In the midst of working with my grandson Caleb on his dvar Torah for Parashat Shelach Lecha — my Torah portion almost sixty years ago, his father’s almost thirty years ago, his own on June 13th — he turned to me, as he is often wont to do, and asked a characteristically deep question: “So Bebop, what does it feel like to be retiring in a couple of years?”
I was struck silent. Because I’ve preferred not to think about it.
“Caleb,” I said, “it’s one of the biggest moments of my life. There’s a part of me that feels happy to be ending my career in a place I love, with so many people I love. And another part that is sad about leaving a life so full of meaningful service.”
I knew that probably sounded like Charlie Brown’s parents in his ears. What does he know about retirement? Career? He’s in middle school. Meaningful service? Come on. But after listening thoughtfully for a few seconds — which for an almost-thirteen-year-old is noteworthy — he said, “It sounds hard.”
It is hard.
A colleague who retired a few years ago was incredulous when I told her I was retiring in June of 2028. I’d thought the long runway was helpful — for me and for the congregation — to transition to a new reality. “So that makes you a lame duck!” she said.
Lame anything sounds pejorative. The frame is borrowed from electoral politics, where authority drains the moment a successor is named. But a pulpit doesn’t work that way. My rabbinate is relational, not transactional. It fades when I stop showing up. And I have no plans to stop showing up.
One of the many reasons I’ve loved working with Caleb on his dvar Torah — besides the enormous helping of naches I get from it — is revisiting the text itself. There are copious topics and encounters in Shelach Lecha. The one I want to pinpoint is the moment the Israelite spies look out at the inhabitants of Canaan. The Canaanites appear gigantic and frightening. Ten of the twelve scouts return shaken, and they speak the line that has lodged in Jewish memory: “We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes — and so we must have appeared to them.”
When the unknown loomed large, the scouts shrank. They lost confidence in their own stature, their own standing. The faith required to enter the promised land collapsed in the face of an opaque and frightening future.
But two of the twelve see it differently. Joshua and Caleb — yes, that Caleb — refuse the grasshopper frame. Vayahas Kalev et ha’am: Caleb hushes the crowd and says, “Let us go up and take the land. We can do this.” It is not lost on me that the grandson asking me what retirement feels like carries this name. The Torah is rarely so generous.
We have learned enough from this portion, and from the subsequent arc of Jewish history, to know that acquiescence has not served us. Passivity has not served us.
Our future is not about entering the land of Canaan. We are, right here, right now, every day, trying to read the future for Jews in America and throughout the Diaspora. The choices the Israeli government has made — without reckoning with how those choices reverberate from Jerusalem outward — have put us in an exposed and compromised position.
There is meaningful debate to be had among us about Israel, about Zionism, about statecraft, about the future of democracy here and there. I trust this community to have it. But whatever our personal positions, this much we share: Israel’s prosecution of the war in Gaza, and now the war against Hezbollah, has dramatically altered how Israel is viewed in the world — and how we are regarded along with it. Most of us never expected antisemitism to be anything more than a history lesson. We are painfully aware now that it is not.
We are witnessing a true sea change. What happens next is frightening and opaque, and depends on factors none of us controls — the trajectory of regional war, the political direction of the Israeli government, the temperature of American public life, and whether anti-Zionism quietly slides into permissible antisemitism.
We are facing a slow-moving storm.
And we are not shrieking gevalt as our ancestors did in the wilderness. We are not rending garments. We are a resolute, robust community. Strength and determination are part of our DNA. We will not knuckle under to the ignorant or the intolerant. That is not who we are. Whatever we face, we face together.
We have carefully built a community that embraces everyone who walks through these doors. We shape the TBA zeitgeist to be inclusive. We believe in this temple’s capacity to give our children — and each other — a sense of confidence and self-worth as Jews. We cultivate curiosity. We sculpt an ethic of caring about the world we live in. We hatch baby chicks and butterflies in our ELC.
We are not raising grasshoppers.
We are all committed to the continued growth and strength of the Jewish people. And that commitment starts right here. TBA is blessed: with a great group of educators, with a soulful cantor, with a battle-tested executive director, with a staff engaged and determined to make this place feel like home — warm, safe, secure.
And you. Without you, none of it stands. Your presence in this room or streaming from your living rooms, your financial support, your soulful support — the dreams and promises we hold at TBA rest on you. This covenant, this brit, is strong and enduring.
There may well be tough times ahead. I am not afraid. I have deep faith in our work and in the path we are on. I have deep faith that our next steps will be taken with a resolute sense of hope and vision.
There are no grasshoppers here.
Before Shabbat 