This week’s Torah portion, Re’eh, begins:

רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃

See, this day I set before you blessing and curse… (Deut. 11:25)

Blessing, if we follow the mitzvot; curse if we turn away. This can feel simplistic, even counter to the world as we know it. (We all know that doing the mitzvot is not a guarantee of good fortune.) But it lands with me as a deep teaching about the kinds of choices that are open to us in every moment, choices about who we want to be and how we want to be in the world.  

My teachers at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality like to say, “We are in choice.” We can choose to doomscroll, or to roll up our sleeves and create. We can choose to coast through life half-asleep, or we can choose to wake up.  On a related note, this weekend is Rosh Hodesh Elul. It’s almost new moon. I’m never ready to hear this, but the new year is on its way.

This month it’s traditional to hear the shofar every morning. Some people blow shofar every day, or go to a place where they can hear its blasts. (Some of us rely on YouTube.) To Rambam, the shofar calls out: "Wake up, you sleepers from your sleep, you slumberers from your slumber. Search your deeds and return to Me in teshuvah!" 

To our sages, the calls of the shofar are a spiritual alarm clock designed to wake us up to the urgency of living. In those cries they also heard wailing: the cries of childbirth, the cries of Rachel lamenting for her children, the cries of a heart that breaks for all that is painful in our world. It’s easy these days to be in touch with that brokenness, especially if we read the news. 

In one of my favorite teachings, the cycle of shofar calls from tekiah (one blast) to sh’varim (three shorter blasts) to t’ruah (nine very short blasts) back to tekiah says, “I felt whole, I have felt broken, I will feel whole again.” I love that because it’s a circle, a cycle, a coming-back-around. It reminds me that times of brokenness are never the end of the story. 

I think of the Jewish year as akin to a walk around the Guggenheim museum – you know, the one with a spiraling walkway that goes in circles all the way to the top. We come around the spiral of the Jewish year and here we are in Elul again, but it’s not the same as last year. We’re not the same as last year. We never are, even if our external circumstances haven’t changed.

The name of the month Elul can be an acronym for Ani L’dodi v’Dodi Li – “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine,” a line from Song of Songs. The Beloved in this metaphor is God* (*whatever that word means to us – God far above or deep within, the still small voice, the force of love and justice and hope in our world.) This month is a time for connecting with the holy. 

Our sages imagined God as a monarch, distant and transcendent. This month, they envisioned that monarch leaving the palace and walking with us in the world. I love the idea of God walking with us in the fields. I picture what it looks like here: newly-shorn grasses becoming hay, or goldenrod and purple loosestrife blooming in their late-summer splendor… 

This can be a hectic season, especially if we or our children are going back to school in a few weeks, and especially if we’re part of the team preparing the synagogue for the high holidays. I’m inviting us this month to slow down, even if we feel like slowing down is impossible. (Maybe especially if we feel like slowing down is impossible.)

Slow down and notice the season and the sky. Slow down and walk in the fields with God. This can be an actual practice: walk in the fields or the woods and literally speak out loud with God, saying whatever it is you most need to say as this year draws toward a close. If you feel awkward about doing that, you can hold a phone to your ear. 

Or write in a journal. Or talk to God in the shower. Or talk with God as you’re driving alone in your car. Following the practice of my teacher Reb Zalman z”l, I imagine the Shekhinah – the Divine Presence – sitting in the front seat of my car wearing bluejeans. I talk to God the way I talk to my best friend, without holding anything back. 

This month I find myself saying to God: I’m sorry I got distracted this year. I’m sorry I spent so much of the year caught up in despair over the news of the world, and that I allowed that despair to dull my capacity to take ethical action and do something about what’s broken. I’m sorry about the places where I fell down on the job of being the person I most aspire to be.

And also: thank you for the sunsets. Thank you for the scent of basil leaves and rosemary. Thank you for the people in my life. Thank you for Torah study and for learning with others, because I always forget how much that moves me. Thank you for harmony and for singing with others, because like prayer, singing always uplifts my heart. Thank you for the fact of my life. 

What do you need to say – to God*, to the universe, to yourself – as we enter the last few weeks of this year? That’s the question into which I invite us this Shabbat. 

And if this is a week when life has left us feeling broken, like the stuttering cries of the shofar, may the gentle embrace of Shabbat help us return to feeling whole. 

This is the d'varling I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)

Every Bayit board retreat is a reunion. You exist, beyond the tiny Zoom box that's been on my screen all these months! Sometimes it's a reunion of people who have never met in person. We've been building together, and now we get to walk in the world together for a time.

We stroll on the beach and marvel at soft sand between our toes. We talk about high holiday sermons: what we need to say, what we're not sure how to say, the pressures of this year that are not quite like any other year we can remember. 

We talk about the next book we're bringing forward -- Adam Green's stunning Recover, a journey through atypical anorexia chronicled through key moments in Jewish time -- and about other publishing projects on the horizon. Spiritual practices and tools and deep dives into text.

We pray outside under the shade of a tree with purple leaves. We talk about this week's parsha and how we reconcile with difficult verses. We discuss divrei Torah and teachings that have moved us. We talk about who's using the tools that we create (and who's not, and who might, and what they need).

One day after morning prayer I'm inspired to write a new psalm, which Steve illustrates on the spot. The publishing team looks at another manuscript, and we brainstorm what we might co-create with its author. We talk about roles and responsibilities. We set goals for the year ahead. 

We talk about what we're reading, who we're listening to, whose voices inspire us. We talk about women's voices and nonbinary voices in Torah and mishnah commentary, and whose ideas we want to figure out how to uplift. We work on new curricula, things we can teach now.

High holiday sermons ebb and flow in our conversations like the waves. We make slides for the pre-high-holiday class R. David and I are teaching. We talk mussar and ethics and spiritual practice. We cook meals for each other, dance around our shared kitchen while doing dishes, sing and laugh.

We daven with guitars and harmony and spaciousness. We daven with tiny siddurim and occasional melodies and a lot of silence. We daven maariv in the hot tub one night, and sing Adon Olam to many delicious tunes. I revel in the sweetness of friends who love the liturgy as I do. What a mechaieh.

On Friday evening we take part in "Devotion by the Ocean," a Kabbalat Shabbat celebration created by Shirat HaYam, co-led by half a dozen clergy and musicians on a bandstand at the shore. As a bonus we get to meet Bayit Liturgical Arts builder Joanne Fink in person, because she's there too!

We soak in the sweetness of a Shabbes together. The birkat hamazon. Text study over coffee. Leisurely davenen. The rishrush of the waves at the beach. Singing the ashrei quietly to the Shabbat afternoon tune. A poignant havdalah when it's time to begin preparing ourselves for returning home. 

Now we'll continue building and dreaming and co-creating together from afar. I'm already looking forward to next summer's board retreat when again we'll convene to dream up what we want to build. For now, I know these memories will energize the work of my hands -- and lift up my heart.

The news is constant
and most of it is bad.
These are the waters
we swim in, choked
with mud and debris,
this is the rubble
weighing us down.
People are starving
and we argue about
who's more at fault.
Measles is roaring
back to life. Every
day is Tisha b'Av now.
Which means every day
a seed of hope
is planted.
Every day, a runway.
Every day we get up
from the floor,
brush off mourning's
ashes and begin again
like our ancestors
in the wilderness
who every year
would dig their graves
expecting to die
and wake to discover
another chance.

 A seed of hope / is planted. Tradition holds that moshiach / the messiah will be born on Tisha b'Av -- the seeds of redemption growing in the soil of our darkest day.

Every day, a runway. Tisha b'Av begins the seven-week runway toward the Days of Awe and the Jewish new year. 

Like our ancestors.  See Rashi on Taanit 30b:12:1.

This poem was inspired by a conversation after the first session of Seven Habits of Highly Evolved People, the pre-high-holiday class I'm co-teaching with R. David Markus this year.

1. 

On this date: 

The return of the scouts
The destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE)
The destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE)
Rome crushed the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 CE)
The start of the First Crusade (1096)
Expulsion from England (1290)
Expulsion from Spain (1492)
Germany entered WW I (1914)
The beginning of the Nazi Final Solution (1941)
Deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto (1942)

Not (only) on this date: 

The climate crisis
Our sense of safety shattered
Our burning and flooding planet
October 7
Starvation in Gaza
Suffering

2. 

Everything has been falling apart for so long.

How long must our hearts be cracked open?
Sorrow seems our constant companion.

Help us to believe
that better is possible.

The walls have come down.
Here at the bottom, do we dare to look up?

Where can we go from here?

3. 

Listen, please, all peoples, and see my pain --

My boys and girls have walked into captivity! (Lamentations 1:18)

The Court of the Captives

One day,
The court of the captives
Will convene
Before the halls of power.
They will bring
Their torment and suffering
As evidence against us,
As evidence of our failure
To protect them,
As evidence of our failure
To redeem them
With speed and urgency.

On that day,
The court of the innocent
At the gates of heaven
Will join the chorus –

The newly murdered,
Babies and dreamers,
Parents and children –
Bringing their blood
As evidence against us,
As evidence of our failure
To protect them,
As evidence of our failure
To secure our land
and our people.

On that day,
The court of the captives,
And the court of the innocent,
Will minister to each other
At the gates of righteousness,
Both in heaven
And on earth,
Offering torn cloth
Soaked in tears
To bind their wounds,
To bless the living,
And to console the lost.

Today,
Yes, today,
The court of the captives
And the court of the innocent
in heaven
Convene,
Arraying the charges
Before us,
And wait,
Still wait,
For us to answer.

Alden Solovy

4. 

Oh rascal children of Gaza

Oh rascal children of Gaza,
You who constantly disturbed me with your screams under my window,
You who filled every morning with rush and chaos,
You who broke my vase and stole the lonely flower on my balcony,
Come back –
And scream as you want,
And break all the vases,
Steal all the flowers,
Come back,
Just come back…

Khaled Juma

5. 

7.10

No one needs
to explain this year
why we fast
when the wall
was broken.

Tehila Siani

6. 

Hunger

It’s here
and everywhere.
In the folds between the streets,
in your weakened step,
and in that look before an unspoken question:
this is hunger.
Hunger is not a beast
but a stranger knocking at your door,
sits at your table,
and impartially shares the air with you.
I see it in the eyes of lurking stones
in the fatuous chirping of birds
and in the reflection of my shadow on the bare wall
as though I were a ghost
digging an escape route under the skin.
A song without melody is hunger,
A dance in the utter void,
poetry written by a body
whose tongue is tied….

Sana Darghmouni

7. 

A Dark Dawn

Angry winds blow
and clouds blacken the sky.
Prayers are still of no avail
and children still die.
“These names are shared with permission”
they go on saying,
showing those beautiful faces.
And still, everywhere, weeping,
and no one can help.
And what’s the exit strategy? The agenda?
Is there a light at the end of this tunnel?
One hundred and seventeen days have passed
And there’s no end in sight. No end.

Eli Sharfstein

Over 665 days have passed now. 

8. 

This

This angel of death just turned my body into pieces
and took my soul. It
left me lying there on the bloody ground,
my fingers resting on a neighbor's broken window.
It didn't look back to see if I was smiling or crying,
or if my mouth was even intact.
It just wanted my soul.
My family was out looking for my body.

Mosab Abu Toha

9.

Smoking Frontiers

The children were
playing ball
between the house
and the field.

No matter.

They were not dressed
in battle gear,
or full of endless fatigue,
or standing at attention.

Not at all.

The nation, in tears,
dazed at the smoking frontiers,
watches how, again and again
the silver platter is replenished.

Hanna Yerushalmi

10. 

If I Must Die

If I must die,
you must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
so that a child, somewhere in Gaza
while looking heaven in the eye
awaiting his dad who left in a blaze—
and bid no one farewell
not even to his flesh
not even to himself—
sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above
and thinks for a moment an angel is there
bringing back love
If I must die
let it bring hope
let it be a tale

Refaat Alareer
killed by an airstrike

11. 

Poem

Don’t turn my son’s murder
Into an instrument for war
Don’t send missiles in his name

Don’t send soldiers in his name
Don’t send messengers of revenge
Send in his memory love
Send in his memory condolences
Send a blessing in his name

Karen Harel
Her son, Oran Alfasi, was killed on Oct. 7, 2023

12. 

They Call Us Now

They call us now,
before they drop the bombs.
The phone rings
and someone who knows my first name
calls and says in perfect Arabic
“This is David.”
And in my stupor of sonic booms and
glass-shattering symphonies
still smashing around in my head
I think, Do I know any Davids in Gaza?
They call us now to say
Run.
You have 58 seconds from the end of this message.
Your house is next.
They think of it as some kind of
war-time courtesy.
It doesn’t matter that
there is nowhere to run to.
It means nothing that the borders are closed
and your papers are worthless
and mark you only for a life sentence
in this prison by the sea
and the alleyways are narrow
and there are more human lives
packed one against the other
more than any other place on earth
Just run.
We aren’t trying to kill you.
It doesn’t matter that
you can’t call us back to tell us
the people we claim to want aren’t in your house
that there’s no one here
except you and your children
who were cheering for Argentina
sharing the last loaf of bread for this week
counting candles left in case the power goes out.
It doesn’t matter that you have children.
You live in the wrong place
and now is your chance to run
to nowhere.
It doesn’t matter
that 58 seconds isn’t long enough
to find your wedding album
or your son’s favorite blanket
or your daughter’s almost completed college application
or your shoes
or to gather everyone in the house.
It doesn’t matter what you had planned.
It doesn’t matter who you are.
Prove you’re human.
Prove you stand on two legs.
Run.

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

13. 

If I Must Starve

If I must starve, let it be with dignity in my children's eyes,
not with my hands tied by silence.
Let the world witness that I did not bow to the hunger
but stood, even as the sky emptied
and the earth closed her mouth.
If I must starve, let it be while I still cradle my child's hope,
not as a number lost in footnotes.
Let the sea carry my name to shores that forgot my people,
and let the wind whisper:
she fed love when bread was gone.

Nour Abdel Latif
July 22, 2025

14. 

from Gaza

That the war must end, it is clear
Find a way, find a way
That does not mean the destruction
Of one people or another.
History, in its wisdom, in its terror,
Has brought us to this place
To this impossible mathematical
Equation where we cannot solve
The future with the past,
With blood or blame or bombs
Or unsustainable slogans.
I see a new future is possible there.
I see the lands fertile in tough
Invaluable collaboration.

I see that the desert will come alive
With music. I see two peoples finding
A new way. I see that this miracle
Is the only pragmatic path.
All that hatred, that anger, can
Only blossom into a miracle.
If vision and love can’t bring us
There, then let all the suffering
Find for us a new road.

Ben Okri

15.

One Tiny Seed

There is a lullaby that says
your mother will cry a thousand tears
before you grow to be a man.

I have cried a million tears . . .
We all have.

And I know that way over there

there’s another woman

who looks just like me

because we are all so very similar

and she has also been crying.

All those tears, a sea of tears
they all taste the same.

Can we take them
gather them up,

remove the salt

and pour them over our desert
of despair

and plant one tiny seed.

A seed wrapped in fear,
trauma, pain,

war and hope

and see what grows?

Could it be
that this woman

so very like me

that she and I could be sitting
together in 50 years

laughing without teeth

because we have drunk so much
sweet tea together

and now we are so very old

and our faces are creased

like worn-out brown paper bags.

And our sons

have their own grandchildren

and our sons have long lives
.
One of them without an arm

But who needs two arms anyway?

Is it all a dream?

A fantasy? A prophecy?
One tiny seed.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin
Her son Hersh was killed in captivity

Because I got in a fistfight
for the sake of heaven.

I fell off my meditation cushion
like theology without underpinning.

I was so delighted by the sound
of a lawnmower I forgot how to walk.

I wrestled with an angel all night,
clung until they blessed me.

Actually I thought I'd overslept
and missed morning prayer.

I bolted upright, tumbled
tangled in the bedsheets

skinned my knee on rough carpet
and whacked my head on a table.

From a distance it's fancy eyeliner,
a smoky lid. Up close

I look like half of a raccoon.
It's true, every single day we pray

"You support all who stumble," but
I didn't think I meant this. Guess

I was too distracted to hear God yell,
"Slow down, you move too fast."

Still, Shekhinah showed up with
terms of endearment and alcohol wipes.

And though there was no angel, I got
a blessing: this practice of presence

and curiosity, upwelling like blood
pooling beneath my skin.

Shared with gratitude for all of my friends and teachers in Cohort 6 of the Clergy Leadership Program at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.