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It’s been quite a year so far, and we’re only a few days in.

Last Friday evening, as we welcomed in the year 5781, we learned of the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, perhaps the most prominent, certainly the most iconic, Jew in American public life.

Her death is monumental, both because of her legacy as a jurist and a trailblazer, and also because of the weight that a vacant Supreme Court seat adds to this election, already the most consequential of a lifetime.

In this week’s Torah portion, Ha’azinu, we lose another significant leader, perhaps the most notable of all time: Moses. At this point, as the Torah closes, we find him near the end of his journey. He has led the people out from slavery in Egypt, guided them as they received the Torah from God, and encouraged them as they wandered through the desert for forty years. Now he stands upon Mount Nebo, gazing beyond the Jordan River into the Promised Land, the long-awaited destination to which he has led his people for so long. But God tells him that he will not make it across the river. He will die on this mountaintop. He will never arrive at his destination, and the Israelites will have to continue on their journey without him leading the way.

Why do leaders disappear when it feels like we need them the most?

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that we read about the death of Moses as we prepare for Yom Kippur. In this Torah portion, we learn that Moses can’t be our leader forever. On Yom Kippur, we prepare ourselves to take on the banner of authority that he left behind. We reflect on our capacity to forgive, our ability to make principled choices, and our desire to do the right thing. We take up the mantle of moral leadership, perhaps the same one that Moses left to all of us, the Jewish people, upon his death.

As we reflect upon what it means for each of us to live up to the aspirations bequeathed by our leaders — and demanded of us by our tradition — during Yom Kippur, I hope you will join us for our engaging, reflective, and meaningful services. They will begin tonight with Shabbat on Instagram Live at 6 pm. Then, on Sunday night, we will begin Yom Kippur with Kol Nidre, followed by services all day on Monday. In the Torah, Yom Kippur is called a Shabbat Shabbaton, a “Sabbath of Sabbaths,” a day of complete reflection, rest and, hopefully, renewal. I hope you will spend it with us.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah — May you be sealed in the Book of Life for a good year.

Have you ever heard the expression, “Two Jews, three opinions?” When I first heard it, someone even chimed in, “At LEAST three!”

The reality is that life resonates with each of us differently. These different perspectives of the world inform our opinions as well as our learning styles, tastes, and experiences. Luckily for us, the Jewish holiday beginning tonight, most commonly known as Sukkot, goes by three different names throughout the Torah, each offering a different perspective on our observance of this holiday. As Sukkot shows us, having two Jews with three opinions, or one holiday with three names, can bring us together in our diversity. Having multiple perspectives ultimately makes us a stronger, more multifaceted community.

Our most common name, Sukkot, is shorthand for Chag HaSukkot (Leviticus 23:34), which means The Festival of Booths. Our first association with these booths is the Sukkah itself: an outdoor structure made from organic material where we eat, sometimes sleep, and hang out for a week. This name offers a historical connection to the holiday, as these “booths” are a way to commemorate the Israelites’ precarious journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. The first Torah portion we read for Sukkot teaches: “You shall live in booths for 7 days… in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I, Adonai your God” (Leviticus 23:42-43). We build these sukkot to remember how our ancestors lived in the desert. They were constantly on the go, and these booths were fragile, impermanent structures that provided them with critical shelter in the brutal desert climate. The commandment to sit in the sukkah is an invitation for us to put ourselves in their shoes, and experience those simultaneous conditions of vulnerability and gratitude. For those of us who connect to history, Chag HaSukkot offers us a historical window into our tradition as we celebrate this Sukkot.

The next name we have for this holiday comes from a verse from the Book of Deuteronomy that declares that we must rejoice in this festival (Deuteronomy 16:14). It’s called Zman Simchateinu — literally meaning “The Time of Our Joy.” Just five days after the heavy soul-searching of Yom Kippur, it is our time to rejoice! For those of us who seek spiritual connections to our holidays, an 18th-century Lithuanian rabbi called the Vilna Gaon wrote that this festival is “Zman Simchateinu” because it marks the first time God’s presence returned to the Israelites after they committed the sin of worshipping the Golden Calf. We spent last Sunday night and Monday together on YouTube reciting the liturgy to atone for our sins of the past year, naming specific transgressions, and asking God to hear us. Now, just a few days later, we spiritually mark the moment God’s presence returned to the Israelites with pure joy. As Rabbi Deena taught in the tradition of Rabbi Andy on Yom Kippur morning, “We are commanded as Jews to find joy in life. Says the Psalmist, ‘Serve God with joy and gladness, come before God with song in your hearts.’” Zman Simchateinu is one of these very moments where we can serve God with our joy and gladness.

We find a different name for our holiday in the Book of Exodus. In a set of instructions about observing our appointed pilgrimage festivals, this time of year is designated Chag HaAsif, the Festival of the Harvest (Exodus 23:15-16). While we might not all be actively tending fields today, Chag HaAsif provides a way of connecting to our Earth. Even in Biblical times, Chag HaAsif didn’t mark a specific crop’s harvest. Rather, it marked the moment in the season when people finished the hard work of cutting, reaping, winnowing, and sheafing their grain crops and hoped a rainy winter would yield good production in the spring. We still acknowledge this moment in our prayers — Sukkot is when we stop praying for dew and start praying for rain in the Amidah. We are still dependent on these natural cycles, even if we are further removed from the harvesting process than we once were as a people. For those of us who seek ways to connect with the Earth, Chag HaAsif gives us an opportunity to do just that. With this framework, we can be mindful of the seasonal shifts and admire that we are living on the same planet with the same cycles as those who came before us.

For just one holiday, we have three different names, messages, and points of entry into our sukkah. Chag HaSukkot, The Festival of Booths, reminds us historically of the Israelites living in these makeshift booths, and gives us an opportunity to apply historical lessons to contemporary times. Zman Simchateinu, The Time of Our Joy, presents us with a spiritual high after the hard soul-work of Yom Kippur, and commands us to rejoice together. And Chag HaAsif, The Festival of the Harvest, connects us to the Earth, the Earth’s natural cycles, and the agricultural rhythms that dictated the lives of our ancestors. Whether we connect historically, spiritually, ecologically, or some combination of the three, Sukkot has a name for us.

As we inevitably enter the sukkah with different perspectives from one another, our holiday gives us a symbol to show how, when we bring each of our unique life experiences, we are stronger together. We have a custom to shake the lulav and etrog, four kinds of plants that we recite a blessing over and shake in our sukkah. According to a Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 30:12), each of the four species — date palm, myrtle, willow, and etrog — represent a different kind of Jew. Despite these differences, the custom is to hold all four kinds of plants close together when we shake them. This way, we know that we are all in this together regardless of which opinion we hold, what life experiences we bring, or which name for Sukkot resonates with us most. May we all celebrate Sukkot together as a community — from our homes or from the JCP Sukkah on Duane Street — as we mark our history, rejoice, and transition to fall.

I hope you will join myself and Rabbi Deena tonight on Zoom at 6 pm for a festive Shabbat sing-a-long, filled with the songs and prayers that we are learning in the Hebrew School Project! It will be a wonderful way to begin this Time of Rejoicing.

Laid out before me on Friday nights were my father’s photographs and other tsotchkes from his service in the Second World War. Black and white images, neatly scattered and arrayed, each bearing a story of some kind that my dad artfully recorded in his own brilliant mind as well as in his singular script on the backs of these snapshots. Dad served in the 980th Engineering Maintenance Corps, repairing jeeps and tanks, mostly, and provided support for the other men and women who landed in Europe before him. He fought with his company commanders because he was smart and tenacious and hell, for all I know, was already deeply traumatized about what he may have been hearing about Hitler’s plans to exterminate Jews. His mother (my grandma) had fled Kopyl, Minsk in 1903. When news began to emerge during the war that their entire village (and nearly 1 million Jews throughout Belarus) had been murdered by Nazis and their collaborators, the devastation was so great that neither my father nor grandmother ever mentioned it. Dad was seventeen when he was drafted; nineteen when he shipped overseas; and twenty-two when he returned back home on the GI Bill to finish his degree at the University of Wisconsin. I suppose what one might say is that time pushed him forward into the ever-evolving present. Few of his generation chose to look back.

But I do — for him and for me.

One particular picture stands out for me among the many — dad standing in an army camp in Italy with two friends, Samson Cassabo and Stipano LaRocca. They were Italian American, clearly first generation themselves, who were in the U.S. army fighting in Italy. Imagine that. Of course, they were anti-fascists as well, as were most Americans (Charles Lindbergh and his America Firsters notwithstanding.)

When I asked my dad about that, fighting alongside Italians against Italians he said simply, “We are all Americans, son.” And he didn’t need to say much more than that. Those were clearly delineated principles back then.

The war shattered my father’s faith. On a number of occasions during my childhood, I yearned for a Hebrew school education, for more Jewish rituals in the home, and he was having nothing of it. “If there is a Holocaust, then there is no God” was fairly axiomatic for him but I know now, as a student of history, how prevalent that view was for many American Jews of his generation. It was enough to become an American, to enjoy its freedoms and advantages, and to leave behind the kind of — in his mind — primitive expressions of belief that were either untrue, would get you in trouble, or both.

But now all these years later, with Dad being gone since 1983 of a heart attack and me, the age he was when he died, going through the pictures, still. I puzzle over their meaning. I share them. I am the keeper of the flame.

And tonight, at sundown, when Shabbat and Shemini Atzeret arrive to close out the Sukkot festival, I will light a Yizkor candle for Dad, as I have done each year for twenty-eight years. And for his parents, which he never did; and for my mother, a Jew-by-choice; and for my teacher George L. Mosse, who died without children so why shouldn’t his students say Kaddish in his name a few times a year?

But this year Yizkor feels different. With news yesterday of a Michigan militia being caught by the FBI in its kidnapping plot against Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the broader militia movement’s threats to American democracy and the electoral process, I can’t help but think of the lessons imparted to me from my father. A son of refugees. A son of immigrants. Who fought alongside other Americans from all walks of life in order to vanquish the most evil leader of the twentieth century.

This was a basic tenet of what it meant to be a citizen. You served your country because your country gave you freedom. Today, that “freedom” surely remains unrealized for an inexcusably large number of Americans. The point being that we who have inherited such freedom are obligated to ensure that all can share in the bounty of democracy and individual freedom.

There was a model in place for my father’s generation that we have lost as Americans and as Jews: we no longer expect something of each other for each other. Or, put differently, drafted into a unit of young men from all over the nation, from every imaginable background and faith tradition, and being asked to sacrifice a precious few years of your youth for something greater is one of the most noble ideas we have in our quivers for battling over the future of our own nation. A shared purpose, a shared narrative, a shared set of ideas, pointing in a direction.

Over the years, what I discovered in piecing together my father’s narrative was not only his story, but the generational narratives of American Jews who lived through one of the most mind-boggling centuries of Jewish history — mass migration; Holocaust; establishment of Israel; Six Day War — representing a sequence of events that historians and psychologists and sociologists are still grappling with. It will be a long time before we fully understand what has gone on these past hundred years.

As the sage Ben Bag Bag said of Torah study, “Turn it and turn it, for everything is in it. Reflect on it and grow old and gray with it. Don’t turn from it, for nothing is better than it.”

O’ America! You throw so much away. You discard. You waste! But what we inherit is precious, unique and uncommonly beautiful. Even the images, fading from black and white into sepia and grey, bear testimony to a life of values and meaning and despite differences, a unity of purpose.

But as Jews, it is vitally important to remember that just as Sukkot is a festival that reminds us of the fragility of freedom, of the ongoing pursuit of justice, of the need for shelter and bounty for all people, then our work is never done. Like learning, we need to keep turning the project of building a better world “over and over again.”

For our divided country; for our divided world; I pray for a Yizkor of love and recognition of the potential for good in all people. I pray for the strength to do battle with those who will limit the right for all people to be truly free. And I pray for a renewed sense of obligation to the other, to our neighbors, to the whole that derives its measure from the individuality of its many parts.

Please join Rabbi Deena and myself for Yizkor services tomorrow, Saturday, October 10 at 1:15 pm via Zoom here (Meeting ID: 893 7184 5794; Passcode: YIZKOR). To receive the digital prayer book in advance, please RSVP (you can still join without an RSVP).

In these trying times, may the lights of Shabbat and Shemini Atzeret radiate peace, from your homes, to the city, to the country and to the world around us.

Jewish communities, from biblical times to the present day, have often been deeply focused on counting our numbers. This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Bamidbar, is the second-longest in the entire Torah. Its contents? A long account of a divinely-mandated census. The idea behind the census is that Moses and the rest of the leadership of the Israelites need to know how many people comprise their newly free nation. Earlier in the Torah (Exodus 30:12), we learn that, because each Israelite was required to give a sum of money for the upkeep of the Tabernacle, the leadership was able to count how many people were in their society by counting the donations… perhaps a biblical equivalent of an Annual Benefit? (We at JCP held our own virtual Benefit yesterday, but our Online Auction is live through Monday at noon).

Although God instructed Moses and Aaron to take the census in this Torah portion, other biblical leaders are punished by God when they decide to do the same. According to the Book of I Chronicles, King David, looking to assess the power of his kingdom, was convinced by the Satan (which in Judaism is understood to be an inciting spirit) to “number the people of Israel.” As a punishment for taking this census, God sends a plague that kills 700,000 people (I Chronicles 21:1, 14). This account has led to superstition and hesitancy in the Jewish community around participating in the secular census, and even around counting the number of people in a room. I know many traditional grandparents who refuse to say how many grandchildren they have; assigning them a number would bring bad luck.

In modern times, too, there is a fascination with knowing our numbers. For instance, the Pew Research Center on Jewish Americans in 2020, and a similar report published in 2013, presents every statistic and graph under the sun in order to determine just about every trend and pattern imaginable: how many Jews identify with a particular denomination or particular political party? How many find synagogue spiritually meaningful? How many eat Jewish foods and share other aspects of Jewish culture with people who aren’t Jewish? The list of questions goes on. And anecdotally, I have often seen that when a rabbi meets a new colleague, one of the first questions asked is: “How many members are in your congregation?” The assumption is: the bigger the better. The more members you have in your community, the greater your rabbinic reputation.

Though the causes of the upheaval in Israel are incredibly complicated and nuanced, one of the main reasons for the tragic violence we are seeing this week comes down to a race for greater numbers. How many Jewish Israelis live in East Jerusalem, (in villages like Sheikh Jarrah, which is at the heart of the most recent controversy) versus how many Palestinians live there will likely determine who ultimately gets to control the Holy City. But this question of demography has been at the core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for decades, with many wondering what will happen if Jews are no longer a majority in the Jewish State.

These questions about demographics, though, are not unique to Israel; they exist in the United States as well. The 2020 Census was wrapped up in the political question of whether to count undocumented immigrants. And the results, recently published, will have enormous implications for upcoming elections, as Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, and Oregon will each gain seats in the House of Representatives, while California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia will each lose a seat.

Whenever we count a population — be it of a synagogue, a neighborhood, or a nation — perhaps the first step should be to determine why we are engaging in this project. Are we counting our people to achieve utilitarian and political ends or bragging rights? Or are we counting them for sacred purposes, in order to provide resources and ensure proper representation? The ideal end goal should be to ensure that everyone counts.

An inability to form a government; a restless population; an ongoing, unresolved national, religious and territorial conflict spanning generations; a presidential administration in transition; and provocations expressed by extremism of all kinds; it’s a tragic, horrifying and dangerous perfect storm for violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Yet again.

Our hearts break, yet again, for our brothers and sisters in Israel who have been killed, gravely injured, traumatized and terrorized by falling lethal rockets from Gaza. Unquestionably, Israel has the right and must exercise that right to defend itself and deter further attacks against its citizens and its borders.

As Jews and as humans, our hearts break again for the loss of innocent Palestinian lives as well. Images of Israelis and Palestinians living in radical fear at the borders and the interior must remain intolerable to us; must demand of us compassion, action, justice and the tireless pursuit of peace. The right to live in safety and self-determination is why Israel was created in the first place. We must demand of everyone involved hope and not fear.

Now more than ever we need leaders who can build the will to create and sustain a cease fire. Now more than ever we need leaders who recognize the pain and suffering unnecessarily inflicted upon innocent lives when war’s destructive weapons are deployed. Now more than ever we need to recognize that there is very little that is black and white in politics and that ultimately, territorial and existential conflict such as this is resolved through dialogue and bold leadership, not violence.

Us versus Them will not resolve this entrenched battle between Israelis and Palestinians. Destabilizing division, hatred and violence have woven a dangerous, destructive path.

We need Together, as impossible as it is to imagine right now, in order for justice and peace to prevail for all the inhabitants of the land.

For the past fifteen months, my study group has been immersed in a daily examination of sacred Jewish texts, traversing the ancient and contemporary for a glimpse into the wisdom of Jewish civilization. When faced with war again in Israel, it may be tempting to quote Proverbs and sigh in anguish that “there is nothing new under the sun.” But the greater commanding voice which roars from our texts reminds us that the human was created in the image of the Divine; and that the animation of God on earth is expressed through the pursuit of love, justice and peace.

This is our work; this is our mission; this must be our flame of undying hope.

“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10). This familiar line appears in two very different contexts. The original is in this week’s Torah portion in the book of Leviticus, marking a moment known as the “Jubilee Year,” a year of celebration and freedom from servitude at the end of a 50 year cycle. The second place this line appears is in the city of Philadelphia, engraved in the side of the Liberty Bell. Although the words are the same, the line takes on different meanings in their two different contexts, thousands of years and miles apart from each other.

Despite the universal-sounding message of the verse on its own, Torah commentators over generations help clarify to whom “all the inhabitants thereof” really refers. French medieval commentator Rashi notes that “all the inhabitants” is intended specifically for Hebrew servants, both those who have served beyond their 6-year terms, and those still in the midst of that contract (Rashi on Leviticus 25:10). At the same time in Spain, commentator Ibn Ezra agrees that this proclamation is for Israelites and Israelites alone (Ibn Ezra on Leviticus 25:10). In the next generation of medieval commentators, French rabbi Chizkuni doubles down on the particular audience of this verse, and adds that this proclamation is inapplicable beyond the biblical land of Israel because it is designed for the “inhabitants” of that specific land (Chizkuni on Leviticus 25:10). To summarize each of these Torah commentaries together, “all the inhabitants thereof” exclusively refers to Hebrew servants living in the biblical land of Israel, and no one else.

Traveling from biblical Israel to Pennsylvania in 1751, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” took on new meaning in a totally new environment. The bell into which this verse is inscribed wasn’t even known as the Liberty Bell yet. It was the bell of the Pennsylvania Assembly, which would ring out to gather lawmakers for discussion and townspeople to hear the news. In these early days, “all the inhabitants thereof” likely meant the inhabitants of Pennsylvania, whose state charter promised religious and political independence from England. In 1835, the bell entered its next phase as abolitionist publication The Anti-Slavery Record named it the “Liberty Bell” based on its inscription. In the following years, the Liberty Bell became a symbol of aspiration for the Abolitionist Movement because “all the inhabitants thereof” in its American context excluded enslaved Black people from its message. The Liberty Bell similarly became a symbol for the Women’s Suffrage Movement because, again, the universal freedom proclaimed in its inscription did not extend to everyone.

As illustrated by both biblical and American context, “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” wasn’t always intended for everyone. The expansion of who “all the inhabitants” refers to over time, however, teaches us a tremendous lesson, from biblical Israel, to colonial Pennsylvania, abolition, women’s suffrage, and beyond: In their original contexts, not all Jewish or American ideals are meant for all people. That can be a painful reality to face. However, I believe it is our job as Jews and Americans to identify what from our particular traditions fulfills and inspires us, and work to apply it to “all the inhabitants thereof” who could share in our benefit. Starting with liberty, I hope we participate in the progression of Jewish and American history and continue to expand it to all who are yet to be included in this transformative vision for freedom and equality.

What a terribly broken hearted way to enter Shabbat. To awake this morning with the tragic news from Israel: dozens of Jewish worshippers killed in an avalanche of humanity at a spiritual celebration in Meron for the festival of Lag B’Omer. A nightmarish, ghoulish, suffocating event — a human disaster in the service of God — ought to humble us all. Living as we do in our age with the malignancy of death staring us in the face, whether it be gun violence, racist and anti-Semitic attacks against innocent victims, or the incomprehensible destruction of war; this tragedy in Israel was an example of what can happen when our fellow Jews, our fellow human beings, are cut down in joy, in celebration, in love for and in service to our God.

To die in service to God is a perversion of the natural order. Judaism teaches that above all else, we are to sanctify life. Further, the tradition also teaches that only in the most extreme circumstances should a Jew willingly give up his or her own life in devotion to God.

In Meron, at the grave of the early rabbinic sage Shimon bar Yochai, pilgrims gather each year to celebrate Lag B’Omer. “Lag” in Jewish numerology is the number 33. It has been 33 days since Passover began. Jewish tradition teaches that during the 49 days between Passover, our liberation from Egypt, and Shavuot, receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai, we “count the omer,” or the spring grain that grows in the land of Israel during this time. Nature and ritual come together in a kind of spiritual-historical time to mark the wonder and bounty of the earth as well as the covenantal way in which we Jews mark our journey through life.

The Counting of the Omer is a time of introspection, serious reflection, preparation for the Gift of Torah. In ancient mytho-history, the 33rd day of the Omer was a two-fold date of importance. It marked the end of a period of plague and persecution of the ancient sages, in particular a rivalrous incident between Rabbi Akiva and his students; and it also marks the yahrzeit of Shimon bar Yohai, a monumental figure in early rabbinic history. Bar Yohai was a brilliant teacher, in possession of a rich and illustrious imagination, and he was also a fierce critic of the materialism and brute power of the Roman empire. He was once chased into exile by the Romans, forced to flee for his life and hide in a cave with his son for seven years. When he first emerged, he was so caught up in his righteousness, that anything or anyone he looked at was destroyed by fire. God told him to return to his cave. It seems that the Divine Voice demanded an obedience that was tempered, moderated, more embracing of life than the extreme expressions of devotion. He eventually emerged to understand that life could return to a kind of normalcy and the Talmud relates that when he came back to the world the second time, he was deeply moved by watching his fellow Jews prepare for Shabbat, sharing flowers and fresh myrtle to welcome the glory and splendor of the day of rest.

Bar Yohai is also, by legend, the author of Judaism’s most mystical tract, the Zohar, though scholars have long demonstrated that in fact the Zohar is of Medieval origin. But myth is a powerful tool and the passion with which believers flock to Bar Yohai’s grave is on full display each year in Meron.

That passion — so beautiful in its intent — has had an incomprehensibly tragic result in the senseless deaths we bear witness to today.

No one should die in service to God. With wrenched hearts we must face the fact that this was so; and also strengthen our efforts moving forward to ensure the safety of worshippers, lovers of the Divine Name, whenever and however they meet, with the intent of the loving expressions of peace and righteousness at the center of their beings.

When we experience death in Jewish life, we pray that the Divine brings comfort to the mourners; and we also pray that the memory of those we lost serve as a blessing. These words we use: “May God provide comfort to the mourners of Zion” and “May their memory be a blessing” are the animating life forces of how we transcend our grief in such moments.

The entire JCP community offers words of comfort, strength and love to the families of those lost in Meron on Lag B’Omer. May our people know only peace; and may our love for and worship of God be tempered by the humility of our service, rooted in the sanctification of life, always, now and forever.

We’ve all likely heard the term “scapegoat,” a person or group that is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, usually for reasons of expediency.

But what do goats have to do with it?

The term “scapegoat” has its origins in this week’s double Torah portion, Acharei Mot-Kedoshim, in which we learn that a scapegoat is not an abstract concept, but a ritual involving, you guessed it, live goats.

The Torah portion describes the annual Yom Kippur ceremony that the High Priest would use to cleanse the people of their sins. First, he would take two identical goats and would, by lottery, designate one goat as a sacrifice to God, and one to be kept alive for later use as the scapegoat. After the sacrifice of the first goat, the High Priest would engage in the following ritual:

“He shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat; and it shall be sent off to the wilderness…thus the goat shall carry on it all their iniquities to an inaccessible region” (Leviticus 16:21-22).

With all of their mistakes, sins, and wrongdoings transferred from the people to the goat, and the goat sent out to die in the wilderness, the people could enter the new year feeling relieved of the burden of guilt and shame from the previous one. To us, this ritual might seem oddly physical; sins can’t just be transferred from a person’s conscience to a goat. But for the Israelites, the scapegoat was a tool to help them leave behind the sins of the past and begin anew.

Since the days of the Bible, humans in all societies have engaged in this ritual of identifying and banishing a scapegoat… with one significant difference: scapegoat is no longer a goat, but a human being or a group of people blamed for the ills of society and sent to its margins.

Isabel Wilkerson, author of Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, claims societies based on caste systems, like ours in the United States, use the practice of scapegoating as a way to keep members of the lower caste outside of the sphere of concern of the upper castes. She writes:

“In a caste system, whether in the United States or in India or in World War II Germany, the lowest caste performed the unwitting role of diverting society’s attention from its structural ills and taking the blame for collective misfortune…the scapegoat unwittingly helps unify the favored castes to be seen as free of blemish as long as there is a visible disfavored group to absorb their sins.” When times are tough, it’s easier to blame an already marginalized group than to do the hard work of repairing the brokenness in society.

This desire to transfer our own sins and pain onto other beings is deeply ingrained into our consciousness. It feels good to transfer our burdens onto something, or someone, else. But what happens to those who bear the brunt? They end up being seen as expendable, destined to languish in the wilderness of our society.

How do we work to diminish this dangerous human tendency? The second Torah portion we read this week, Kedoshim, gives us a potential answer. In it, God instructs Moses to assemble kol adat b’nai Yisrael, the entire community of the people of Israel, to receive the Holiness Code, a list of instructions that will allow them to achieve a state of sanctity. The Holiness Code begins with the proclamation: “You all are Holy, for I, Adonai your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:1).

This is a revolutionary idea, both in the ancient world and today, because it teaches that all people — not just those at the top of the social hierarchy — are inherently holy. This echoes the decision by God, made at the very beginning of the Torah, that humans will be created B’tzelem Elohim, in the image of the Divine. Therefore, in an ideal world, we would recognize that no human being can ever serve as a scapegoat; their inherent holiness won’t allow for it.

Perhaps this week’s conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd is a sign that our society is finally understanding that Black Lives, too, are inherently holy; they are not to be scapegoated, but treated with equal justice under law. But can we imagine a society where that is already the assumption, where we didn’t have to be reminded of this fact through the tragic loss of life, and ordeal of national strife and discord? This is the aspiration set out in Torah.

May we help to build a world where, instead of seeking out a scapegoat and transferring our burdens to others, we take to heart this powerful teaching in the Torah, so that it is no longer a yearning, or even a cliché, but a reality by which we live.

When I think of childbirth, I usually think of the act itself. Whether it’s the video I saw in 8th grade health class, my family regaling me about the day I was born, or how popular culture portrays childbirth in movies like Knocked Up or Juno, I associate childbirth with the miraculous and excruciating task of going through labor.

Yet, unlike my health teachers or any Judd Apatow movie, the Torah focuses less on childbirth itself and more on the period of time following delivery. God instructs Moses to tell the people, “When a woman at childbirth bears a male, she shall be ritually impure seven days, as in the days of her menstruation” (Leviticus 12:2). On the eighth day, the baby is circumcised, and then the new mother “shall remain in a state of blood purification for 33 days; she shall not touch any consecrated thing, nor enter the sanctuary until the days of her purification are complete” (Leviticus 12:4).

The procedure of ritual purification after childbirth suggests that we need a pause after giving birth. These instructions propose that after nine months of carrying a baby and all that entails — the sickness, body changes, pain, and fatigue — perhaps child bearers could use a month or two to recover from bringing a new life into this world before re-entering society. Today, this idea takes form as parental leave.

While humans and other mammals come to mind first when we consider birth, we see that the language around childbirth applied to nations as well. Dr. Orit Avnery from the Shalom Hartman Institute makes a strong case that Passover is the story of a people’s birth — with the moment of birth commencing when the Israelites paint their doorposts with blood, and exit their surrogate mother of Egypt through the birth canal of the Red Sea. The phrase “Birth of a Nation” has been used for at least three movie titles: a racist film in 1915 glorifying the KKK, a film reclaiming the name in 2015 about Nat Turner’s rebellion, and a 1996 History Channel documentary about the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

We commemorated the events of that History Channel documentary this past week with the celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut — Israel’s Independence Day. On the Hebrew date of 5 Iyar in 1948, Israel declared independence as a modern nation state with the support of the United Nations Resolution 181. Like childbirth, the establishment of a sovereign Jewish nation after close to 2,000 years of diaspora was both a miraculous and difficult process. It was a miracle that the Jewish people established its own sovereign power after millennia of disenfranchisement and violence against Jews in almost every corner of the globe. And it was difficult because this sovereignty has been accompanied by conflict for much of its existence.

The Biblical framework for childbirth offers us a new way to think about how to deal with the realities of birth — the extraordinary and the painful. In the case of the nation-state, including Israel, we don’t have a precedent for taking a period of pause and reflection after what was undoubtedly an arduous process of bringing a new entity into the world. Israel does, however, already incorporate short pauses of mourning and celebration along these lines.

There is a two-minute siren that goes off in all of Israel on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day. During these two minutes, everything stops. I remember standing on a sidewalk of a busy street in Jerusalem, and once the siren sounded, every driver on the road pulled over and exited their cars to stand together in silence. Yom Hazikaron in general is a time of pause, as almost all restaurants, shops, movie theaters, bars, schools, and offices close for the day. Even regularly scheduled television and radio programs stop to honor those who have died defending Israel.

As soon as Yom Hazikaron ends, we transition to Yom Ha’atzmaut, a different kind of pause. We pause on Yom Ha’atzmaut to celebrate Israel — its people, culture, accomplishments, and status in the world. In the broad view of Jewish history, Jews hadn’t had a sovereign nation in more than 2,500 years when Israel was founded. The 24 hours of Yom Ha’atzmaut might not be enough to consider what this really means to each of us and to the Jewish people as a whole. After generations of Jewish history without political power, the last 73 years have been condensed with the triumphs and challenges of state sovereignty.

As the Biblical recovery period after childbirth suggests, what if we had a full month to reflect on what the state of Israel means to the Jewish people? A full month to appreciate Jewish sovereignty in the world; to consider the responsibility that comes with state power; to celebrate Israel’s contributions to the world; to explore the Jewish religious and cultural innovations that come from a Jewish state; and more. The time and space to reflect on these ideas could help each of us clarify Israel’s meaning to the Jewish people and to the world.

Childbirth is a profound human experience, one that brought each of us into this world. The Torah did its best to legislate childbirth as it saw fit, and in the process offered the framework of pause and recovery after going through such an intense period of creation. This framework can inform how we navigate a national birth, such as Israel’s, and give us time to fully appreciate and reflect on all that Jewish sovereignty has represented over these past 73 years. It has been great to acknowledge and celebrate Israel this week, and I hope the Biblical framework of extended reflection around childbirth encourages us to keep Israel on our radars for longer than just its appointed holidays. Chag Ha’atzmaut Sameach!