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.

More Than Words: The Inner Work of S'lichot

This Saturday night, some synagogues around the world will hold special services known as S’lichot, part of the broader spiritual preparation for the intense and sacred days of Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippur. These services, often held late at night or early in the morning, invite us to begin speaking the language of forgiveness, compassion, and return (t'shuvah), not just in theory, but in the rhythm of our prayers and in the posture of our hearts.

The word S’lichot means “forgiveness”, and the S’lichot prayers include poetic confessions, psalms, and repeated recitations of the Thirteen Attributes of Divine Mercy (Exodus 34), which tradition teaches were revealed to Moses as the key to God's forgiveness. These texts offer us not just a plea for absolution, but a spiritual vocabulary to help us confront our shortcomings with honesty, courage, and hope.

Historically, the practice of S’lichot has developed in different ways across the Jewish world. Sephardic communities recite S’lichot every weekday morning throughout the entire month of Elul, starting on the first day of the month and continuing until Yom Kippur. In Ashkenazic tradition, S’lichot begin on the Saturday night before Rosh haShanah, as long as there are at least four days before the new year begins. When Rosh haShanah falls early in the week, as it does this year, Ashkenazic S’lichot begin a full week earlier to allow for that minimum period of spiritual preparation.

But whether recited for a month or a week, S’lichot is not just about more prayer, it’s about deepening the work of Elul. It’s about moving from general reflection to specific self-examination, from abstract ideas to the concrete details of our lives: the conversations we avoided, the harsh words we regret, the promises we didn’t keep. S’lichot invites us to approach the High Holiday liturgy not as something external or mechanical, but as the echo of a process we are already deeply invested in. When we stand in front of the open ark on Rosh haShanah or beat our chests on Yom Kippur, we want those moments to resonate with the inner work we’ve already begun.

This week, even if we are not having daily S’lichot services at Bet David, I invite you to take that step and engage more deeply in the process of spiritual assessment. Take time to reflect, to journal, to study a psalm or a prayer. Reach out to someone you need to speak to. Sit with the discomfort of change and with the hope that comes from knowing that change is possible. The High Holidays are approaching. Let’s meet them with hearts already open.

Shanah Tovah uMetukah, may this be the beginning of a good and sweet year, one in which each of us moves closer to our full potential.

Dvar Torah: What Do We Do with the Offensive Passages in the Torah?

A previous version of this text was published on this blog in Portuguese under the title "Dvar Torá: O que fazemos com as passagens ofensivas da Torá?")

You have probably heard the story of the discussion between two rabbis about which is the most important verse in the Torah [1]. One of them chooses the verse, “Love your neighbour as yourself,” whilst the other chooses a verse that speaks of the creation of human beings in the image of God. Rabbis love telling this story because it speaks of values that are dear to us and relate to the role we believe Judaism should have in our lives: empathy and the inalienable dignity of every human being, as well as speaking to Jewish pluralism.

But a liberal Jewish community, committed to fostering a critical Judaism that is truthful in its relationship with its sources and engages in dialogue with adults, must acknowledge that not all verses in the Torah value empathy or human dignity.

Some time ago, I was in a conversation with fellow Jewish educators who were expressing their discomfort at having to read a verse from the Torah whose literal meaning stood in stark contrast to the very educational values they sought to instil.

What do we do when the words of our tradition do not reflect the values we believe Judaism stands for, or even worse, when they reflect the opposite values?

This is not a question unique to our community, nor is it a recent one. Since the beginning of the rabbinic era, some 2,000 years ago, Rabbis have been expressing their discomfort with parts of the tradition and seeking strategies to deal with it in midrashim, in the Talmud, and in other commentaries.

This week's parashah, Ki Tetze, is considered to have the largest number of mitzvot in the entire Torah; according to one count, there are 72. Some of them are deeply rooted in our values, such as the concept that we must not delay the wages of our employees, as they depend on these payments [2], the obligation not to subvert the rights of the oppressed because we were oppressed in the land of Mitsrayim [3], or the duty to return a lost object we have found or to take care of it until we find its owner [4]. There are mitzvot in our parashah whose reason may not be obvious to us but which do not offend us, such as the prohibition against wearing clothes that mix wool and linen [5]. But there are also several mitzvot in this parashah that conflict with my values, and I imagine with yours as well.

There is the instruction that a defiant and rebellious son should be brought by his parents to the city elders to be stoned to death [6]. There is the law that a man who rapes an unmarried woman shall be ordered to pay a fine to her father and marry her, with no possibility of divorce [7]. And there is the law concerning a man who accuses his wife of having lied about her virginity – if her parents can prove he is lying, he is physically punished and fined; but if her parents cannot prove she was a virgin, she shall be condemned to death [8].

Many of you may not have known about these rules. They are not on the list of mitzvot that we, as rabbis, like to publicise. Perhaps you feel shocked and uncomfortable with the values they express: the apparent lack of empathy in how we approach disagreements within our families, or the absolute lack of empathy for the female perspective in rules about marital conduct. Personally, I admit that these rules leave me shocked and disturbed, to use an euphemism.

Faced with rules like these, we need strategies so that we don’t discard Judaism as a whole, so that we don’t “throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

I know of four distinct strategies – four strategies that are all grounded in Jewish tradition and have their adherents today. Many people, perhaps most of you, alternate between different strategies for different situations or throughout your lives.

The first strategy is to deny the discomfort, attributing any reservations we might have about these mitzvot to our own inability to recognise their wisdom. “If it is in the Torah, it comes from God,” its proponents claim. “If it comes from God, we can only obey without question. Or do you think that in your limited capacity, you can comprehend all of Divine logic?!” What the defenders of this strategy prefer to ignore is that Jewish tradition questions Divine decisions all the time! Abraham questioned God in the most emphatic terms when he learned of the Divine decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah [9]; Moses challenged God upon learning of the decision to destroy the people after the episode of the golden calf [10], and again after the episode of the 12 spies [11]. In rabbinic tradition, one of the most famous passages in the Talmud tells how God decided to intervene in a debate and how the rabbis responded: Lo Bashamayim Hi (לא בשמיים היא)—"It is not in Heaven" [12]. God’s reaction to this act of chutzpah? Pride. “My children have defeated me,” God says, like a proud parent watching their child outplay them in chess. The response that we lack the capacity to comprehend the full complexity of Divine logic may well be correct, but it has never prevented Jewish tradition from questioning and even challenging God when we have disagreements.

The second strategy is the one that the educators I met with had proposed: why don’t we just stop reading the passages we find especially problematic? Personally, I am a proponent of adapting some of our liturgical texts, of slightly modifying the wording of some prayers. But the Torah?! The verb of action that appears in the brachah for the study of Torah is la'asok (לעסוק), to be engaged in the words of Torah. The root of the verb is the same as that of essek (עסק), meaning "business". The true study of Torah is something that goes beyond the purely philosophical. It doesn’t just stay in the brain; it involves the heart, arms, and legs: we truly engage with it, body and soul. Anyone who has worked in a garden will understand the metaphor of getting soil under your fingernails—that is the measure of true Torah study. Could we achieve this result if we omitted all the passages that make us uncomfortable? Discomfort is part of this process of Jewish growth—and if we eliminate every passage that causes us discomfort, we would tremendously limit our growth in our encounter with the Torah!

A third strategy is to analyse the Torah text in its historical context. The laws establishing utterly asymmetrical marital unions might not seem so unjust because the culture of the time gave even less autonomy to women. By comparison, the text can even seem slightly more egalitarian. In many liberal circles, this is the most commonly adopted strategy. Its adherents argue that you cannot judge a text that is at least 2,500 years old by 21st-century sensibilities. Personally, my problem with this approach is that I want this text to have relevance for my life today. When I read the Torah as an academic, I have no problem placing it in dialogue with other cultures of the region. But when I, a 21st-century Jewish adult, read the Torah in a religious context, I look to the text for values and references that help me define my behaviour towards the oppressed of my time, to negotiate the relationship with my children when they are defiant, and to question my own relationship with authority. For me, the Torah isn’t merely a historical document to be read with detachment; it is a sacred text that speaks across generations, inviting and challenging me to become a better version of myself each time I read it.

How, then, do we deal with the passages whose values are not aligned with my own?

The fourth strategy—and it must be obvious by now that this is the one I most resonate with—is to treat the Torah’s mitzvot not as literal instructions, but as invitations to wrestle with the ethical issues they raise. Any good teacher knows that sometimes the best way to spark a meaningful debate is with a provocative statement. That is what the Torah often gives us. In this approach, these verses are not the lesson—they are the spark. They launch the conversation. Each community will engage with the prompt differently and arrive at conclusions that evolve over time. In this way, the Torah remains “a tree of life to those who grasp it.”

How do we navigate power imbalances in employment? What do we do when our children challenge what is most sacred to us? How do we respond to sexual violence, infidelity, or divorce when people seem to forget they once vowed to spend their lives together? Can we uphold ethics even in the most bitter of disputes—even in war?

These are among the urgent conversations this parashah invites—some would say commands—us to have. In a reality where the public debate on how to handle violent crime often veers into calls for street justice, and where the devastating statistics on gender-based violence are a constant source of pain and urgency, these discussions feel essential.

The rabbinic tradition teaches that the case of the rebellious son never happened and never will. So why was it included in the Torah? The answer: to reward those who engage with it seriously [13]. The reward is the debate.

A Judaism that is critical, contemporary, and meaningful doesn’t always offer easy answers. It often challenges us and unsettles us. But for those who engage with it fully—with heart, mind, and even under their fingernails—the reward is a faith that brings meaning and depth to every step we take, every decision we make, and every emotion we feel.

Shabbat Shalom.

[1] Jerusalem Talmud, Nedarim 30b

[2] Deuteronomy 24:14-15

[3] Deuteronomy 24:17-18

[4] Deuteronomy 22:1-4

[5] Deuteronomy 22:11

[6] Deuteronomy 21:18-21

[7] Deuteronomy 22:28-29

[8] Deuteronomy 22:13-21

[9] Genesis 18:23-25

[10] Exodus 32:9-14

[11] Numbers 14:11-25

[12] Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b

[13] Tosefta, Sanhedrin 11:6

The right to forget and be forgotten, and the responsibility to remember

(A previous version of this text was published on this blog in Portuguese under the title "O direito de esquecer e de ser esquecido e a responsabilidade de lembrar")

Our memory has the interesting ability to smooth over the rough patches in our lives. Like coarse sandpaper smoothing the texture of a rough piece of furniture, over the years we come to remember milder versions of conflicts, amplifying the roles played by those we love and diminishing our own failings. It is an important tool that allows us to carry on living after we have been through particularly difficult episodes, without it, we would continue to recall traumas, dwell on grudges, and live in regret. Much like a literary work or a film “based on a true story”, our memory keeps one foot in what actually happened, but with the other, it seeks to ease the burden of living permanently with these recollections.

For some time now, however, this characteristic of our memory has been hindered by the sheer volume of records we leave of our experiences and interactions. What good is it for memory to soften a conflict if a quick look at a messaging app is all it takes to remember the exact pain we felt? When we make a slip-up, the records on social media prevent our memory from registering it in softer tones than it originally had. Everything we write, photograph, and film is indexed by search engines and is a click away for anyone seeking to know who we are, even if we are no longer the same person who produced or appears in those records. Everything we write, whether an article or a status update, becomes permanent.

Who can live with perpetual responsibility for every thoughtless act? Who can sustain relationships when past failings endlessly return to haunt us like ghosts?

A passage from this week’s parashah, Ki Tetze, states:

“Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey after you left Egypt, how, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the march when you were hungry and tired, and cut down all the stragglers at your rear,”

And it ends with the command:

“Therefore, when ADONAI your God gives you security from all your enemies around you, in the land that ADONAI your God is giving you as a heritage to possess, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget!”[1]

The tension between remembrance and forgetting is palpable in these lines. Here, it concerns the memory of an act that has crystallised in Jewish tradition as the paradigmatic expression of cowardice and evil. In such situations, where the trauma of those who lived through them is evident, where does our duty lie: do we strive to remember and ensure that similar actions never happen again, or do we ensure they are forgotten, sparing the victims from reliving those terrible moments?

As with so many other issues, there are no absolute answers that cover every situation. In a world that records ever more details of what we say, what we do, and where we go, the allure of moments when we can truly forget, and be forgotten, is tempting. On the other hand, there is the ethical obligation to remember so that we may learn from our experiences, ensuring that, individually and socially, we do not repeatedly fall into the same traps.

May we, from the convergence of our right to be forgotten and our responsibility to remember, build situations where we can grow without permanently carrying the weight of the world and of our memories on our shoulders.

Shabbat Shalom!

[1] Deut. 25:17–19