Before Shabbat

Purim is a genuinely unhinged holiday. It invites raucous, transgressive behavior right into the sanctuary. The more noise produced, the better. It’s as if the tradition wants us to install a decibel screen and get the groggers and foot-stomping to over 100dbs. We are allowed, only on Purim, to cross-dress. And all of this is fueled by liquor. In the Talmud, Megillah 7b, it is written that a person is supposed to drink on Purim until they cannot tell the difference between “cursed be Haman” and “blessed be Mordechai.” Really.

Essentially, Purim is the official opening of a collective Jewish steam valve. It provides some room to play for the deepest part of the human personality, the unruly id. For Jews who live in a tight system of boundaries and communal expectations, Purim cracks open all kinds of transgressions, but just for a day. It’s costumes, whiskey, and carnival—yay!

There is, however, another side to this revelry. The Purim story narrative emphasizes the plight of a Jewish community whose security depends on the goodwill of non-Jewish sovereigns. The decision of Queen Esther, a hidden Jew who comes out of the closet, turns the tables on her people’s persecutors, setting the stage for a massive score-settling—the Jews of Shushan and surrounding parts of the kingdom slaughter 75,000 men. Everyone is terrified of the Jews, and they live happily ever after.

Our congregant, Rick Lipof, sent me a piece from Jewish comedian Elon Gold’s pre-Purim stand-up shtick. Gold says that Hamas doesn’t know Jewish history, that had they read the Megillah, they would realize that “those who seek to destroy us will be destroyed.” The crowd cheers, and the monologue continues.

Gold is a funny guy. But then, as I listened, I began to think about the Purim story more deeply. Previous generations of persecuted Jews may have viewed the expression of joy at the triumph of the Jews of Persia at the expense of their would-be exterminator and his accomplices as a delicious revenge fantasy. But here, I emphasize “fantasy.” Rounding people up we define as our enemy and murdering them has never been a big to-do item on the Jewish list.

Sure, there are times throughout history when Jews have sought vengeance. It is inevitable that some would succumb to that deep, primal reflex. There are also examples of ultra-Orthodox rabbis who justify such behavior. But Jewish teachings on vengeance challenge individuals to rise above the instinct for retribution, advocating instead for a pursuit of justice tempered with mercy and forgiveness, where possible. This approach seeks to break cycles of violence and reflect divine attributes of justice and mercy.

We avoid the last verses of Megillat Esther. We don’t teach it. We don’t cheer about it. We don’t put it on the Jewish ethical smorgasbord. It is repellant. As a fantasy, it certainly gives us that feeling if only we had it. If only we could casually dispatch every enemy of the Jewish people. But we do have a higher standard, as awkward and nagging as it may be. We will defend ourselves always. And even in battle, there must be standards.

It’s hard to be a Jew. It’s hard to uphold a standard of justice and mercy in a world of pain and violence. Celebrate Purim with joy. Acknowledge this once-a-year loosening of Jewish norms. And then return to the endless work that lies ahead.

Experiencing nostalgia evokes memories of people, objects, places, events, or experiences from the past. These memories are often smoothed over. The hardships of the past are often overlooked, and the positive aspects are emphasized, and sometimes exaggerated. This selective memory contributes to the overall warm and comforting feeling that nostalgia can bring, along with pangs and sighs and tears.

Some folks love nostalgia. They like to wear vintage clothes. They have lots of photo albums: hard copies and online, too. They’re big on oldies but goodies. They often say things like, “Life was so much better in the old days.” Or, “They don’t make them like they used to.” They won’t listen to any music made after the Beatles broke up (April 1970, by the way).

I’m not big on nostalgia. I don’t reach into that bag too often. I tend to lean into what’s next, not what was. I’m aware of the extent to which the Jewish calendar can seem, at first blush, to be all about nostalgia. “Remember the Shabbat and keep it holy.” Tell the Passover story every year. Build a sukkah every year, etc. But I relate to these dicta not as cherishing the past but rather engaging the future with the strengths gained from history. Yes, it says in the Haggadah: “In every generation, it is incumbent upon each one of us to see ourselves as if we had personally left Egypt.” But that’s not an invitation to relive the pain of slavery and the hardships we endured. The purpose of bringing it up is to remind us that the journey is not over. It’s the opposite of nostalgia.

Nostalgia crept up on me the other day as I walked into Blacker’s Bakery. Picking up the challah for my family and for the temple is a standard Thursday ritual. I shmooze a little with Karen and Becca Blacker. If I’m lucky, there’s a pastry sliced up for a taste or a crinkle cookie with my name on it. As I wafted in, following the aroma of freshly baked bread and sweets like Pepe LaPew following the scent of perfume, it struck me. Like Proust’s madeleine from A la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), that overwhelming bakery sensory experience brought me back to Covid time. Life was so fundamentally different then. We were filled with anxiety, feeling unsettled and unsure of what was next. But getting into that long line outside Blacker’s bakery to get my challah made me happy. I wasn’t sure of much, but I did know my Shabbat would be a good one. As I walked home, challah in my backpack, I felt such a deep appreciation. As the nostalgic moment enveloped me in memories, I understood that it was important to appreciate that moment again.  

Mixed feelings of joy and sadness is an apt definition of nostalgia, and it fits so many recollections of Covid time. It’s hard to believe how we’ve managed to fire up the engines and blast off again into space. It’s odd how such a life-altering time has faded in so many ways to the back of the mind. But Covid time changed everything. Nothing will ever be quite the same. What those changes are continues to be a colossal question. What remains true throughout time is that sharing appreciation and gratitude is vitally important. For challah, for love, for hope.

It’s been five long, excruciating months since Hamas launched their heartless, brutal terrorist attack on Israel. They murdered 1200 men, women and children. They raped and looted and pillaged. They’re currently holding over one hundred hostages. Their goal was to take the heart and soul of Israel and mercilessly squeeze them dry with the ancient tools of fear and unspeakable violence.  

Israel’s war, launched to erase the name of Hamas like Haman’s name on Purim, has been relentless. With awful, stone-hearted resolve, the IDF has marched through Gaza, searching out the enemy, entering the subterranean tunnels where they hide. The Israeli air force has dropped bombs, strafed homes, and fired missiles, essentially transforming cities and towns to wastelands reminiscent of Europe after WWII. And in the rubble, there are innocents, large numbers of women and children with no place to go, no place to hide. 

The Holocaust is, of course, for all Jews, an eternal source of pain and trauma. For we who live in the Diaspora, over time, some of the sting has dissipated, though not the essential truth of abandonment subjugation and genocide. Our younger generations still learn about the Holocaust and experience its bitterness and angst. But it feels distant, a part of history. They don’t know the names of the perpetrators or the places of mass death. This is what happens over time. Is that a sad truth? I don’t know, but it’s something for us to consider over and over again. 

In Israel, the Holocaust lurks right below the surface. It is a shadow that never quite fades. It is mentioned all the time, referred to in political addresses, at demonstrations, in IDF training, in primary school curricula. When American Jews say, “Never Again”, we are thinking more historically and metaphorically about violence and genocide. When Israelis say, “Never Again”, it has an immediate reference to the present and the horror they promised each other to never have to endure again. 

When Hamas murders innocent people, burns bodies, and decapitates children, they break down the wall between the vulnerable past and the strong, resilient present. And that is unbearable. The terrible trauma of October 7^th has ripped open the hearts and the hopes and assumptions of Israelis.  

This terrible wound of October 7^th connects so deeply to the Israeli psyche. It contradicts the standard assumption that Israelis will never be so vulnerable to the enemy. And this fact, this trauma, has made many Israelis feel like the war in Gaza, with all of its violence and the loss of so many innocents is regrettable, but necessary.  

Out here in the Diaspora, we try to understand this. We want to stand with Israel. We want to do whatever we can to come to the aid of our stricken brothers and sisters. But we also see what those who are traumatized may not. We see the grief of Gazan women and children, true innocents. Our hearts break for their suffering. We seek some means by which to ameliorate their misery.  

We are also experiencing the corrosive effects of the war on Diaspora Jews all over the world. We who love Israel are feeling hostility and condemnation: on campuses, on city streets, on social media. The binary judgment: Israel bad, Palestinians good, based in ignorance of history, is bleeding into our lives, making us feel vulnerable and alone. The most frightening aspect of all of this is how it now, around the edges, certainly looks like and feels like antisemitism. It’s not just Israel is bad – it’s now the Jews are bad.  

It is with enormous humility and respect for our Israeli brothers and sisters that I say, as a Diaspora Jew: we must redefine what we’re doing in Gaza. We must shed a ray of light to see that continuing to bomb and destroy Gaza is ultimately counterproductive. For every Hamas fighter killed or captured, ten orphaned children of Gaza, tired and sick and slowly starving are filled with hate and revenge. They are the next generation of recruits.  

After the smoke clears, Jews and Arabs will still be living in the same neighborhood. We won’t leave our homes and neither will they. How do we begin to stitch together that which has been torn asunder? What are we to do? The occupation of the West Bank and the blockade on Gaza must end – not only because it is brutal and oppressive for Palestinians – but also because it does not guarantee any long-term safety for Israelis. We know that a negotiated peace agreement is the only way to ensure freedom, equality, and safety for both peoples.  

I may not talk about October 7^th as much as I did. I’ve had to learn how to navigate through the pain and the sorrow. I must get through the days, weeks and months ahead. But the Israel-Hamas War plays in the background of my life every day. 

I have never cared about Groundhog Day. Ever. It is, after all, a ridiculous premise that the angle of the sun on a particular day and how it shines on a rodent’s back has predictive insights into the appearance of Spring. It gets any attention at all due to the marketing brilliance of the Punxsutawney, PA. Chamber of Commerce and the desperate search by the news media for any story that is a feel-good item.

People have always sought some definitive solutions to unanswerable questions. Go to a fortuneteller. Read Tarot cards. Interpret the tea leaves. Look for a woodchuck’s shadow. They want to know the future.

Some people start a book by reading the last 25 pages first to allay the anxiety of not knowing. Acknowledging how little we can know about what happens next is difficult. The future scares us because it’s so dark in there.

The lack of opacity in looking into the future is reflected in the absence of light during the winter. This year, we recorded the cloudiest winter ever in the greater Boston area. It’s been brutally cloudy. So, too, in the headlines. Israel, Ukraine, floods, looming national elections… We are in the midst of a global polycrisis, which occurs “when crises in multiple global systems become causally entangled in ways that significantly degrade humanity’s prospects. These interacting crises produce harms greater than the sum of those the crises would produce in isolation, were their host systems not so deeply interconnected.” I told you it was dark out there.

This is why conspiracy theories grow like mold in tough times. They provide simple solutions to vexing complications. Why were there fires in California? They were set by Jewish space lasers. Why are there progressive, democracy-minded people in power anywhere? Because the world is controlled by the “Deep State,” a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Climate change is either manufactured or illusory, and that some nefarious force—be it the United Nations, liberals, communists, or authoritarians—wants to use climate change as a cover for exerting massive new controls over the populace.

Simple solutions would be great. A secret decoder ring or a direct line to an oracle would be terrific. And if you have one, please lend it to me. But in the meantime, we must work the problem: with faith and reason, calmly and judiciously. How else do we move forward?

No one has a clue about the profound results of climate change. No one sane can say they know the way out of Gaza. No reasonable person can suggest that Taylor Swift is doing psyops for the CIA to get a second term for Joe Biden. We can look at trends. We can respectfully listen to divergent ideas with our hearts open to learning something new, something we have not thought of before.

Mazel tov to Punxsutawney Phil and his handlers. May they live and be well with the mediums of the world, the Tarot card readers, and the clock that tells the correct time once a day. As for us, let’s grab some flashlights and get through the darkness together.

The other day, while walking past the conference room, I spied a bunch of old TBA newsletters sitting on the table. Remember those days of paper? There were 30+ years’ worth of Kadima bulletins in an impressively big pile. They aren’t there through happenstance. Instead, they are evidence of the massive effort to celebrate TBA’s upcoming 60^th anniversary. But more on that later.

I thought it would be fun to grab a random Kadima and give it a read, for old-time’s sake. It wasn’t fun. Instead, it was a very sobering window into seeing what we were all thinking and feeling about Israel. I picked up the March 2005 edition and drifted back to that period as I read my guardedly optimistic assessment. I wrote, “Maybe, we have reached the point where some semblance of sanity will at last emerge. “ I wrote, “Maybe the time has come where, anemic from all the blood loss, we can begin. It won’t be easy, but this is the only logical course… To believe that peace is possible this time: is it a pipe dream? I pray not.” Then, the last sentence, the summary conclusion, is: “I still believe in the power and the possibility of peace in the Middle East.”

Nineteen years ago, such sentiments and assessments did not seem foolish or naïve. Hoping out loud did not sound Pollyannish. For a brief and shining moment, hope made sense.

It’s almost embarrassing to read these old appraisals now and imagine I believed them. But I did. I held these possibilities for peace so close to my heart. I was part of a movement of Jews in America and in Israel who, along with Palestinians, were willing to move forward slowly and deliberately to a new understanding of our shared neighborhood.

I want to hope again. I want to imagine an Israel at peace, flourishing, dynamic, the “start-up nation” as committed to a thriving democracy as it is to high tech and industry. But I can’t see or feel it right now. The trauma of October 7^th continues to hang over everyone and everything like gun smoke powder. The fate of the hostages is like a piercing pain that does not subside. The tragedy of innocent Palestinian lives lost gets more horrible as it deepens. Where can we find hope?

 This search for something to hope for is made even more problematic due to the lack of clear guidelines for what should happen next. There is no clearly definable endgame stated other than “destroying Hamas,” something many people don’t necessarily believe is even possible. Over one hundred days into this war, and I can’t tell you what Israel’s political objective is for the morning after. Are we heading for a situation where 7 million Jews are going to permanently control 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and 2.1 million Palestinians in Gaza? It’s hard to persevere when you can’t see the horizon.

When will I be able to sing a song of peace again? Where will I find the opportunity to celebrate? When will that time arrive? How many more sacrifices must be made?

Nineteen years ago, I dared to imagine a time for every purpose under heaven. I envisioned a better world, a time for coexistence. I thought that maybe we’d arrived at last at a tipping point. 

What is the algorithm for hope?

Over 100 days have passed since October 7^th. The world is shifting on its axis.

Or maybe it’s some planetary earthquake. We’re falling, flying, tumbling in turmoil (thank you, Paul Simon). We are holding on, as tightly as we can, to the ship’s railing, the plane’s armrests, and the grab handle above the door. The turbulence is awful.

Even the scariest roller coaster comes to a smooth and safe landing. But as we glance around for the comforting red glow of the exit sign, we see nothing but darkness, and the ride isn’t slowing down. I could use some training wheels, but not even Amazon carries them.

It’s feeling awfully precarious. Two days ago, I read a list of potential wars in the offing. I won’t even give you the link, lest it bathe you in the bitter waters of despair. But it shook me up.

An adolescent girl hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam and wrote in her diary, “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Of course, this turned out not to be the case. Her family was betrayed, and only her father survived the Holocaust. But she never lost hope. Until the end, hope kept her sane and alive.

In solitary confinement, Natan Sharansky endured harsh conditions. He spent long periods in a small, isolated cell, faced extreme cold, and had limited access to necessities. And yet, he survived: with hope, with Psalms, with the game of chess playing repeatedly in his head.

There are hundreds – thousands – millions of examples from our ancestors who held on even in the most extreme circumstances. Some saw redemption, and others did not. But all of them – all of us – have a heritage of hope. We have a long history of wars, fear, and sadness. And we have an unbreakable spirit.

We have to double down on that message of resilience and historical grit. We send our love, hope, and donations to the Israeli families waiting for word of their loved ones on the Gaza battlefields and the hostages in the hellish tunnels. We gather as a congregation to support each other with love and steadfastness, looking ahead to our potential to provide a handhold and open our hearts and doors to provide some shelter from the storm.