Category: Personal Narrative

Empty, Open, Receiving: Wilderness Lessons from Shavuot

On By scatteredleaves322In D'var Torah, Sermons, Holidays, Personal NarrativeLeave a comment

This post appeared in another format on the Hillel International blog on May 20, 2026

“May I be empty
and open to receive the light
May I be empty
and open to receive   

May I be full 
and open to receive the light
May I be full 
and open to receive”

Shavuot celebrates a time of receiving. After a long period of wandering in the vast, empty desert, the Israelites arrived at Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah. This was the great revelation after our liberation. It was the moment of our becoming a people. 

There are many beautiful commentaries that explore how Torah was given and received, and who was there to receive it.  Midrash Tanchuma says that the Torah was received in the wilderness because “Just as the wilderness is ownerless, available to all, so too the words of Torah are ownerless, available to all.” Midrash Shemot Rabbah teaches that “Not only those who were in the wilderness stood at Sinai, but also the souls of all future generations.” Shemot Rabbah also says that God’s “voice went forth and divided into seventy voices, in seventy languages, so that each and every person would hear according to their capacity.” 19th century Hasidic master, Sefat Emet, took this a step further: “The voice was for each person according to their capacity…And so within each and every person there is an aspect of the giving of the Torah…for the utterance is heard both outside and within.” Sefat Emet also wrote that the Torah was both given once, and that its giving is ongoing in the present. 

Together, the text and commentaries teach that we were all there, together in that ownerless wilderness, receiving a message that was both personal and communal, a message that belonged not only to one person or even one group of people – but to everyone. Each time we interpret, innovate, or uncover a message from our ancestral tradition or from the torah within, we become part of the great unfolding story of our people’s revelation at Sinai. 

I’ve been reflecting recently with graduating seniors who are facing their ownerless wilderness – the uncertainty of life after college. A memory from one of my own times of wandering, as well as these teachings about Shavuot, have been a helpful framework for them as they prepare for their next steps. 

In June 2008, I had just finished a master’s degree in history at UC Santa Cruz. I had planned on pursuing a PhD and becoming an academic historian, but throughout my time in the program, it became clear that this wasn’t the right path for me.  But I didn’t know what else I could do instead, and I was terrified in the uncertainty of this wilderness.  My story was ownerless and wide open. I felt lost as I frantically applied for jobs. To make matters worse, it was 2008, and the country was in its own desert: an economic recession. 

At the same time, a beloved rabbi was preparing to leave Santa Cruz Hillel, where I had been an involved participant throughout undergrad and graduate school. I felt honored when a committee asked me to join them in a hiring process for the new staff member. I cared about the future of our Hillel, and I figured that it would help to see the other side of a hiring process while I applied for jobs. Then, after we had interviewed a couple of candidates, one of the people on that committee turned to me and asked, “Heather, why haven’t you applied for this position?” It was a Sinai moment. 

I had never considered working for Hillel, but the more I thought about it, the better it felt. I didn’t know what to do with my life, so why not give back to an organization that had given me so much?  Hillel had always been there for me, a reliable, loving space, no matter what happened in the rest of my life, and I was excited about the opportunity to create that space for others. When I look back, I realize that Hillel was there for me in that moment as well, a path forward in the wilderness of my job search and identity crisis. Like so many in our ancestral tradition – including Moses when he encountered God in the burning bush – it wasn’t just that I happened to be in the wilderness. I had to be in that vast unknown before the path forward was revealed. I am grateful every day that I was open to receiving this message that guided me into my future. I never would have predicted it, but 18 years later, I’m still working for Hillel, and I’m a rabbi. 

This story has become part of my own torah, a moment I return to whenever I’m facing another wilderness, or when I’m speaking with a student who is facing theirs. When we are in the ownerless wilderness, it can be tempting to narrow our vision, to focus on the familiar because the unknown is so scary. But Shavuot and the commentaries on this holiday teach us that we are all at Sinai,  receiving the Divine voice according to our own capacity. Sometimes it arrives in the voice of a friend or mentor, who sees something in us that we couldn’t see in ourselves. 

Shavuot celebrates our receiving, but that moment at Sinai was not only a moment.  As Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (z’l), taught, the divine broadcast is eternal; “the question is whether we have our receivers turned on and tuned to the right frequency.”  The Torah is still being given. We are still receiving – and creating! – Torah. It’s all a matter of how attuned we are, how open we are, to receive what’s coming through. What might you receive if you make yourself open, free, and ownerless like the desert? What is the torah, the wisdom of your heart, that reveals itself to you when you are ready to truly listen? 

The Kabbalists taught that we should read “midbar,” wilderness, as “midaber” – “to speak.” To tell. To create worlds with our words. Revelation is not only about what we receive, it’s about how we respond. What we do with what we receive. How many times have you ignored or tried to brush off some piece of advice, some internal, deep knowing? What would change if you not only noticed, but acted meaningfully in response? 

You are most likely in your own wilderness right now, and with Shavuot approaching, I encourage you to tune in to the Divine broadcast. Notice who is standing with you at Sinai, and open yourself to receiving whatever message comes through. Torah belongs to all of us, and the Divine voice is all around you and inside of you. What is the message that is meant for you? How will you respond when you receive it? 

Threadnody

On By scatteredleaves322In Personal Narrative, RitualsLeave a comment

Threnody (n): a song, poem, or musical piece composed as a formal lamentation or memorial for the dead

On Tuesday, Joseph, Ella and I buried this bracelet in the backyard. 

The bracelet had been with me for almost a year. On my wrist. In my backpack. My purse. It came with me to Kallah in Baltimore over the summer. It came with me to California for three visits and then a fourth when I officiated my grandfather’s funeral. It went to three different states when I officiated weddings in August, October, and January.

I bought the bracelet not long after we lost our last embryo on March 10, 2025. With that embryo, we also lost our last chance to become biological parents to a second child. I was still carrying the weight of the two pregnancies we lost before our miracle Ella, as well as the two losses that followed her. Even as I delighted in Ella every day, I grieved for the future I envisioned for us as a family of four. At the same time, my parents were preparing for their move to Florida. Realizing they are aging, I grieved anew that it took us so long to have a child and that we live too far away for frequent visits. I grieved for the time we lost and the time we won’t have. I grieved the end of my childhood, young adulthood, and the vision I’d had for my future. 

I had trouble speaking about this litany of grief because I also have so much to be grateful for. I know that grief does not undermine gratitude – it actually expands our capacity for it.  But it was still hard for me to name this weight, padlocks dangling heavy on the gates of my heart. 

If anyone else had come to me with this problem, I would have designed a ritual for them, some way to externalize the feeling, acknowledge and validate it. I would have invited them into ritual to honor the memory of what had been lost, and to support their steps into the future. But as our sages taught, in a famous Talmud passage, “A prisoner cannot free themself from prison.” In the story, Rabbi Yohanan, who had the power to heal others from sickness, could not heal himself. He needed a friend to help, and so did I (Talmud Bavli, Brachot 5). It was Reb Irwin who suggested a bracelet made of biodegradable materials. Something that I could keep for a year and then bury. I’d made similar suggestions to others coping with miscarriages – carry a rock for a week, a month, or as long as you carried the pregnancy, and then bury it. In the absence of a body, a casket, or a funeral, it’s helpful to hold a physical item, return it to the earth, and say goodbye. The loss of this embryo seemed to carry all the previous losses inside of it, a set of faceless Russian nesting dolls. With all of those layers, it felt like a year was the right amount of time to carry the bracelet. 

The bracelet I selected was made of turquoise acai seeds and black cotton thread. When it arrived, I counted 22 beads. One for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. In Jewish tradition, 22 is a number that represents creation and completion. The mystics teach that these letters were the building blocks of the universe. In Bereishit, God created 22 things within the six days of creation, and rested when the work was complete. And in gematria, Hebrew numerology, the number 22 = יחד yachad, which means “together.” 

Despite my intent to wear it daily (and the mystical meaning I was rapidly assigning to acai seeds on a string), the bracelet itself was not the sturdiest. The woven structure fell apart within two weeks. I bought a second one. After all, if I wanted this item to stay with me for the duration of a year, I needed something durable, something that could hold itself together. The second one fell apart as quickly as the first, and I found myself asking my friend Bekah to help me stitch the beads back in line at ALEPH’s Kallah over the summer. Bekah is a Kohenet, artist and ritual guide; I told her why the bracelet was important to me, and asked for suggestions. How could I keep it from falling apart? 

I spent a lot of time rethreading the beads in the art room during breaks at Kallah. I tied and retied them, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get the beads to line up as they had before. Bekah noticed, and she reflected my behavior back to me – my singular focus on stringing the beads in a specific way. And I realized that for years, I had been trying to build my life the same way. No matter how hard I try, I just can’t control the future. I can pick the colors, string the beads, line everything up, create something beautiful – but sometimes, the thread breaks, the colors fade, the last embryo fails to attach. Sometimes, I am left with something less than what I’d envisioned, and more beautiful in its authenticity. I am left with the life I have, and the best thing I can do is wrap it around my wrist, and wear it with love. 

I kept both of the broken bracelets, carried them through my own wilderness, like the broken Tablets of the Covenant the Israelites carried, along with the whole ones, in their traveling sanctuary (Talmud Bavli, Bava Batra 14b). I kept one bracelet within my eyesight in my office, and kept the other in my backpack or purse. These artifacts of my grief made the losses visible, even if they were only visible to me. 

This past Tuesday was March 10, 2026. One year had passed since the day we learned about our last embryo. It was time for burial. Since I had two bracelets, I decided to keep one as a reminder of what I learned in the art room at Kallah. I brought the other out to the yard behind the house we’ve been renting in Urbana for the last four years. I moved into this house mid-miscarriage, and it’s the house we brought Ella home to when she was born. It’s the last home we ever shared with Gulliver. 

It was a beautiful spring day. Ella was wearing her favorite sweatshirt, the one my mom made for her with a dog embroidered on the front. We didn’t have a gardening trowel, but the earth was soft enough that we could dig a small hole with a snow shovel and soup ladle. “Today we are outside in the yard!” Ella chattered, telling us about the trees, the grass, and the wildflowers. She was excited to help us dig, “like a doggie!” I didn’t feel the need to say a blessing of any kind, or to name out loud what we were doing and why. It was beautiful to just be yachad – together – returning these 22 seeds to the earth. Ella asked if we could eat dinner outside afterward, so we sat together on the porch, enjoying the evening. 

One year after a traditional burial, Jews do an unveiling ceremony. The headstone is covered until that time, and at a ceremony around the one year anniversary, the veil is lifted. This was a different kind of loss, and I was burying, not unveiling. But something lifted for me that night as we sat on the porch together after burying the bracelet. For a few moments, there were no veils separating the life I am living from the life I had envisioned. I tied my daughter’s laughter with string, wrapped it twice around my heart, and I knew, in that moment, that we are everything we need. 

A Brush with Death

On By scatteredleaves322In Personal Narrative, ThoughtsLeave a comment

For as long as I can remember, this hairbrush, mirror, and lace doily have lived on the bedroom dresser in my grandparents’ bedroom. I remember playing with them as a little girl – marveling at how something as simple as a hairbrush could be made ornate. I don’t recall my grandmother ever using them. But I knew they were hers. I associated them with her. And they belonged on my grandparents’ bedroom dresser, next to the framed photo of my whole family at my bat mitzvah, and facing the large painted portraits of my mom and my two uncles when they were children, hanging on the wall over my grandparents’ bed.

I don’t know what I will do with the hairbrush and the mirror, but I couldn’t bear the thought of letting them go. As if leaving them in the donation box meant giving away the part of me was who believed everything my grandmother touched was beautiful because she had touched it. I added them to my pile on the bed in my mom’s childhood bedroom, along with two of grandmother’s paintings, a couple of photo albums, and a needlepoint she made. I remember looking at the needlepoint as I fell asleep while my grandmother sang Brahms lullaby in Yiddish.

The hairbrush and mirror look out of place next to these handmade treasures, and next to the menorah – the metal dark with age – that my mom and her brothers grew up lighting for Chanukah. We lit that menorah together with my grandfather during our visit and I am so glad we were there to do that. I am so glad Ella repeated the words after me, while my grandfather beamed beside her. I never expected that I’d be taking this menorah – or the paintings or needlepoint or the hairbrush and mirror – home with me, just over a week later.

I went to my grandfather’s CD tower and pulled out an album from clarinetist, Acker Bilk. When I picked up the clarinet in band in fifth grade, my grandfather introduced me to his “Stranger on the Shore,” and we loved to listen to it together – plaintive, longing, wistful. He and I were supposed to dance to that song at my wedding but my grandmother was tired and needed to get home before the DJ got around to playing it. Now the song was echoing in my heart as I walked through my grandparents’ house – full of things, but empty of them.

My grandparents’ house was our second home when I was growing up. They only lived about 25 minutes from us, and we were there every Sunday for dinner. After I left for college, every time I came home to visit my parents, we also had Sunday dinner with my grandparents. My mom dutifully shared photos of each Sunday meal in our family group chat, so I felt connected to those gatherings even when I lived far away. As a child, I didn’t realize how rare it was to have no true “extended” family, because there were no extensions – we saw each other every week, so everyone was immediate. Everything was always. My grandparents’ house was the other home I came home to, even after my grandmother died in 2015. We all still miss her, but I loved that I could feel her comforting presence so strongly when I visited. Everything she touched, like the brush and the mirror, was right where she left it.

I said goodbye to my own childhood home three times, but when I left after winter break, I was not prepared to say goodbye to this one. My parents were supposed to move away and sell the house over the summer, so I visited and said goodbye to their house in May, walking through it with my phone, taking photos and videos. I narrated favorite memories associated with every corner, floorboard, and cabinet. My parents ended up pushing the move back, and I was grateful to have one more Thanksgiving and winter break in the house.

Joseph, Ella, and I were in Southern California, visiting our homes, and our families in them, from December 20th-December 28th this year. We spent time with my grandfather on 21st and 25th. My grandfather had just received a good report from his primary care physician. At the age of 95, he still lived independently and read voraciously. Driven by lifelong intellectual curiosity and a zest for learning, my grandfather led three discussion groups in his 90s, for other octo and nonagenarians. When I was in college, my Grampie was the only person besides my thesis advisor to have read my entire undergraduate senior thesis – which was a serious undertaking, because that thing was over 100 pages on the American Revolution. I remember when he handed it back to me – with typos marked in red! Typos my thesis advisor herself had missed. I was so touched that he’d read the whole thing and with such attention to detail. He also read my masters thesis, and, I believe, most, if not all, of my rabbinic capstone.

In the living room of their house, the book my grandparents made for me, of all the poetry I wrote between the ages of 6 and 13, was at the center of their coffee table. They called it “Voyage of the Imagination,” and they had presented it to me for my bat mitzvah. It’s one of the most cherished gifts I’ve ever received – not just the book itself, but their relentless belief in my words, in my story, and in me. My grandfather believed I had something to say, something precious to offer – and whether it was an elementary poem in rhyming couplets, an academic thesis, or a high holiday drash, he wanted to hear it, read it, mark it up with a red pen and hand it back to me with one thousand questions. Grampie’s great-granddaughters – who called him “Double,” for double-grandparent – were the light of his life, and having Ella there to visit, chatting, playing, and singing, clearly made his whole month. I had no reason to think it was the last time. But I guess no one ever really does.

The day we flew back to Illinois, my grandfather wasn’t doing well. He’d had a couple of on and off health issues in the last year – but he was in his 90s, and that happens. A nagging feeling tugged at my heart but I shrugged it off. My grandfather had bounced back so many times that we barely worried. He went into the hospital and my mom kept us updated on his progress. My mom told me that Grampie had decided that if he wasn’t getting better, he was at peace and ready to join my grandmother. This was his decision. I was sure he would recover.

On December 31st, I woke up feeling nauseous. I assumed it was nothing and went to work. Then my mom messaged me. My grandfather was on hospice. Not long after that, he was gone, and I discovered I had food poisoning. I went home to look at flights. The funeral would be on January 2nd, and I would be officiating.

I wrote the eulogy in the airport on January 1st. My grandfather had been an aviation pioneer – involved in the early years of commercial air travel – and even as I sat there, queasy and grieving, it felt like an appropriate place to write something beautiful for him. And I did write something beautiful. I wrote a beautiful eulogy and designed a beautiful funeral. I officiated a beautiful service on January 2nd, after spending the night awake and writhing with stomach pain. It was an honor to his memory and a love letter to his legacy. I didn’t cry until I was in my grandparents’ house for the last time, realizing that these things – from the hairbrush to the Sunday dinner table – would no longer be there, waiting for me to come home to them.

I know that a table isn’t the people who sat around that table together, but my memories are wrapped around the table legs. My memories are laughing with my grandfather in the living room, falling asleep to my grandmother’s voice, running their fingers over her hairbrush. My memories’ hands are sweaty and struggling to turn the doorknob of my parents’ house after high school cross-country practice. They are tucking a letter for the tooth fairy under the pillow in my childhood bedroom – after I swallowed my first tooth, I wrote the letter asking the tooth fairy if I could have the prize anyway (she conceded). My memories are following baby Ella as she crawls down the hallway toward the den. My memories are sharing an indoor picnic in that den, sitting on a blanket in front of the fireplace and listening to the rain fall outside. My rituals of return brought me back to the same two homes my entire life. I miss my grandparents. I will miss these places too. It feels like my childhood and young adulthood chapters are closing as my family tries to close these two houses.

But thankfully, memories cannot be sold. Thankfully, I am a ritual artist, and we are creating new ones. Ella FaceTimes with my parents each morning. It’s not Sunday dinner, but it is meaningful. My parents are moving, but their new home will become the house Ella remembers. My grandfather died, but I think of him when I listen to “Stranger on the Shore,” and when I ask too many questions. My grandmother is gone, but I hear her voice when Ella listens to Brahms Lullaby as she falls asleep.

The goodbyes pile up in the inbox of my heart, and I can only mark “unread” for so long before I need to respond. So, here I am, in a coffee shop in Central Illinois, writing back – to my grandparents, to my houses, and to the parts of me that still live there. More goodbyes are needed, but I only have capacity to respond to a few at a time, and I am starting with these. “I am sorry for the delayed response, beloveds. I promise I haven’t forgotten. I promise I will always remember.”

Three of these photos are from my Bat Mitzvah (Dec. 7, 1996). One of these photos was taken not long after I was born (Dec. 1983) on the couch in my grandparents’ house. All of these photos were in an album at my grandparents’ house, along with many other cherished memories. May theirs always be for blessing.

Strength and Song

On By scatteredleaves322In Dvar Tefilah, Personal NarrativeLeave a comment
  • A sigil made out of the Hebrew letters for Ozi v’Zimrat Yah. I developed the sigil during a class on facilitated by Kohenet Bekah Starr,* and drew this one during the two week wait


עָזִּי וְזִמְרָת יָ וַיְהִי לִי לִישׁוּעָה
Ozi v’zimrat Yah
Vayehi li lishua
My strength (Ozi) and God’s song (Zimrat Yah) will be my salvation.

This prayer-song was my anthem for my final embryo transfer. Offered to me as medicine from my soul sisters on the Sunday of the Ohalah Shabbaton in January, I listened to recordings of my beloved friends singing me this song as I drove to doctors appointments and before most of my injections.

Ozi v’zimrat Yah. My strength and God’s song. We never know how the song will unfold. When I surrender to its music and I focus on my own strength, the parts of my life – and the parts of IVF – that I can control, it helps ease my passage through the dissonance I encounter along the way.

IVF – really, all pregnancy and birth, but especially IVF – are part miracle, part medicine. My strength and God’s song. Hope and hormones. Prayer, practicing trust, and doing everything we possibly can to make it work.

We did everything we could to make our final embryo transfer work on February 27th. And still, on March 10th, we found out the embryo didn’t even attach this time. I was not pregnant.
I’m not pregnant.

For a long time I felt guilty about even wanting or praying for another child, and I felt guilty asking my friends for support while I was trying. I leaned on community so heavily in my journey to Ella. Part of me felt like “I already got my miracle. Who am I to ask for another?” But we had always wanted two. That was our intention. Before the first miscarriage. Before infertility. Before the endo diagnosis. Before IVF. We dreamed of being a family of four. I wasn’t willing to give up on that, not while I still had remaining embryos. Even after my challenging pregnancy and birth experience with Ella, I wanted her to have a sibling. And knowing that we only had XY embryos left – we were really excited about the possibility of a baby brother.

But we miscarried the embryo we transferred in September and this final embryo didn’t attach. And we won’t be doing further medical intervention. The time for egg retrievals is behind us. It costs a fortune. My egg quality wasn’t great during all those retrievals and it’s certainly not better now. My body reacts so badly to the progesterone injections that doing this again with a donor egg isn’t an option either. After this transfer, I battled another infection at one of my injection sites. It was cellulitis – the same thing that landed me in the hospital in 2021. I caught it early this time and got antibiotics as soon as I knew. I am glad I listened to my body and went to the doctor instead of waiting longer.

While I battled the infection, Gulliver, our beloved 13-year-old labradoodle, got very sick. In just five days, we went from thinking we might gain a family member – to facing the very real possibility of losing one. I didn’t have capacity to reflect on the embryo loss while we were deciding if we should put Gulliver through the operation. Would they operate and find cancer, discovering that he had no chance at survival anyhow? Would they remove the spleen and find a benign tumor, prolonging his until-now happy and healthy life? Once again, we were standing at the crossroads of medicine and miracles. Our strength and God’s song. A doctor we trusted and an outcome we couldn’t. Just enough information to tell us we had a choice, but not enough to know if we had a decent chance. How would the song unfold this time?

We are so relieved that our sweet boy is healthy after all. We know Gulliver is a senior dog and we aren’t in denial about that. But for now, he is cancer-free, which means that he and Ella can make more happy memories together in the time he has. They shared a piece of pizza on Saturday, and it felt sacred.

It has been over seven years since my first pregnancy, and over five years since we started pursuing IVF. Seven years of trial and error. An endometriosis diagnosis. Countless ultrasounds, blood tests, laparoscopies, injections, miscarriages, tears, and everything else. At the same time – rabbinical school, a cross-country move for a rabbinic position, a child born, ordination received, and growing into my roles as rabbi and mother. Ozi. My strength. It took so much strength to get through it all. Looking back, realizing again how unlikely it was for IVF to work even once for someone like me, I’m so, so grateful that it did.

Ozi v’zimrat Yah
Vayehi li lishua
My strength and God’s song will be my salvation.

I have no regrets about the decisions we made. I am grateful that IVF – part medicine and part miracle – brought Ella into our lives, even while I grieve for the ones it couldn’t. We surrender what we can’t control, and do our best with what we can. We don’t know how the song will unfold, but this process has taught me that in the face of dissonance, the best thing I can do is continue, with all my strength, to sing along.

*Read more about Kohenet Bekah Starr’s art and teachings here