Dvar Torah: From Paediatric Judaism to a Lifetime of Learning

Many of us here are parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. We want the best for the children in our lives. We want them to be well-read, so we encourage them: we give them books and we ask often, “Have you done your reading yet?” But a fascinating 2018 study on this very topic revealed a profound truth. Children have an uncanny ability to detect hypocrisy. One child in the study said of his parents, “They don’t do any reading, they just ask me and then I have to go do it.” Another put it simply: “He doesn’t read himself really.” The researchers concluded that when encouragement is not backed by example, it rings hollow.

This simple truth from the world of literacy is a powerful mirror for our own Jewish lives. How often do we treat Jewish learning as something exclusively for the young? This results in what we might call a “paediatric Judaism.” Imagine if our entire experience of literature never progressed beyond Curious George and the like. We would be missing the richness of the novels, the poetry, the drama that give life meaning. And yet, so often, this is what happens with our Jewish knowledge. We mature into sophisticated learners in every other area of our lives, our careers, our hobbies, our understanding of the world, but when it comes to Judaism, many of us remain stuck at a 13-year-old’s level. Our faith becomes a set of stories and rituals that one graduates from, like primary school. This is the danger we face.

Our own tradition understood this profound psychological truth centuries ago. A person once asked Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk how they could encourage their children to dedicate themselves to the study of Torah. Menachem Mendel replied: “If you truly wish to do this, then you yourself must devote time to Torah, and they will follow your example. Otherwise, you will not dedicate time to Torah, but merely tell your children to do so. And that is how it will remain.”

And that is how it will remain. A faith for children. A faith that cannot sustain us through the complexities of adult life.

It is into this very challenge that our parashah speaks with such astonishing wisdom and foresight. The text provides the perfect antidote to this problem of a hollowed-out, paediatric Judaism. Listen to this verse from D’varim: “Gather the people, men, women, children, and the strangers in your communities, that they may hear and so learn to revere the Eternal your God and to observe faithfully every word of this Torah.”

Let us pause and absorb the radical inclusivity of this statement. The instruction is not “Gather the children.” It is not “Ensure your children have a Bar/Bat-Mitzvah education.” It is “Gather the people.” All of them. Men and women, young and old. The children, who are not just our future, but our partners in the present. And, perhaps most strikingly, “the strangers in your communities.” Every single person is to be included in this great assembly of learning.

This is a profound statement about the nature of Jewish education. It is not something to be confined to the classroom. It is not a task to be completed in childhood and then set aside. It is a lifelong, communal endeavour. The Torah is not meant to be a dusty scroll, revered from a distance by adults while being force-fed to children. It is meant to be heard, learned, and internalised by everyone, together, until it shapes the very way we see the world. The goal is twofold: to learn to revere God, and to observe the Torah faithfully. The reverence and the observance are intertwined, one flowing from the other. And it starts with the adults showing up.

But this grand instruction begs a fundamental question. If this learning is for everyone, what is this Torah that we are all meant to know? Is it the 613 mitzvot in all their intricate detail? Is it the complex tapestry of Talmudic debate? Many adults shy away from Jewish learning precisely because they imagine it to be an insurmountable mountain of arcane rules, something best left to the rabbis or the especially learned.

Our tradition, however, provides us with some beautifully concise and powerful answers. Perhaps the most famous is the story of a person considering becoming a Jew by choice who came before Shammai and Hillel. He approached Shammai with an impossible request: “Teach me the whole Torah while I stand on one foot.” Shammai chased the man away with a builder’s ruler. It was an absurd request.

But then the man went to Hillel. Hillel, renowned for his gentle nature, did not dismiss him. He stood the man on one foot and said, “Do not do to your neighbour what is hateful to you. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary. Now go and study.”

“The rest is commentary. Now go and study.” In this one, brilliant statement, Hillel encapsulates the very essence of adult Jewish learning. He does not say the commentary is unimportant. But he says it is all an elaboration of a single, foundational principle: empathy. The core of the matter is to see the other, recognise their humanity, and treat them with dignity. The intricate laws of Shabbat and kashrut are the “commentary”, the frameworks through which we practise and refine our ability to live out that core principle. Hillel’s message is clear: start with the heart, with the basic principle of human decency, and from there, the study of the rest will have context and meaning. This is an entry point for any adult, at any level.

This focus on the ethical core is a recurring theme. Consider the debate between Rabbi Akiva and Ben Azzai over the klal gadol baTorah, the most important verse in the entire Torah. Rabbi Akiva proposed the famous verse from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” It is a powerful choice, a call for active love and compassion.

But Ben Azzai disagreed. He chose an even more foundational verse from Genesis: “This is the book of the generations of Adam. On the day that God created man, in the likeness of God He made him.” Ben Azzai argued that this was greater because our ability to love our neighbour as ourselves can be subjective. It presumes that what we want for ourselves is what our neighbour wants, but people are very different from each other. Sometimes the best way to treat someone with dignity is not to think of them as being just like us, but to recognise and honour our differences. And what if, on a given day, you do not love yourself very much? Ben Azzai’s verse, however, establishes an objective, unshakeable truth: every single human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. Their value is not dependent on your feelings towards them. It is inherent. This principle compels us to honour the humanity in everyone, even our enemies.

What is striking is that in identifying the core of Torah, none of these sages pointed to a ritual precept. They all pointed directly to the realm of interpersonal ethics. They all understood that the ultimate purpose of the Torah’s intricate system is to shape us into a certain kind of person. It is to mould us into a mensch.

Mensch is a Yiddish word that, although often translated as “person”, means a lot more than that. A mensch is someone of integrity, honour, decency, and compassion. A mensch is a real human being. This is the goal of a Jewish education, and it is most certainly not a paediatric goal. Becoming a mensch is the work of a lifetime. It is an adult curriculum.

This brings us to a stark teaching from Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of our Fathers: “וּבְמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ” — “In a situation devoid of humanity, strive to be a human being.”

This is a profound ethical demand. It is easy to be a good person when surrounded by good people. But what do you do in a moral vacuum? What happens in a workplace where gossip is the norm? Or in a political climate where decency is mocked? The Mishnah tells us: in that place, you must strive to be a mensch. When no one else will stand up, you must. This requires an adult morality, an internalised ethical framework that does not depend on external validation. This is what Jewish learning is for.

And so, we return to where we began. We cannot ask our children to build this deep ethical character if we are not actively engaged in building it ourselves. We cannot expect them to love a tradition that they see us neglect. The command of our parashah is our guide. It is a call to intergenerational, communal learning. It is a call for adults to model what a life of learning and striving looks like.

Let us, therefore, answer that ancient call. Let us gather, all of us, and commit ourselves to this learning. Let us show our children, and each other, that Judaism is not a subject to be passed, but a life to be lived. Let us learn together what it means to be a mensch, so that our children do not learn from our hypocrisy, but are inspired by our example. In doing so, we not only honour our past, but we build a more humane and compassionate future for all.

Ken Yehi Ratzon, may this be God’s will.

Shabbat Shalom and Shanah Tovah!

Write This Song: On Music, Memory, and Meaning

Music has always played a significant role in my life. I’ve never played a musical instrument, and I don’t pretend to be a gifted singer, but from a very young age I found great joy in singing. I still remember performing at a talent show in a hotel I visited with my parents when I was six. Apparently, I had no trace of stage fright! Later, as a teenager, I parodied a well-known Brazilian protest song to suit my then-rebellious worldview. Where the original called out, “Come, let’s go, for waiting is not knowing; those who know make the moment, they don’t wait for it to happen,” my version sang: “Come, let’s go, for studying is not knowing; those who study waste their time and don’t know what it is to live...”

Yes, I was once that teenager. Please don’t share this with your children, and especially not with mine!

Despite the questionable lyrics, I loved music. I still do. Music was, and remains, far more than entertainment. It has often served as a kind of emotional time machine. There are songs that instantly transport me to the back seat of my mother’s car in the early 1980s, to the burning passions and heartbreaks of adolescence, and to the tense political atmosphere of Brazil’s final years under military rule. Music has that power: to help us feel before we are ready to think; to reveal truths our minds may resist; to connect us with moments and people long gone.

I sometimes bristle when the Torah is described merely as a “book of law”. Of course, it contains laws, but for me, especially as a Progressive Jew, it is first and foremost our people’s sacred narrative. It tells the stories from which I’ve drawn so many of the values that shape my life. Chief among them is the image of humanity created in the Divine image, read on the second day of Rosh HaShanah and again on Simchat Torah. There’s no explicit law in that passage, but from it flows the profound Jewish commitment to the dignity of every single human being.

This week’s parashah, Vayelech, sets the stage for the powerful poem that will follow in next week’s parashah, Haazinu. Moshe is instructed to prepare a song that will be delivered on the last day of his life, summarising Israel’s relationship with God, past, present, and future. The text commands: “Now, therefore, write this song for yourselves, and teach it to the children of Israel. Put it in their mouths, that this song may be My witness against the children of Israel” (Devarim 31:19). Moshe's legacy is not just law; it is also music and memory, a testimony designed to be internalised emotionally and carried forever in our hearts.

On this Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Return, may we allow the songs of our own lives to accompany us on our journey. May they bring us not only nostalgia but healing, connection, and the strength to keep walking towards the future we still long to compose.

Shabbat Shalom and Shannah Tovah!

Dvar Torah: Giving Life to Our Metaphors for God | Rosh haShannah 5786

(A previous version of this text was published on this blog in Portuguese under the title "Dando vida às metafóras sobre Deus. Rosh haShaná 5783")

I want to begin with a Chasidic story that I love to teach, and which I came across in a book by S. Y. Agnon [1], the Israeli author awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966.

One day a chasid visited his Rebbe, the Rabbi Elimelech of Lizensk, during the days between Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippur, and asked whether he could watch how the Rabbi performed the kapparah.

For those unfamiliar with the term, kapparah is an old tradition in which a person’s sins are transferred to a chicken on the eve of Yom Kippur by waving the animal over the person’s head. The animal is then slaughtered, along with the sins of the person, and donated. Over time, and with concern for animal welfare, some people have done a version of this ritual in which the sins are instead transferred to money, which is then donated. Let it be clear that these practices are no longer observed by the great majority of the liberal Jewish world.

The Rabbi’s answer surprised the chasid somewhat:

“I am honoured that you wish to see me carry out the mitzvah of kapparah, but I must tell you that in this particular mitzvah, my performance is nothing extraordinary. If you want to see someone who does it in a special way, go and see Moishe, who runs the hostel.”

On the morning before Yom Kippur, the young chasid went to Moishe’s home to observe how he did kapparah, peering through a window.

Moishe began by sitting in a wooden chair in front of a small fireplace in his living room, with “his two books of teshuvah” by his side. Moishe took the first book and said:

“Ribono shel Olam [Master of the World], the time has come for us to settle accounts for all our transgressions of the past year, for kapparah applies to all Israel.”

He opened the first book, read what was written very carefully, and began to weep. The young chasid listened closely while Moishe read a list of sins (all apparently rather minor) that he had committed in the previous year. When he finished reading, Moishe took his notebook, soaked with tears, held it above his head, then threw it into the fire. He then took the other book, much heavier than the first, and said:

“Ribono shel Olam, before I listed my transgressions; now I will recount all the transgressions that You have committed.”

Moishe immediately began to list all the episodes of death, suffering, disease and destruction which had occurred over the previous year to members of his family. When he finished listing them, he said:

“Ribono shel Olam, if we were to calculate precisely, You owe me more than I owe You. But I do not wish to be so exact in our accounting, for today is the eve of Yom Kippur and we are all obligated to make peace with one another. Therefore, I forgive all Your transgressions against me and my family, and You also forgive all my transgressions against You.”

With that, Moishe took the second book, also soaked with tears, held it above his head, and threw it into the fire.

He then poured vodka into his cup, made the blessing, said “L’chaim!” loudly. He sat down with his wife and had a good meal in preparation for the fast.

The young chasid, shocked, returned to his Rebbe and recounted the heresies Moishe had spoken to God. The Rabbi said to him:

“Know this: in the heavens, every year God and all the Divine court gather to hear with keen attention the things Moishe says. And as a result, there is joy and satisfaction in all the worlds.”

As I said, I love teaching this story because there is in it a fundamentally Jewish element of protest which we have allowed to fade over the past century and a half. When I offer the first class in an Introduction to Judaism course, I tell the students that whereas, in most other religious traditions, being a devout person means saying “Yes, Sir” to the Divine message, in Judaism a committed Jew responds to God’s call with “how dare You ask me such a thing?!”. That was how Avraham, the first patriarch, responded when God instructed him to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah [2]; that was how Moshe responded when God said He would destroy the people after the episode of the Golden Calf [3]; that was how the rabbis responded when God attempted to intervene in one of their rabbinic debates [4]. The name most often given to the Jewish people in the rabbinic tradition, Yisrael, reflects this perspective: “one who wrestles with God”. The most amazing thing is that God does not seem disturbed by our questioning of God’s actions; on the contrary: in one story in which God's opinion is rejected by the rabbis, God comes away smiling and saying “My children have defeated me” — proud, like a parent whose daughter defeats him at chess.

When I teach the story of Moishe performing his extraordinary kapparah, people seem to appreciate it, and I think the reason is that they admire his conduct. But the truth is I believe they also identify with the chasid, who thinks it (what Moishe is doing) is heresy.

We want a new model of relationship with the Divine, yet we have immense difficulty giving up the current model, even when it deeply troubles us.

In preparation for this sermon, I was reading a book called God the What? What Our Metaphors for God Reveal about Our Beliefs in God, by Carolyn Jane Bohler. Early in the book, the author offers a questionnaire about our beliefs and suggests that readers fill it out before reading the book, and again after finishing it.

Personally, after all my years in rabbinical seminary, I consider myself someone with a sophisticated Jewish education; someone whose understanding of God is in no way based on what I call “Santa Claus God” — the long white-bearded image, sitting on a throne in the sky, watching every detail of our lives. My understanding of the Divine is fluid, but much closer to Mordecai Kaplan’s, the founder of the Reconstructionist movement (who defined God as “the power that makes for salvation”), or to those who see God as a process; or to Maimonides’, the rationalist philosopher for whom humanity could never assert with certainty what God is, only what God is not — for example, that God does not have a body. And yet, by the end of Bohler’s questionnaire (which includes statements like “God continues working in us, shaping us”, and “God and humanity share power and responsibility”, and “God takes what is and, again and again, seeks to create the best with what He has”), I was surprised to find that most of my responses still assumed “Santa Claus God”, the God I don’t believe in. I asked myself: why is that, if that is not how I believe the Divine to be?

Because the context that surrounds us matters, and repeated context matters even more. Perhaps some of you followed a few years ago the controversy around the live-action Little Mermaid film, in which the title role is played by Halle Bailey, a Black actress. On one side, fans upset that the Little Mermaid in the film would not have the almost-white skin of the original cartoon version. On the other, Black children moved to see that their hero would be portrayed looking like someone similar to them. I have never met a mermaid, nor do I know anyone who has. I do not know what colour her skin or hair would be, her height, or her tone of voice — and even without knowing a mermaid, no one complained when Hans Christian Andersen’s 19th-century character was portrayed as a red-haired white woman in a Disney cartoon. Without denying that many of the complaints had racist inspiration, there is also the truth that, after being portrayed white and red-haired in many children’s movies, that image becomes engraved in our consciousness. Dolls, Disney animations and other studios’ productions, clothes, many items hammering that idea into our heads since 1989, when the animated feature was released. That repetition of an image turns what might once have been only one possible way to read the character’s appearance into the only way people feel it must be.

The same phenomenon occurs with our theological perceptions. Within the Jewish world, whenever we recite a brachah we use the formula “Baruch Ata Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha-Olam” — “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, King of the Universe.” Many aspects of the Divine are implicit in this short formula: God is “other”, whom we address as Ata (You) — and so is not part of us. God is male. God is hierarchical, our King and of the whole universe. In the wider culture, when God is a character in a film, it is in the vast majority of cases portrayed as an old white person with a deep voice. Even the comedians who deconstruct religious tradition, who question religious perspectives, portray God this way — other, male, hierarchical. When God is presented outside that mould — and there have been several attempts in recent years — the reception is like Moishe’s kapparah: it’s heresy!

Some time ago, I led workshops with groups of educators and students: I asked them what attributes they would ascribe to God based on the way God is depicted in the Torah and in Jewish liturgy. Most of the responses were far from welcoming: “punitive”, “egocentric”, “dogmatic”, “fearsome”, “violent”, “misogynistic” were some of the words used. However, when I asked what they personally believed about God, I received entirely different answers: words about being welcoming, partnership, horizontality. From the texts we read, the prayers we say, the cultural reality in which we live, we have come to accept that the “correct” perspective of God is one in which many of us no longer believe.

“No longer believing” also needs qualification, because it is implied in that phrase that once Jews believed in this God literally. Rabbi Larry Hoffman is one of the principal — if not the foremost — experts in Jewish liturgy in the liberal Jewish world. He challenges the idea with which we have been convinced: that our ancestors believed these texts literally. In his words:

“Complicating matters is our still very poor understanding of our ancestors, whom we envision as humorless saints who did not have to suffer the problems with prayer that plague us. But what if they were more like us than we think? Did the same prayers that bother us bother them – an all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing God who lets innocent children die, for example? When they encountered these liturgical claims, did they take them literally? Or had they already come to terms with the inexpressibility of the profound? Did they have to await modern literary criticism to develop what we now call “readership strategies”—or did they already know enough to read the way we do, recognizing the poetics of simile, hyperbole, personification, and the rest? That they lived in medieval times makes them neither childishly naïve nor mentally incompetent, after all. Some of them were geniuses like Maimonides, who denied God’s corporeality and anticipated our unease with prayers that treat God as if God were an all-too-human judge requiring pacification by prayer and petition. But was Maimonides the only one who thought such “heresies,” or was he just a particularly prominent person who dared say them out loud? Great writers do not always provide ideas that no one has ever entertained so much as they couch them in words that evoke knowing nods from readers who more or less suspected these truths anyway but had no way of expressing them.”

“What shall we say, similarly, about the authors of these prayers? How would we know if they wrote ironically, rather than literally, for example? Their Hebrew was unvocalized, leaving us, the readers, to guess at punctuation like commas and periods, but also exclamation points for intensity, question marks to denote rhetorical uncertainties, and quotation marks to warn against a literal understanding of what they bracket. What if we have been getting all this wrong? We can see, for example, how frequently they cited the Bible; but if their primary concern was quoting, how would we know if they intended the quotes as literal truths? We quote Shakespeare‘s “seven ages of man” to get across the idea of human development, but not to say that there are specifically seven such ages that “men,” say, bur not women, go through. If someone writes “divinely,” we do not mean they really write like God. What if our most gifted writers of prayer almost never took their writing literally? What if they were gifted the way writers are today—able to stretch language imaginatively enough to convey what ordinary conceptual thought will never quite arrive at?” [5]

Some time ago I read an article reporting that a skeleton was found in Borneo, Indonesia, with a leg amputated between knee and foot 31,000 years ago. The marks on the bones show that this was not an accident, but a surgical amputation. The surgery took place when the individual was 14 or 15 years old, and he lived until about 20. According to the article’s author:

“What seems obvious to me is that this discovery will force scientists to reconsider the technological and cultural development of those peoples. Since these populations did not know writing and did almost not build architectural works, all we know about them comes from excavating the places in which they lived and studying bones, paintings, remains of food, and the few artefacts found. With so little information, it is natural that we underestimate the progress of those societies. A discovery like this will force us to re-evaluate the knowledge and the technologies these people already mastered.” [6]

For more than 30,000 years, human beings were already capable of surgical amputation, but we continue to imagine that our ancestors believed the Torah literally and that our rabbis composed the Jewish liturgy without any poetic licence, without use of metaphor, without irony. All of those would be modern techniques to escape a theological reality with which we cannot quite reconcile ourselves.

In her book Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language, Sallie McFague argues that reading religious texts as if they had a single literal meaning is to engage in what she calls the “idolatry of religious language”:

“The ancients were less literalistic than we are, aware that truth has many levels and that when one writes the story of an influential person's life, one's perspective will color that story. Our is a literalistic mentality; theirs was a symbolical mentality.” [7]

What if a symbolic reading were within our reach? What if we allowed ourselves a generous and radically metaphorical reading of the liturgical poems we will read in these Days of Awe, the Yamim Noraim?

In the book about religious metaphors that I mentioned earlier, the author suggests techniques for us to use these metaphors intentionally, without feeling that we are submitting to a theology that is not ours — and also to recognise that some of these metaphors do not work for us, that we should seek others. In one example where the reinterpretation was possible, she discusses the image of God as a potter, which is part of the liturgy of Yom Kippur—and which used to be dear to me, yet also troubling. I was troubled by the idea of God as a potter because it placed me in a passive, clay-like role, without agency, subject to the will of my Creator. Carolyn Bohler relates in her book that her son works with clay, and what she learned from him is that many attempts are required before the final product is ready. She continues, saying that the Divine Potter enjoys being creative, editing us, shaping us, giving us form.

With such a generous reading — not violating the sense of the text but nor presuming that its authors intended we adopt a literal reading — I have been able to see a way in which the Divine, dwelling within me, in a non-hierarchical way and without assuming any gender, helps me to transform all the time, in dialogue with me, as together we strive for me to become the best version of myself. The author herself recognises that not all metaphors leave room for this kind of symbolic seeking. In the book of the prophet Hoshea, for example, God compares Godself to an abusive husband — an image perhaps impossible to reclaim, especially for survivors of domestic abuse. Many others, however, have been thrown out like the proverbial baby with the bathwater.

In the best sermon I have ever read, Rabbi Margaret Moers Wenig depicts God as an old woman waiting for her children to visit on Yom Kippur. At one point, God complains about the postcards her children send, with printed words written by others, in which they merely sign their name — toward the end of the text, it becomes clear that these postcards are the pages of the machzor, the High Holiday prayer book of Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippur — words we repeat as if they were ours, as if we meant what they express, without even stopping to reflect upon their meaning.

Moishe, the hostel-owner, showed the radical courage to perform cheshbon hanefesh, accounting of the soul, both for himself and for God — thereby giving meaning to the ritual of kapparah. Could we too find that kind of radical courage, and transform the experience of these awe-filled Days into something truly meaningful and transformative?

Shanah Tovah! May the year 5786 be transformative and very sweet for all of us.

[1] S. Y. Agnon, “The Account,” Yamim Noraim, Part II, ch. 22.
[2] Genesis 18:25.
[3] Exodus 32:11-13.
[4] Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b.
[5] Larry A. Hoffman, “Prayers of Awe, Intuitions of Wonder,” in Who by Fire, Who by Water: Un’taneh Tokef, ed. Lawrence A. Hoffman, Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 2010, pp. 4-12.
[6] Fernando Reinach, “A mais antiga perna amputada”, Estado de São Paulo, 17 de setembro de 2022.
[7] Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language, p. 23 (e-book).

Dvar Torah: The Courage to Rise | Rosh haShanah 5786

Yesterday, we spoke of t’shuvah as a deeply personal act of self-creation, of turning away from the paralysis of shame and toward the agency of authorship. Today, our focus shifts. We must now speak of t’shuvah as a collective act of hope, of turning toward a future that feels fractured and uncertain.

Before we speak of turning, we must be honest about where we are turning from. We stand today weary, perhaps even wounded. The last few years have demanded a reckoning with profound trauma, sorrow, and deep, often paralyzing, rage. We have weathered the grinding psychological weight of a global pandemic. We were plunged into new depths of anguish after the horrific Hamas attack on October 7th, a day of unspeakable cruelty that shattered the fragile sense of safety for Jews worldwide. This was followed by the devastating Israel-Gaza war, an ongoing tragedy that has brought profound suffering and division to our homes and hearts. In this moment, we are asked to hold multiple griefs at once, and the image of God in every life. Simultaneously, we are confronting a frightening resurgence of antisemitism and hate. We see oppression, inequality, and environmental degradation, problems that seem intractable. Our shared sense of truth is badly eroded as, it seems, is our capacity to engage diverse opinions without demonizing those with whom we disagree. And on top of it all, many of us have had to face our own private family ills and personal tragedies. When faced with such monumental suffering, the spiritual task of finding hope can feel not just difficult, but irresponsible, or perhaps utterly impossible.

It is easy to sink into despair. And a moment of despair is understandable; it is human. But our tradition teaches that to remain there is the greatest sin against life. The work of Rosh haShanah is to find the courage to get up again. Judaism gives us the spiritual framework for rising. The very word for hope in Hebrew, tikvah, comes from the root for a line or cord. It reminds us that hope is not a gentle feeling; it is a stretched rope, something taut and enduring, that we hold onto to pull ourselves out of the depths.

To grab hold of that rope, we must first look at a very strong metaphor for our time: the Broken Tablets. When Moshe descended Sinai and saw the Golden Calf, he shattered the luchot, the tablets he was carrying. It was a moment of absolute despair, the ultimate fall. Our collective tablets feel shattered today. Our faith in progress, in safety, in a shared sense of humanity—so many of our certainties lie in pieces at our feet. The temptation is to believe that because the tablets are broken, the covenant is void. The story is over.

But what did our ancestors do? The Talmud [1] teaches that the broken fragments were gathered up and placed in the Holy Ark, carried alongside the second, whole set. This is a very profound Jewish metaphor for hope. Hope is not about pretending the brokenness didn't happen. It is the sacred and difficult work of carrying our broken pieces with us, right next to our wholeness, as we build a new future. To rise, we must first have the courage to gather the shards.

This journey of gathering the shards happens in what storytellers call the Second Act. [2] It is the difficult middle, the moment when we are in the dark, too far from the start to turn back, but not yet close enough to see the light. This is the desolate space where the Israelites wandered for forty years, carrying an ark filled with both wholeness and brokenness. It is where we find ourselves now.

This is not a new challenge for us. For generations, in our darkest moments, we have held onto our stories as tools for survival. The scholar David Arnow reminds us that Judaism possesses a "deep reservoir of resources—ideas, texts, practices, and stories—that have helped the Jewish people over the ages to choose hope over despair." These narratives are not mere fairy tales; they are potent spiritual technologies. Enslaved peoples in the Americas, hearing our story, sang of Moshe and Pharaoh, finding in our liberation a promise for their own. The story of Exodus—of a people moving from absolute degradation to freedom—became a universal hope narrative, proof that the tyrant does not get the final word. Our entire history is a collection of these stories: Abraham and Sarah having a child at an impossible age; Esther saving her people from a planned genocide; the Maccabees achieving an improbable victory. These stories, as the psychologist Shane Lopez explains, help us see pathways where others see brick walls. They are the tools we use to navigate the darkness. [3]

So, how do we navigate this darkness, using the tools our tradition has given us?

First, we must be honest about the stories our fear is telling us. In the darkness of the Second Act, our first instinct is to tell a story of absolute despair: "The world is entirely against us," or "Nothing will ever be right again." We must get this story out of our heads, speak it aloud, and see it for what it is: a raw, messy, emotional first draft, not the definitive truth.

Second, we must fight against what some call "comparative suffering." [4] It is easy to dismiss our own pain by saying, "My sadness is nothing compared to the loss experienced by others." But compassion is not a finite resource that gets used up. Every time we honor our own struggles and the struggles of others with empathy, we open the gates of healing wider for everyone.

Finally, in this Second Act, we write a new ending. This is the revolution of hope. It begins by reclaiming our agency. As the Czech dissident and president Václav Havel once wrote, “hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” [5]

Our hope is not dependent on a guaranteed outcome. It is rooted in the meaning of our actions. We find that meaning in the foundational principle of our faith: olam chesed yibaneh—the world is built on loving-kindness. [6] This is a radical declaration. It asserts that despite all evidence to the contrary, the fundamental building material of the universe is goodness. Our task is to act in a way that aligns with that goodness, to become builders alongside God. If loving-kindness is the world’s building material, hope is our willingness to lay the next brick.

Our faith requires us to act. When the Israelites were trapped at the Red Sea, with the army closing in, God did not say, "Wait for a miracle." God said to Moshe, "Why are you crying out to me? Tell the people to move forward." [7] Our task is not to wait for salvation, but to be the inspired action.

Elie Wiesel expressed this idea in poetry:

Created in the image of [God] who has no image, it

is incumbent upon

our contemporaries to invoke and create hope

where there is none.

For just as only human beings can push me to

despair, only they can

help me vanquish it and call it hope. [8]

Rosh Hashanah is the birthday of the world, and this year, it feels like we are being asked to help rebuild it from its broken foundations. The fall was real and it was brutal. But our capacity to rise is just as real. When we stand up again, we are transformed. We carry the broken tablets with us, and they make us not weaker, but wiser and more compassionate.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks made a crucial distinction: optimism is the passive belief that things will get better. Hope is the active belief that together, we can make things better. [9] Hope is a Jewish virtue precisely because it is born not of certainty, but of courage in the face of uncertainty. That courage is contagious. When we choose to rise, we inspire those around us.

This year, let us take the hard-won wisdom of our collective falls. Let us step into the new year, carrying our broken pieces not as a burden of despair, but as a testament to our resilience. And with that resilient strength, let us begin to write a better, truer, and more compassionate next chapter to our story.

May we have the courage to gather the fragments, the resilience to rise from the fall, and the commitment to transform our losses into goodness and light for the year to come.

In the shofar we hear our path: tekiah—the wholeness we long for; shevarim–teruah—the fractures we carry; tekiah gedolah—the long breath of a people who refuse to stop at broken.

Shanah Tovah!

[1] Talmud Bavli Bava Batra 14b

[2] Brené Brown, Rising Strong

[3] https://reformjudaism.org/blog/choosing-hope-times-trial

[4] Rising Strong

[5] https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/vaclav_havel_392717

[6] Psalm 89:3

[7] Exodus 14:15

[8] https://reformjudaism.org/blog/choosing-hope-times-trial

[9] https://rabbisacks.org/quotes/optimism-and-hope/

Dvar Torah: From Judgment to Self-Creation | Rosh haShaná 5786

Here we are, together, standing at the threshold of a new year. Rosh Hashanah arrives, and with it, the awesome task of t’shuvah — that heroic act of turning, which demands of us a profound cheshbon haNefesh, an accounting of the soul.

But let’s be honest with each other. For many of us, this intense season of introspection can feel less like a path to spiritual renewal and more like a dreaded summons. We are called to stand before the great metaphor of the Book of Life, holding our breath, waiting to see if we’ve measured up. The anxiety is palpable. It can feel, if we’re not careful, a bit like that strange holiday from the show Seinfeld — Festivus — where the main event is the "Airing of Grievances," and a father gathers his family just to tell them all the ways they have disappointed him.

Sometimes, the weight of our tradition can make the High Holidays feel like a spiritual Festivus. It can feel like we are being called into the principal's office, knowing we’ve done something foolish and are about to be reprimanded. This feeling of a looming, external judgment feeds a profound spiritual danger: the fear that our mistakes define us, that our fate is sealed, and that we are powerless. It suggests a rigid, predetermined world that erases our agency and undermines the very purpose of t’shuvah itself.

Today, I want to suggest that we have a choice. We can challenge this paralyzing perspective. And we can begin by understanding the critical distinction between the productive fire of guilt and the destructive poison of shame.

The renowned researcher Brené Brown, who has spent her life studying vulnerability, gives us the modern language for this ancient distinction. She identifies guilt as that uncomfortable but deeply productive feeling that says, “I did something bad.” It focuses squarely on an action, a transgression. It’s specific, and it’s repairable. Shame, on the other hand, is the devastating, identity-based attack that whispers, “I am bad.”

Why is this distinction so crucial for us today? Because shame paralyzes. It is correlated with addiction, aggression, and despair. Brown’s research reveals that shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we can change and do better. After all, if we believe we are fundamentally broken, why would we even bother trying to return? Shame is a form of self-annulment, allowing a momentary failing to define and erase our entire worth.

This is not just psychology; it is deep Jewish wisdom. The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught that Judaism is a quintessential guilt culture, not a shame culture. A shame culture is obsessed with public image and conformity. A guilt culture emphasizes our individual responsibility before God, before our own conscience. This ethic is so powerful because it allows for the essential separation of the sin from the sinner. Our deeds can be rectified without erasing our essential dignity.

So while guilt is uncomfortable — that inner dissonance that tells us we’ve strayed — that discomfort is precisely what motivates meaningful change. It is a signal to act, not a verdict of worthlessness. The sacred task of Rosh Hashanah is to learn how to transform the anxiety of guilt into a productive curriculum for our own growth.

This journey begins with a powerful truth our tradition gives us for comfort: we are not alone in our imperfection. In fact, we are in the very best of company.

Shame thrives on the myth of perfection, on the isolating belief that everyone else has it all figured out. But our Torah, with radical honesty, tells us otherwise. The human condition begins with a story of failure. After their transgression in the garden, Adam declares, “I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.” This is the classic expression of shame — it leads to hiding and blame-shifting, not the accountability that guilt demands.

And this theme of human struggle continues through the flawed, beautiful lives of our ancestors. Their stories are our stories. We remember Sarah’s jealousy, Avraham's terrifying faith, and even the tension in God’s role in these narratives. Our texts remind us that spiritual strength is not found in avoiding the struggle, but in having the courage to engage with life in all its messiness. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “The credit belongs to the [one] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.” Our patriarchs and matriarchs were in the arena. And so are we.

This idea — that our mistakes do not define our essence — is not just in our stories; it is embedded in our most dramatic rituals. In biblical times, on Yom Kippur, two goats, nearly identical, were brought before the High Priest. One was offered to God, representing our true, pure, essential self. The other, the scapegoat, symbolically carried our mistakes away into the wilderness. The message is breathtaking: your sins are real, but they are not you. They are a doppelgänger, an identical-looking self that can and must be separated from your true core. Our tradition insists that the part of you that strives, that loves, that connects — that is the real you. The rest is just a story that can be sent away.

If Rosh Hashanah sometimes feels like a fatalistic judgment, it is because we have become stuck in a single, powerful metaphor: God as Judge, passing down a verdict to be inscribed in a sealed Book of Life.

But a metaphor is not a fact; it is a lens. It is a tool for understanding. And, yet, as the linguists Lakoff and Johnson teach, the metaphors we live by don't just describe our reality; they create it. Think of the "war on drugs" — that metaphor focuses us so intensely on conflict that we fail to consider vital paths like treatment or economic aid, because those simply aren't moves you make in a war; the metaphor itself traps our thinking. In the same way, when we overuse the metaphor of the Book of Life, it powerfully highlights Divine power, but it also hides our own agency and our role as partners with God, creating a spiritual fatalism that can remove our very incentive to transform.

What if we had the courage to choose a different metaphor for this day, one also rooted deeply in our tradition?

What if, instead of the courtroom, we chose the metaphor of Hayom Harat Olam — Rosh Hashanah as the birth day of the world? A birthday is not about judgment; it is about potential. It is about celebrating a new beginning. This metaphor highlights our capacity to bring newness into the world, to be creators ourselves.

Or what if we embraced the metaphor of God’s coronation? A sovereign is not a sovereign without a people who freely choose to crown them. This metaphor highlights our power. It suggests that holiness is not just imposed from above; it is something we actively bring into being through our choices and our commitment.

By choosing the lens of creation and partnership over judgment, we reclaim our agency. We shift from the terrified question, “What will be written for me?” to the empowered declaration, “I am ready to help write the Book of My Life.” This choice unlocks the most revolutionary idea in Judaism: that t’shuvah is not about fixing a mistake, but about self-creation. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik taught that the penitent becomes, in the eyes of our tradition, “a different person.” This is the ultimate antidote to shame, which tries to hold us captive to our past.

This resonates with what the psychologist Carl Jung wisely said: “I am not what happens to me. I am what I choose to become.” When we assume authorship of our own stories — even the chapters marked by pain or failure — we regain the power to write the ending. We are no longer merely characters in a story written for us; we become the authors.

So how do we walk this path? How do we become the authors of our own renewal? Our tradition gives us a plan.

First, we need a structure. Maimonides provides it: regret, confession, and resolve. These are concrete actions. But Rambam, with his profound understanding of the human soul, offers us a subtle but crucial insight in the very order of his words. He teaches that the first step is to face the future — to resolve to change our path. Only after we have set our intention forward does he mention the need for regret. It’s a brilliant psychological move. He is telling us: Don't get stuck looking in the rearview mirror, or you will crash. First, turn the wheel. Point yourself in a new direction. Only then, once you are moving toward hope, can you safely and productively reflect on the path you've left behind.

Second, we cultivate a tender heart. Rabbenu Yonah Gerondi, a Spanish rabbi from the 13th century, speaks of a “holy sensitivity,” a bushah as an essential toward real and transformative t’shuvah, an awareness before God that softens the heart and deters repetition. This is not the toxic shame that crushes us, but the quiet, inner sense of unrest that recognizes the gap between who we are and who we could be. It is the purifying awareness that kindles a real return.

But this sensitivity must be fiercely protected. Our Talmud is unequivocal: to publicly shame someone is like shedding blood. This is why our communal confession, the Ashamnu, is in the plural — we have erred — protecting each individual from public degradation.

Finally, we must learn to manage the messy drama of our own faults. Brené Brown talks about the first, unfiltered story our fear and anger tell us when we fail. A story of blame, of self-protection, of catastrophe. The first step toward healing is to get that story out of our heads, perhaps by writing it down. This simple act helps us see it for what it is — not reality, but a first draft. We can then look at it with compassion and ask, “What is really going on here?” And we can begin to write a more honest, more courageous second draft.

Ultimately, this work requires us to choose vulnerability — to take off the “armor” of perfectionism and allow ourselves to be truly seen. This is the central challenge of the New Year: to step into the arena of our own lives, accept our imperfections, and courageously commit to becoming the person we want to be.

We began this reflection confronting the anxiety of the Book of Life. We conclude it by recognizing that our inscription is less about a passive verdict imposed from above, and more about the radical, active choice we make in this moment. Rambam teaches that when we stand before God in prayer, God relates to us not as a knower of the future, but as a knower of our hidden, innermost hearts right now. Your sincere desire for change, your heartfelt commitment to turn, in this very moment — that is what creates the inscription.

The promise of our prophets remains: “My people shall never again be ashamed.” T’shuvah offers restoration, not disgrace. As Jung reminded us, we are defined not by what happens to us, but by what we choose to become.

This Rosh Hashanah, let us seize our power. Let us reject the paralysis of shame, harness the productive call of guilt, and choose the path of courageous self-creation. By doing the inner work — the difficult, vulnerable, and often messy process of reckoning and repairing — we affirm that we are fundamentally worthy.

May we be inscribed in the Book of Life, not because our fate was predetermined, but because we, in this sacred moment, chose life, chose transformation, and chose to create ourselves anew.

Shanah Tovah.

[1] https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/metzora/the-power-of-shame/
[2] George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.
[3] https://www.yu.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/Understanding%20the%20Teshuva%20Process%20of%20the%20Yamim%20Noraim.pdf
[4] https://www.sefaria.org/Sha'arei_Teshuvah.1.21?lang=bi
[5] https://www.yu.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/Understanding%20the%20Teshuva%20Process%20of%20the%20Yamim%20Noraim.pdf
[6] Joel 2:26–27

Dvar Torah: Reclaiming Inner Authority in a Participatory Jewish Community

In this week’s parashah, Nitzavim, the Israelites are on the cusp of entering the Promised Land, a pivotal moment in our people’s history. And with all the possibilities brought about by envisioning a new life after forty years of wandering, Moshe delivers one of the most empowering, yet demanding, statements in the entirety of the Torah:

כִּי הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם לֹא־נִפְלֵאת הִוא מִמְּךָ וְלֹא רְחֹקָה הִוא׃

לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲלֶה־לָּנוּ הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה׃

וְלֹא־מֵעֵבֶר לַיָּם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲבׇר־לָנוּ אֶל־עֵבֶר הַיָּם וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה׃

כִּי־קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר מְאֹד בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ׃

Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it. [1]

This is not a simple remark; it is a radical declaration. Moshe tells the people that the capacity to live a meaningful, ethical, and religious Jewish life is not reserved for prophets or dictated by distant authorities. It is "very close to you".

This verse lays upon the modern Progressive Jew two profound mandates: to Reclaim Inner Authority and to embrace Communal Co-Creation. For a voluntary, thriving community like ours, these mandates are the bedrock of our future. Yet, when a new rabbi arrives (or, as is the case here, comes back in a more permanent role) to a community thirsty for a rabbinic voice, there can be a tendency to relax from the lay-led effort that guaranteed its success and to delegate the decisions to the new rabbi. I want to talk about this with you today—about your role and mine in helping this community reach the heights it deserves, and in helping you make relevant Jewish decisions in your personal lives.

The human tendency, which Moshe attempts to shatter, is to outsource our moral and spiritual lives. We look for an expert, a definitive answer, or a simple "yes" or "no" to resolve the deep tensions of being a Jewish human. We want an authority to go "up to the heavens" for us because that process absolves us of the hard work. But Moshe insists the hard work is internal. The instruction is not too baffling.

For us, modern Progressive Jews, this individual agency is foundational. We live with what Rabbi Deborah Waxman, in a recent essay, calls a "splintered authority". [2] This choice means we are "taking authority onto ourselves, either individually or collectively, which is at once liberating and full of challenge”.

The instruction in Nitzavim is given to the collective, affirming that our shared spiritual life depends on us moving beyond a consumer mindset and embracing the role of co-creators.

Of course, such a movement does not come without its risks. The process of becoming a rabbi involves years of full-time study and the intellectual acquisition of tools to interpret Jewish texts and traditions. Moving the decision-making process completely away from rabbinic leadership would be as much of a mistake as it would be to concentrate all the power in rabbinic hands.

Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, an Orthodox authority, diagnosed the two extremes we must avoid. He found two opposing assumptions equally unpalatable: the first, that laypeople should have no authority because the rabbis always know best, which he called "blatantly patronising and paternalistic." The second, that rabbis should have no authority in communal policy outside of narrow legal rulings. He found this position "unconscionable" because it reduces the rabbi to a mere legal specialist and implies that anything not explicitly forbidden by Jewish law is beyond the scope of rabbinic judgment—a notion he called "morally and religiously abhorrent." [3]

I would like us at Bet David to consider a different path, one adopted by what Rabbi Jacob Staub called “living, vital, exciting, voluntarily-joined communities”—what he also termed “participatory decision-making communities.” [4] Building upon the experience of the Reconstructionist movement, to which we are related through the World Union for Progressive Judaism, Rabbi Staub offered a specific example. If the community is determining a policy on dietary laws, it is not something "that a rabbi decides," but something the community "studies and talks about for a year or two and comes up with a consensus decision." He details that members must "study the rules, the laws. You study the midrash, the interpretations.... and then you come to a decision that then gets brought... to the whole congregation, to ratify." This ensures people have ownership because "it is their community."

This focus on shared responsibility is rooted in our understanding of covenant. Rabbi Deborah Waxman urges us to see covenant on a "horizontal axis," shifting away from a hierarchical model and focusing on relationship building. She defines this as "voluntarily choosing to co-create communities where we agree to a set of values and then work to articulate norms that prioritise our interdependence over our individuality."

The core challenge, then, is to ensure that reclaiming our inner authority does not devolve into a free-for-all, based only on gut instinct—on our kishkes. Our passion must be rooted in an educated mind, one that engages thoughtfully with tradition and with the arguments both for maintaining and for changing it. This principle is captured perfectly in the Progressive credo, often attributed to Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan: "Tradition has a vote, but not a veto." We must listen to the voice of tradition, we study it, but we are not obligated to practise things the same way, retaining the freedom to reinterpret and redefine our practices—based on knowledge, not on prejudice.

This model of partnership in communal life extends, of course, to our personal lives as well. While I am more than happy to talk to you about the individual ethical challenges each one of you is facing, bringing Jewish perspectives for you to consider, it is critical that this process is not seen as "moral outsourcing"—you are, and you must remain, the master of your own ethical behaviour.

Parashat Nitzavim places an immense challenge before us. It challenges us to stop waiting for clarity from the heavens or the sea, and instead to locate wisdom in ourselves and in our community.

This path requires courage: the courage to embrace our individual agency, the courage to commit to a co-created community built on a horizontal covenant, and the courage to wrestle with tradition.

As we stand here today, committed to this Progressive vision in Johannesburg, let us remember that the tools for flourishing are not distant. The wisdom to choose, the capacity to act justly, and the power to co-create our sacred future are not beyond reach.

The Instruction, the capacity for an ethical and vital Jewish life with your full participation, is "very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it". May we step up, take ownership, and realise the depth of the partnership we share.

Shabbat Shalom and Shanah Tovah!

[1] Deut. 30:11–14.
[2] https://evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org/covenantal-community-and-classical-reconstructionism/
[3] Aharon Lichtenstein, “Communal Governance, Lay and Rabbinic: An Overview” in Suzanne Last Stone (ed), Rabbinic and Lay Communal Authority, 19–52.
[4] https://www.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/what-makes-reconstructionist-congregation-different/

Returning to Ourselves: T’shuvah in Nitzavim

Adapted from a dvar Torah originally delivered in Portuguese at CIP (São Paulo) in 2022 titled "Tshuvá por nossa história coletiva"

Here we are, nitzavim, “standing” together, on the threshold of Rosh haShanah. Parashat Nitzavim is threaded with the verb lashuv, “to return”: eight times in ten verses [1] the Torah insists that returning is possible. That drumbeat is not accidental on the Shabbat that so often precedes Rosh haShanah. As we ready ourselves for Days of Awe, the tradition invites a season not of self-flagellation but of honest return towards God, towards one another, and towards the truest version of ourselves.

But what is this journey of return? Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, the leading figure of Modern Orthodoxy in twentieth-century North America, affectionately known as “The Rav”, described it not as a single act, but as a lifelong process:

“It is a precept whose essence is not in the performance of certain acts or deeds, but rather in a process that at times extends over a whole lifetime, a process that begins with remorse, with a sense of guilt, with man's increasing awareness that there is no purpose to his life, with a feeling of isolation, of being lost and adrift in a vacuum, of spiritual bankruptcy, of frustration and failure—and the road one travels is very long, until the goal of repentance is actually achieved. Repentance is not a function of a single, decisive act, but grows and gains in size slowly and gradually, until the penitent undergoes a complete metamorphosis, and then, after becoming a new person, and only then, does repentance take place.” [2]

T’shuvah is as central to the spiritual work that carries us into haShanah and Yom Kippur as it is grammatically central to our parashah. The repetition of lashuv reminds us that return is not a one-time gesture but a sustained orientation. To help us translate this lifelong process into actionable steps, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s recent book On Repentance and Repair revisits Maimonides’ pathway and applies it to our communal and civic lives. In her words:

“The work of repentance, all the way through, is the work of transformation. It’s the work of facing down false stories and engaging with painful reality. It’s the work of being open to seeing ourselves as we really are, of understanding that other people’s needs and pain are at least as important — if not more so — than our own. It’s about figuring out how to be the kind of person who sees others’ suffering and takes responsibility for any role we might have in causing it. It’s about ownership — owning who we have been and what we have done, and also owning the person that we are capable of becoming.” [3]

Drawing on Maimonides, she outlines five steps. Briefly: 

1. Naming and Owning Harm: specifically, and with empathy for the person hurt; vague “sorry if” statements are not t’shuvah. 
2. Starting to Change: create conditions that make better choices plausible (therapy, learning, spiritual practice, accountability), so you become someone who will act differently.
3. Restitution and Accepting Consequences: repair material, emotional, reputational and time losses as appropriate. 
4. Apology: with humility, centred on the harmed person’s needs and safety, not on easing your guilt. 
5. Making Different Choices: the test of t’shuvah is meeting a similar situation and acting otherwise.

This demanding process reflects a core paradox in Judaism: it is at once exacting and optimistic. It constantly calls us to the hard work of t’shuvah, yet always believes in our capacity to achieve it. In this spirit, Rabbi Ruttenberg quotes Rabbi Nachman of Breslov: “If you believe that you can damage, believe that you can fix. If you believe that you can harm, believe that you can heal.”

May these High Holy Days be a transformative experience for us all, individually and collectively. And may we, in 5786, meet the version of ourselves we have always dreamed of becoming.

Shabbat Shalom and Shannah Tovah!

[1] Deut. 30:1–10
[2] Pinchas Peli, On Repentance: The Thought and Oral Discourses of Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik, p. 75
[3] Danya Ruttenberg, On Repentance and Repair, p. 52/381 (e-book)

Dvar Torah: Translators and tradition facing ancient words with honest eyes

 I often say there’s a cluster of especially rich sermon themes in a few Torah portions. The first two books, Bereshit an d Sh’mot, teem with stories, which makes giving a drashah, just like this one, feel like gathering from an orchard in full season. Then we reach the “desert” of Vayikra, with its painstaking sacrificial detail, trying for B’nei Mitzvah who must master what they’re reading, and for rabbis who must somehow draw water from a rock. The final books of Torah, Bamidbar and Devarim, are not quite so arid, but they don’t offer the same abundance of Bereshit and Sh’mot. They feel to me a little like the Highfeld, neither as lush as the Garden Route forests nor as stark and dry as the Karoo. And yet, as with deserts everywhere, astonishingly beautiful flowers still push through the thorns; just as blossoms can burst from cacti, I found in this week’s parashah, Ki Tavo, a single line that opens into very different pathways, so different that I want to reflect on both.

This line appears in the beginning of the parashah. When the Israelites settle in the Land, they are to bring a basket of first fruits, present it to the priest, acknowledge that they stand there because God honoured the promise made to the ancestors, and declare:

וְעָנִיתָ וְאָמַרְתָּ לִפְנֵי ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ: אֲרַמִּי אֹבֵד אָבִי; וַיֵּרֶד מִצְרַיְמָה (…) וַיְהִי־שָׁם לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל עָצוּם וָרָב.

“You shall then declare before ה׳: Arami oved avi; my father went down to Egypt, few in number, and sojourned there; and there he became a great, mighty and numerous nation.” [1]

The narrative goes on to recall oppression, deliverance and the gift of the land, but it was that opening phrase that captured my attention.

Many of us know it from the Haggadah, as a possible answer to the question posted by the Ma Nishtanah, “why is this night different from all the others?”, “what are we celebrating tonight?”. The classic Babylonian tension between Rav and Shmuel turns in two directions: Shmuel reads the Seder as celebrating political liberation from slavery and answers Avadim hayinu, “we were slaves”, while Rav stresses spiritual liberation from idolatry and answers Arami oved avi, “my father was a wandering Aramean”. [2]

Not everyone agrees with this translation to the verse, though. Rashi’s voice enters with force for a different understanding of its meaning. Citing Sifrei, a collection of midrashim on Numbers and Deuteronomy compiled almost two thousand years ago, Rashi writes, in essence: “This recalls the lovingkindness of God: Arami oved avi means ‘an Aramean sought to destroy my father’. Lavan sought to uproot everything when he pursued Jacob, and because he planned to do so, God accounted it as though he had done it.” [3] The Maharal of Prague reads with Rashi on this; others, Rashbam (Rashi’s own grandson), Ibn Ezra and Sforno, stay with the plain sense: “My father was a wandering Aramean.” [4] Compare the two: is it “an Aramean sought to destroy my father” or is it “my father was a wandering Aramean”? The difference is not trivial. One reading cultivates a narrative of persecution and rescue; the other foregrounds migration, modest beginnings and vulnerability.

The question this debate leaves us with, however, is how we deal with passages of the Jewish tradition that contradict the way we understand ourselves and our Judaism at the end of this 5785. Last week I spoke about how to relate to difficult biblical passages. Today I return to the theme, with an eye on the siddur, and with difficulties of another sort, difficulties of language, theology and communal comfort. Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, one of the foremost experts in Jewish liturgy in the Progressive world, notes how liberal communities, precisely because they pray in siddurim that include translation, encounter this dilemma more sharply than traditional ones. In his words: “Liberal worshipers faced this dilemma in ways that traditional ones did not: because their prayer books delivered prayers in translation, they suddenly discovered what they had been saying for many years but had never known it. Prayer-book editors responded with a number of strategies. They changed the Hebrew, so that the English would come out ‘decently’; they purposefully mistranslated the originals to avoid ideas that ancient authors had no trouble with but that modern worshipers found horrifying; … or they omitted the troublesome prayers altogether.” [5]

When the text says Arami oved avi, that my ancestor was spiritually lost, do I have the courage to face how much truth there is in that claim, how much I myself, not only my father, am still lost, or do I prefer to adopt a translation that softens the force of the words?

This tension is present also in passages that we sing during the service all the time, like Mi Chamocha. The Hebrew of Mi Chamocha asks: “מִי כָמֹכָה בָּאֵלִם ה׳?” — “Who is like You among the gods, O God?” [6] That phrasing does not sit easily with contemporary Jewish theology, grounded in the recognition that there is only one God. It is, in fact, the product of an ancient world in which Israel’s beliefs were expressed in ways different from our own. Our discomfort, then, is not only with what a literal translation would say, but with what the Hebrew continues to say on the very pages of our siddur, even if we decide to translate it creatively. Our Mishkan Tefilah at Bet David therefore softens the line to: “Who is like You, O God, among the gods that are worshipped?” Other siddurim go further still: “Who is like You among the powerful, O God.” To what extent do we retroject our own Jewish worldview onto ancient texts without daring to alter the Hebrew; and when we recognise that what the text says no longer reflects what we believe, do we live with the consequences of that fact?

With Rosh haShanah in just ten days, we will meet liturgy and stories that refuse to sit neatly. Some lines seem to strip us of agency, like sheep passing before their shepherd, or depict us as clay in the hands of the potter. Do we teach into those images, naming their ancient provenance and poetic intent, or do we trim them away in English while leaving the Hebrew to say what it always said?

These questions are not recent. Rashi lived in eleventh-century France. And the proverb that translators love (and dread) still applies: “Tradutore, traditore” — “translator, traitor.” Every translation reframes one culture for another; may we not betray either the original or the people who rely on our words to understand what is being said.

There is another thread to pull in Arami oved avi, and it is bound up with gratitude in a way that many Jewish immigrants who have flourished in this remarkable country can recognise. Rashbam affirms that by identifying the wandering Aramean as my father, not a distant ancestor, but my father, from whom I directly descend, the declaration acquires personal force each year it is repeated. As we carry the fruit of our labour in the basket of first fruits to be offered, we acknowledge that our success is not our merit alone: it is God who turns seeds into fruit; it is God who frees captives. In Rashbam’s reading, it is as if each person were saying: “My parents came from a strange land, in which they were slaves, to this good and prosperous land. Now, as a sign of gratitude, I bring these first fruits of the land to the Temple, because I recognise that this abundance is not my achievement alone; I enjoy it through the love of God.” [4] What a contrast with the “self-made” mentality, for whom every success is credited solely to personal talent and effort, and who refuses to acknowledge the contribution of any other factor.

As Elul draws to its close, may we reckon honestly with where we have come from and who and what has enabled us to arrive here. May we look with courage at our tradition and at ourselves, honouring what deserves honour and transforming what must be changed. And may we, as translators of scripture, prayer and life, be faithful both to the text and to the people for whom we render it.

[1] Deuteronomy 26:5.

[2] Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 116a.

[3] Rashi on Deuteronomy 26:5.

[4] Rashbam, Ibn Ezra and Sforno on Deuteronomy 26:5, and Maharal of Prague in Gevurot Hashem.

[2] Hoffman, Lawrence A. “Prayers of Awe, Intuitions of Wonder”, Who by Fire, Who by Water: Un’taneh Tokef. Lawrence A. Hoffman (ed.), Woodstock, Vt: Jewish Lights Pub, 2010. pp. 4-12. 

[6] Exodus 15:11.