Rabbi’s Writings

Do Not Stand Idly By

June 3, 2020 by Rabbi Debora S. Gordon • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: antiracism, BlackLivesMatter, tzedakah • 5 Comments

Jewish tradition teaches us Lo ta’amod al dam rey-echa, do not stand idly by while your neighbor is bleeding (Lev. 19:16). This is a sh’at d’chak, an urgent hour. We need to show up right now, as Jews, in support of justice and real equality for Black and Brown people.

Some Jews are Black and Brown and are always on the front lines of dealing with racism. Some Jews are in the streets. Some are providing logistical and legal support. Some of us can help with the critical resource of money. “You shall surely open your hand to your brother [and sister]” (Deut. 15:11)

These 3 funds fulfill Jewish values and meet urgent local needs, and donations to them will directly support people on the ground.

Pikuach nefesh, physical life and safety, is one of Judaism’s highest priorities, and pidyon sh’vuyim, redeeming captives, is a communal obligation. In New York’s Capital District, the central on-the-ground fund for rapid response to ensure the safety of protesters is the Albany Bail & Safety Fund for Black Lives. This fund is managed by Albany racial justice activists Amy Jones and Clyanna Lightbourn of Voix Noire. Donate here: www.paypal.com/pools/c/8pAK2AzvDg

Shleymut (wholeness) is the Jewish word for wellness. There is need of spiritual healing and safe spaces for Black people and others to deal with the traumas of this moment. Root3d is donation-based wellness studio that centers the healing of Black and Brown communities. Learn here: root3dhealing.com/ Donate here: paypal.me/root3dhealing or through Cashapp: $root3dhealing

“Love the immigrant as you love yourself, for your were immigrants in the land of Egypt” (Lev. 19:34) . The community that was hit on Central Avenue over the weekend is made up in large part of Muslim families, many of whom are recent immigrants. Looting affects not only property but people’s livelihoods. Imam Faisal Ahmad, whose father founded Masjid As-Salam (the mosque on Central Avenue), has established a GoFundMe to support the families in greatest need. Donate here: charity.gofundme.com/o/en/campaign/help-rebuild-albany-muslim-community

May we do the holy work of bringing blessing and protection to everyone. May we shine light upon pain that is routinely de-centered, and accompany each other on the long march to justice. May we gaze into each others’ faces and see the divine spark that lives in each of us. And let us say, Amen.

Liberty and Safety

May 15, 2020 by Rabbi Debora S. Gordon • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: BlackLivesMatter, COVID-19, entitlement, freedom, Love your neighbor, music, politics of fear, racism, safety, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Torah verse, video, violence • 0 Comments

I am still struggling to write a coherent post about the slaughter of Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged in Georgia; the death of British railway worker Belly Mujinga from COVID-19 after being spat at by someone who [claimed he] had the virus; and the sense of entitlement, fear, and intimidation that runs through the stories of their deaths, intersects with armed protesters in the Michigan statehouse, and is an essential part of systems of enslavement everywhere and at all times.

In the meantime I share this quotation from the current week’s Torah portion:

וּקְרָאתֶ֥ם דְּר֛וֹר בָּאָ֖רֶץ לְכָל־יֹשְׁבֶ֑יהָ Uk’ratem dror ba-arets l’khol yosh-veha

famously inscribed on the Pennsylvania State House bell (now known as the Liberty Bell) as “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.” (Leviticus 25:10) In its original context it referred to the Jubilee (yovel) year, an every-fifty-year occurrence in which people who were indentured (usually translated as ‘enslaved,’ but it was a far different system than in pre-Civil-War US) were freed, and concurrently land was re-apportioned among families so the newly-emancipated people had a basis for livelihood.

“Your personal liberty to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.”

(A history of the usage and attribution of this quote may be found here.)

The following photo was posted on Reddit on May 13, 2020. I reposted it a couple of days later when it appeared on Facebook, with the comment:

וְאָהַבְתָ לְרֵעָךָ כָּמוֹךָ V’ahavta l’rey-acha kamocha

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Leviticus 19:18

If liberty (or freedom) is to be shared among all the inhabitants of the land, nobody’s liberty can be boundless. And yet…

While looking up details about the Liberty Bell, I learned that this sign is a paraphrase of words attributed to Ben Franklin:

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Apparently no one who commented on my post recognized the origins of the sign any more than I did. One can imagine this quote being a basic tenet in some circles with the best of intentions. It has been adopted by groups that oppose the growth of government surveillance. But the application in this photo is fringe, appalling, and utterly lacking compassion. Under *no* circumstances should anyone’s physical health and survival be called “a little temporary safety”! Especially when it’s someone else’s safety and survival that one is denigrating, not one’s own.

But if you look at the 18th-century letter in which the quotation appears, these words are neither original to Ben Franklin, nor do they mean anything remotely like the unfettered freedom this sign claims for its holders. Franklin was writing about an earlier letter in which the statement was quoted by the Pennsylvania Assembly, as it feuded with the governor over sufficient funds to properly provision the army, maintain roads, etc. The governor, apparently under pressure from wealthy landowners, blocked them at every turn.

You can read the original letter for yourself. I recommend scrolling up to page 99 and starting at “The residue of this piece.” Note that “the proprietaries” are wealthy landowners, who apparently had been instructing the governor to veto tax bill after tax bill.

The politics of fear is not new

It’s fascinating to read that the governor had been making wild claims, for political purposes, about the danger posed by native peoples in the area. The Assembly acknowledged that while scattered settlers were indeed afraid, their fear was out of proportion to any threat. If you want to read it yourself, start on page 95 in the left-hand column with “Intelligence (probably the same intelligence contained …” and look especially at the top paragraph on the right, in which the governor’s words are characterized by Franklin as:

“A dose of venom apparently prepared and administered to poison the province; if the governor might have been their savior, and was not, for want of proper powers, the assembly accused of having withheld them, were to be considered as public enemies. [If the governor might have saved them, but couldn’t because the assembly didn’t give him enough power, then the assembly would be considered dangerous.] The populace are never so ripe for mischief as in times of most danger.”

An astute awareness of the politics of fear. Franklin continues:

“A provincial dictator he wanted to be constituted; he thought this would be the surest way of carrying his point; and if the Pennsylvanians had taken so frantic a turn, they would not have been the first, who like the flock in the fable, had, in a fit of despair, taken a wolf for their shepherd.”

Will we never learn?

But I can’t end on that note. Including a nechemta, a comfort, is a tradition of Jewish leaders going back 2,000 years or more. Franklin’s words are reassuring as well as disquieting: We’ve survived fear-mongering top leadership before.

And let’s finish with Ella’s Song, which has been playing in my mind for days:

Why it’s right that Reform summer camps aren’t opening this summer

May 7, 2020 by Rabbi Debora S. Gordon • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2020, COVID-19, Pikuach nefesh, Summer camp, Union for Reform Judaism • 1 Comment

I’m a rabbi in large part because of Reform summer camp. It’s true that I grew up in a fairly observant household (especially for the Reform Movement at that time); that I’ve always asked the “big questions”; and that one of my grandfathers was a rabbi. But it was at Jewish summer camp where Judaism came alive and became really relevant to life, where all these things clicked.

That’s why I volunteer each summer as faculty: To help make the magic that shaped me.

A week ago today, multiple messages arrived in my inbox about the extremely difficult and sad decision not to hold Reform Jewish summer camp in person this year. Reform Israel programs are also cancelled this summer. It was such big news that it was reported by CNN.

I am broken-hearted about it, and so is everyone I know who loves camp. When I was a kid, I counted the other 48 or 50 weeks every year until I could return to the home of my heart for a few weeks each summer. It was the only place where this socially awkward, intellectual introvert felt truly welcomed and loved by the majority of my peers. Closing will pose all sorts of hardships for parents and kids, for staff and administration, for the survival of the camps themselves. But I absolutely support the decision.

Over the past month, there have been several articles published in the Jewish Daily Forward about the potential for closing camp, along with calls for keeping it open. Three weeks ago, Judi Rudoren, editor-in-chief of the Forward, wrote “Let there be camp — please!“, a heartfelt prayer and poem of praise for the institution that has shaped so many Jewish leaders of today.

Let there be mosquito-ridden outdoor movie nights and teva* trips with hot dogs on sticks over open flames. Let there be job wheels that seem to always saddle the same sad sap with toilet-cleaning duties. Let there be fights about who gets the first shower, let there be clothes-swapping among the tweenage girls, let there be hand-holding on the walks back to the bunk after evening activity, let there be marathon rounds of Crazy Eights and Magic: the Gathering.

Lord, if you’re listening, let there be camp…

*teva = nature

The week before that, a former camper and parent-of-campers at my own Jewish summer camp, OSRUI in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, wrote “I’m a pediatrician and a parent. We should send our kids to summer camp.” At the time, he could write that

…the modeling data from The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent global health research center at the University of Washington, strongly suggest that by the time summer comes, the worst of this first round of COVID will be well behind us.

Jewish summer camp can be the gateway back to normalcy for our children as the immediate issues of the COVID-19 pandemic start to wane over time.

Today these projections are no longer likely. With states now reopening — even some where the caseload and death rate are still increasing — projections now suggest more than double the number of cumulative deaths by August than were previously forecast, with the daily death rate nearly doubling and the daily number of new cases increasing 8-fold by the end of this month. Nothing has changed in the the virus’s contagion nor our susceptibility. Camps are closed for the same reason schools are closed, and more.

Yet just this week the Forward published another claim that summer camp can and should be opened. Abraham Wyner wrote in “I’m a statistician. Closing camp because of corona is a huge mistake“:

It may initially seem prudent to close camp, but if the risk is not only acceptable but comparable to the risks we accept every day, then camp should open. The benefits of camp are many and they should not be ignored.

Let’s start with the benefits of remaining open. First and foremost you have the immense reward of camp itself. The Jewish summer camp experience is the most successful method we have for Jewish identity building. Multiple studies have demonstrated that the Jewish sleep-away camp experience has a large positive impact on holding Jewish values and future life choices like marriage and child-rearing. A decision to close camps this summer will have consequences for future summers.

Furthermore, many camps that do not open this summer may never open again. …

He goes on to say:

Camp age children are not only unlikely to develop symptoms, but they also have a very small chance of being sufficiently ill to require hospitalization, and almost no chance of dying (only infants have appreciable risk). The mortality rate for persons under 55 (regardless of underlying condition, see figure below) has so far, in the two months total of community transmission in Philadelphia, been less than one in 20,000 residents which is similar to the risk of dying in a traffic accident over the time we have been isolating at home.

Unfortunately, that small probability is magnified by at least a factor of 100 for seniors and those with serious underlying health problems. But it is considerably less so for the population of campers and staff that would attend camp.

That COVID-19 is a terrible illness is not disputable and should be taken extremely seriously. But the mortality risk is almost entirely localized to our most vulnerable populations while sparing the very population that would be attending camp. The data shows that the mortality risk to campers and staff is well less than the acceptable risk undertaken every day by driving.

And even more can be done to make camp safe for the vulnerable with easily implemented procedures. Campers and staff could be required to completely isolate in the weeks before camp. During camp, visitors could be kept to a minimum and deliveries and all interactions between the outside world and camp should maintain strict protections.

Mr. Wyner may know his statistics, but he doesn’t know summer camp. Camp looks like it’s all about youth and people in their 20s, and in truth they are the heart of it; but there are plenty of us old folks contributing to their safety, knowledge, structure, etc.

Thinking about my own beloved Crane Lake, where I will not be volunteering this summer: The year-round caretaker and head of maintenance is around my age. The nurses and doctors that volunteer for a week or two, or are hired for the summer, are all around my age. The camp director, the office administrator, inclusion specialist, social worker — these are all people who have many years of experience, which is a big part of why URJ summer camps provide such high-quality experiences for our campers.

And then there’s faculty. Reform Camps don’t operate without us. As the letter I received last week says, “You infuse the summer with the content and passion that inspires campers and staff members alike to seek  out additional opportunities for Jewish learning and action during the year. ” At 57, I’m not even the oldest of the returning faculty at Eisner, Crane Lake and SciTech. The idea that camp is run entirely by young people is decades out of date, if it ever was true.

And in any case, the statistics that *truly* matter are not those of age and immunity, but the reality that all human systems function with a statistically-predictable amount of messiness. There really is no way to ensure that the coronavirus would stay away from every camp, all summer. Mr. Wyner’s plan would require several thousand people to completely isolate themselves for two weeks before camp. Could we really trust that the hundreds of people who are at each camp have been scrupulous — and lucky — in their preparations? Again, take myself: Two of my children are teenagers living at home. Can I absolutely guarantee that my teens are not going to the store without masks, or otherwise doing something that might bring them into contact with the coronavirus? No! I believe they are doing well, but I won’t predicate someone else’s life or health on it.

And does two weeks with no symptoms guarantee that you’re not a carrier? No, it doesn’t. We now know that people who never develop symptoms may be busy sharing the virus with everybody they come in contact with. So even if I abandoned my responsibilities to my family and made them feed me for two weeks, and if we could agree on who would restrict themselves to the bathroom without the shower, the end result would be no more certainty than I have right now.

And all this for one week as faculty? And no, staying the whole summer is not an option for me. Besides the fact that I’m needed at home, and that especially this year High Holy Day preparation must begin before camp is over, working at camp is exhausting. I used to be able to do two weeks, now I prefer only one. A whole summer? Not happening!

We can’t realistically believe that 17 Reform summer camps could entirely exclude the virus. The idea that any kind of social distancing could be enforced among the campers (and even less among the young staff!) is laughable. Campers come from large geographic areas, counselors and unit heads come from all over the US, and much of the specialist, kitchen, and maintenance staff is hired from overseas through CampAmerica. Even without overseas staff, were that possible, the nature of camp means that a single outbreak would potentially be transmitted to hundreds of families and dozens of communities at the end of the session.

We take pikuach nefesh, saving life, seriously. That is why I support the heart-breaking decision to close Reform Movement camps. It will not kill the camps; they are too important and too beloved. For this summer, camps are offering what virtual programming they can. When it is safe, we will return; and when we do, we won’t have blood on our hands. As Rabbi Chase Foster wrote today, “Trust camps when they say it’s not safe. And it’s not safe.“

Counting our way from Freedom to Responsibility

April 30, 2020 by Rabbi Debora S. Gordon • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2020, COVID-19, freedom, Jewish holiday, Passover, responsibility, Shavu'ot • 1 Comment

We are in the midst of counting the omer, counting the days from Pesach/Passover to Shavu’ot (“Weeks”). We begin the count on the second night of Pesach and count “seven times seven” full weeks until we reach 49 days, and the next evening begins Shavu’ot.

“The Torah itself dictates the counting of the seven weeks following Passover:

“You shall count from the eve of the second day of Pesach, when an omer of grain is to be brought as an offering, seven complete weeks. The day after the seventh week of your counting will make fifty days, and you shall present a new meal offering to God (Leviticus 23:15-16).”

In its biblical context, this counting appears only to connect the first grain offering to the offering made at the peak of the harvest. As the holiday of Shavu’ot became associated with the giving of the Torah, and not only with a celebration of agricultural bounty, the omer period began to symbolize the thematic link between Passover and Shavuot.

While Passover celebrates the initial liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, Shavuot marks the culmination of the process of liberation, when the Jews became an autonomous community with their own laws and standards.” (MyJewishLearning.com, “How to Count the Omer“)

One can only imagine how heady the freedom felt when they were sure that their pursuers lay dead in the water behind them and they had left Egypt for good. Their world had changed irrevocably for the better; Moses and Miriam led them in song and dance.

Then reality set in. Three days without water, and they were complaining bitterly. The first water they found was also bitter, and had to be sweetened by throwing in a shrub or piece of wood. (Exodus 15:22-25)

They came to a place with plenty of water and palm trees (probably date palms), and camped there, but they couldn’t stay. Their exodus from Egypt was not in order to wander aimlessly in the desert, or even to settle down and just enjoy themselves. They were on their way to Mt. Sinai, where they would enter into a relationship of mutual responsibility with God as they understood God.

And in the three chapters it takes to get there (Exodus 16-18), they complain that they are starving and thirsty. They are attacked from behind. Moses has to be helped by his father-in-law to understand that he cannot spend his whole day adjudicating disputes and teaching the rules, but needs a whole network of support to whom he can delegate most of the day-to-day questions. They are free, but they don’t know how to structure their lives yet. The change is disorienting. Sound familiar?

Our world changed irrevocably this year before Pesach ever arrived. We are counting days of isolation as well as counting our way to Mt. Sinai. There’s even a ritual for counting these days of lockdown, counting up toward the “ultimate in-person, regathering of our communities.” (Whenever that may be and whatever it might look like.)

For me the first few weeks at home were ones of innovation and re-prioritization. I write as someone with a house and several acres, secure employment that can be done remotely, reliable internet and fast devices, and children old enough to be mostly self-regulating. For me it was a time of obsessive learning and connecting — on social media, by phone, by the now-ubiquitous Zoom. It was a time of daily counting the number of new cases and the number of people who died. As I crunched numbers and looked at survival rates by age, I mourned in anticipated grief of how my own family and community would be affected by the coronavirus.

But after several weeks of watching the graph, hardly daring to believe that the exponential doubling in NY was slowing down and the curve was flattening, it slowly became clear that my family and synagogue were not being touched at anywhere near the rate predicted by the aggregate statistics. We now know that the experience of COVID-19, including cases and deaths, varies wildly:

By geography: New York City became the epicenter (not only in the US, but in the world) with hundreds of deaths a day and an overwhelmed hospital system, but there are states that continue to report fewer than 5 deaths on any given day (look, for instance, at the Dakotas and Montana).
And by economic security: Everywhere, people who have to go to work physically (because their jobs are deemed “essential,” and their paycheck is essential for their family) are at higher risk. These jobs are also overwhelmingly underpaid. Poverty itself is an underlying condition: Living in a food desert, or with food insecurity anywhere, is linked to many chronic but preventable diseases.
In the US, communities of color are disproportionately poor, as are immigrant communities, including people being held as refugees and asylum seekers. People without stable housing and people in prison are disproportionately people of color. And the nursing homes in NY State which have reported the highest rates of death also tend to have higher proportions of residents who are people of color, though I don’t have data about who is dying.

My grief and horror shifted as I understood the impact of the numbers. The rate at which my family, my congregation, and my friends are not being directly touched is inversely mirrored by the rate at which people of color and people with inadequate economic resources are getting seriously ill and dying.

Because the US is incredibly stratified and segregated — by geography, by economics, and by color and culture — there are still large segments of our population who don’t personally know anybody who has died or even tested positive. I have been watching for a spike in identified cases 10-14 days after Easter, not only because of some churches defying regulations, but because I suspect that many families, believing themselves safe, got together for Easter dinner. Look at the graphs: It’s there, both nationally and in many states, around April 22-25.

It’s a human response to find a way to explain why “they” got hit with a horrible thing but “we” are safe from it. If you are reading this in the US, ask yourself: Could you envision the current situation as the virus made itself known in Asia and Europe? If you are anywhere near NYC, could you imagine massive outbreaks locally when identified cases were only on the West Coast? Most people simply could not conceptualize something so totally outside of our experience.

Given the economic devastation wrought by the shutdown and the reality of some people not seeing the virus personally, one can begin to understand some people characterizing the response as an overreach by their state’s governor. In the last two weeks we have seen protests in some places (sometimes incorporating anti-Semitic slogans and imagery) demanding re-opening and declaring that the states’ stay-at-home and close-business orders are infringements of personal freedom. These look like grassroots protests, and I’m sure the people who participate in them believe what they are saying; but there is an element of “astroturf” to them. They are not simply spontaneous outbursts of community sentiment; they have been carefully orchestrated and stirred up by far-right organizers, using internet platforms to coordinate. And nowhere in any of the photos of protesters will you see people of color.

Rabbi Gordon wearing a fabric mask over nose and mouth with colorful Hebrew letters on it — I WEAR THIS FOR YOU

Meanwhile polling data indicated that a large majority of people in the US support the measures and are more worried about a too-rapid reopening. The protests got a lot of attention in the news, but in reality only a very small percentage of the population participated. As I tell my children when scary things happen, it’s “news” precisely because it doesn’t happen all time time. Where I live, the vast majority of people are wearing masks outside and try to keep 6 feet distant even in grocery store lines. We notice the exceptions because they are the exceptions.

From my perspective the real evil that is happening right now is taking place among a powerful minority who are enriching themselves further, blocking common-sense supports, diverting money and resources, giving license to expressions of hatred, and being careless of the power of their words … I’m not sure I can continue with this. There are people with blood on their hands, people who could have prevented deaths and did not.

I pray that there is a reckoning ahead. The principle of pikuach nefesh, saving human life, is deeply embedded in Jewish law and custom, and these recent weeks have made it clear that the US needs to make huge strides in providing universal healthcare, childcare, and internet access, a living wage, and a safe working environment for everyone. Because it turns out that caring for the people who care for us all is in the best interests of everybody.

Meanwhile, humans everywhere are facing an unknown amount of time in the desert, not knowing what will feed us spiritually and emotionally — and for plenty of people, literally. We are dealing with loss and uncertainty, stress and trauma, and the past is looking awfully good sometimes, just as it did for the complaining Israelites. But we can’t go back there. We can only go forward.

Yom HaShoah 5780/2020

April 20, 2020 by Rabbi Debora S. Gordon • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2020, Jewish holiday, poem, video, Yom HaShoah • 0 Comments

The Shoah (“catastrophe”) was not a plague or pandemic. It was caused by human beings and intentionally targeted specific groups of people. In the space of six years, 1/3 of all Jews living were murdered, starved or tortured to death, or died of disease. An unknown number took their own lives. Along with Jews, Romany, people with disabilities, queer people, and others were specifically targeted; and millions of other people, soldiers and civilians, suffered and died as well.

Jews in particular were systematically humiliated and degraded as well as murdered. While we were not the only ones who suffered, we occupied a central and horrible place in Nazi ideology.

Now, especially, we are reminded that what we thought was safely in the past may return. As with Amalek, an ancient Biblical enemy to whom the Nazis are sometimes compared, we are commanded never to forget. For if “those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it,” then remembering what happened and honoring our dead is part of our survival — as Jews and as human beings.

This is the poem I read during the service:

The Vow

With the assent of my eyes which saw parents bereaved

And piled shrieks upon my overburdened heart

With the assent of my compassion which schooled me to pardon

Until there came days too terrible to forgive

I have sworn this vow: To remember it all,

To remember — and not to forget one thing.

Not to forget one thing — to the last generation

Until my humiliations subside, till they are over, till they’re gone,

Until all my painful lessons are completed for good.

Lest for naught shall pass the night of wrath

Lest in the morning I return to my fleshpot

Having learned nothing this time, either.

— written in the 1940s by Israeli poet Avraham Shlonsky,
translated by Rabbi Debora S. Gordon

A recording by Israeli singer Izhar Cohen: With Yom HaShoah iconography (candles, yellow star, barbed wire, Israeli flag, yellow Yizkor “remember” in Hebrew) or with a static view of the record album.

Zachor זָכוֹר Remember.

Yizkor Elohim/May God Remember

April 14, 2020 by Rabbi Debora S. Gordon • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2020, COVID-19, Jewish holiday, mourning, Passover, Yizkor • 4 Comments

Tonight begins the seventh day of Pesach. It’s a yontif (Yom tov, a non-work holiday day), like the first day (or two) of Passover, and I invite you to light candles to mark the beginning of this ending. Such markers of time are especially important for those of us whose days are blending into each other as we stay home and struggle to create structure for ourselves. So notice that it’s the last day of Passover.

And then, on Wednesday night for those who celebrate 7 days of Pesach, and Thursday for those who celebrate 8, it’s eat chametz night! Time for pasta and toast, bagels and bread, cereal and — who knows? — doughnuts. Enough with the bread of affliction already.

And if you are a Jew whose roots are in North Africa, you already know about Mimuna (Maimouna), a joyous community-wide celebration of the return to chometz-dikeh eating. (OK. that’s a little too cross-cultural — an Ashkenazi pronunciation for a Sephardi celebration.) One of my college professors, Dr. Joelle Bahloul, grew up in Morocco and from her I learned of the close collaboration between Jewish and Muslim neighbors in the celebration of Mimuna. After all, how could you throw a party full of chametz (leavened/fermented food) starting immediately after sunset when you have had nary a crumb nor drop of it in your house for the past 8 days? Only if your neighbors had ready for you to purchase, borrow, or “buy back” all that you would need!

Joyful Maimuna follows the last day of Pesach. But the last day itself, whether 7th or 8th, is a solemn one. It is one of four days on the Jewish calendar designated for Yizkor, the memorial service whose centerpiece is a prayer asking “May God remember” people who have died. It concludes with El Maley Rachamim, a prayer asking “God, full of compassion” to shelter the souls of the departed beneath the wings of God’s presence, and then Kaddish.

This year, we have need for pausing and remembering at Yizkor. It’s not that God needs a reminder. Nor, alas, do we. But we need to remind ourselves to pause, to breathe in the sorrow, to breathe it back out.

Irregular rows of lit tea lights against a black background

Yizkor is recited on days which traditionally would bring family to mind, Yom Kippur and the three major agricultural festivals: Pesach/Passover, Shavu’ot/“Weeks,” and Sukkot/“Booths.” (Technically on Shmini Atseret, the holiday at the end of Sukkot.) Here, at the end of Pesach 5780, family is very much on our minds, whether we have it or not. Family with whom we are hunkered down at home, and family we can only see on a screen and speak to through the ether. Family we will never see again in this world, and family who aren’t there to care for us if we get sick.

Originally, Yizkor was recited only on Yom Kippur. Its primary purpose was to honor the deceased by committing to giving tzedakah [charity] in their memory, on the theory that the good deeds of the survivors elevate the souls of the departed. It also enhanced the chances for personal atonement by doing a deed of lovingkindness. Since the Torah reading on the last day of the pilgrimage festivals [the holidays of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot] mentions the importance of donations, Yizkor was added to these holiday services as well.

It was the custom in medieval Germany for each community to read a list of its martyrs at the Yizkor service. The practice was eventually expanded to include the names of other members of the community who had died. (MyJewishLearning.com)

We have many names to recite this year … and cannot. As of this writing, the World Health Organization reports that 117,217 people have died worldwide from the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. We know that this number is too low to accurately represent reality. A bit closer to home for me, Hart Island in New York City is once again being used as a mass burial ground for people who died of COVID-19, whose bodies have remained unclaimed for two weeks. Their names are preserved, but there is no grave marker for them. Nor for the people who died of AIDS or so-called Spanish Flu nor any others buried there over 150 years. Families who can afford a burial will be able to reclaim the bodies of their loved ones for reburial; but while there is no cost for the disinterment, funerals are expensive, and “city burial assistance covers $900 for a funeral not costing more than $1,700.” (A total cost which is almost impossible to find, and funeral directors are overwhelmed. It is striking to me that these people are being buried in plain pine boxes, which is in accord with the simplicity required by Jewish tradition. Photo.)

There will never be a complete accounting, and most names are unknown to anyone but the people who love them and the people who held their hands, if they could, as they died. And, if so you believe, to God.

But our people have known mass death before. There is a version of El Maley Rachamim for Jews who died in the Shoah (otherwise known at the Holocaust). There are others as well, with the exact language changed depending on what tragedy has occurred. For instance, this 2017 El Maleh Rachamim for Victims of Racial Violence. Undoubtedly there were similar memorial prayers after the Black Death and the massacres of Jews at that time, who accused of causing it by poisoning wells.

So this year, we might pray:

אֵל מָלֵא רַחֲמִים, שׁוֹכֵן בַּמְרוֹמִים

הַמְצֵא מְנוּחָה נְכוֹנָה

תַחַת כַּנְפֵי הַשְּׁכִינָה

בְּמַעֲלוֹת קְדוֹשִׁים וּטְהוֹרִים

כְּזֹהַר הָרָקִיעַ מַזְהִירִים

אֶת נִשְׁמוֹת כָּל בְּנֵי וּבְנוֹת אָדָם וְחָוָה

אֲנָשִׁים נָשִׁים וְטַף

שֶׁנִּגְעוּ בַּמַּגֵּפָה וָמֵתוּ

.מִפְּנֵי שַׁאֲנַנוּת וְגִזְעֲנוּת,

בְּמִקְרֶה וּמֵמָצָבִים רְפוּאִיִים

בַּעֲבוּר שֶׁבְּלִי נֶֽדֶר

אֶתֵּן צְדָקָה בְּעַד הַזְכָּרַת נִשְׁמוֹתֵיהֶם

.בְּגַן עֵדֶן תְהִי מְנוּחָתָם

אָנָּא בַּעַל הָרַחֲמִים,

הַסְתִּירֵם בְּסֵתֶר כְּנָפֶיךָ לְעוֹלָמִים

.וּצְרוֹר בִּצְרוֹר הַחַיִּים אֶת נִשְׁמוֹתֵיהֶם

ה’ הוּא נַחַלָתָם,

וְיָנוּחוּ בְשָׁלוֹם עַל מִשְׁכּבוֹתֵיֶהם.

וְנֹאמַר אָמֵן

God full of compassion, dwelling on high,

grant perfect rest

beneath the sheltering wings of Your Presence,

among the holy and the pure

who shine with the light of the heavens,

for the souls of our brothers and sisters, all people,

men, women, and children,

who have been struck by the plague and died

because of complacency and racism,

chance and underlying conditions.

I hereby commit (without making a vow)

to do acts of justice in their memory.

May the Garden of Eden be their resting place.

Oh please, God of compassion,

keep them in the shelter of Your wings for eternity

and bind up their souls in the bond of life.

The Eternal One is their inheritance;

may they rest in peace,

and let us say, Amen.

If you have a yahrzeit candle, I invite you to light it tonight or tomorrow night (depending on whether you observe 7 or 8 days of Pesach) just before you light holiday candles. Take a moment for your own meditation or a prayer, or just stand silent to honor the memories of uncounted thousands of our fellow human beings who have died in this pandemic.

!עֹשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם בִּמְרוֹמָיו, הוּא יַעֲשֶׂה שָׁלוֹם עָלֵֽינוּ וְעַל כָּל יִשְׂרָאֵל, וְעַל כָּל יוֹשְׁבֵי תֵבֵל, וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן

Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya’aseh shalom, aleynu

ve’al kol yisra’el,

ve’al kol yoshvey teyvel,

ve’imru: Amen!

May the One who makes peace in the heights, make peace for us,

for all Jews everywhere,

and for all the inhabitants of the planet,

and let us say: Amen!

This is not a time for productivity. Not yet

April 4, 2020 by Rabbi Debora S. Gordon • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2020, blog, COVID-19, Jewish holiday, mourning, Passover, safety, Seder, trauma • 3 Comments

Tonight I want to pass on some words from Rabbi Susan P. Fendrick. These are for everybody who needs them, and especially for women of any age, and especially for millennials of any gender, and especially for Jewish educators and cantors and rabbis:

You are allowed to have a shvach seder.

And by shvach, I mean the Yiddish word for mediocre, underwhelming, unremarkable, or even kind of pathetic.

You do not need to set up a multi-media, multi-layered presentation on Zoom. You do not need to cook 17 dishes that remind you of all the family members you are not gathering with. You do not need to do all the cool things that people are suggesting for small seders. You do not need to go out on your mirpeset/porch at 11 pm and sing Chad Gadya with your neighbors. You do not need to compile an “in these times”-themed haggadah or seder supplement.

You are living through an international pandemic. For all of the support you have, for all of the jokes people are making, for all of the new Torah that is being learned…you are experiencing a collective trauma as an individual, within the daled amot – the delimited space – of your own home and your own life. You may be managing others’ experience of that trauma. You are dealing with challenges you have never faced before. You may feel scared, angry, depressed, or lost.

If you want to and can do any of the above for a maximalist seder night, great. But if you don’t want to and/or can’t, it is totally fine to cook a modest meal, throw together a seder plate at the last minute, get up to make salt water when it’s time for karpas because you forgot to do it before, make decisions on the fly…

You do not need to make up for the seder you are not having, or the seder you wish you could have. Do this year’s seder(s) however that works for you this year.

This is important not just for seder. You are living through a crisis. You and your family and everybody around you are experiencing trauma and grief (whether it feels like grief or not, there are so many losses right now, from loss of playdates to loss of control to loss of freedom of movement to loss of life). This is not a time to worry about “productivity” or “academic success” or even necessarily “a socially distant meaningful, memorable Passover.” Not yet. As Professor Aisha Ahmad writes,

…ignore everyone who is posting productivity porn on social media right now. It is OK that you keep waking up at 3 a.m. It is OK that you forgot to eat lunch and cannot do a Zoom yoga class. … Know that you are not failing.

(That means you too, my clergy colleagues!)

Right now is the time to ensure your physical safety, strengthen your community safety networks, and slowly get used to changed circumstances. (Professor Ahmad again.) Turn off the news. Did I say that loudly enough? Turn off the news. Go outside and garden if you have access to land. Turn off the news. Get off Facebook. Put on your mask and go outside and pull weeds, find flowers, watch the clouds, find the moon as it approaches full.

Stop worrying about what people with power and money are doing; you can’t do anything about them right now. Truth: Crooks and monarchs and business tycoons have always done what they are doing now. We have survived them, like we survived Pharaoh. 200 years ago we would have had no idea what they were doing anyway, so pretend you have no idea and take care of what is in your grasp: Check on someone who has no one. Keep yourself and your loved ones safe. Pay attention to the people who speak truth and compassion. Offer a listening ear — you’ll both feel better. And by all means, have a shvach seder.

May you have a zissen Pesach/a sweet Passover, whatever it is like.

This year we are enslaved, next year let us be freer people.

This year we are here … and here …and here… Next year in the same room!

P.S. What I have said here, and have been saying for days, is strongly shaped by Professor Aisha Ahmad’s essay “Why You Should Ignore All That Coronavirus-Inspired Productivity Pressure.” She writes:

I am just a human, struggling like everyone else to adjust to the pandemic. However, I have worked and lived under conditions of war, violent conflict, poverty, and disaster in many places around the world. I have experienced food shortages and disease outbreaks, as well as long periods of social isolation, restricted movement, and confinement.

So I listen to her. And I hope you will listen too.

Old foods, new symbolic meanings on the Seder plate

April 2, 2020 by Rabbi Debora S. Gordon • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2020, blog, COVID-19, food, Jewish holiday, Passover, Seder • 1 Comment

Some people are asking what to add to the seder plate this year. There are many creative answers. For myself, I think we already have all the symbols we need:

Matzah: Represents both being unprepared and responding creatively to novel situations. Even though we have been caught off guard, we are figuring out how to live [in this strange time], and we will turn our Bread of Affliction into Bread of Freedom.

Salt water (or vinegar in some Sephardic traditions): a mild disinfectant. We will take measures to protect ourselves. We don’t need zero risk — just keep it low enough not to overwhelm our healthcare system or our own immune systems.

Charoset: A mixture supposed to represent the mortar that sticks bricks together. Our ancestors were forced to build literal walls with bricks and mortar. Today we build virtual walls with “social distancing.” But nothing is quite what it claims to be. “Social distancing” actually means maintaining real physical distance while still socializing “virtually.” Sephardic charoset, which generally includes mashed dates, figs, and/or bananas, really is sticky; but Ashkenazi charoset, chopped apples and walnuts seasoned with cinnamon and held together with wine or grape juice, wouldn’t stick anything together. It’s virtual, not actual, mortar.

But our virtual mortar is also sweet, and so is sticking together in tough times. We are finding all sorts of creative ways to be “virtually” present with each other, from Zooming services to visiting our elders through windows to singing together from balconies. This virtual togetherness helps ease the bitterness of enforced separation. And yet, it is no substitute for a hug or sitting around a table together. We are almost — virtually — there, but we keep a screen between us. Charoset symbolizes everthing “virtual” that is being imposed by this pandemic.

Maror: The bitter plants of the world are also among the most tenacious. Like horseradish, like dandelion, we will survive and even thrive in the face of adversity.

Karpas: Spring green. In my family, there was always a cold boiled potato to dip in salt water, along with parsley. After I left home I learned that this was what Litvak (Lithuanian) Jews used for their ritual “hors d’oeuvre” — who had anything green in March that far north?? Karpas reminds us of the importance of short supply chains and eating locally.

Orange: Representative of the way that stories and explanations morph and change. I don’t have time to give you the links right now but there was an original midrash in a 1980s Oberlin Haggadah that referenced a crust of bread, which Susannah Heschel then transformed into an orange and re-drashed (gave new meanings to), and finally there was a widely-circulated folk-midrash, a completely made-up explanation that was believed to be true, mentioning Anita Bryant and an angry man. The orange reminds us to avoid contributing to the “infodemic” of misinformation, rumor, and outright disinformation.

Z’roa: Roasted shankbone, literally “arm,” the most stark of our symbols: a bone from an animal. If you use a vegetable symbol (most commonly a roasted beet), that was a living being too. But how like a virus is a harvested vegetable! Not exactly living and growing, yet still harboring within itself a life force. It is the heat of roasting that finally destroys its ability to grow. Our bodies use the same tool. The fever that makes us so miserable is an attempt to roast the virus so it can reproduce no more.

Z’roa has multiple layers of meaning. It represents the Passover offering, the main dish of the Pesach meal in ancient times, and that sheep or goat symbolized an even earlier life and death experience. Just before the tenth plague, God instructs Moses and Aaron to

“Speak to the whole community of Israel as follows: ‘On the tenth of this month each family shall take a lamb, one lamb per household. But if the household is too small for a lamb, let it share one with a neighbor who lives nearby, in proportion to the number of people: you shall contribute for the lamb according to what each household will eat. … You shall keep watch over it until the fourteenth day of this month, and then the assembled community of all the Israelites shall slaughter it at twilight. They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they are to eat it.’ … And the blood on the houses where you are will be a sign for you: When I see the blood I will pass over you, so that the plague will not destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 12:3-7, 13)

Thus z’roa also represents the healthy adaptations that the Israelites made in extraordinary times. Look ahead a few days and prepare. Cooperate with your neighbors to meet the needs of people in differing circumstances. Swab your doorposts with blood, your door handles with disinfectant, to keep out the destroying plague. (Thank you Rabbi Esther Hugenholtz for that parallel.)

The Hebrew word for “bone” itself, etsem, points to life-sustaining actions. First, etsem also means “specific,” as in בְּעֶ֙צֶם֙ הַיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֔ה b’etsem ha-yom ha-zeh, “on this very day” (v. 17 in the same passage in Exodus). This phrase reminds us to be truly present at this specific moment in time. Thinking about the global pandemic and its ramifications for the future is anxiety-producing if not downright scary for many people. But the future is virtual, not actually happening. It is healthier to focus on the reality of this moment, and ground yourself in the specific tasks you want to accomplish b’etsem ha-yom ha-zeh, right now.

From etsem we also have otsmah, strength or fortitude, and atsma’oot, independence or self-sufficiency. You may surprise yourself to find how deeply these qualities are bred in the bone. You have what it takes to get through this.

Finally, the egg: The longer it’s cooked, the more rubbery it gets … under ordinary circumstances. But under true adversity, cooked for 6 hours or overnight to make huevos haminad os, the egg takes on beautiful colors and is soft and creamy. So we will endure the tough and rubbery times, trusting that we will turn this time to beauty and good when we can.

Feel free to use, please b’shem omro (“in the name of the one who said it” — give credit). May you all have a chag sameyach v’kasher u’vari, a joyful and kosher and healthy holiday, and may we soon be liberated from Mitzrayim (Egypt) — ‘the narrow places’ in which we find ourselves.

Rabbi Debora S. Gordon

Reb Deb

April 2020/Nisan 5780

Mah Nishtanah: How is this plague different?

April 1, 2020 by Rabbi Debora S. Gordon • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2020, COVID-19, food, Jewish holiday, Passover • 1 Comment

Mah nishtanah ha-magefah ha-zot mi-kol ha-magefot! How different is this plague from all other plagues!

For all other plagues took place long ago or far away. This plague is here and now.
For all other plagues in our lifetime there was an “us” and a “them.” This plague affects us all.
For all other plagues, real-time communication was a key problem. This plague comes at a time when information also spreads virally, for good and for ill.
For all other plagues, we mentioned them at Seder. This year, we have to make Seder in the middle of the plague.

For each difference, there is a corresponding action:

Accept that reality has changed. Reach out for emotional and spiritual support as you need it. Be patient and kind with yourself and others.
Reach out and strengthen (or form) a network of mutual support. We are all in this together and it will take every one of us to work our way through it in health and safety — emotional, mental, and spiritual as well as physical.
Use our ability to communicate long-distance and real-time to share emotional and practical support and verified information. Try not to contribute to the “infodemic” of misinformation, rumor, and disinformation.
See below.

Our world has been turned up-side down. We have lost the certainty of what’s happening next week, much less next month. It’s disorienting. Our ancestors responded to their suddenly-changed lives by complaining through the desert, occasionally refusing to follow rules, and longing for the way things used to be. We grieve for the ordinary lives we have lost, as well as for the death and suffering that this plague brings. We try to prepare for Pesach while mourning our lost expectations of what Seder would be like this year.

Be patient; it will take time to adjust. Go easy on your expectations of yourself and others. Get outside into the sunshine, or at least stand at a window and breathe fresh air. Please be in touch if you want to talk. And be creative in your seder this year! Here are some new drashot (meanigful explanations) of our symbols:

Matzah: Represents both being unprepared (“they had no time to let their dough rise”) and responding creatively to novel situations. Even though we have been caught off guard, we will respond creatively and turn our Bread of Affliction into Bread of Freedom.
Salt water (or vinegar in some Sephardic traditions): a mild disinfectant. We will take measures to protect ourselves. We don’t need zero risk — just keep it low enough not to overwhelm our healthcare system or our own immune systems.
The egg: The longer it’s cooked, the more rubbery it gets…under ordinary circumstances. But under true adversity, cooked for 6 hours or overnight to make huevos haminados, the egg takes on beautiful colors and is soft and creamy. So we will endure the tough and rubbery times, trusting that we will turn this time to beauty and good when we can.
Maror: The bitter plants of the world are also among the most tenacious. Like horseradish, like dandelion, we will survive and even thrive in the face of adversity.
Karpas: Spring green. In my family, there was always a cold boiled potato to dip in salt water, along with parsley. After I left home I learned that this was what Litvak (Lithuanian) Jews used for their ritual “hors d’oeuvre.” Who had anything green in March that far north? Karpas reminds us of the importance of short supply chains and eating locally.

May the Holy One of Blessing be a Presence you can feel when you are in need; and please be in touch if you are in need of a human ear. I hold you in my heart and pray that we will see each other face to face soon, and be able to offer hugs. Wishing you a zissen Peysach, a sweet Pesach, and a chag sameyach, a holiday of joy. Zai gezunt! Be healthy!

Rabbi Debora S. Gordon

What Are You Paying Attention To?

September 30, 2019 by berith167 • Rabbi's Writings • Tags: 2019, 5780, addiction, being present where and when you are, Elijah, High Holy Days, humane technology, internet, midrash (new), poem, Rosh Hashanah, screen time, sermon, Torah • 0 Comments

What Are You Paying Attention To?

Rosh HaShanah 5780/2019

Abraham was relaxing one evening when his phone vibrated with a text message. “Can I call you?” “Sure.”
The call went something like this:
“Take your son…” “The one who lives at home or the one who’s moved away?”
“Your only one…” “I’ve still got two, and each is the only child of his mother”
“The one you really love” “Do I even have to say that I love them both?”
“OK already! Take Isaac, and get going to the land of Moriah, and offer him up there as an offering on one of the hills that I will tell you about.” (Connection fades out…)

Abraham turned to Sarah — but she had her earbuds in and was playing a game on her device, so he decided it was easier just to set an alarm for early next morning and be gone. It was a really difficult journey; Abraham was torn between wanting to tell Isaac what was going on and trying not to think about it himself; so mostly he posted photos of the trip on Facebook and watched the GPS; and anyway Isaac was listening to music and posting on Snapchat. On the third day Abraham’s phone pinged a notification to look up, and there was the mountain.

Things got tense after that. Abraham told the donkey-wranglers to hang out for a while, and they promptly sat down and stared at their screens. Abraham and Isaac started to climb, not looking at each other. At one point Isaac took off one headphone and said, “Dad?” Abraham sighed and stopped reading the sensational story about child sacrifice that he had googled, and said, “I’m here.” “What’s going on? You’ve got a knife, you’ve got wood, but I don’t see a baby goat for the offering.” Sigh. “God will see to the kid for the offering, son.” And the two of them got busy with their devices again and walked on.

Well, you know what happened at the top of the mountain. Isaac stayed focussed at his screen so he wouldn’t notice what was going on, and Abraham stuck in his earbuds and turned up the music so he wouldn’t hear his child’s cry. Then Abraham reached out his hand and picked up the knife to butcher his son.

God’s angel had to call his name two times to get his attention! Abraham snatched the earbuds out and listened, and then he actually looked up and around. There was a ram with its horns caught in the bushes behind him. Isaac was saved.
It could have happened like that.

Recently I read about former employees of Google, Facebook and Twitter who have taken major steps to disconnect themselves and their families from the internet. Research tells us that we touch, swipe, or tap our phones over 2500 times a day. And these tech folks are well aware that almost every time you look at a screen, websites and mobile apps are using sneaky tricks to keep your attention focussed on them. These are the some of the very people who invented technology’s addictive features. Like the “Like” button. And they know that the “attention economy” trades in our most precious human resources: our time and attention.

There’s even a disturbing piece of research which suggests that simply having our cell phones within reach — out of sight, turned off — can diminish our thinking capacity. Not because we are consciously aware of them, but because our phones have become so relevant to our lives that part of our brainpower may be occupied with preventing us from thinking about them. Is our phone addiction making us stupid?

I am not suggesting that there was ever evil intent behind the invention of social media or smartphones. They’ve transformed our lives in tremendously beneficial ways, and have become essential tools for knowledge and connection. But even with the best of intentions, the companies that create and administer this technology are under intense pressure to compete for our attention. And it’s harming our society and ourselves. The Center for Humane Technology, which was founded by some of these “tech defectors,” tells us, “Hidden designs hijack our attention, manipulate our choices, and destabilize real world communities.” And it’s all so that someone else can amass more money or power — or both. It happens directly, by manipulating our choices, and indirectly, by distracting us from injustice.

We now know that the 2016 election included sneaky uses of social media to sway voters. Not just to influence people directly, but to whip up outrage and polarization, because sensational extremes grab everybody’s attention, supporters and critics alike. And when our emotions are riled up, we make decisions based more on instinct and feelings than on thought. Both the US election and the British “Brexit” vote appear to have been affected by this.

A small aside: The same kind of psychological insight and manipulation is being used right now in a telephone scam in our area. A young person calls an elder, posing as their grandchild who is distraught because they are stuck overseas and need money for a plane ticket, or they’ve been arrested and need money for bail. The caller is using more than simple trickery; they are attempting to activate strong emotions which can overwhelm rational thought. Please be on guard against this kind of scam, and share the word: it is almost certainly not your grandchild calling you.

Our phones have become our digital slot machines. Every time a little red notification dot appears, do you feel the need to find out what it’s telling you? (Red is hardwired in the human brain as an alarm color.) Do you just have to respond to that internet troll? Do you enjoy keeping your streaks going from day to day — games played, puzzles solved, Snapchat? Snapchat streaks are particularly insidious because your friend’s streak also gets broken if you break yours, adding social pressure to keep it going. Do you play the same game for hours, trying to reach the next level? The attention economy thrives on these “feedback loops”: Reward-based behaviors that activate the pleasure centers of our brains, the same neurological pathways stimulated by gambling or drug use. All of these are designed to lure us in again and again, to become habits and perhaps compulsions. For some people they become literal addictions, requiring detox and rehab.

Drug addiction is overall more lethal than internet addiction. But mobile apps and the internet are everywhere, and we keep our phones with us nearly every waking moment. The rise of the attention economy has the capacity to affect society on an unprecedented scale. And it’s all so new that we are the lab rats. Google turned 21 this week, which means it’s younger than most people in this room.

So the question is, If the people who built these technologies and understand how they lure us in are taking radical steps to wean themselves off their screens, how much are the rest of us actually exercising free will around our devices? How much are we triggered, manipulated, persuaded and maybe even coerced by our information technologies?

And the gravest injury to our lives comes from the reality that human beings have limited bandwidth. Our screen habits can affect our ability to think clearly; and screen time affects our relationships, and the time we have available to do, create, to enjoy, and to be.

Rosh HaShanah is our yearly “reset” button. We come here to be shaken free of our tunnel vision, our usual habits, our unexamined life. Teshuvah, the work of self-examination, restoration, and change, is a soft re-boot. The shofar and the prayers of Rosh HaShanah are a wake-up call and a process to get ourselves out of our bad habits and onto a life-affirming path.

Paying attention is not just about banishing distraction. The ancient root of the word “attention” means “to stretch.” The idea is of “stretching your mind” toward something. It requires an act of will.

Think of God’s role in this as the energy that’s always trying to lure us into making good choices, always inviting us to pay attention to what really matters. But God doesn’t grab our attention like sensational news does. In order to refocus, we have to resist what’s clamoring for our attention. So did the prophet Elijah, standing in the opening of a cave wondering where his life was going (I Kings 19:11-12): First there was a strong wind that sent boulders crashing and breaking; then there was an earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire. But none of those sensational, attention-grabbing things represented God’s presence: God was in the still, small voice.
Being here, today, helps us clear our minds and gives us the opportunity to hear the still, small voice that has our best interests at heart.

And as much as we’re hardwired to be hoodwinked, we are also hardwired to care. There are rewards in this direction too, positive feedback loops that, with time and effort, can help us develop new habits, and support us in living an intentional life that maximizes meaningful relationship and compassion and justice.

So get savvy about attention hijacking. Work on not letting your emotions dictate your screen time. Jewish poet Merle Feld wrote:

Sometimes
out of the corner
of my eye
I get a glimpse
of my life.

In a flash
in a moment—
over there—
I see it clearly.

Quickly then
I make a shopping list
or rent a video.
Quickly, I look away.
Merle Feld, “Over There”

Be willing to be present in your own life.

Protect your eyes with the 20-20-20 rule: Every 20 minutes, take 20 seconds to look at something at least 20 feet away. Set an alarm to remind you to move every hour, even if it’s just to the bathroom and back, and leave the phone behind while you walk. Same thing outside: put it in your pocket and notice what’s going on around you.

Don’t overdose on the news or social media. Your parent or grandparent might have read three newspapers a day because that was the way to be an informed citizen, but now we’re surrounded by nearly infinite news delivery, and a lot of what’s delivered is irrelevant to your life. If you find yourself getting all worked up over the behavior of someone you don’t know personally, consider taking a break.

And turn off all notifications that don’t tell you that a live human being is trying to get in touch with you in real time. You can search the web for “take a break” apps to retrain your screen habits, and yes, I know that’s ironic, but useful. And look up “humane technology.” Just take a break from your research every 15 or 20 minutes.

In the Torah’s story, we don’t know why Abraham didn’t talk to Sarah. We don’t know why the angel had to call Abraham twice to get his attention. We don’t know why Abraham didn’t see the ram until he looked up. But we know that God is calling us to look up; to extricate ourselves from the thicket of compulsion that is growing up around us; to stay “woke” to injustice in the world, without overdosing on toxic news or confrontation; and to be awake and alive to the richness and beauty of the world around us, and to participate fully in our relationships with the people we love.

We know this is God’s will already; may we work hard on making it our own will this year.

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