so they tried to imagine the details of his administration. While Ibn Ezra mused that all the food must mean “all that was possible to gather without causing the people to starve,” seemingly allowing the people to eat what they determine themselves to need and collecting the rest, Ramban imagined 14 years of rations, saying “It appears to me to be correct that Joseph gathered all food under his control, and he gave enough of it every year for sustenance to the Egyptians, so that they should not squander it.”

Each of these visions of administration still sit squarely in the realm of how a single leader or government manages for the future.  While I do think there is a lesson in here about civic engagement, good leadership, and government accountability, I also want to push a step beyond the Joseph story.  I’m not convinced that the people of Egypt who weren’t in control themselves felt any less scared and confused than Adam ha Rishon as they experienced the famine.

So I wanted to look to another story for a paradigm that would get us beyond these stories of disempowered individuals, and for that I turned to the rabbi’s story of Hanukkah. The Jews living under the Greeks were so at odds with their government that a faction of guerrilla Jewish fighters, the Macabees, was on the rise.  The majority of the Jewish people wanted to accept their subordination and avoid trouble with their rulers, and resented the Macabees for stirring up dissent. The band of Macabees could have thrown their hands up in the air and said that there was no hope for the future. Yet they battled and prevailed, and when they entered the defiled temple, they hoped to restore it to it’s proper glory.  Finding only a single cruze of oil, they could have decided not to rededicate the temple at all, feeling overwhelmed by the inadequacy of their offering. Rather, they believed in the power of this small act. They understood that even great miracles are made up of bravery, courage, and faith in the face of the unknown. Their story reminds me that miracles are actually rooted in our own actions, often at times when changing the tide feels impossible.

May we each remember that in our small acts, we have the capacity to make miracles.

A friend of mine recently shared with me how ambivalent she felt about the holocaust while she was growing up. Her parents seemed so connected to the tragic stories they would tell her, while she found it difficult to receive them. She considered her parents to be stuck in a rut, digging the same hole that only led to sadness and fear. After the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue two weeks ago, however, she found herself re-examining her relationship with the past – and wondering if she had been willing to let in the stories her parents had wanted to share with her, if it would have provided her much needed resilience in the face of these hard times.

I know that not everyone here today wrestles to connect with the legacy of the Shoah in the same way that my friend did. And yet, her struggle represents the next chapter of the Jewish people. The deeper we get into the 21st century, the further away the lived experience of the holocaust will be, and the harder the task of making this painful story into a meaningful and enduring one.

It so happens that this week’s parsha, Toledot, is the perfect backdrop for an exploration of continuity. There are many exciting things that happen in this parasha – Jacob buys Esau’s birthright for a bowl of lentil soup, and Rebecca tricks her husband Isaac into bestowing his blessing on Jacob, instead of his favorite son Esau – but it is the less memorable parts of this parsha that I’d like to focus on. The story of Isaac and the wells that he dug.

Isaac is the biblical patriarch which we have the least information about. While Abraham went on an epic search to follow God and find meaning, and Jacob was the father of 12 sons who became the 12 tribes of Israel, Isaac seems woefully stuck in between these great men. And we find him, in chapter 26 of Genesis, literally stuck digging wells.

Rabbi Adin Steinzalts points out that to begin something is difficult, but it is far more challenging to continue things. Once the spark of inspiration has run its course, the daily energy required to sustain, without the fire of newness, can be almost impossible to summon. It’s the new business venture that gives way to the tedium of bookkeeping. Or the wide eyed child who becomes a rebellious teenager. All the more so, Steinzalts says, continuing our parent’s legacy is that much more difficult.

And yet Isaac does just that – he settles in Gerar, in the land of the Philistines and sets about digging wells – the very wells that his father Abraham had dug in his day when he also lived in Gerar.

וַיָּ֨֨שָׁב יִצְחָ֜֜ק וַיַּחְפֹּ֣֣ר אֶת־בְּאֵרֹ֣֣ת הַמַּ יִ֗֗ם אֲשֶׁ֤֤ר חָֽפְרוּ֙֙ בִּימֵי֙֙ אַבְרָהָ֣֣ם אָבִ֔֔יו וַיְסַתְּמ֣֣וּם פְּלִשְׁתִּ֔֔ים אַחֲרֵ֖֖י מ֣֣וֹת אַבְרָהָ֑֑ם

And Isaac dug anew the wells of water that they had dug in the days of his father Abraham, which the philistines had closed up after the death of Abraham.

But he didn’t just redig the wells, he also named them the same name that his father had named them.

וַיִּקְרָ֤֤א לָהֶן֙֙ שֵׁמ֔֔וֹת כַּשֵּׁמֹ֕֕ת אֲשֶׁר־קָרָ֥֥א לָהֶ֖֖ן אָבִֽיו

And he called them the same names that his father had called them.

And it is the fact that Isaac continued the work of his father, that actually created the Jewish people. Far more than the epic quest that Abraham set out on to find God, or the multitudinous family that Jacob sired, it is Isaac’s persistence that made the Jewish story into a generational story, and not just a one-hit-wonder. And each of you keep this story alive every time you come to shul. Bake Challah, light candles, say a blessing. Every time you continue our story connects you to a story that has been being told for thousands of years, and the act of continuing to tell it is a beautiful courageous act of faith.

I heard an amazing story from a survivor named Sam a few weeks ago, and though it contained some incredible moments of heroism and miracles, it is a humble moment that I want to share with you. When Sam and 4 other children were sent to a work camp towards the end of the war, they were saved from the fate of most children (too young to work) and allowed to enter the camp provided they remain there totally unseen. The Jewish inmates of the camp, upon hearing that children would be arriving, gathered at the barbed wire fence to receive them. They were all adults, and most of them hadn’t seen a child since the beginning of the war. They were parents and grandparents, most of them having lost their own children years ago, and they stood at the gates, hungry to receive these 5 Jewish children. Sam described how they lifted them over the threshold and kissed and hugged and sang and danced and passed them around the circle from person to person. He said he felt like the Torah on Simchat Torah.

Now there are two incredible things about this story. One is that in Sam’s world, less than a century ago, the reference point he had for the most joyous, most ecstatic experience, was Simchat Torah. And the other is that these adults were so moved by the presence of these children because they understood that through the mere fact of their existence, of the potential to keep these children alive, the Jewish people could be saved.

When I look around the room tonight, I see all of you as well diggers. Like Isaac, you too are showing up for the daily work of digging into the earth, often in the same places that have been dug before, in hopes of finding may’im chayim – living waters. And the fact is, most days, this search is arduous, the beauty and the depths don’t reveal themselves until so late in the process, and it can be hard to stay the course and to explain to others why you keep showing up. Judaism is like that. It is a deep and powerful well, but we have to dig so so so far down to get there, sometimes we can feel lost in the process.

I have heard it explained that Jewish time exists in a spiral, not a circle. A circle would mean that we are living the same stories over and over again, that the pains and traumas of the past are destined to be re-lived in every generation, or the next. But when we think of it as a spiral – that every year we show up for the same holidays as a different person, that every holiday coincides with a slightly different time of year, and that the world around us is constantly changing… suddenly the story of the Jewish people is an anchor in time that can be an incredible source of strength and sustenance. Let it be that in the years to come, we will continue to dig into our past – not as pits – but as wells of living water.