Tag: high holidays

Wisdom from the Wilderness

On By scatteredleaves322In D'var Torah, Holidays, Sermon, SermonsLeave a comment

There’s a name for what we’re experiencing . That feeling of having our hearts broken so repeatedly by the news cycle. Flash floods, fires, mass shootings, wars within us, wars between us, and wars in the world. Wars that make us question who we really are as a people. One day you’re worrying about climate change, the next it’s a group project, AI taking over, what you’re going to do with your life, the next pandemic, your situationship, economic collapse, or drama within your friendgroup. There’s never enough time to process one crisis before another begins. Even when the crisis is no longer acute, there’s a pit in our collective stomach, and it’s not just because we’re Jews with stomach problems. There’s anxiety pulsing through our communities as we wonder what will happen next. The feeling is called “existential whiplash.”  An instagram post from a mental health service called Spring Health says that “existential whiplash” is the emotional strain of trying to keep up with daily life while everything around us feels uncertain or overwhelming. 

Our ancestors knew a thing or two about this feeling, and what it’s like to yearn for stability, while knowing that change is going to keep coming. They survived slavery, escaped Egypt, and crossed the Red Sea. They had a dramatic experience at Mt. Sinai. They reached the Promised Land.  In between these major events, they wandered in the desert – trying to live amid existential whiplash, just like us. The Hebrew word for desert is “midbar.” It also means “wilderness.” The word  midbar appears approximately 270 times in the Torah. It represents uncertainty, wandering, a feeling of lostness in a world churning  with change. 

We’ve spent a lot of time here too, bamidbar – in our own spiritual wilderness. Believe it or not, 2020 was only five years ago. It’s been a long five years, and it’s been utterly exhausting. But all that intergenerational trauma we’ve acquired – going all the way back to our ancestors in the midbar – comes with intergenerational resilience. We are still here.  Still moving forward. We’re even still complaining about it, much like our ancestors in the desert.  

Tonight, I’m going to share 7 lessons for our spiritual wilderness based on our ancestral experience, as well as a few lessons based on the literal wilderness. Some of our most powerful spiritual technologies mirror the interdependent systems of the natural world. In the wilderness, we have an opportunity to learn from that which is wild, around and within us. We will see what our ancestors and the natural world can teach us about the resilience we have right now – and the ways we can build it for the future.  

7 Lessons from the Wilderness 

Lesson 1: Build sanctuaries. “V’asu li mikdash, v’shohanti b’tocham” – God says. “Make for Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell within them.” The mishkan – the communal, portable sanctuary in the desert – was elaborate. Five Torah portions in Exodus discuss the building of this space, sometimes in excruciating detail. The mishkan teaches us that at times of uncertainty, we should build something beautiful. We should pour our energy into creating, especially co-creating something that will serve the community. 

What sanctuaries have you built in our wilderness? What does your mishkan look like? Your mishkan might be your dorm room, a friend’s car, or your favorite coffee shop. It might be the arboretum or another outdoor space where you feel at peace. When you can’t change the whole world, you can still create something beautiful. Something safe. Something meaningful to you and those around you. 

The commentators point out that “v’shohanti b’tocham,” means “that I may dwell within them.” Yes, we must build physical sanctuaries, and we do – and on another level, the text may be referring to the people themselves. “Make for Me a sanctuary that I may dwell within them,” the people. The mishkan, the dwelling place for the Divine – is within every one of us.  

This means you can both build and be a sanctuary – for yourself and others. When have you been a sanctuary for someone you care about this year? When have you been your own? What does it look like to know there is a safe and sacred space within you, one you can always return to? The ultimate mishkan – traveling temple – goes wherever you go, and is there for you no matter what. This is the first lesson of the wilderness: In times of existential whiplash, build sanctuaries. 

There are many examples of collaborative building in the wild that can be instructive for us. Bees build hives and make honey through a process called festooning.. These “festoons” create structural support and regulate the temperature of the hive. Within the hive, there are worker bees who build honeycomb, nurse bees caring for the young, and scout bees who search for optimal hive collections. Each bee contributes to the structure that enables the hive to thrive. 

This leads me to lessons 2 and 3. Lesson 2 is Everyone has something to offer. God instructed every person to bring gifts to the sanctuary, telling Moses, “You shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved.”  Everyone was asked to give from their heart, and every gift was accepted.  

What can you do to sustain yourself and your community?  Are you an expert problem solver? Someone with powerful listening skills? Are you creative? Are you the person who can always make your friends laugh? Think about what you can give, and give it with love. It might be exactly what your community needs. Lesson 2. Everyone has something to offer. 

Like bees, when we contribute our skills and strengths to our community, we also benefit from the skills of others. This creates a more capable community that allows people to flourish – even or especially in the wilderness. This is where lesson three comes in. Ask for help. In the mishkan, Kohanim were the priests, who made sacrifices on behalf of themselves and their communities. The Levi’im played music and managed the practical aspects of Temple worship. There were also specific roles for individuals. Miriam was the one who could always find water. Betzalel was an artist who designed that first mishkan. 

Lessons 2 and 3 are connected. If everyone has something to offer, you can help others – and others are here to help you, like the bees in their hive. We all have different skills to share. Who, in your wilderness, can you turn to for help? Who can you reach out to when you experience existential whiplash?  When your well has run dry, find a Miriam who can help you locate a new source of lifegiving water. If you can’t serve God by leading song, find yourself some Levites who can. 

Hasidic master Sefat Emet wrote, “Each one gave their own offering,  but they were all joined together by the Mishkan, and became one. Only then did they merit the Divine Presence.” Each person had something unique and precious to offer – but they could not experience the Divine Presence until they shared these offerings. We became a people united not by what we took, what we achieved, or what we conquered. We became a people united by what we gave to one another.

Ecosystems are interdependent. Beavers create habitats, and those habitats are shared with other life forms. Recent research suggests that trees of the same species are communal, and will form alliances with trees of other species. Some claim that forest trees live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication similar to an insect colony. We are both of and in the wilderness. No one can make it through the wilderness alone and fortunately, we don’t have to. Third lesson from the wilderness: Ask for help. 

One Jewish practice that speaks to lessons 2 and 3 is the act of praying with a minyan – ten people. Mourner’s Kaddish is one prayer we only say when we have a minyan. We show up to support the mourners so they can say this prayer during their time of vulnerability and grief. In my prayer services, we count the Jews who are in the building, not just the ones who are in our service, because we are here together for the same reason. We are here because we know we are interdependent, because it strengthens the community, and because we believe in showing up. 

In April, there was a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in Southern California. A livecam from the San Diego Zoo showed all the adult elephants making a protective circle around the two youngest elephants. This behavior is a natural instinct to protect the most vulnerable. An elephant minyan. I think about it when we pray Mourner’s Kaddish together. We can’t protect anyone from grief. But there is so much power in showing up, like the elephants – it makes the grief just a little more bearable, a little less lonely. 

When there’s existential whiplash, make the minyan.  When others ask for help, it’s ok to not always have the right words. Sometimes, showing up is the help. When people are vulnerable, when things are uncertain, when the ground itself feels shaky – count your people, leave no one behind, show up, and be counted yourself. 

Lesson 4: Practice mindful awareness – be present and look around. Our ancestors often found what they needed in the wilderness when they least expected it.

Jacob ran into the wilderness after deceiving his brother and his father. He fell asleep with his head on a rock, and he dreamed of a ladder with angels ascending and descending. Jacob awakened, saying “Mah norah hamokom hazeh!” God was in this place, and I didn’t know it. 

Moses was also bamidar when he saw a bush, burning, but not consumed in the fire. He had run away from Pharaoh’s land, struggling with his conflicting identities as a master in Pharaoh’s palace and a Hebrew, like those Pharaoh enslaved. God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, saying, “Take off your shoes. The place where you are standing is holy ground.”  It was existential whiplash. 

Moses and Jacob were in the wilderness – physically, emotionally, and spiritually – when they received these messages. The Israelites were in the wilderness when we received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Midrash Rabbah Numbers 1:1 teaches that this was because the Israelites had to be “free and ownerless like the desert” in order to receive it.  The lesson is to be aware of your surroundings. God was in that place. The ground itself was vibrating with holiness. That which appears empty is full of potential. Make yourself free and ownerless like the desert. That which appears mundane may actually be sacred.  Lesson 4.  When facing existential whiplash, practice mindful awareness.  You never know what the wilderness of our moment might reveal.  

Lesson 5 is to forgive. Yom Kippur is the anniversary of the day God forgave the Israelites for one of the greatest sins of all-time – building and worshipping a golden calf. Moses went up Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah from God. The Israelites were afraid and uncertain as they waited. We’ve all been there. We turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms in the wilderness of the unknown, just like our ancestors did.  Even Aaron, Moses’s brother, a leader in the community, took part, inciting the group to not just build, but worship the false idol. 

We have all worshipped false idols in the last year. We have doomscrolled through the desert, worshipping headlines, statements, and trends, arguing in comments instead of taking responsibility for our errors. Your leaders, like Aaron, have also committed this sin. But the story of the golden calf and God’s forgiveness of our ancestors remind us how important it is to forgive, even if it means forgiving idolatry. 

Individuals can’t be perfect, communities can’t be perfect, and the world can’t be perfect.  Ecosystems can’t be perfect either –  even a slight shift in one element can create significant and damaging change across the system. Without grace for the flaws of individuals, communities, or the world, we lose interest in showing up to help each other. We instead cut ourselves and others out. Our communities suffer as a result, much like our ecosystems when something is missing. 

On Yom Kippur, we pray for God to forgive us, as God forgave us for the golden calf. But the only thing we can really do is forgive each other and ourselves. Adonai, Adonai, El Rachum v’Chanun, we chant, listing God’s 13 attributes of mercy – God, God, compassionate and merciful. Can we be compassionate with one another? Can we have mercy on ourselves? Can you forgive yourself for your own idolatry? Can you forgive your community? The world? Can you forgive God? It’s a tall ask. It’s not always possible and it’s not even always the right thing to do. But most of the time, it is – and we must try. Lesson 5. Forgiveness. 

Lesson 6 is to make space for grief. Miriam, Aaron, and Moses – all great leaders – eventually die in the wilderness, before the Promised Land. We’ll focus on Moses and Aaron first. Regarding Aaron’s death, the Torah says “All the house of Israel bewailed Aaron thirty days.” Regarding Moses’s death, we read, “The Israelites bewailed Moses in the steppes of Moab for thirty days.”  To this day, shloshim – 30 days – is one of the mourning periods after a death in Jewish tradition.  With their deaths, Aaron and Moses taught us how to grieve. 

Elephants revisit the remains of deceased herd members, touching and examining the bones, or standing vigil for extended periods. Some cry and refuse to eat after losing a companion. Dolphin mothers may carry their dead calves for periods of time, and other pod members may assist in carrying the body or guarding it. 

Loss happens in the wilderness. In ours, it may seem like everyone is grieving, all the time. But announcements of anguish for suffering communities does not reflect a full grieving process. Existential whiplash leads to “statement culture.” Everyone feels the need to say something about the most recent bad news. It’s often necessary, but it keeps real grief itself at a distance. We need to pause. We need to wail, like the Israelites cried for Moses and Aaron. We need to reflect and remember, like elephants revisiting their herd members’ bones. Make space to mourn. That’s lesson 6.  

Lesson 7 is to practice trust. God appeared to the Israelites as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. The pillars  were with them at all times, reminding the Israelites that they were safe. That’s right. They had an emotional support pillar-of-cloud.  Still, as a people traumatized by a history of enslavement, it took them a long time to trust their safety, their leaders, and God. Even when the Israelites were on the verge of the Promised Land, they believed false risk reports, and acted out from a place of fear. They had to wait another 40 years before going into the land as a result.  Nonetheless, the pillars of cloud and  fire stayed with them; a Divine Presence. A reminder that they could learn to trust. 

When you are hypervigilant, or overly attuned to risk – what is your pillar? What shows you that you are safe, that you can trust the process, that you will be cared for, no matter how the future unfolds? Can you trust yourself? Your leaders? Your community? Lesson 7 is to “practice trust” because in times of emotional whiplash, it really does take practice. But our ancestors learned how. And so can we. 

I want to share one case study from the wilderness that shows what happens when we miss the mark in each of these lessons.  When Miriam died in the wilderness, “The community was without water, and they joined against Moses and Aaron. The people quarreled with Moses, saying, “Why have you brought God’s congregation into this wilderness for us and our livestock to die there? Why did you make us leave Egypt to bring us to this wretched place, a place with no grain or figs or vines or pomegranates? There is not even water to drink!”

Miriam was the one who made wells of water appear in the desert, so their concern about water was understandable – but by now, they had been bamidbar for a long time. God had provided what they needed, from manna to eat, to the Torah herself.  By whining for the Egypt they left behind, the Israelites abandoned the sanctuaries they built together.  With mindful awareness, the Israelites might have made space for Moses and Aaron to grieve for their sister. Instead, they panicked, quarreled, and cried for water. Ultimately, God told Moses to speak to a rock, and water would pour from it. In Moses’s rage, he hit the rock instead. 

It’s so relatable. The communal experience of water anxiety. The personal loss. The competing needs, everyone yelling over everyone else. And all of it happening all at once. It was existential whiplash. Instead of grieving, he had to make it stop. He had to fix it. Can anyone relate? Me too. With awareness, Moses might have said “I hear your concern for water. God will provide. Give me a few minutes to myself before I ask God for help.” Instead, he lashed out, hitting the rock in his rage. 

We are living in a wilderness, experiencing profound existential whiplash. The Israel / Palestine crisis, the climate catastrophe, rising antisemitism, lack of access to health care – the list goes on.  While the issues themselves may be new to us, the experience of wilderness is, for lack of a better term – precedented. We have been afraid and uncertain before. We know what happens when we act from a place of fear, building false idols that don’t really protect us. We know what happens when we jump into fixer-mode, without first making space for grief.  We are interdependent, like so many animals in the wilderness. When just a couple of wolves can’t trust the others, it threatens the health of the whole pack. 

We also know what it’s like to build and to be a sanctuary, for each other and for ourselves. We know how to make a minyan, how to lean on each other, and we know how to make offerings that come from the heart.  We know that every bee’s role is urgently needed for the health of the hive. We know how to see the sacred where we least expect it to find it. We can lessen the pain of existential whiplash by looking to the midbar – the wildernesses of our past, the wild world around us, and the wildernesses within, to discover what we need to thrive.  

To recap: 

Lesson 1. Build Sanctuaries. 

Lesson 2. Everyone has something to offer. 

Lesson 3. Ask for help. 

Lesson 4. Practice mindful awareness.

Lesson 5. Forgive. 

Lesson 6. Grieve. 

Lesson 7. Trust. 


A midrash teaches that midbar, wilderness, is linked to the word “midaber,” which means speech. We can use our speech, our words, to teach one another these lessons when we’ve forgotten. We can use them to write down our stories, so we can return to them in the next wilderness. We can use them to remind ourselves that our ancestors passed down their grit (along with all that anxiety and the stomach problems), and that we are stronger for it. We are always in the wilderness and there are always sanctuaries and we keep trying and learning and becoming. There are words for what we are experiencing – existential whiplash. And there’s a term for the antidote – it’s what happens when we learn from everything behind us, around us, and within us. It’s resilience.

Witnessing: Yom Kippur Sermon, 5785

On By scatteredleaves322In Communal Tragedy, Holidays, SermonsLeave a comment

When I was regularly facilitating children’s grief groups and volunteering at grief and cancer camps, I had a recurring dream. In the dream, I was facilitating a grief group, much like the ones I led in waking life. The crucial difference is that the dream grief group was a grief group for the dead. My job in that dream was two-fold: to witness the dead as they grieved the lives and loved ones they left behind, and to support the dead through this transition, to help them integrate their new reality. These dreams were never scary. They were tender. Loving. We even laughed together, just like we did in my grief groups for the living.

Almost always, the deceased parents of the children I worked with in waking life showed up in my dream grief groups. I recognized them immediately when they walked in, because their living children had shown me pictures of them at candlelight memorials and in popsicle stick photo frame activities. I’d heard so many stories about these deceased parents from their living children, whose grief I witnessed in waking life. One teen described her late mother as feisty and smart. She was a brilliant scientist who always wore bright red lipstick. When that deceased mother came to my dream grief group, she appeared just as her daughter described her, red lipstick and all. 

My unconscious mind fabricated grief groups for the dead based entirely on stories shared by their living children – memories, quirks, inside jokes, and even the tough moments – the ones that emerged late at night at grief camp. “My last conversation with her was an argument. It was so stupid.” “I was so angry at him for the drug use. What if he didn’t know I loved him?” In my dream grief groups, the deceased parents and I fondly remembered their children together. Their parents were always so proud of them. 

The dream groups were intimate. Personal. Powerful. It was my mind’s gentle way to witness my own witnessing – to make sense of the countless stories of loss I carried with me over my decade working with these children. 

Grief group facilitation taught me a lot about the power of witnessing – or, as my friend Rabbi Irwin Keller says – “with-nessing.” With grief, there is no problem-solving, no solution. Nothing can be done to change the situation. Witnessing and being-with are the greatest gifts we can offer. 

The Shema, the most central statement in Jewish liturgy, is a proclamation of our witnessing. In the Torah, the last letters of the word “Shema,” which means “Hear,” and the word “Echad,” which means “One,” are written in larger script than the rest of the text. These letters are Ayin and Dalet. Together, they spell “witness.” The Shema is a call to witness the Oneness of the Divine Presence as it unfolds in the world. In other words, even God needs to feel seen. 

For a number of reasons, I stopped facilitating children’s grief groups after I moved to Champaign-Urbana. The dreams stopped coming at regular intervals, and then they stopped entirely. I was focused on life in a different way, so I stopped dreaming about the dead.

After October 7, 2023, I was sure the dreams would return. I was grief counseling full time, even when we didn’t call it grief counseling. I facilitated groups. I witnessed the pain of countless students, friends, and colleagues. But the dreams didn’t come.

Until September 1st. Since that night when six hostages were murdered, those hostages and others who died on and after October 7th have been visiting my dream grief groups. Like the parents of the children I used to work with, I know the faces and stories of the dead from the living people who loved them. I’ve met musicians, tattoo artist, Shani Louk (z’l), and children who were murdered in their kibbutz bedrooms. I met Carmel Gat (z’l), who was a mindfulness meditation and yoga instructor. In my dream grief groups, she leads some gentle movement for the group each time we meet. The murder of those six unlocked the part of my dream life that processes my grief, and the grief of those I witness – by helping the dead process theirs.

Yom Kippur has a lot to teach us about death, grief, and witnessing. Jewish tradition considers Yom Kippur to be a “dress rehearsal” for our own deaths: We refrain from eating and drinking, washing and pleasure, and some people wear white, evoking the image of shrouds. I’ll talk about that tomorrow morning. Yom Kippur invites us to witness the grief of others, as we experience our own grief at the Yizkor – memorial – service. 

There’s also a Yom Kippur afternoon service that is not often included in Reform spaces, but its message is an important one for this year. It’s called Eyleh Ezkerah – “These I remember,” based on lines that we repeat throughout the service: “Eyleh Ezkerah v’nafshi alai eshp’khah, al koroteinu ha-marot einai zoglot dimah” – “These I remember, and nafshi – my soul – melts with sorrow. For the bitter course of our history, tears pour from my eyes.” The service tells the stories of generations of Jews who were murdered for being Jewish – from Rome to Mainz during the First Crusade to the Spanish Inquisition. “These we remember,” we say again, and again. None of us personally knew rabbinic greats like Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel – but we remember them based on the stories of others. The Eyleh Ezkerah service offers a way for us to use ritual and memory to witness the dead, and to create meaning for the living.   

Earlier this week, on the anniversary of the October 7th massacre, students and staff worked together to implement a student vision – a memorial museum. Far from a static walk-through museum with statistics and political analysis, the experience lifted up the stories of actual people – soldiers, people who lived and died in the kibbutzim, and people who witnessed the murder of their loved ones at the Nova festival. First-person testimonials were the fabric of this experience. We felt the presence of those who died on the 7th through the powerful stories and memories of those who loved them. 

And each of us who walked through the museum was a witness. A witness to the stories. A witness to others walking beside us. A witness to our own grief – grief we may have forgotten during an intense year of political argument and analysis. Eyleh Ezkerah. These we remember. Late at night on October 8th, when we cleaned up and put away the museum pieces, it felt like uncovering the mirrors in a home after shiva. That night, more of the dead from October 7th and beyond attended my dream grief group than ever before. 

In my Erev Rosh Hashanah sermon, just 10 days ago, I said that I don’t know what to say about October 7th, and it’s still true. But that’s because there’s nothing we can say that will change what happened. 

It turns out that, once again, it’s not about saying something. 

Listening is greater than speaking.
Presence is greater than power.
Witnessing is sometimes the most precious gift we can offer.

Surrounded by death, witnessing says “I am here. We are alive. We are together. You are not alone.” 

In my dreams, no one, living or dead, is grieving alone. 

We are all witnessing each other. 

And we are comforted.

Hovering: Rosh HaShanah 5785

On By scatteredleaves322In Communal Tragedy, D'var Torah, Holidays, Sermon1 Comment

Wow. What a year. I have to be honest, friends. I don’t know what to say about it. I don’t know what to say about the year we are leaving behind. I don’t know what to say about where we are now – with rockets flying in multiple directions, slogans screaming across Instagram, countless lives lost and relationships shattered since October 7th. I don’t know what to say about where we are going in this new year when there’s no resolution in sight. We eat apples dipped in honey, illustrating our hopes for a sweet new year. But it can be really hard to think or talk about sweetness when we are tasting bitterness at the same time. 

The beauty of Jewish holidays is that they are both commemorative and experiential. We are asked to remember something that happened in the past – AND we experience it in real time. At Passover we are told that we ourselves are coming out of slavery. Rosh Hashanah is a time when we both remember and experience renewal, rebirth, and creation. When God began creating the world, 5785 days ago in Jewish time, the earth was tohu vavohu, chaos and void. And choshech, darkness, was on the face of the deep. And Ruach Elohim, the spirit of God, m’rachefet, hovered on the face of the water.

What was God feeling in that moment, hovering over the darkness? Was God afraid of the void? Anxious amid the chaos? What did it take for God to find the courage to say “yehi or,” “Let there be light?”

We, too, have known darkness this year. We have also faced the depths. And right now, we, too, are hovering – m’rachefet – between darkness and whatever comes next. What is it like living in this hovering uncertainty? What will it take for us to risk looking forward at all, let alone looking forward with something like hope? I don’t know. But I do know we have examples in our tradition of other moments like this one, and we can learn from our ancestors. 

Our ancestors shared an experience of darkness, chaos, and confusion at Mt. Sinai, waiting for Moses to bring Torah down from the mountaintop. When Moses ascended Mt. Sinai, the Israelites didn’t know when he would return, and they were terrified. In their fear and anxiety, hovering beneath the mountain, they turned to a destructive but familiar coping mechanism, like so many of us have in those uncertain moments – they built a golden calf, a false idol. 

How many of us have turned to an unhealthy habit in moments of anxiety in the last year? Me too.

Moses came down from the mountain with the commandments on two luchot, two stone tablets, and when he saw the golden calf, he was so furious that he shattered them. Moses climbed the mountain again. Even though he was angry at the Israelites, he pleaded with God on their behalf. And God forgave them on the 10th of Tishrei – a day that we now experience and commemorate each year: Yom Kippur. Then Moses descended with new luchot. 

A midrash – which is Torah fanfiction – on this Torah portion tells us how our tradition treats the brokenness we experience in times of darkness and hovering. When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai the second time, with new tablets, the Israelites kept the broken ones. They placed the broken luchot, along with the new ones, in the holy ark.

Why keep this symbol of our own fear, this casualty of rage, this set of broken laws? Because brokenness and wholeness live side by side in the world and in our hearts. Because we had to be in the wilderness, hovering, waiting, lost and afraid, worshiping a false god before we could worship our One God from a place of trust. We kept the broken tablets because learning is part of becoming. We kept them alongside the new ones, because brokenness itself is holy. The broken tablets, carried along with the whole ones in the Aron HaKodesh, the holy ark, represent the resilience that carried us through the rest of the uncertain wilderness.

Rabbi Harold Kushner (z’l) raised an important point about this story “…The saga of the golden calf, God’s anger at the people, Moses’ intervention and God’s forgiveness raise an interesting question: When something breaks, something that was precious to us, is it ever possible to put it together again so that it’s as good as new?” 

So much shattering occurred over the last year. Trust was broken. Relationships ruptured. Communities crumbled. October 7th splintered us again and again. How can we repair? Is it even possible to build ourselves up again so that we and our communities are as good as new?

Rabbi Kushner continued, “It would be nice to believe that a God of second chances would make that possible, but the reality seems to be no, you can’t. If it’s broken and repaired, it will never be the same. The crack will always show. But what a God of second chances does is make it possible that you will end up with something in its place that will be even stronger and better than the original.” 

What would it look like for us to build something better? And what examples can our textual tradition offer for guidance? 

After God hovered in darkness, over the face of the water, God said “yehi or” “let there be light,” and went about the work of creating the world for us. When we finished hovering in the darkness at the foot of the mountain with the golden calf, we went about the work of creating a Mishkan for God, an elaborate and collaborative traveling sanctuary. Each person contributed something of their own to the creation of the Mishkan. The sages consider the golden calf incident to be one of the darkest moments of our history – despairing, leaderless, and chaotic. Our ancestors came through that darkness and said “yehi or,” “Let there be light.” And they created a mishkan. 

The truth is that there is always darkness, brokenness, and loss. And – we can always say yehi or – while we hover within the tohu vavohu, within the chaos. Kohelet says “To everything there is a season, a time for joy and a time to weep.” In his poem, “Kohelet Wasn’t Right,” Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai responds that no, these are not separate times. “In the days when each hour collides with the next,” he says, “we have no choice but to cry and to laugh with the same eyes, to mourn and dance at the same time.” We have to carry the broken tablets with the whole ones. We have to create light while the darkness swirls around us. When false idols have made us forget that we are One, we have to build a mishkan together. 

Does it sound impossible? That’s ok. It won’t happen perfectly, or all at once. Creation didn’t happen just one time – creation is always unfolding, all around and within us. 40 days and nights passed before Moses came back down the mountain with the new tablets after seeing the golden calf. It took time for the Israelites to return to the mishkan. Healing is a long and by no means linear process. We may continue hovering – m’rachefet –  over the depths for awhile.

In the meantime, we have ancestral tools, handed down in our hearts and in our liturgy, that can help us make incremental change. One of these tools is selichot – forgiveness. Rabbi Kushner wrote that “The crack in the first set of tablets was the loss of the dream of perfection. Now the challenge facing you is… can you replace that dream of perfection…with a more realistic one… that will make allowance for human frailty? … Can you give yourself and those around you permission to be human…? On Yom Kippur, so many years ago, God forgave the people who built the golden calf. He forgave us for being human beings, with hopes that we would learn to forgive each other as well.” 

Can you forgive yourself for the moments when the darkness was unbearable, the moments when the shattered pieces of your heart cut so deeply you couldn’t see the whole ones beside you, the moments when hovering was the only option because you couldn’t find light amid the chaos? Can you forgive your community for the moments when we failed to hold you in the way you needed to be held? Can you forgive God for God’s imperfect world? 18th century Ukrainian rabbi, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, taught that Moses was able to find the nekuda tovah – the good point, the Divine Spark – in the Israelites when he pleaded with God on their behalf on top of the mountain. Nachman teaches that this is what allowed the Israelites to move from building the golden calf to building the mishkan – all it took was one person seeing the good inside of them. Forgiveness is another way to say “yehi or.” Let there be light. 

5784 had darkness, chaos, confusion, and grief. We have been at the foot of the mountain with the golden calf.  At this exact moment, when we remember and experience the story of creation, we are m’rachefet – hovering – on the face of the depths. How can we say “yehi or,” like God, when God created from darkness? How can we say “yehi or,” like our ancestors who contributed to the mishkan after contributing to a golden calf? How can we build new tablets – while we hold onto the broken ones? We have looked at an ancestral tool, but we can and should draw on personal experience as well. 

Take a deep breath. Think back on some of your own, personal, darkest moments from this last year. What are the qualities you already had inside you, what are the roots you returned to, what did you discover that was grounding, replenishing, and brought you a little more light? What did you try? What was helpful for you?

Even in this dark year, you were able to find “yehi or” moments. Looking back on our year at Hillel, I can also see examples of times when we said “let there be light” as a community, not in spite of, or even because of, the chaos – but because it is what we do. It’s part of who we are. 

Yes, there was rupture within our community. And, over the twenty-five Bagel Brunches we shared on Sunday mornings, we ate 1,250 bagels in total. There’s an ongoing hostage crisis and war in the Middle East. There was anger, distrust, and antisemitism on campus. There was also Matzo Ball, a festive Hollywood themed semi-formal at Joe’s at the beginning of spring semester. We were anxious and uncertain, but we also celebrated Purim with 300 of our besties at the seventh annual Purim drag show. The news cycle was relentless and depressing. And we played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. We said “yehi or” when we piloted a wellness-themed Jewish Learning Fellowship, where students shared from their hearts and deepened their relationships. We said “yehi or” when we welcomed the angels, and each other, by singing Shalom Aleichem together before each Shabbat meal. With the darkness – light. With the brokenness – creation. With the hovering – a mishkan, a gathering space for sacred community. 

Contemporary scholar of kabbalah, Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed, writes that “An envelope of bitterness encases the divine sweetness,” yet we can “reach the sweet, divine essence hidden within the layers of the world’s bitterness.” So we will dip our apples and our challah in honey for a sweet near year. We will practice forgiving ourselves and each other for our imperfections. We will rebuild relationships and repair our community. It won’t be the same as before, but it will be stronger. We will honor our brokenness and our wholeness. We will turn away from false idols and we will work together to create a better world. We will say “yehi or.” Say it with me: “Yehi or.” Let there be light. 

Shared with gratitude to Rabbi Bluth and Josh Feldman for helping me figure out what to say in a year when none of us really know what to say. Your friendship and mentorship means the world to me.

Creative High Holiday Offerings

On By scatteredleaves322In Holidays, Liturgy, PoetryLeave a comment

For my friends and colleagues who are preparing and want to add something new…or for those who simply enjoy reading original liturgy, here are some creative offerings.

Rosh Hashanah

A Shofar Offering – Shofar’s Cry: Sarah and Hagar Speak
This is an interpretive Torah experience for Rosh Hashanah, incorporating Hagar’s story from the Torah reading on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and the Akedah, which we read on the second day. This is designed to be read aloud by two people, each taking one of the parts. It would work well on Zoom as well as in person. Please feel free to use it with attribution.

A Haftarah Offering – Hearing in our Hearts: Hannah’s Story
This is a prayer from the perspective of Hannah, whose story we read in the haftarah on Rosh Hashana. If you’re in the same place as me this year – praying with Hannah – please know that your prayers are mine as well. May the Womb of the World hear our longing this year, and may the new year bring new life to us all.

Yom Kippur

Yearning to be Known – Unknowable – Unknowable with visuals
God is unknowable, but here’s what I know: God yearns to be known. This is a poem about God. It’s meaningful for year-round, but one of the lines is “God is asking for our forgiveness on Yom Kippur.” I’m using it as an entry point to the Amidah.

A Forgiveness Prayer – Held in the Brokenness
This prayer focuses specifically on repeat mistakes – the things we find ourselves returning to, year after year, no matter how we try.

A Different Kind of Vidui – Vidui for God (2021)
My friend, Geo, and I were both struggling with the concept of more repentance this year, despite having many things to repent for – so we dug into the pain and co-wrote a new Vidui for God. Bold move? Yes. But as Hila wrote, Jewish rebukes of God have a long history. Thank you so much to Ritualwell for publishing ours.

“The High Holiday season can be an intense time of self-reflection, as we look inward to see where we have missed the mark this past year. But after a year of pandemic, fires, hurricanes and global instability, how harsh must we be toward ourselves? Don’t we need a larger dose of compassion than self-flagellation this year? A Vidui for God (2021),” Heather Paul and Geo Poor turn the tables on this traditional prayer and boldly demand that God hold Godself accountable for the ways in which God has let us down. While this Vidui may appear sacrilegious to some, it is situated within a long history of Jewish rebukes of God, from the ancient prophets onward, and can help give expression to our deepest frustrations in our relationship to the divine.”

At Any Time

A Caregivers Prayer
I’m using this to honor caregivers – especially those working in medicine over the last two years – during Yizkor. It would also work well as part of a misheberach.

Illuminate the World: A Peace Prayer
I’m using this along with Oseh Shalom after the Amidah.

Prayer for Entering Recovery
I’m including this in my written materials for personal reflection – because you never know who needs it.


I would love for you to use any of my original liturgy and poetry. If you are not sharing people’s names for attribution during the service, because it feels stilted or it breaks up the flow of the experience, I would appreciate having my name listed in any written materials, ideally along with my website: scatteredleaves.net. I would also love to hear what you end up using! There is nothing more rewarding for me as a liturgist than knowing that my liturgy made an impact. Thank you!

Close Up: Memory, Confrontation, and the Days of Awe – High Holiday Sermon, 5774

On By scatteredleaves322In Sermons2 Comments

“On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur is sealed; who will live and who will die.” This text from our High Holiday liturgy flooded my mind as I entered the gas chamber at Dachau Concentration Camp. The guide had explained that the word “Brausebad,” painted in black above the doorway, is no longer the German word for “shower.” After the Holocaust, the Germans started using a different term because “Brausebad” was the last word that so many millions of people saw before their deaths. When the year begins, we don’t know who will live and who will die. The victims of the gas chamber did not know either. I walked in, I saw the false shower heads, murmured the Mourners Kaddish in the middle of tiled room. And then, thanks to the timing of my birth, I walked out. 70 years ago, the only way out was through the chimney, and here I was, in July 2013, just walking through, processing the moment through my camera lens, like I always do – breathing, living, remembering. I visited Dachau this summer after spending a week in Berlin with Germany Close Up, a program designed to introduce young American Jews to modern Germany, heavily subsidized by the German government. A Holocaust survivor I know told me that if the German government was paying to bring young American Jews to Germany, it was for one reason only. But she was wrong. I returned. I am safe. I went to two concentration camps, and felt a surge of elated energy as I passed through the gates on the way out, overwhelmed with gratitude for my continued liberation.

I went to Germany with questions, and like any good Jew, I returned with more questions. I returned on the cusp of the month of Elul, the month when Jews, as Rabbi Alan Lew (z”l) says, look at the window instead of looking through the window: “When the shofar blows on the first day of Elul,” he says, “and every morning thereafter, it reminds us to turn our gaze inward, and to place judgment at the gates of our consciousness, to shift our focus from the outside world to the considerable activity taking place in the window through which we view it.”1 In this prelude to the High Holidays, Jews deepen our awareness, apologize to those we have wronged, and make plans to grow as human beings over the year to come. We have the opportunity to look back, to remember, and to learn how we can move forward in the new year.

Stolperstein - Stumbling Stones Berlin taught me a lot about looking back. For the first time, I had the opportunity to ask non-Jewish Germans, outright: What did your family do in the war? Most of them had no idea. It wasn’t something you talked about, their families said. It was something you remembered. You can’t walk anywhere in Berlin without remembering something. The city itself seems to have PTSD. Look down at the cobbled sidewalks and you see gold stumbling stones inscribed with the name of a Jew who lived in that spot, noting the date of deportation and the place of their death. Look up and there’s the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, tremendous and dominating, so much a part of the landscape that children have snowball fights amid the giant blocks during the winter. Turn the corner and there’s another memorial, in Hebrew, English, and German. Everywhere, the memory of someone we lost and the culture that went with them.

I don’t think anyone in Berlin has the chance to forget, even for a minute. It was like a tour through my own psyche. Yes, my psyche – I’m an American Jew, three generations removed from the Holocaust. I grew up reading too many books about the Holocaust, and had nightmares in which Dr. Mengele shot my mother while I had to watch. I was 10. I’d never been to a concentration camp and I did not know my own family’s Holocaust story, but somehow, these memories became my own. My favorite author, Jonathan Safran Foer, says “Jews have six senses: Touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing … memory. While Gentiles experience and process the world through the traditional senses, and use memory only as a second-order means of interpreting events, for Jews memory is no less primary than the prick of a pin, or its silver glimmer, or the taste of the blood it pulls from the finger. The Jew is pricked by a pin and remembers other pins. It is only by tracing the pinprick back to other pinpricks – when his mother tried to fix his sleeve while his arm was still in it, when his grandfather’s fingers fell asleep from stroking his great-grandfather’s damp forehead, when Abraham tested the knife point to be sure Isaac would feel no pain – that the Jew is able to know why it hurts. When a Jew encounters a pin, he asks: What does it remember like?”2

Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe

Visiiting Berlin, I got the sense that the city itself remembers the way Jews remember, with a sixth sense. Young German non-Jews who have no connection to the Holocaust still feel guilty when they meet someone Jewish. Holocaust education in the schools is extensive. Most highschool classes visit a concentration camp. All are required to visit a memorial.By the time they get through school, they are tired of hearing about it, tired of feeling guilty, tired of questions that don’t have answers: What did our family do in the war? What can we do about it? How can I live with this history? The trauma of the Holocaust has been passed down, l’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, among Jews and non-Jewish Germans alike.

The psychology of trauma teaches us that exposure is the only way to heal. Talking about it. Recognizing the pain. Being with it. Germany Close Up provided an opportunity for us to do that together. I don’t know if a r’fuah shlemah – a complete healing – is possible. But I do know that confronting the issue through compassionate conversation, sitting with the pain together, was itself a healing experience. As Rabbi Lew says of our sins, “What’s done cannot be undone— but it can be healed; it can even become the instrument of our healing.”3

We are good at remembering, but confronting trauma is much harder, and there comes a time when “never forget” just isn’t enough. For me, that time was this summer. I went to Germany because I was ready to explore some of the deeper issues in my own memory and in our collective Jewish memory. I engaged directly with the site of the trauma, with contemporary Germans, and shared a Shabbat dinner with the new Jewish community in Berlin. I also learned that Israelis love to visit Berlin and that Germans love to visit Israel. It’s harder for American Jews, and I’m not sure why. We remember. We’re not ignoring the trauma. But many of us are not coping with it either.

This is just one example of an evaded issue – the largest unresolved trauma of the 20th cenIMG_2441tury, and part of our collective Jewish memory. I know that some are not yet ready to get on a plane and fly to Berlin to cope with it. But I wonder if each of you can take this opportunity over the next ten Days of Awe to consider other evaded issues in your personal experience. What other traumas have you been ignoring? What is it that you are remembering, but not facing? What would it be like for you to engage directly with a painful experience in your personal memory – perhaps the death of a loved one, a challenge to your identity, a moment when you were unkind to someone who reminded you of something you fear in yourself? Can you acknowledge your failings and traumas without allowing them to consume you?

On Rosh Hashanah, we read the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, another traumatic story in our collective history. I have often wondered what it was like for Isaac, who lived the rest of his life knowing that his father was seconds away from sacrificing him. How did Isaac walk through the world carrying this trauma? Did he relive that slow walk up the mountain in his nightmares? Did he wake up relieved that he could move his arms and legs, that he was not bound after all, to the memory of the wood, the knife, and the imminence of fire? I’m sure Isaac never forgot the terrifying moment Abraham stood above him with the knife. What traumatic moments do you replay in your own memory over and over again? And are you hiding behind the memory itself, instead of engaging in the more painful but rewarding task of confrontation?

It is not for me to say that you need to enter your personal gas chamber so that you can walk out. Only you can decide when you’re ready to confront your own trauma, and you get to decide what that means for you. All I’m asking is that you take this time during the Days of Awe to notice the window you’re looking through. Then, when you’re ready, you can open it.

Note: Hillel at Stanford is now partnering with Germany Close Up, so I will be staffing this trip over spring break 2014. If you are a Jewish student at Stanford and you want to know more about how to get involved, email me at hpaul@stanford.edu.

If you are not a Hillel at Stanford student and you would like to do this program, check out the Germany Close Up website to learn more! 

1. Lew, Alan (2003-08-01). This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation (p. 78). Hachette Book Group. Kindle Edition.

2. Foer, Jonathan Safran. Everything is Illuminated (p. 193). Harper Perennial; 1st Perennial Edition/6th Printing edition (April 1, 2003)

3. Lew, Alan (2003-08-01). This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation (p. 29). Hachette Book Group. Kindle Edition.