This sermon was delivered at Mishkan Chicago’s 5785 Rosh Hashanah service. You can listen on Contact Chai podcast or watch on Mishkan’s YouTube channel.
****
About a week after October 7th, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table of our Board Chair, Lisa, and I was just bawling. Weeping for what had happened to our brothers and sisters in the south of Israel — for the dead, the traumatized, the orphans, the hostages, for their shattered sense of safety, for their shattered families. Karmit, our tour guide who had taken us to her village on the Lebanon border the previous summer, was among the 60,000 evacuees from the North under threat of Hezbollah fire. Emili, our Palestinian guide, was unable to travel to be with her husband who was undergoing cancer treatment, because borders were closed to Palestinians for any kind of internal travel til further notice. My WhatsApp groups of friends, colleagues and family in Israel had been popping off all week with people tracking each other down and making sure each other were safe, not unlike two days ago. It was so surreal, and so personal.
I was crying because only three weeks earlier, rabbis all over the world, myself included, echoed IDF generals in our high holiday sermons, who were cautioning that the Netanyahu government’s reckless pursuit of an antidemocratic agenda against the will of its people was splintering Israeli society from the inside, and making itself more vulnerable to external threats, which of course are ample — so I was bawling that what we feared and were warned would happen, happened. I was bawling because I was angry at the Hamas masterminds and fighters who orchestrated and carried out the attack in the most horrific ways, who took hundreds of millions of dollars over decades and instead of building world class infrastructure for their people built world class infrastructure for terrorism under their hospitals and schools. I was also angry at the IDF, with the most sophisticated surveillance in the world, for failing to do every job in their name. And, I was bawling, because already by that point it was clear that Israel’s response was about to turn life for millions of Palestinians in Gaza into a living hell, and with the eyes of the world on Gaza, the settler violence, already some dangerously rampant in the West Bank would become even worse. And I was bawling because after 40 years of settlement expansion and intifadas and siege and terrorism this felt like the latest terrible installment of an untenable status quo.
And finally, I was crying because I was feeling the painful tension inside of our own community that rears its head whenever Israel is in the news, turning one of Mishkan’s greatest assets into a liability. Because while we may have wide agreement about things like the reality of climate change, the need for reproductive freedom and LGBTQ rights, (not to mention, the need for a gluten free, dairy free option when we host a Shabbat oneg) we span the spectrum of perspectives and experiences when it comes to Israel. And that’s not unique to Mishkan, of course, but it’s something I’ve taken pride in and celebrated over the past 13 years, especially as conversations about this issue become more polarizing across the divides of generations and identity groups. As Jews, lovingly holding the tension of multiple approaches to hard problems is our superpower, it’s what we call makloket l’shem shamayim, is a key value, in general, and certainly in the abstract; but it becomes really hard in moments like this because fear and grief close us down, narrow our vision turning different perspectives into different sides, and different sides into proxy wars we feel the need fight. And I could feel it happening in the Jewish community more widely, and in our community, too.
On a selfish level, I was crying because, just a week into the war, I was bone tired, and I couldn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Lisa couldn’t fix any of that for me that day. But she did sit down next to me, and let me cry.
As we come up on the anniversary of October 7th a recurring theme this year for our people has been grief. But what I really want to talk about today is what happens when we’re processing our grief unconsciously– whether it’s over the daily disappointments life deals us (because of course those didn’t stop), or the over the ongoing tragedies of this year, which, let’s be clear, are still unfolding, like a wave that knocked you down once and you keep getting up and trying to walk to shore to find stability and then another comes and knocks you down again, and then again, making it impossible to feel really grounded in this time. So many of us over the last 13 years have turned to this community to find that vital grounding and support in a world that breaks our hearts and drives us crazy, and I submit to you that we need that now, more than ever- with this election coming up, my friends we need that space. So as painful and as exhausting as grief can be, I want to suggest that instead of letting it isolate us from one another, we allow the presence of grief to actually bind and heal us, so we can move forward into this year with greater strength, courage, and vision, come what may.
I invite you to breathe in, exhale, and settle in. I apologize in advance if there’s something that I say that rubs you the wrong way, or if you would have given a different sermon this morning. I ask for your grace, and hope you’ll share your thoughts with me, lovingly after the holiday.
So first let’s just talk psychology. Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s 5 stages of grief are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. These stages of course don’t always happen in order and can also occur simultaneously. Denial is “This can’t be happening to me.” Anger is “ whose fault is it? Make them pay.” Bargaining is imagining all the scenarios where if you just change the past, you could fix the present. Depression is not getting out of bed, not showering, not functioning, not wanting to go on if you have to live in this painful new reality. And finally acceptance is, well, acceptance of reality. It’s learning to live in this world, changed, of course, but the wound of the loss has become a scar, and one learns to live again, to love again, with all the painful wisdom they’ve come by honestly.
Grief has an uncanny ability to morph into other emotions and make sad situations even more painful– maybe you’ve seen this happen in your own family or workplace. Unable to change the world around us, we’ll turn on people close to us trying to control what we can in a desperate and transparent attempt to regain a sense of agency, to protect ourselves from further pain. One way this showed up in our community this year, was some folks were angered by any mention of Palestinian pain, as if Palestinian pain would invalidate their own grief over the trauma caused to Israelis or invalidate the need for Israeli security, and as if the two realities could not coexist, not on a Facebook thread and not even inside their heart. And I saw it when others were angered by this Jewish community’s centering, at times, of Israeli and Jewish grief, as if acknowledging it would invalidate the righteousness of the cause of Palestinian dignity and freedom, and as if the two could realities could not coexist, not in a Facebook thread, and not even inside their heart.
And then what happens is we shut out not only the pain that’s happening to people over there that makes us uncomfortable to think about, but we shut out people right in front of us who make us uncomfortable, too. But the people right in front of us– they’re our people, not strangers, and not caricatures of the most extreme unhinged version of whatever we fear. We’ve been praying and singing and doing justice together and learning and celebrating with each other in this community for 13 years. These are the people who, when you say, “Yitgadal v’Yitkadash she’mey rabah,” they say “Amen.” But I’m worried that the tricks we use to mask our grief, thinking we’re protecting our hearts– assigning blaming, lashing out, being self-righteous, not listening, pushing away others, even others we care about– are ironically and painfully making us weaker when we’re already down, and more isolated when we’re already feeling lonely.
Before I go on — is this resonating? Raise your hand if you have felt grief this year. And leave your hand up if you’ve employed one of these strategies to deal with it? I know I have. This kind of shutting down our own ability to fully feel even in the presence of the people closest to us, is something the Torah knew well long ago, and warns us about.
In Chapter 20 in the Book of Numbers, the Israelites suffer their first really prominent public loss: the death of Miriam. For Moses, she was as much his protector as she was his sister, watching over him as he sailed down the Nile in a basket; standing alongside him on the far shore of the Red Sea with a tambourine leading the Israelites in songs of freedom. For the people of Israel she has been captain of the spirit team– in contrast to Moses’s earnestness and Aaron’s piety, she brought the rhythm and the joy. In the desert, she provided the well that would give water to everyone to drink. She was a hero and a prophet. She wasn’t perfect– there was that episode back in Numbers 12 when she and her brother Aaron were talking smack about Moses’s wife, and she was punished with some kind of horrible skin disease. But Moses, ever loving and forgiving, prays to God on her behalf, and she’s healed and they make up. And only a few chapters later, Miriam dies, and the well that had given the people water disappears.
Does the whole Israelite community rally around Moses and Aaron, bring them food and sit shiva and create a community of care amidst this devastating loss? Do they sit with Aaron and Moses and let them cry? No, they do not. The people turn on Moses. They say “Why did you bring us into the wilderness, for us and our animals to die out here? Why did you make us leave Egypt to bring us to this terrible place – a place with no grain or figs or vines or pomegranates, there’s not even water!!”
Which one of the stages of grief do you think they were in? I’m thinking, anger and a little bit of bargaining. The revisionist history the Israelites’ come up with is truly impressive– remembering Egypt like it was some kind of Las Vegas buffet available to them, as if they had not been slaves! Israelites, I want to shake them awake and say, “Show a little gratitude to Moses! Show a little grace and patience, while your leaders grieve and get a new plan together!” But unconscious grief compromises our ability to self regulate, not to mention the fear they feel that maybe they won’t survive. Of course they lash out and say things they don’t mean. We all do when we’re grieving, especially grieving such a public community loss. That’s not to excuse bad behavior– it’s an argument for being as aware as possible of what’s actually going on inside, so the real need can be addressed, which is no more and no less than simple recognition of the pain of the loss.
But what happens next in this story is even more tragic. Moses and Aaron fall on their faces in frustration, impotence and sadness. Their beloved sister dies and now this ungrateful people can’t spare a moment before attacking and accusing them?
But God shows up for them, “Shhh, guys. I got you.” God says, “Take up your rod, and go speak to a rock and tell it to give water to the people.” Gotta love the friend with the plan in moments of crisis. Thank God, literally.
So Moses takes the rod and indeed speaks, but not to the rock, rather to the people. He snaps at them, blurting out “Listen you rebels, shall we get water out of this rock?” And he brings his staff down on the rock, hitting it twice. Water gushes out and everyone drinks. And God says to Moses, “You shall not lead this congregation into the land I have given them.”
This is the Torah’s ultimate cautionary tale of what can happen when we lead with anger when what we feel is grief. Moses has dealt with harder situations than this in his career as a prophet and leader and he certainly has had moments where he loses his cool, and yet, this epic lapse of judgment and control is his undoing, and it happens in a moment of profound unprocessed grief. God’s mission for the Israelites, after all, is to create a society based on even handedness, justice, and compassion– all the things they were not given in Egypt, and Moses is supposed to lead them there. But Moses, speaking harshly to his people, and using violence to get his point across… There is too much Egypt still in Moses for him to lead the people into the promised land. Our frantic efforts to control and avoid grief can cause us to regress to behaviors we thought we were done with years ago, and to employ strategies that are not ultimately strategic, even if in the short term they get the job done. He got water from the rock all right, but he lost the thing that mattered most. At the end of the day no one from this generation lives to see the Promised Land, even though that had been their one shared goal. It is tragedy heaped upon tragedy.
Is there an alternative to this kind of unconscious acting out of grief? In her beautiful book that came out this year, The Amen Effect, Rabbi Sharon Brous talks about an ancient Temple ritual described in the Mishna. When Jews would make chag, pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem (and yes that’s related to the same word in Arabic haj), they would enter and circumnavigate the center moving to the right, assuming they were coming in good health and good fortune. But if there was someone to whom something awful had happened, who had suffered a catastrophic loss, they would enter the same entrance and circle in the opposite direction. And one by one as people saw each other, the one moving right would say to the one moving left, just as the angel said to Hagar in the passage we read this morning: Mah lach, “What’s bothering you?” And a person would respond, “My mother died.” Or “My partner’s mental state is declining,” or “They found a lump.” Or “My son is sick and I’m worried to death about him.” And the person would respond, may you be comforted.
The ritual wasn’t meant to magically heal or fix anyone, rather to allow them to be seen and held in their pain. Its being a Lisa in the Kitchen. Much like the way we want to share good news when we have it, we also need acknowledgement of our grief. The person walking the other direction is clearly experiencing the world differently– so it’s not about empathy or even sympathy. Rather, it’s about being a witness to nonjudgmentally hold the grief of another, even if it’s not yours.
It’s why we always send out a condolence notice to our community of Builders, when someone’s family member dies. It is a mitzvah, a Jewish spiritual obligation– to go to the shiva. Not because you are good friends with them, or like them, or even know them, but because when someone says, Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mey rabah, you say Amen. Which is to say, I see you, and I can’t make it better, but I’m sorry for what you’re going through, and I am here. Hineni.
What if instead of launching straight into blame and defensiveness the Israelites and Moses and Aaron had taken time to mourn, out loud, together? I imagine them sitting in circles, telling each other their Miriam stories, telling each other where her absence hurt most. Mah lach, they ask each other, where does it hurt? This one says, “I miss her music,” this one says, “My sheep relied on her well,” this one says, “Back in Egypt when we were kids after work we used to swim in the Nile together.” There’s the one who stands and listens, nodding as each speaks, because even though he really didn’t know Miriam, he has a kind of second-order grief, because so many people he loves are grieving. And each person is witnessed and validated as others nod in recognition and say may this community be a comfort to you. They don’t share the same story, but they are all in pain. And when you really listen to someone else’s pain and story, an amazing thing happens– they become much more available to be able to reciprocate and listen to you. If these Israelites had been able to witness each other’s sadness even if they don’t totally get it… I can’t help but imagine that they all might have behaved differently, better, and had a more wise, compassionate and frankly strategic response to their new reality.
I watched too often this year as people who shared many of the same values and aspirations, whether in the same family, longtime supporters of reproductive or civil rights or environmental justice or getting Not Trump elected this fall, let alone people who shared things like a favorite bookstore or synagogue, used those spaces exclude and divide and punish other members of the group in ways that weakened their ability to pursue their shared mission. Alternatively, I watched people walk away from those groups entirely, because it was too painful to feel like their grief wasn’t being acknowledged or validated– perhaps feeling better in the short term, but nonetheless losing a space where they had found purpose, support and community. This is happening over the place. Bookstores and organizations of writers that shamed and wouldn’t sell books or print an article by anyone deemed a Zionist (whatever that means, and that means a lot of things to a lot of people, including left wing anti-occupation activists from Israel who probably agree on 99% of the same things as the people closing the doors on them); but also Jewish organizations that let go of talented employees for speaking out against this war, attending ceasefire protests, or even liking the wrong social media post.
I regularly found myself wondering this year, how does shutting out people who share our aspirations for causes we care about here in America help Israelis or Palestinans? Or is it just our grief, dressing up as righteous moral indignation, sabotaging ourselves and our ability to do good where we can? How does walking away do anything other than further isolate us, lose us a seat at tables we care about, us at a time when we need each other, emotionally and also strategically? Or is it just that we haven’t developed the tools and the self-awareness to stay grounded, to hang in the conversation, to say “Mah Lach,” to one another in the fullness of our discomfort and stay present, not for the purpose of arriving at consensus but to hold ourselves in the embrace of community in all our messiness, realizing that difference, even our different grief, will not break us.
You might say it’s unreasonable to imagine that those Israelites, who thought they were going to die in the desert from thirst, could sit and have vulnerable emotional conversations about their pain before collaboratively arriving at next steps. So much the more so, us in a post October 7th world when Jewish generational trauma alarm bells have been ringing on full volume all year. Surely, you might say, a person who actually lost someone on October 7th, or any day since, or who’s kid is a hostage, who understands in a painful personal way the stakes we’re talking about here, could not be called upon to convert their grief into the kind of compassionate witnessing that is the basis of community and transformation? Right?
And yet, I think of the Parents Circle Families Forum, in Israel and Palestine. Members are Jews and Arabs, Christians and Muslims who are brought together by a nightmare — the murder of one of their family members, on purpose or as collateral damage, in this endless conflict. The size of the group is about 750 families. Given that in the past year alone the number of families who now could join is in the high tens of thousands, that number is still very small, which speaks to how emotionally risky it is to show up to talk to a person who is on the side responsible for what happened to your child, sibling or parent. Not only that, imagine telling your friends and family where you’re going and the shower of accusations that you’d receive, that you’re a traitor to your people for even talking to someone from the other side. That you’re naive, and don’t understand our history, and it’s dangerous to trust those people who all want to kill us at the end of the day if they could.
And many of them describe that at their first Parent’s Circle meeting they sat with their arms folded in the corner. In their sharing circles they answer the question, Mah lach, what happened to you and to your family? And they listen to each other, without interrupting or arguing. They learn more about the deceased family members of the others in the room, they ask follow-up questions. And no matter how skeptically they came in, being in a room with individuals who were not monsters but people, not a monolith of colonial occupiers or blood-thirsty terrorists, but people, who cry tears just like them, who bleed red just like them, and who love and grieve just like them, gave them hope that things could be different. It turns out that sitting with someone and letting them bawl, or bawling and letting someone witness it, are profoundly hopeful acts.
And they realize that their grief is interrelated, and the way out of their grief is also interrelated. And it is in the self-interest of each to help the other, and they agree to not to use their grief as an excuse to justify further violence between their peoples. Yonatan Zeigen, whose mother was the peace activist Vivian Silber, who was murdered and mutilated beyond recognition in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th, has quit his job and taken up his mother’s life’s work of peace-building full time. Arab, who’s sister Abir was shot in the head by an IDF soldier outside her school when she was 10, now says his revenge for Abir’s killing now is to stand with his Israeli brothers and show the world what non-violent conflict resolution looks like. He quotes Martin Luther King, saying, “We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish as fools.”
The members of the Parents Circle do not all agree upon what a final status arrangement looks like between Israelis and Palestinian. But they do agree that the process of getting there must involve sharing grief, a process of reconciliation, dialogue and diplomacy– all the things we teach our children are the ways to solve problems, even hard ones, even when we have been hurt, or have caused hurt, or both. Outside of the organization its members are part of different political groups which are not necessarily aligned. But in the meantime, they’ll practice creating the kind of community and world they believe is possible where they can, and that they know is necessary for future peace between their peoples, in any configuration.
I think we can learn something from the brave people in the Parents Circle. If they, who have lost so much, can turn to the other, and see them not as an enemy but as part of the essential strategy in achieving their safety, their dignity and their liberation, how are we over here cannibalizing each other and our shared aspirations over what Freud calls the “narcissism of small differences”?
And let me be clear: I’m not saying that the political differences in our midst, even in this room, are insignificant. Far from it. What I am saying is if we must recover the strength to turn toward each other in grief, not away. Because If we mirror the tribal echo chambers that reinforce our own pain while dehumanizing and minimizing the pain of the other– whether that other is another Jew with different opinions, or someone on the other side of a border– than we all should let go of dreams of security and freedom and dignity for anyone between the river and the sea. And those are dreams I know we all hold for Israelis and Palestinians and all the people who live there, even if we have different ideas of how to achieve them. We can take a page out of the book of the Parents’ Circle and create a little corner of the Jewish community where we can stand in the presence of grief and difference, and rather running away from it or insulting or painting caricatures of one another or blaming each other for not seeing things our way, we instead commit to creating a strong, flexible space that’s capable of holding all our beauty, complexity, pain, and dreams. Where we can cry together and celebrate together and strengthen one another as Jews on the hard road of life.
That’s what the original Mishkan in the Torah, was all about. After the Exodus from Egypt, after receiving the 10 Commandments at Sinai and after the sin of the Golden Calf, God instructs Moses to tell the people to create a Mishkan, a traveling sanctuary where God would show up for them as they built it together. The Mishkan took a traumatized people in a world they couldn’t control, and gave them a space where they all had something to contribute, and could create something holy, something far bigger than any one of them could build themselves. It required the presence and contributions of people with different skills, talents and life experience. While the materials to construct it were the very same ones as the people had used to make a Golden Calf, this space, the Mishkan, would be not a space for reinforcing false gods and old ideas, but for building space for new ones. And as much as the Israelites bickered and fought their way through the desert, the Mishkan was the place they came back to again and again to find God, and find their way back to each other and to move forward through the wilderness.
So repeat after me: “Mah Lach?” “What’s troubling you?” We can ask each other where it hurts and actually listen, not for the purpose of arguing or convincing but learning. And we can remember that hearts have four chambers, and we can make for ourselves a heart of many rooms, as the Midrash says– to be able to hold multiple truths at once and know that we will not break. And we will discover that not only won’t we break, but we will become stronger. Because as you might have noticed, we Jews don’t all agree on everything. And I know that can be painful, especially when the stakes feel so high. But the window of possibility and transformation begins to open when you share your pain with the person walking the other direction, which is to say, who sees the world differently than you. And rather than argue the point, and tell you why you’re seeing it all wrong, they simply nod and take it in. And then you do the same for them. And you can ask follow up questions based on what seems wrong and preposterous to you, and you actually listen! And they can do the same for you. And lo, you’re now having conversation based on curiosity and respect that’s not a shouting match trading talking points.
And there are vanishingly few places in this world where that’s possible anymore. But that’s Judaism. That’s learning in hevruta, with a person who sees things differently. It’s what being in a Mishkan is, a real Jewish community whose purpose is building thriving Jews in the midst of a changing and dangerous world.
I believe in us. I’ve seen us do it. Whether in anti-racism trainings, or Israel book groups, or the workshops we’ve run on Resilience in a Time of Crisis, or at Resetting the Table workshops or in our conversations after Morning Minyan ends. We know how to speak from personal experience and recognize that not everyone sees the world the same way. And that’s OK because the point isn’t agreement, it’s humanizing the people and perspectives we might otherwise caricature or dismiss. I’ve seen us nod and say Amen when someone tells you they’re hurting, even if we’re not in the same place. This doesn’t happen by accident– go take a look at our community norms that are written a boards in the hallway to see how we don’t just hold this as an ideal, but create actual norms to hold with respect, kindness, and curiosity the differences we know we have and we value.
Every place in the world with Jews needs strong, resilient, proud, healthy Jewish communities that can empower us to do what Jews have done for 4,000 years in the face of an uncertain world that will break our heart and drive us crazy. And you need a community to do these things which include but are not limited to prayer; study; raising kids in a moral tradition that values complexity and nuance; that teaches us to love others and also love ourselves; where we bury our loved ones and celebrate new life and new love; give tzedakah and do justice, stay in relationship with Israel and its peoples in care and in critique; and where we build a strong social fabric made of people who argue with respect over the things that matter most. That is what Jews do to thrive. That’s what gets me up in the morning every day in this Mishkan. It’s what Jews have been doing since the Exodus and we didn’t let the Egyptians, or the Babylonians, or Assyrian Greeks, or Romans, or Cossacks, or Spanish Inquisition or Holocaust kill our ability to create Mishkans, like this one, wherever we are in the world as hard as things may be. And damned if we’re going to let Yahya Sinwar, or Bibi Netanyahu, or Itamar Ben-Gvir drive us to cannibalize and weaken our communities from the inside, as often ironically and painfully happens when we’re being attacked on the outside and when we are mired in unprocessed grief. As the founder of this community, I will not let that happen here on my watch. What we do here is too beautiful and too important, for all of us, for the health of the Jewish people, and frankly, as a counter testimony to a world increasingly mired in polarization, division and dehumanization.
The eyes of our people may always face East, whether in our prayers, or each year at Passover as we say “Next year in Jerusalem,” and even now, as we pray and work toward enduring peace in Israel, as far off as it may seem. And yet, there has always been a Mishkan creating beauty wherever it was in the wilderness, and we need ours to be strong, healthy and resilient, just like the Mishkan was for our ancestors’. We can continue to turn toward each other to look at the person in our own community who is here and who is in pain, too, and be brave enough to ask them Mah lach, what’s on your heart, and be able to listen, to nod, to witness. Even to say Amen. And then, to share your grief, and allow another to witness you. To cry and allow others to cry with us, because it’s rough out there and we need a place to find grounding, inspiration and healing.
We don’t have to be made smaller by our grief. No matter where we are, we can all help build the world we know is possible, right here in our little corner of Chicago (or wherever you’re hearing this sermon from), a beautiful container to hold the fullness of who we are, and who we are becoming.
L’shannah tovah.