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For as long as he can remember, Majdi Wadi’s mother was obsessed with the American Dream. Born and raised as a Palestinian refugee in Kuwait, America offered the Wadi family something they could find nowhere else on earth – “a land of opportunity and a place to call home… a place to achieve their dreams.”[1]

Finally, in 1992 Majdi joined his brother in Minneapolis where the two launched their dream to share their culture with the larger community. And how would they do it?  Hummus.

From one small grocery, “Holyland” grew and grew –supermarkets, a bakery, restaurants, a catering operation, and a hummus factory. Their hummus could be found in stores across the country. With nearly 200 employees, Majdi said his business was like “the United Nations – we have Hispanic, we have African American, we have African Immigrants, we have European, … name it. And this also reflected the people that we served.”

In the summer of 2020 – in the aftermath of the explosion of racial tension in Minneapolis, Majdi’s daughter Lianne decided to go out and join the protest movements. The family hung Black Lives Matter banners in their store windows. They provided food and refreshment to the protestors.

But then tweets that Lianne had posted in 2012, some eight years earlier when she was 15 – tweets she had deleted many years earlier – came to light. They were despicable. The original tweet said: ”Top 3 races you wish to eliminate. Ready, go! Jews, blacks, and the fats.” Another tweet commented: “#IfIwasPresident I’d finish off what hitler started and rule the world.”

Lianne had a very difficult adolescence. She was the only Arab Muslim girl in a nearly all-white school. She struggled with her identity and went through what her father called “a dark time.”  She attended therapeutic boarding school in Utah for two years, and turned herself around. Eventually, she came home, graduated from the University of Minnesota, and joined the family business.

When her posts resurfaced on social media, her father condemned them instantly, and publicly fired his daughter from the company. Lianne apologized on her Instagram feed.  “I was so shocked that I ever posted something so offensive,” she wrote.[2] “I want to apologize from the bottom of my heart. They were such horrible and vile things, and that’s not who I am. It’s not what I believe in…. Those statements were made a long time ago.  I was at a different place in my life. They in no way, shape, or form reflect who I am as a person today.”

But the apology was not enough. The posts went viral and calls for a boycott spread. Majdi’s home address was posted online and the family had to evacuate their home for ten days.  They lost $5 million in contracts as major stores dropped their products – Costco, Target, Sam’s Club and local Supermarket co-ops.  The landlord at his biggest store cancelled their lease and they permanently closed the location. He had to lay off nearly 70 people from his businesses, many who had worked with him for more than a decade, almost all from minority backgrounds.

Tonight begins the Day of Atonement, the day when each of us are called to account for our trespasses and misdeeds. The Psalmist laments: “If You keep account of sins, dear God, Lord, who will survive?” (Psalm 130:3). This evening we attest: “We are no so arrogant and stiff-necked as to say before You, Adonai our God and God of our ancestors, we are perfect and have not sinned. Rather we confess, we have sinned, we have transgressed.”

But instead of cultivating humility in the face of our limitations and flaws, it seems so often we prefer a posture of condemnation and judgment. We are quick to indict and cancel those whose opinions or beliefs we think are offensive. As Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff write in The Coddling of the American Mind, we build distortion fields that play on our emotions – overgeneralizing, catastrophizing, looking at things as black and white, us vs. them, shaming and blaming.

Social media algorithms are designed to promote posts that inflame outrage. A 2017 study by the Pew Research Center, showed that posts on Facebook exhibiting “indignant disagreement” received nearly twice as many likes and shares — as other types of content.[3]  Media outlets are replete with amped up posturing, grandstanding, indignation and virtue signaling and amazingly harsh, and even vulgar denunciations of anyone who posits ideas different from our own. 

A student at Smith college said when she started college, “I witnessed countless conversations that consisted of one person telling the other that their opinion was wrong. The word ‘offensive’ was almost always included in the reasoning. … I began to voice my opinion less often to avoid being berated and judged by a community that claims to represent the free expression of ideas. I learned, along with every other student, to walk on eggshells for fear that I may say something ‘offensive.’”[4]

At Claremont college in California, a student wrote in the campus newspaper how she, as a Latina, felt marginalized and underrepresented. A dean of the college wrote an email to reach out and console her, but the student thought the email invalidated her concerns. After posting the email online, weeks of protests, marches, and demonstrations ensued, and the dean was forced to resign.[5] A public defender with legal aid in New York was drummed out of her job by a group of colleagues who called her “racist and openly so” because she published an op-ed  saying she didn’t subscribe to certain school board policies influenced by critical race theory.[6]  And if you want to hear what cancel culture on the right looks like, ask Colin Kaepernick, Liz Cheney, or Brad Raffensberger.

In a letter to Harper’s Weekly in July of 2020, more than 150 scholars, writers, and intellectuals from across the political spectrum wrote that: “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted … censoriousness is … spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.” 

How do we learn to talk to each other rather than cancel each other?  How do we heal these fractures and divisions that have rendered our society so polarized?  How can we learn to stop demonizing each other and constantly questioning each other’s motives? How can we break the gravitational pull of polar extremes to meet each other somewhere in the middle?

Adam Grant in his book Think Again notes that when we try to persuade someone of our opinion or idea, we tend to fall into three kinds of mindsets: preachers, prosecutors, and politicians.  Preachers pontificate and deliver sermons to advance their ideas.  They will exhort you to see the truth and moral grandeur of their beliefs.  Prosecutors shoot for flaws in other people’s reasoning, they build cases and amass arguments and data to prove they’re right and win their case.  Politicians seek to win over their audience by pressure and persuasion, campaigning and lobbying to win someone over to their side.

But preaching, prosecuting, and politicking hardly ever work. Dr. Corky Becker from Essential Partners taught me that debate is like a game of volleyball.  Your job is to slam the ball to make your opponent miss so you can score points and win the match. And no one likes to lose, so we hold fast to our opinions, even more tightly when we’re told we’re wrong.

Changing our minds becomes a mark of moral weakness, an admission of defeat.  Not subscribing to the mainstream opinion of our group or community could result in ridicule, ostracism, or cancellation. The net result is people inevitably end up hardening their positions. As we learn in the Talmud in tractate Sotah, our preaching, prosecuting, and politicking makes things worse: “when those who show their arrogance by speaking too long (literally drawing out spittle) proliferated, the number of arrogant people in general proliferated, … dispute proliferated in Israel … and the Torah became like two Torahs.”[7]

Does it ever dawn on us that we may not have a monopoly on the truth, that people on the opposite side of a question might have something to teach us?  Does it ever occur to us that the other side might actually be right?

What if we could learn to replace arrogance with humility?  What if we could learn to see changing our minds as a virtue, not an admission of weakness or defeat, but as a righteous strength – an opportunity to learn and grow. What if we could learn to replace our convictions with curiosity, and judgment with inquisitiveness?  What if we could replace our instinct to say, “I don’t want to hear it!” with “That’s interesting. Tell me more.”   

The Pirke Avot teaches that Kol Machloket SheHi L’Shem Shamayim, Hi Sofa L’Hitkayem – every controversy that is for the sake of Heaven, its wisdom will endure (Pirke Avot 5:16). Real dialogue, Dr. Becker suggests, is more like a game of catch. Your job is to create a give and take with your partner to see how long you can keep going before you let the ball drop.

My teacher Rabbi Michael Chernick suggests: “When people argue for the sake of heaven they put aside ego and the need to win at all costs. By not descending into ad hominem insults and dismissal of the truth of the other participant in the argument, the parties to the argument bring to light different facets of ultimate truth. In this way, they arrive at as much truth as human beings are vouchsafed. This truth, which is the end product of a combination of deeply held principles tempered by a willingness to yield in the face of a point of view that resonates with the mind or the heart, endures and has a powerful impact on the lives of those who hear and accept it.”[8]

We do better when we become better listeners. Grant relates a story of a woman from Montreal who gave birth to a very premature baby. Even though Montreal had seen several outbreaks of measles, the woman had decided not to have her children vaccinated. She had heard from friends and neighbors that vaccines were dangerous and could cause terrible side effects.

Studies show that when people are shown the research about the safety of vaccines, they actually become more ambivalent, rather than more accepting. “Much like a vaccine inoculates our physical immune system against a virus, the act of resistance fortifies our psychological immune system,” Grant says. “Refuting a point of view produces antibodies against future influence attempts. We become more certain of our opinions and less curious about alternative views.”[9]

Efforts by the doctors and nurses to convince her to vaccinate her newborn went nowhere. She felt like the doctors and nurses were accusing her of “wanting my kids to get sick. As if I were a bad mother.”

So the staff contacted a neonatologist named Dr. Arnaud Gagneur. He approached the new mother completely differently.  Dr. Gagneur began by telling the mother that he was afraid of what might happen if her newborn got the measles, but he accepted her decision. He just wanted to understand it better. They spoke for over an hour, during which time he asked open-ended questions about how she had reached the decision not to vaccinate. He listened with respect and open curiosity, and validated her concerns. He expressed trust and appreciation for her intentions and explored their mutual motivations and beliefs in a non-threatening, non-judgmental, but open and inviting conversation.

She ultimately decided to vaccinate her baby, and her older children as well.  She said that the key to her changing her mind was when he said, “whether I chose to vaccinate or not, he respected my decision as someone who wanted the best for my kids. Just that sentence – to me, it was worth all the gold in the world.”

What would have happened in Minneapolis if Lianne Wadi’s old tweets had been greeted with curiosity rather than judgment?  Imagine what might have happened if the community, instead of resorting to moral condemnation and boycott had instead gone to her and said – what’s the deal with these tweets?  Is that what you really think?  Why did you post that?  Imagine what they might have learned instead.

They might have learned that Lianne shared much of the same anguish as did so many people in her community, that loneliness and fear sometimes result in toxic hate. They might have learned that people in pain will often mask that pain by pretending to arrogance and hatred they don’t mean or feel. They might have learned that she had endured an incredibly difficult struggle to discover her authentic self, and had grown from a dark and hateful teen into a loving and aware young adult. They might have learned that she came from a family that had not only realized the American dream, but had turned around and given back to their community, and supported extraordinary causes for vulnerable people in Africa. They might have learned that even the people who would seem to be your enemy could actually be your allies.  All they would have had to do was to replace their judgment with curiosity, asked some questions with humility and understanding, and stopped screaming long enough to listen.

Curiosity does not mean avoiding conflict. It simply means approaching conflict with openness and curiosity. Wilbur and Orville Wright argued back and forth for days on how to design the propeller for their new airplane. The arguments often grew loud and hot. But throughout, they both constantly listened to each other. “Discussion,” Wilbur once said, “brings out new ways of looking at things.”

The next morning, Orville showed up at the shop first and told their mechanic that he was wrong – that they should design the propeller Wilbur’s way. Wilbur showed up later and suggested that Orville was right and his way was wrong. They then discovered that they both were wrong. At Kitty Hawk, the brothers figured out that they didn’t need a propeller – they needed two propellers, spinning in opposite directions. “In a great argument,” writes Adam Grant, “our adversary is not a foil but a propeller. With twin propellers spinning in divergent directions, our thinking doesn’t get stuck on the ground; it takes flight.”[10]

We call our God One, because it is only in God’s realm that all truth can be known. In this new year, let us cultivate the humility to cast aside judgment and embrace curiosity. Let us be willing to rethink our assumptions, and to open our hearts to new ideas and new truths. Let us reject the impulse to self-righteous indignation and self-certitude and instead seek out opportunities for dialogue and learning. The more open we are to growing in our understanding and appreciation for the truths shared by others, the closer we may draw to God in our own lives, and the more Godly will be the world we create together.

[1] From “America’s Cultural Revolution”, Podcast episode Honestly with Bari Weiss, June 9, 2021 – https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/honestly-with-bari-weiss/id1570872415?i=1000524764029

[2] https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/06/05/holy-land-grocery-ceo-fires-daughter-over-racist-social-media-posts

[3] “Why It Feels Like Everything Is Going Haywire” by Jonathan Haidt and Tobias Rose-Stockwell in The Atlantic December 2019.

[4] Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Coddling of the American Mind.  New York: Penguin 2018, p. 72.

[5] Op. Cit. Lukianoff and Haidt, pp. 53-55.

[6] “A Witch At The Legal Aid Society” by Bari Weiss. https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/a-witch-trial-at-the-legal-aid-society

[7] Talmud Sotah 47b

[8] https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-lost-art-of-argument-for-the-sake-of-heaven/

[9] Adam Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. New York: Viking, 2021, pp. 143-145.

[10] Op. Cit. Grant, pp. 91-93.

Sermon for Rosh HaShanah Evening

September 29, 2019 – 1 Tishri, 5780

Temple Beth El of Boca Raton

Rabbi Daniel Levin

In 2011, psychologists Richard Eibach and Steven Mock from the University of Waterloo published an odd study in the journal of the Association for Psychological Science. They gathered eighty fathers and mothers with at least one child under the age of 18 and studied whether parents honestly derive real satisfaction and joy from the process of parenting.

What did they find?  When presented with the economic costs of raising children and the inherent sacrifices that come from parenting, they discovered something extraordinary – that the claim of parental happiness is actually a psychological defense. “In other words,” they wrote, “we parents have collectively created the myth of parental joy because otherwise we would have a hard time justifying the huge investment that kids require.”[1]

It was just as fascinating to read the comments from readers at the end of the article.  I was shocked by how many people resonated with the researchers. Many said they chose not to have children and were glad they didn’t become parents. Others talked about how incredibly difficult parenting was – some even expressing regret for having children at all.

At the same time, there were others who talked about how parenthood was the most meaningful thing they ever did. Sure it was “the hardest job you will ever do,” but the satisfaction and joy that came from sharing love with children brought a fulfillment they could never replace.

Can we be real for a moment?  Parenting is hard. Really hard. It’s incredibly demanding to be a parent. From the moment of conception the physical demands of motherhood are literally and figuratively gut-wrenching. Then they give you this amazing, holy, and precious child – and it immediately begins vomiting on you. They shriek at all hours of the day and night. They poop in the tub. You offer them healthy food – they won’t eat it. You ask them to go to sleep, they run around and scream. You ask them to do their homework, to help with the dishes, to pick up their clothes or their toys – they ignore you. You bring them on vacation, they whine that they’re tired or they want ice-cream.

I remember when my kids were very small I was talking with the father of a bat mitzvah girl. “Dan,” he said. “You know how your kids are so cute and delicious you feel like you could just eat them? And then they get to be my kid’s age and you wish you had.”

It can be so frustrating sometimes as a parent. We’ve been around the block a few times and we’ve seen a few things. We know the mistakes we made, and we remember the mistakes our parents made too.  If they would just do what we tell them, if they would just heed our advice, we know they would be so much happier. Why won’t they just listen?!?

Our celebration of Rosh HaShanah asks us to think about parenthood, but in a very different way. Among the most familiar features of the liturgy is the litany we just recited – Avinu Malkeinu. It begins with a story in the Talmud, where the people were suffering a terrible drought. Rabbi Eliezer stood before the open ark on a fast day and recited twenty-four blessings, but he was not answered. Rabbi Akiva then came before the ark after him and said: Avinu Malkeinu, Ayn Lanu Melech Ela Ata – Our Father, our King, we have no king other than You. Avinu Malkeinu, L’Ma-ancha Rachem Aleinu – Our Father, our King, for Your sake, have mercy on us. And rain immediately fell.”[2]

Why refer to God as Avinu Malkeinu – a father and a ruler? The land of Israel was not like Egypt, the rabbis teach, where water flowed easily from the Nile. Instead, the Israelites were like children, completely dependent on their parent for sustenance. Thus Akiva called out to God as a child calls out to a parent – “Hey I’m thirsty. I need you to get me something to drink.”

For some, Avinu Malkeinu can be an alienating construct. Some of us grew up without fathers, or had relationships with our fathers that were traumatic and abusive. For many, the image of God expressed in the masculine amplifies the sense of marginalization for women.  Today we live in a modern democracy, far removed from the experience of a monarch – tyrannical or benevolent.

Imagine, however, what it must be like to be the Holy One. Imagine what it must be like to parent us.

The mystic Isaac Luria taught that at the beginning of time, God’s presence spread from one end of the universe to the other. But then God was overwhelmed with love and decided to create a world. In order for the world to come into being, God had to perform a cosmic act of self-contraction – Tzimtzum – in order to make space for the world. Into the darkness of the vacuum created by God’s receding presence was born the world. But then God was overwhelmed with love a second time and God decided to restore God’s light to the darkened world. The light returned through a ladder of holy vessels filled with God’s essence – first through wisdom, then through understanding, then through compassion, then through strict justice, and further down into the world. The lower vessels could not contain the power of God’s light, and in a massive cataclysm, the vessels shattered, sending shards of broken holiness into the world.

And then God was overwhelmed with love again, and God said: “Let us create humanity in our image after our likeness…” And in creating us, God asked us to be God’s partners in lifting up the broken shards and doing the work of Tikkun – repair of the broken world.

We who are blessed to have become parents know something of the Divine Joy the Holy One experienced in bringing the world into being. Like Hannah, whose story we tell tomorrow, we know what it is to be completely consumed with love and desire to bring a child into the world. Many know the agony and frustration from having that dream thwarted. We know what it is to perform Tzimtzum – sacrificing our own wants and needs to make room for a child. We know the sublime, transcendent, exultant ecstasy that comes from the spiritual bonds we share with our children, and in helping them discover the holiness in our world and the holiness in themselves.

We want to ensure our children have everything – to protect them from pain, to keep them on the right path, to plant them in a Garden of Eden in which they know no want but only tranquility and peace.

But we can’t. And that’s the most difficult part. Our children will wander off. They will know disappointment. They will suffer injuries and pain. They will push us away, reject what we offer, come crying back for reassurance, and drift away again. The world we give our children is shattered and broken. It is filled with opportunity for untold blessing, but also replete with potential for disaster.

How can we teach them to protect themselves from harm, how can we teach them to build a moral core and the spiritual strength to lift up those broken shards and do the work of repair?

So it was that in another extraordinary act of love, God gave us the gift of Torah – the blueprints for the creation of the world.

Our very existence is a product of Divine love. We have been given so many extraordinary gifts – life is an embarrassment of blessings. We are each given the gift of life, the astonishing opportunity to simply live and experience the wonder of being. We are given intellects that can consider and reason, that can invent and innovate – we are given souls that can wonder and adore, that can remember and can dream. And we were given the gift of Torah, a Divine gift of wisdom that can lead us to experience the profound depths of holy experience, to to resolve the inequities and injustices of human life, and to channel the holy gift of love to restore and heal this shattered world.

And like petulant children – we take it all for granted. We say to the Holy One – “What do you know anyways? You think you can tell me what to do? I don’t need you. We live in the 21^st century. Fifty years ago we landed a man on the moon. We mapped the human genome. We created artificial intelligence. We have air conditioning and impact glass. We have thousands of channels, cellular phones, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter. We are modern autonomous, liberated, independent, sovereign selves – completely in control of our lives and our destinies. Avinu Malkeinu? – Feh.

The Holy One tells us, “Do not bow down to idols or worship the work of your hands.”  Then we spend our lives in pursuit of material gain and wonder why we still feel empty no matter how much we buy.

The Holy One tells us, “keep Shabbat and make it holy.” Then we spend our lives on the run with our heads in our screens seven days a week and wonder why we feel burned out and why we seem disconnected from the people that matter most to us and why we never seem to have a moment just to stop and think.

The Holy One tells us, “do not steal or deal deceitfully or falsely with one another.” And American businesses lose $652 billion in fraud each and every year, causing enormous suffering for individuals and families.

The Holy One tells us “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” And then we tolerate systems that trap the poor in poverty, that insulate glass ceilings and institutionalize inequality, and then exude surprise when oppressed groups cry out in resentment over the injustices they suffer.

And then, on the flipside, there are other times when we ask God to be a helicopter parent. We ask God to ensure our prosperity, we entreat God to protect us from sickness, from violence, and hunger, and we beseech God to come down and fix it for us when things go wrong. How often have you closed your eyes in prayer and said: “Oh God, let it be okay…”? And when we don’t get the outcome we wanted, we blame God for all our anguish and misfortune.

Can we imagine what it must be like for the Holy One, Avinu Malkeinu – our Divine parent and ruler – to parent us?

Sure we can – because we know what it is to be overwhelmed with love. We see our children make mistakes and poor decisions, behave in ways that self-sabotage and appear self-destructive, and languish in confusion, alienation, and dissatisfaction. And our hearts break for them.

Our hearts break for them not because their behavior is a reflection on us as parents. Our hearts break for them not because they may not achieve whatever society and we have imagined to qualify as success. Our hearts break for them because there is nothing we can do to alleviate their suffering.  We hold our arms open wide, waiting to embrace them, to comfort them, to reassure them and support them. We wait and we wonder … will they come?

A friend of mine has a daughter who became addicted to drugs. While she was in high school he sent her to program after program to help her find recovery. Still she could not become clean. In college, her addiction grew worse, and she eventually dropped out of school. Each successive effort at detox and rehab would eventually result in relapse. Finally, he realized he could not love her out of her addiction. He could not want recovery for her. It had to be her choice. He accepted that the best way to love her was to let her go – to let her figure it out on her own. “I never knew there could be pain like this,” he said. “But my love alone is not enough.”

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik teaches that when we sin, we don’t just do injury to ourselves – we do injury to God. Just as when our children harm themselves they inflict injury to our souls, so too do we harm the Holy One when we fail to live up to our potential.

But it is when our children find themselves that we realize our mission as parents.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook wrote: “The primary role of penitence … is for the person to return to himself, to the root of his soul. Then he will at once return to God, to the Soul of all souls … It is only through the great truth of returning to oneself that the person and the people, the world and all the worlds, the whole of existence, will return to their Creator, to be illumined by the light of life.”

There is no greater joy for a parent than when our children embrace that sense of their own worth, when they realize the best version of themselves, when they find a path in life that gives them meaning and purpose and a sense of fulfillment and peace.

Recently my friend shared with me an amazing call he received from his daughter. After her last stint in rehab she moved up north and started a new life. She got a job, attends her recovery meeting every day, and was living in a halfway house. He hadn’t spoken to her in several months, when the phone rang with a number he didn’t recognize. It was his daughter. “Daddy,” she said. “I’m calling you from my own phone which I just bought this week. I bought it with my own money that I earned from my job. It’s mine. I’m so proud of myself.”

In tears, he told me he had never been more proud of his daughter in her life. After all the years of pain and anguish, the tears this time were tears of sheer joy and happiness.

Tradition teaches throughout the centuries that God too is waiting for us to find ourselves. God too is waiting for us to call. And when we return, we will find love, only love.

So in this New Year, we ought each of us to do what we can to provide that sense of joy to God as our parent.

Avinu Malkeinu, let this be the year when we finally decided to listen to the Divine guidance your Torah and tradition have to offer.

Avinu Malkeinu, let this be the when we cultivate in ourselves a sense of humility and realize that maybe we don’t have all the answers.

Avinu Malkeinu, let this be the year when we turn away from our own selfish cares and concerns and instead embrace the mission to live with gratitude and in service to others.

Avinu Malkeinu, let this be the year when we finally decided to honor our parents, mortal and Divine.

As the legendary prophet of children Fred Rogers once said: “Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and weave their own bright patterns as they go.”

Avinu Malkeinu, our holy, nurturing, loving parent, we give thanks for the tapestry of Torah and tradition you have helped our parents and our parents’ parents to weave for us. May we, in this New Year 5780, gather the threads of the future and weave them into a fabric that expresses our gratitude for the gift of life we are given, that represents the very best version of ourselves, and that helps us return to You, embraced by your love for us, our love for each other, and an honest love for ourselves. Inscribe us for blessing in the Book of Life – and give us peace.

[1] https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/were-only-human/the-myth-of-joyful-parenthood.html

[2] Babylonian Talmud Ta’anit 25b

Last summer, I participated in an extraordinary workshop called Na-Laga’at. It literally means – “please touch.”

We were led into a room which was pitch dark – so dark that you could not see your hand in front of your face. We found our way to our seats with our hands on the shoulders of the person ahead of us. It was only the voices across and next to us that told us with whom we sat, and only their touch that revealed their presence.

In the darkness, we were tasked to collaborate on project made from clay. The only way to complete the project was to listen carefully, to explore our imaginations, and to summon the patience and perseverance to work together.

This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Bo, describes the last of the Ten Plagues the Holy One sent to wrest the Israelites free from Egyptian slavery. For the second-to-last plague, God plunges Egypt into thick darkness.

“Then YHVH said to Moses: ‘Hold out your arm toward the sky that there may be darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be touched.’ Moses held out his arm toward the sky and thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was; but all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings. (Exodus 10:21-23)”

Rabbi Ze’ev Wolf of Zhitomir, reflected on this verse by teaching that “People have eyes, yet they do not see … they are too busy justifying their own ways, whether good or ill. … This is the great darkness in all the Land of Egypt.”

Darkness seems to render us alone. Blinded, we see nothing and no one. And without the awareness of the presence of others, we may choose to focus solely on ourselves.

This is what the darkness taught the Egyptians – That if they focus only on themselves, and refuse to see each other, then in that darkness they will become paralyzed – they will never get up and move from where they are.

The Zhitomir Rebbe explained that because they could not “see” they didn’t consider anyone but themselves … they didn’t take to heart how much they could learn from the goodness of the people around them. … They kept finding fault and lack in others, glorifying their own deeds. This led them to walk about in darkness and to see no light. People like that cannot progress from one rung to the next; no person could rise from where he was.”

In this horrible week, our nation continues to drown in darkness. Our leaders refuse to see. They insist that theirs is the only path. They refuse to collaborate or compromise. And their stubborn arrogance is visiting unwarranted and unnecessary hardship on the most vulnerable in our country.

And yet this week, I also found some rays of light in the midst of the darkness. We began our Civil Discourse Issues Series, learning the techniques to break down the barriers that keep us from truly knowing each other and how we can enter into safe and productive dialogue with those with whom we do not see eye to eye.

Temple Beth El and Boca Raton Synagogue, along with several community partners welcomed a platoon of Israeli soldiers who experienced untold trauma in the midst of their service to the State of Israel and the IDF. In the embrace of our community, they will engage in intensive group therapy, and enjoy some welcome pampering and fun with our host families. They seek to banish the darkness of their service, and learn to truly see each other and themselves.

Each of these initiatives teaches us an extraordinary truth. We have the power to banish darkness from our world. If we are willing to listen to each other with humility and respect, if we are willing to reach out and touch each other irrespective of our difference, if we are willing to collaborate even though we differ, we can move beyond the darkness into a radiant and holy light.

The Zhitomir Rebbe teaches us that we liberate ourselves from darkness by always striving to learn from each other.

We become enlightened when we embrace the light of truth shining from within the Other.

We only move forward when, even in the midst of the deepest darkness, we grasp the hands of those around us, and find our way together.

Words. We grasp for words. What words can be found to express what has happened? What words can be found to express the meaning of what is happening? Words fail us.

In the beginning the Holy One fashioned a tool for the creation of the world. And that tool was words. “Baruch SheAmar V’Hayah HaOlam – Blessed is the One who spoke and the world came to be.”

Of all that God could have employed to bring the world into being, God chose words. And having formed and shaped our world, in the last act of Creation, the Holy One gave that tool to us. By giving us words, God made us holy, a little lower than the angels, a partner to complete the work of creation.

From the beginning we knew not what we were given. We first used language to come together to build a tower at Babel. Instead of using words to become all we could be as human beings, we sought instead to use words to try to overthrow the Holy One. And so God confounded our language, and scattered us over the face of the globe.

We speak so many different languages. And in each of those languages are different dialects. Language is how we express who we are, what we believe, what we feel and experience. All language is interpretation. Words express what we think we know and what we choose to believe.

Words carry the power of Creation. And the words we utter have the power to transform our world. Words can inspire and motivate. Words can hurt and denigrate. Words can unite hearts in love and understanding. Words can divide in hatred and fear.

Words can bring about death and destruction. Words can bring healing and peace.

We were given such a powerful tool – and we are so careless in how we use it.

We write and speak without thinking. We compose messages for immediate gratification without considering their long-term impact. We deal in calumny and half-truths, we channel conspiracy theories and cheap lies. We turn language into profanity, for we employ it solely for our selfish, gluttonous craving for power.

God used the power of words to create the world. And we are using the power of words to destroy it.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Just as every time we open our mouths we can choose what comes out, so can we decide, today, that we will use the holy power of words for good.

We can choose to stop using language that insults, demeans, and divides, and instead use language that elevates, uplifts, and heals.

We can choose to stop using language that hides and confuses and twists the truth, and instead use language that clarifies, that illuminates, and that is honest.

We can choose to stop using language that enrages and riles us to hatred, and instead use language that soothes and inspires us to love.

It is time. It is well past time. It is far past the time to be more humane in our language. It far past the time for us to be more humane.

Dear God, don’t let words fail us now. Put the words in our mouths and our hearts that we may do what we must to redeem our hate-filled and broken world. Give us the courage to say what You need us to hear. Give us the wisdom to know when we should say nothing at all.

May God shelter the souls of those slaughtered this Shabbat. May God comfort those who have been made to suffer from the hand of wickedness.

May God help us to find the words to repair the brokenness, and teach us how to speak a message of consolation. May God inspire us to compose the words of a new song – a song of love, of holiness, and peace.

The last morning in Jerusalem – I awaken early. I’ve been doing that a lot in Jerusalem. The light is brighter here, and it floods the apartment. I leave the shades open at night so it will draw me into the day.

I lie in bed contemplating a run. I’ve been doing that a lot in Jerusalem. Some mornings I lace up my shoes and head out into the street. Other mornings I lie in bed and let my mind do the running. This morning I throw on the shoes and down the steps.

My route takes me down a familiar avenue to an intersection where the old Jerusalem rail line once descended from Jerusalem. The municipality has filled the old tracks to make a boardwalk and lined the area as a long public park. It is often filled with runners, walkers, bikers, strollers. There are young fit Jewish men and middle-aged Arab women trying to stay fit. I turn left to take a long climb to the old train station.

For twenty-nine years I have come to Jerusalem to learn. I came for university, for rabbinical school, for seminars, with my congregation, and for the past three years, for intensive study at the Shalom Hartman Institute. The Prophet Isaiah said: Ki Mitzion Tetzei Torah – Torah will go forth from Zion. He was right. It does.

I live on a street called Malal – it’s the acronym for Moshe Leib Lilienblum. He was born in Kovno in 1843. He became enamored with the writings of Jewish enlightenment thinkers and began rejecting his traditional orthodox upbringing and education. He was one of the early organizers of the first Zionist movements, and though he worked most of his life to lay the foundations for building a Jewish state, he lived his life in Odessa where he died in 1910.

Like him I have spent my life wrestling with how to blend the wisdom of our tradition with the insights of modern understanding. I struggle with how to fit that blend into my membership in the Jewish people. Like him I love the Jewish state and work as hard as I can to help build the Jewish homeland. Like him my heart is here but my home is far away.

Running uphill in Jerusalem requires some concentration. As I run I go deeper into myself: I think, I meditate, I write, I learn.

Beginning in the late 19th century, the Jewish people started to run. We ran from persecution and pogrom. We ran from the shtetl into the city. We ran from Europe to North America and to Palestine.  We ran to Jerusalem. It was an uphill climb. We were forced to adapt to new ways and places to live. We had to build homes where we were often unwelcome and unwanted. But as we ran, we thought, we meditated, we wrote, we learned.

At the top of the rise I reach the old Jerusalem train station. It has been renovated and is now a cool public plaza with restaurants, carnival games, shops, and a public theater where there are nightly performances. Many nights there is Israeli dancing. Often on Friday nights there is a public Shabbat Evening service. Last night was an Israeli Beatles cover band – you can only imagine.  Like so much in this city – it is old and new.

Theodor Herzl imagined this place in a novel he called Altneuland – Old/New Land.  My days in Jerusalem are like that.  I start and end my days in the modern city of Jerusalem. The texts I study bring me back to walk the streets with King David, with the priests and zealots who fought with Rome and each other, with sages and mystics and modern Zionists.  I am in dialogue with them all.  They are all my teachers.  I walk and run in their footsteps.

I reach what was the end of the line and turn to head back. Each step brings me closer to home. It’s downhill from here. I think about what I’ve learned these last three weeks. I’ve struggled with how text and tradition guide my individual journey in life, how I can be a better husband and father, brother, and son, what God requires of me as a Jew and as a human being.  I’ve struggled with Jerusalem herself, where I feel at home and yet am often told I am not really welcome. Twenty-four days of wrestling knead me like dough – I am softer and am ready to rise.

I return to my apartment – I live on the fourth floor. Each rise has 18 steps – there are no accidents in Torah or Jerusalem. I ascend. I am tired, but energized. In the apartment my bags are almost packed. My last morning in Jerusalem … I am almost home.

In 2014, the Pew center found that 55 percent of Americans say that they pray every day.  That’s good.  I find myself praying a lot recently too.

But prayer can mean different things.  In Jewish tradition, prayer is not only a petitional exercise, asking God for the things we cannot deliver for ourselves.  Prayer is also a values-clarification exercise, a reminder of what really matters and what doesn’t.

In chapter 19 of the book of Leviticus, each of us are enjoined to strive for holiness in our lives and together to create a holy society.  The commandments here demand of us not simply fastidiousness in our personal behavior, but also describes how we are to interact with each other.  In defining for us what constitutes holy behavior, they also define how we build a good society.

When you reap the harvest of your land, you must leave unharvested the edges of the field and you may not gather in the gleanings that fall to the ground as you reap.  They must be left for the poor and the stranger.

You shall not steal; neither shall you deal falsely or lie to one another.  You shall not swear falsely.

You shall not oppress your neighbor nor rob him; you shall not delay in paying the wages of a hired worker.

You shall not curse the deaf, nor place a stumbling block before the blind.  You shall not commit unrighteousness in judgment, neither favoring the poor or the mighty.

You shall not go around as a gossip or bearer of tales.  You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.  You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall offer rebuke.

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And if a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong.  The stranger that sojourns with you shall be as the home-born among you, and you shall love him as yourself. (Lev. 19:9-34)

Essentially, a holy society is one where we care for the poor and the vulnerable.  A holy society is one where we tell each other the truth.  A holy society is one where we are fair and honest, and we do not abuse or take advantage of each other.  A holy society is one where we make it easier for those who have a difficult journey, and see all as equal before the law.

A holy society is one where we guard not simply each other’s physical security, but also our emotional well-being.  A holy society is one where the stranger is made to feel safe and secure.  A holy society is one where we open our hearts to each other, where we feel each other’s pain, and where we suffer when others are suffering.

Think about where we are as a society at the end of 2017.  How wide is the gap between the society we were asked to create and the society we have created for ourselves?  More importantly, as we think about the direction the leaders of our country want to take us, are their proposals leading us toward a holy society or will their proposals make that gap even wider?

These are not partisan questions.  To me these are questions of fundamental morality.  I want our country to be a holy society.  And I am blessed to witness extraordinary acts of holiness by members of our community every day.  Members of my community volunteer to help care for the homeless and feed the hungry and ease the way of the poor.  Members of my community rally to help children coming into adulthood from foster homes.  Members of my community run and march to help find cures to pernicious disease.  Members of my community work to build bonds of understanding and friendship with people of different ethnic backgrounds and religious faiths.

But it is also important to demand that our national leaders ask themselves if each vote they take is helping to build our country into a holier society.  What are the foundational values and principles on which they are building their policies?

Do their proposals help the poor and the vulnerable?  Do they make it easier for the average person to get a quality education?  Do they make it easier for them to get care when they are sick?  Do they champion the humanity of the worker?  Do they make our society more fair and just, more caring and humane?

Do we, as a society, condone those who are not honest with us?  Are we ignoring the suffering of the Other?  Are we welcoming the stranger? Are we, as individuals, carrying hatred for each other in our hearts?

It is up to us to decide what kind of a society we want America to be. We must cultivate enough personal humility to admit where we fall short of our ideals, but we must also demand, of ourselves and of our leaders, that we do everything we can to build a society that is just, compassionate, and holy.