Every language has a voice, but Yiddish has a body. It shrugs. It sighs. It arches an eyebrow at the absurdities of existence and asks, “Nu, so what else is new?”

For generations, well-meaning cultural obituaries prematurely declared Yiddish a museum piece—a linguistic relic preserved only in Eastern European archives, dusty comedy routines, and golden-age cabaret records. Indeed, to remember Yiddish, this vivacious language, is to dwell in the world of the six million.

But to view Yiddish solely as a dying tongue misses the point entirely.

Mameloshn (the mother tongue) was never meant for formal speeches delivered from marble balconies. It was seeded in the shtetl, forged at crowded kitchen tables, in cramped tenement hallways, in Hasidic studies and maybe across neurotic psychoanalyst couches too. It is a language designed specifically for our time: hilarious, deeply human, and fundamentally existential.

That living, breathing irony is part of why I wrote my new book, My Yiddish Alphabet (with illustrations by Jenny Young).

Part irreverent Yiddish dictionary, part cultural survival kit, and illustrated with sharp, New Yorker-style cartoons, this book is designed for grown-ups who know that life is best navigated with a little wit and a lot of chutzpah.

In My Yiddish Alphabet, the alef-beyz isn’t an academic exercise—it’s a mirror held up to modern life:

• Alef: The silent letter that speaks volumes when your mother-in-law asks if you’ve lost weight.

• Shin: The gateway to shlep (carrying baggage, both literal and emotional) and shmuck (a person who makes you carry it).

• Oy: The shortest, most versatile philosophical treatise ever written, capable of expressing grief, awe, indigestion, or mild annoyance at a traffic jam.

We live in a loud, literal, and often humorless world. Engaging with Yiddish today—with all its biting satire, profound empathy, and sharp wit—is a quiet act of holy rebellion. It reminds us that no matter how chaotic things get, our ancestors already invented a word for it, laughed at it, and meh, maybe moved on too.

My new book, My Yiddish Alphabet, published by Olympia Publishers, is available for purchase! Grab a copy for your coffee table, your therapist’s waiting room, or your favorite schmoozer, and tell me in the comments: what’s your absolute favorite Yiddish word to use when life gets absurd?

If you associate the High Holidays/Days of Awe as a time of dread—a solemn court trial with a stern Judge sitting on a throne as liturgy can connote—Elul comes to offer a radical reframe. The month of Elul is not about guilt; it is about homecoming.

The King in the Field: God Meets Us Where We Are

There is a beloved Hasidic parable by Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Lubavitch, that captures the essence of this month. During most of the year, he writes, if you want an audience with a monarch, you must travel to the capital, navigate bureaucratic halls, and wait outside closed palace doors.

But during Elul, “the King is in the field.”

He leaves the throne room. It is as if he rolls up his sleeves, and walks out into the muddy, everyday spaces where we actually live. He meets us in our dirty work clothes—amid our stress, our unfinished business, our broken relationships, our quiet anxieties.

As a social worker, I think of this as the ultimate spiritual practice of meeting a person where they are. In Elul, we don’t have to clean ourselves up or project perfection before we reach out. The Divine meets us in our messy reality, greeting us with warmth rather than biting judgment.

Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li: The Acronym of Love

The Hebrew name for this month, Elul א-ל-ו-ל forms an acronym for a famous line from the Biblical book, Song of Songs (6:3):

אֲנִי לְדוֹדִי וְדוֹדִי לִי - ”I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”

Notice the order of the words: first I am my beloved’s. It begins with an inner reach—a small, vulnerable step toward connection.

So often, when we think of Teshuvah (frequently translated as “repentance,” but more accurately “return”), we imagine a grueling uphill climb. But Teshuvah is fundamentally a love language. It’s the realization that no matter how far we’ve drifted from our core values, our loved ones, or our spiritual centers, the underlying bond remains unbroken. We aren’t becoming someone new; we are returning to who we always were.

Forty Days of Second Chances

This journey of return has deep historical roots. According to tradition, Rosh Chodesh Elul marks the day Moses climbed back up Mount Sinai to receive the second set of the Ten Commandments. He had smashed the first set after the tragedy of the Golden Calf.

Moses stayed on the mountain for forty days, descending on Yom Kippur with a second chance in hand—proof of God’s capacity for forgiveness and renewal.

Those same forty days—from the new moon of Elul to the night of Yom Kippur—are open to us right now. They serve as a sacred window reminding us that shattered things can be mended, and that broken stone still carries holy words.

The Daily Alarm Clock: Small Steps of Awakening

Starting on Rosh Chodesh Elul, traditional practice introduces small, daily rituals meant to gently wake us up:

• The Shofar’s Call: Every weekday morning, we sound the ram’s horn. It’s not a fanfare; it’s a raw, wordless cry—a spiritual alarm clock interrupting our autopilot.

• Psalm 27: We add this psalm to our daily prayers (“The Lord is my light and my salvation”), grounding us in hope rather than fear.

• Selichot: We gather to recite penitential prayers—Sephardic communities beginning at the start of Elul, and Ashkenazic traditions joining in the week before Rosh Hashanah—verbalizing our longing for repair.

Each of these rituals are a potential reminder: Where am I heading, and where do I want to be?

An Elul Blessing for the Season

As we step into this season of return, may we remember that the door is already wide open. We do not need to earn our way into grace.

May this month of Elul offer you the courage to step into the field, the softness to forgive yourself and others, and the quiet joy of realizing that no matter how lost you may have felt, the way home was always right beneath your feet.

My latest book, The Torah of Social Media (Koehler Books), explores this tension through essays from rabbis, educators, influencers, and thinkers examining how this larger-than-life entity might be harnessed for good. As I write in the book’s foreword:

In 2012, tens of thousands of Haredi men gathered in Citi Field Stadium—not for a baseball game, but for a rally denouncing the internet. It is common knowledge in the ultra-Orthodox world how treyf, or explicitly not kosher, the internet might be. Indeed, the pitfalls of social media are well documented: cyberbullying, the proliferation of fake news, AI, and social media’s addictive qualities are growing increasingly apparent. Ironically, some ten years later, WhatsApp remains a common tool among religious communities for organization and announcements.

There isn’t a single volume, though, in the Orthodox and Jewish community exploring the possibility of how we might use social media as a kli, a vessel, for teaching and learning Torah, using it l’shem shamayim, for the sake of Heaven. We have shied away from conversations around our own experiences with these tools in our own ongoing religious avodah, or divine service. Until now.

This new book is a mosaic of different voices, from Talmudists to Twitterists, engaging with those very questions. As the foreword continues, [the collection features] “essays by Jewish teachers from across the Jewish spectrum, weighing in with their personal experiences, beliefs, practices and poetry in relation to this new force of social media and how it has entered our lives.”

The Wisdom of Aher and Rabbi Meir

To understand how we might engage with a flawed system without succumbing to it, we need look no further than Elisha ben Abuya.

A leading sage of the early 2nd century CE, Elisha was a contemporary of Rabbi Akiva and one of the supreme Torah scholars of his generation. Yet, after witnessing injustice and theological trauma, he rejected core tenets of Judaism, earning the epithet Aher (“Other”). Aher was a tragic figure in a way—unable or perhaps unwilling to find balance within the community who in turn largely dismissed him after his leaving.

And yet, the Talmud records a striking dynamic: even after his apostasy, Elisha maintained a profound bond with his greatest student, Rabbi Meir. In the Babylonian Talmud Chagigah 15b, the Rabbis famously ask how Rabbi Meir could continue learning Torah from a man who had strayed so far. The Gemara answers with a brilliant metaphor:

“Rabbi Meir found a pomegranate: he ate its inside, and discarded its peel.”

Rabbi Meir refused to throw out the holy fruit simply because it was wrapped in a bitter, perhaps toxic shell. He possessed the critical discernment to extract the truth while discarding the waste.

Social Media as the Modern Pomegranate

In some ways, social media is our generation’s Elisha ben Abuya. It is brilliant, volatile, dangerous, and deeply flawed. If we adopt the total rejection of the Citi Field rally, we throw away the pomegranate entirely. If we succumb to Elisha’s cynicism, we might consume the bitter peel and poisonously alienate ourselves in the process.

I am a believer in the power of digital connection, nor I am not blind to its darker corners. Engaging with social media as a spiritual act requires us to channel Rabbi Meir: to enter the digital space with intentionality, seeking out wisdom, community, and holiness, while actively filtering out the outrage, disinformation, and vanity.

We do not have to surrender the internet to chaos, nor do we have to exile ourselves from it. Instead, we can build a Torah of Social Media—one post, one interaction, and one elevated conversation at a time.

Of course, this was always true.

Even the rabbis of the Talmud emphasized the ostracized nature of the Jewish people to potential joiners of our faith. The Babylonian Talmud in Yevamot 47a states:

“Our rabbis taught: With regard to a potential convert who comes to a court in order to convert, we say to them: What did you see that motivated you to come to convert? Do you not know that at the present time Israel is afflicted, oppressed, downtrodden, harassed, and beset by suffering?”

(And that was only a thousand years ago or so.)

The rabbis knew Judaism proudly celebrated its joys and spiritual heights, but they were remarkably sober and straightforward with people who wanted to join the tribe. They knew the cost was real and remains so.

And yet, so is the discomfort with being a target all the time, the traumas recycled and renewed with every attack or anti-Israel sentiment. As Rabbi David Ingber recently said, “The public may be tired from hearing the word antisemitism but the Jewish community is exhausted from experiencing it.” And no, acknowledging that we’re a target doesn’t assume the worst of our neighbors. It’s just a reality check. Jews come in all colors and a kippah is a common denominator and identifier of our heritage to the world.

Nu, what’s the alternative? To take off the kippah? Certainly, plenty of proud Jews do not wear traditional garb; I myself have experimented with a hat or none at all. Wearing one’s faith is a personal decision and there are myriads of ways to express one’s Yiddishkayt. Alas, even as my soul wrestles with honoring my heritage along with my mental health infused fears around being a target, I can’t fully remove my kippah because what it represents is intrinsic. Or as Psalms teaches, “God is with me, I shall not fear.”

But how that fear weighs on us.

Recently, I saw the play Giant which tells the story of the children’s author and notorious antisemite Roald Dahl. Every time Israel was mentioned on stage I felt my kippah burn as if to say “Jew here.” Then again it was a crowded Broadway theatre in New York City. Jews are everywhere.

I wore my kippah during the filming of Amid Falling Walls, a musical project featuring songs from the Holocaust. A show I curated with my father, our rehearsals for the Drama Desk Award Winning Folksbiene production began shortly after the atrocities of October 7, 2023.

Recently, the project was adapted for a documentary style television episode produced by PBS All Arts. During humanity’s darkest hour, Jews of all ages, and especially young people, wrote and sang as a form of spiritual resistance. Their resilience and defiance shines in their songs, generations later.

One searing ballad, Minutn fun Bitokhn (Moments of Faith), written by Mordkhe Gebirtig, imagines the Jews directly addressing their oppressors.

“Wash? So we’ll wash. Cain’s red mark. Abel’s blood from the heart. You can’t wash that away. Chase us from our homes. Cut off our beards. Jews, be cheerful. Let them go to hell.”

The song fluctuates between addressing the Jews’ tormentors and their own people.

The kippah is akin to this song’s sentiment. It addresses those who despise us and reminds our own family: we are here. Mir zaynen do. These words were coined by a 21 year old poet Hirsh Glik and which became the rallying anthem of the Jewish underground, and perhaps the most identifiable Holocaust song.

Glik wrote: “This song was written with our blood and not with lead, it’s not a little tune that birds sing overhead, this song a people sang amid falling walls, with grenades in hands they heeded the call...never say this is the final road for you, though leadened skies cover days of blue, the hour that we longed for is so near, our step beats out the message: we are here.”

What chutzpah, what tenacity. To look at one’s oppressors squarely and refuse to be cowered.

In the television adaptation of Amid Falling Walls I remark that the Jewish people are inheritors of a legacy of hope. It’s ‘amid falling walls’, amid plenty of suffering but at our core we sing.

The kippah, a symbol of hope, accompanies us through those crumbling walls and terrifying moments. It too is our testament of survival.

“There’s nothing to celebrate,” Brunson said at the time, “It’s not over yet.”

Here he was, on the heels of his successful defeat of his opponent, marking a historic come back, and yet, he remained laser focused regarding his overall mission.

(A serious and stark contrast with the blatant joy overflowing New York City’s streets then, celebrating the Knicks’ finals comeback win.)

“It’s not over yet.”

Or as the Israeli folksong by Naomi Shemer goes, “I haven’t loved enough yet, the wind and the sun upon my face, I haven’t yet said enough, and if not now — when?”

“I haven’t loved enough yet.”

There’s just more to do.

There’s always some more waiting in order, more hishtadlus, trying and striving on our end. In Kabbalah, in order for there to be an awakening from above there needs to be a stirring first from below. It was as if Brunson alluded to that piece of Jewish mysticism as he acknowledged then that his team was still shy of their championship title, even amid their historic win and ensuing celebration.

“It’s not over yet.”

How many times in Jewish history have we reminded ourselves of this very sentiment? As it says in Pirkei Avot 2:16: “You are not obligated to complete the task, nor are you free to desist from it altogether.” This has become one of Judaism’s most cited statements about unfinished work and disciplined persistence.

Or (also from Pirkei Avot 2:4) “do not say: when I have free time I will study, perhaps you never will.” The underlying idea is not assuming there will be another moment; act before the work is over. As Hillel the elder said (and Naomi Shemer quoted), “If not now, when?”

Fast forward to the Knicks’ clinching win of the championship.

“I’m in awe,” said Brunson, the team captain, moments after winning while being interviewed.

Yirah, in Hebrew or awe in English.

Yirah is often defined as fear to ahava’s love but fear can be too reductive. Certainly there is a fear element to yirah but awe captures the totality of the word and the healthy humility associated with it. There’s a bunch more positive attributes associated with humility too.

Yes, yirah brings about the notion of anavah, humility, the understanding that a person is not the center of existence, softening ego without erasing identity. It also brings achrayut or moral responsibility in addition to restraint and patience, creating space between impulse and action. Yirah compels presence and attentiveness alongside wonder and transcendence. For some religious leaders like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, awe was the doorway to religious life. Lastly, the biblical line noted awe as the beginning of wisdom: “The beginning of wisdom is awe of God.”

Brunson’s reactions of “it’s not over yet” propel one towards greater accountability and focus vis-a-vis what’s possible. “Awe” invites one towards reflection and gratitude. They are at the core of resilience and perseverance and apparently at the center of a championship team too. Mazl tov, Knicks, and thanks Brunson for the spiritual kernels!

But waiting may also be the super power of the Jewish people. As Maimonides shared, “I believe in complete faith in the coming of the Messiah and even though he may tarry, I will wait for him.” Waiting is intrinsic to being a Jew. Waiting for the Moshiakh or Messiah, waiting for redemption; these are fundamental parts of our faith and we Jews have been waiting for thousands of years.

Waiting is a spiritual cousin to yearning, which the Jewish people also have mastered over the millennia. We have cried in Song of Songs 5:8: “I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if you find my beloved, what will you tell him? That I am love sick.” The Jewish people have been waiting for their beloved, and the Divine has been yearning for us too.

As a people, we pine for better times, for hope-filled days, even if we live among astonishing Jew hatred and prejudice. We are part of a covenant which affirms our role and responsibility which sometimes includes waiting our turn.

Waiting feels anxious. “I’m just meant to sit here?” our inner voice critiques. “Where do I go? What do I do?”

These are natural reactions to the sensation of waiting. And like an ocean’s wave we let those thoughts come and let them pass over us. And then like the actual holiday of Passover, we wait 49 days for the receiving of the Torah, as we count the sefirat haomer. But every day of the sefira, the ritual counting, offers a kabalistic intention of what Divine attribute we might focus on. Waiting becomes holy with intention.

Waiting isn’t simply part of life. It is life. How many of us have wondered when we were younger: “when will I grow up?” or “When will it be my turn?”

There’s something encouraging about this waiting being part of our spiritual DNA if not also deeply unsettling. It doesn’t feel good to wait. And though there are times when we can train ourselves for the reward it doesn’t take away the physical reality of discomfort in waiting.

A breath is in order.

A sigh.

Not necessarily a sigh of relief but akin to the sigh mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 58b, “Rav says: ‘A sigh breaks half of a person’s body.’ Rabbi Yoḥanan says: ‘It even breaks the entire body.’”

It is our teacher the great Hasidic sage Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav who looked at the "power of the sigh" through a more transformative lens, introducing relief into its context. He taught that the very act of "breaking" the body through a sincere sigh could be a form of Teshuva (return/renewal), essentially clearing out the old to make room for a new spiritual breath.

So, maybe give it a try, next time you’re waiting in earnest for something you really want, give it a Rebbe Nachman full on sigh and let yourself feel reminded why you’re waiting in the first place. It won’t change the reality of your waiting but it might alleviate a shtikl, a tiny bit, of the waiting woes.

On Yom HaShoah, established by the Israeli Knesset in 1951, Jews commemorate the oceanic loss of the more than their six million brethren who perished due to their German neighbors onlooking. Of course, there were the Righteous Among the Nations, like Chiune Sugihara, who risked his life saving my grandfather Yosl Mlotek and thousands others. Certainly, there are other multiple meaningful days in Jewish history where we might honor the Shoah (or Khurbn in Yiddish) but all that too is for another time.

Yom HaShoah has always been familiar to me. Listening to survivors recount their testimonies, uncovering my grandparents’ own stories, singing the Partisan anthem and other Yiddish songs of the period. And yet, for me, the Shoah is never old and there is always a history, a person whose tragedy or heroism I don’t know about. How can there not be with such an unconscionable loss? How can there not be with Jew hatred and Holocaust denialism on the rise, still?

The prophet Isaiah’s words in Chapter 66, verse 10 ring with a poignancy for our politically tormented times:

“Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her,
all you who love her!
Join in her jubilation,
all you who mourned over her—” declares the prophet Isaiah.

This sentiment displays how the joy and mourning of Israel and the Jewish people is eternally intertwined. We cannot celebrate without mourning; we cannot tout pride without sharing in sorrow. These are one.

In reflecting on Yom HaShoah, Rabbi Fridman of the Teaneck Jewish Center pointed out the joy he felt upon witnessing his daughter receive her first siddur, along with the lines of school age children waiting to receive their holy prayer book. He noted how powerful the lines of the siddur appear to him in juxtaposition with the lines of his daughter’s assembly along with the “lines” any 2G or 3G (second or third generation) might feel.

To a foreigner these Hebrew prayers might appear like utter gibberish, random symbols and letters jumbled together.

To the prayerful devotee, the symbols and letters form Hebrew words, the words sentences, the sentences prayers, the prayers evoke feelings and so on. Still, their listed repetitive format might feel familiar given the roll call listing of Jews throughout Jewish history.

I thought of those “lines” today as I watched my own daughter Ravi and her singing troupe, HaZamir Prep, assemble to sing at Temple Emanuel’s Holocaust commemoration, one such Holocaust commemorative gathering I participated in myself as a kid. As countless New Yorkers gathered to pay respect to the Shoah and its survivors, I was glued in on my daughter, watching her movements, trying to hear her singular voice.

Of course, she was but one of many, and her voice blended with the hundreds of other Jewish children who would have been slaughtered for singing had they been born in my grandparents’ age.

Amid all this, I was reminded of a beloved teaching from the founder of the modern Jewish mystical movement, the Baal Shem Tov, who taught:

“Every single Jew is a letter in the Torah scroll. And just as a Torah scroll is invalid if one letter is obliterated or missing, so the Jewish people, which is a living Torah scroll, is invalid if one Jew is missing. I go around restoring Jews to their place in the Torah."

These lines of letters and people remind us of the individuality of each precious human being, of every soul and the G!d spark therein.

This Tuesday evening at Adas Israel Congregation I’ll be participating in a program called Neshome Lider; Songs of Spiritual Resilience with my father, Zalmen, and the synagogue’s Cantor Arianne Brown. For those readers in the Washington D.C. area, come take part in a tribute centering our people’s creativity at the centerpiece of our mourning. Like Isaiah sang, “join in her joy, all you who mourn.”

For all of us, let’s take a moment to meditate over the individuality of each soul in the attempted genocide of our Jewish people. Yehi zochram baruch; koved zeyere ondenk. May their memories be for a blessing.

Did I mention he’s a rabbi who boxes?

Ezra has been training for a while now (in earnest since October 7 though anyone who knows him knows it’s longer). I’ve gotten to be the beneficiary of his insights into the Torah of boxing, of staying physically active though Ezra remains a humble, if not, strikingly strange dude welcoming such pain into his personal body. And so, as the sole forty year old+ contender, he entered the Golden Gloves tournament.

To fight, as a Jew, is to quell the generational stereotypes which scream: victim! To fight, as a Jew, is to connect intrinsically to the spark of Judah the Maccabee, King David, the partisans of the Warsaw Ghetto and all the unsung warriors of Jewish life throughout our people’s history. The Jewish people have never stopped fighting: for justice, for equality, for our voices to be recognized and we dare not stop fighting today.

So much of the current Israeli-Arab conflict in Israel and even today’s war with Iran surrounds the sheer shock and notion that Jews fight back. Jews have been fighting back long before 1948 (though the Israeli Defense Forces note a markedly different direction in Jewish history) and Jews have been arguing with God since the times of Abraham and fighting with their bodies since then too. After all, Abraham was more than willing to fight for his nephew Lot, kidnapped, as are current soldiers of Israel willing to fight for their hostages.

Peace remains the primary concern of our people. Indeed, all the seeds of Torah are peace, our tradition reminds us, and Maimonides echoes the sentiment noting that pursuing peace is the greatest Jewish value. However, Jews also believe in the notion of “machloket lshem shamayim,” disputes for the sake of heaven, and contends that there are just wars. Or to say it differently: there are some Jewish fights worth fighting. (I would be remiss not to recall my papa’s stories of him as a Jewish kid in Brooklyn fighting his Catholic Italian neighbors who bullied him since he “killed their god;” the stereotypes continued).

As I witness the unfolding war in Iran and the dismantling of its terrorist regime whose poison has been spread across the Middle East and the world, I find myself praying for peace and for a successful completion of Israel and America’s objectives these days, almost forgetting the countless instances we ask for peace already laden in our liturgy alone.

With all this in mind, I watched my dear friend, a peaceful man, fight. Watching Ezra’s first amateur fight was exhilarating, as one of my other rabbinic colleagues and I discussed if the sages of the Talmud who knew of the gladiator’s barbarity could imagine such a moment where a Torah scholar laced up, stepping into the ring.

Ezra professionally pummeled his opponent for three rounds, a minute and a half each round. At one point his opponent, who was significantly taller than him, was so dazed it took him a few seconds to regain standing (what I learned is called “a standing 8 count” in the third round). And still, Ezra lost that boxing match in a split decision according to the judges. When the announcer shared the news there was an audible booing from the hall and not only from our section of Ezra’s supporters and friends. People even came up to Ezra afterwards to congratulate him on the fight and decry the judge’s call.

Ezra’s a phenomenal sportsman, though, a mentsh par excellence, and came home with a great attitude, soaking chick peas to make hummus for Shabbat, as he does every Friday for his wife, Laura, two daughters, and range of guests they host regularly.

And still something felt a bit familiar: a Jew being told his fighting wasn’t quite kosher enough. Or as my Holocaust surviving 90+ year old grandmother would remind us: “eyn chadash - there is nothing new under the sun.”

And yet, Ezra, this fighting rabbi, indeed felt new. Laura’s T-shirts stood out too. These were special T-shirts designed for us supporters to wear in honor of the fight which said in Hebrew: “I am not a small, scared Jew with trembling knees.”

No matter the outcome, I couldn’t be more proud of Ezra’s holy chutzpah, his professionalism, commitment to the craft, and ever mindful of the symbolism of his actions.

May we be blessed with the necessary discernment, as we navigate our pursuit of peace, which are the disputes for the sake of Heaven we engage in, and which not.

Ki Tisa in English means “when you carry/lift up” as God says to Moses providing structural information around the census, the importance of counting your people, and the assembly of the tabernacle.

But while the portion begins with buildings, sociology, architecture and even philanthropy, it doesn’t end there.

The focus quickly turns to the calamitous episode of the golden calf, the people’s panic and spiritual bereft frenzy led by Aaron, Moses’ brother and later the high priest. While Moses is away (in his spiritual bunker of sorts) for forty days and forty nights (a familiar number indeed), the people grow restless and Aaron directs their energies into the preparation of this golden idol.

Moses smashes the tablets upon his descent from the mountain, destroys the calf, confronts his brother and calls for loyalty to God, which the tribe of Levi quickly responds to, punishing the instigators.

Still, our TV-like limited series doesn’t end there, folks!

Moses returns to the Divine, asking for God’s forgiveness, and for the people to earn a second chance. (As the teaching in the Babylonian Talmud Avoda Zara 4b reminds us: “the entire episode of the golden calf is there to provide an opening for future repentants.”)

God’s presence remains with His people and God reveals Her “thirteen attributes of mercy,” as Moses pleads to know God’s ways.

Oh, and a whole second set of tablets, carved and crafted, for the Jewish people appear too. (Along with another beloved dictum from the Babylonian Talmud Bava Batra 14b: “The tablets and the broken tablets were placed in the Ark.” The ark, as in the ark of the covenant, held in the tabernacle and later in the temple. Unsure if Rabbi Spielberg included this element in Indiana Jones. In any event, our past propels our present).

The themes of this cinematic Torah portion are abundant: the pangs of leadership and responsibility, the implications of trespass or sin and repentance, the role of intermediaries and forgiveness, the fragility of faith, and ultimately, renewal after failure.

And that’s all without popcorn and snacks.

In the time allotted us in this our “preview,” I’d like to revisit the broken tablets messiness.

The great mystic Rabbi Avraham Dov of Avritch, known for his work as the Bat Ayin, describes the golden calf debacle as a descent for the sake of ascent.

He reminds us of the teaching of our sages that “In the place where penitents stand, even the completely righteous cannot stand.” (Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 34b). The mystical tradition is emphatic: it is through the brokenness of one’s heart that one comes to a greater attachment to the Divine than before. Hence, the second tablets. After the break up, after the the divorce, after — the arousal of mercy, the possibility of a new path. The first tablets came from the awakening of above, the second tablets come from the awakening from below.

May all our Oscar nominated films be as rich, nuanced, dramatic, action filled and love rooted as Parashat Ki Tisa. Please do share your top 5 favorite Torah portions in the comments!

I’ve been vibing with Havdallah these days. Not just enjoying the lights, candles, spices but the ideas are delicious.

Havdallah, separation, is the service performed every Saturday night after three stars emerge marking the end of the Sabbath and beginning of the work week.

The ancient text, a collage-like rabbinic riffing of different Psalm verses, calls God as the ultimate salvation and our shield against fear. It’s the Purim verse inclusion, though, that reminded me it’s my Zionist Bundist prayer.

Here’s what I mean.

There was light, joy, gladness and honor for the Jews - so may there be for us.

- Esther 8:16

Hating Jews has always been popular. Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are the latest additions to this ungodly trend. For millennia, Jews have felt the fear and pain that comes with the world’s misunderstanding of them. And throughout the generations, Jews have been steadfast in our hopes and prayers for better times. This was the case during Haman’s reign, during Hitler’s and now.

Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free people in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

- Israel’s National Anthem, written by Naftali Herz Imber, with music adapted from a European folk melody by Samuel Cohen

Not yet lost. Not yet. Our hope has not been diminished. Our light that shined for the Jews mentioned above in the book of Esther, recalled weekly in Havdallah, celebrated in Hanukkah, ablaze in new ways come Passover, has not been forsaken.

Enter these the Jewish liberation movements.

For starters, the political movements of Zionism and Bundism are siblings, arriving on the cultural scene in Europe as organized efforts in response to Jew hatred (though Jews had been emigrating to their homeland ever since their exile). Bundists were Jews whose Jewishness magnified their understanding of the suffering of their neighbors nor did they forsake their own Jewishness in fighting for broader equality.

The calls of the Bund - for justice, for equality, for dignity of all humanity, for repairing the world - are profoundly Jewish concepts. (And it remains a shame, as I’ve written elsewhere, how those who are most familiar with these Bundist songs and teachings bastardize the legacy of the Bund in alienating their own people, in the global fight against Jew hatred and anti-Israel sentiment).

The songs of the Bund are just as much part of my spiritual DNA as the Zionist songs of my youth and I cherish the songs of my people with every fiber I have.

The Yiddish words of David Edelstadt, the rallying poet of the underclass and those who suffered deathly working conditions waiting for salvation, stood out to me as Havdallah’s light lingered:

Even in my grave, I will hear
my freedom song, my storm song,
even there, I will weep tears
for the enslaved Christian and Jew.

And when I hear the ringing swords
in the final battle of blood and pain,
I will sing to the people from my grave
and will cheer their spirits.

- David Edelstadt, Mayn Tsavoe/My Testament

Edelstadt understood his voice was a rallying cry for all humanity. Like the prophet Isaiah who advocated that “God’s house be a home for all peoples.” A prayer for better times, that the light that dwelled for the Jewish people in their time of sorrow is a light that should grow until it is a beacon for the entire world. Or as Rabbi Shlomo Carlbeach put it, “The whole wide world is waiting to sing the song of Shabbes.”

There’s a Yiddish phrase “Yeder eyner pravet Shabbes far zikh aleyn - everyone celebrates the Sabbath for their own,” implying how everyone follows their own practice. It’ a Yiddish version of live and let live.

It dawns on me that Havdallah is like that in its own way, as every Jewish family who practices, debates who holds the spices, the candle, asking whether or not it’s time yet to recite Havdallah and begin the week again. It’s our own private practice, conducted from the home, and in our Jewish spaces, intended for our light to endure and radiate globally.

It’s a wickedly powerful prayer too.

Jewish tradition maintains that song itself is prayerful.

The Bible’s Song of the Sea, Psalms and Levites chants demonstrate this motif that song is prayer. Standing and singing the verses can feel like one is transported to a different time in Jewish history when the words were recited and meant perhaps even more than they mean today. “So may be it for us.”

The Zohar in commenting on the giving of the Torah writes:

When the Holy One revealed Himself on Mount Sinai, all the heavens opened and all worlds were awakened…And every day that Israel prays, those heavens open…The lower voice arouses the upper voice.

- Zohar, Parashat Yitro, 82b-88a

Sinai is indeed a cosmic connection between heaven and earth, upper and lower worlds. But the Zohar affirms the power of the people in prayer. At Sinai, God speaks first and Israel trembles. In prayer, Israel speaks first and God responds with love.

Havdallah is a prayer about distinction. Wines, spices, fires. Sacred to the profane, light and darkness, Israel and the nations, the seventh day and six days of creative labor. God creates all these things, these differences​, and does not encourage us to shy away from our peculiarities. Neither should we.

Maimonides was a rabbi, physician and a master translator of Jewish law born in Spain in 1138 CE. The fourteen volume code of Jewish law he penned was one of the first of its kinds, and whose erudite scholarship is studied to this day.

Indeed, it was the Rambam’s legal overview which initially brought me to Tiberias or Teveria in Hebrew.

Jewish custom will encourage prayer and beseeching by the graves of the righteous, tzadikim, and while historically I have been drawn to the righteous’ words more than their graves, I found myself convinced to visit, its proximity to the Kinneret tilting the scale.

A couple of minutes away from the Sea of Galilee in downtown Teveria is where one finds the venerated memorial site. Upon arrival, I learned that the site contained the graves of other Jewish scholars including sages from the early rabbinic period (70-200 CE).

As I expected, though my heart was open, I felt nothing outstandingly moving by the Rambam’s grave (I am a hasid after all ;).

Even when I discovered the grave of the Shla nearby I didn’t feel drawn in. The Shla, or Rabbi Yishayau Horowitz, was the author of Shnei Luchot Habrit (the two Tablets of the Covenant, whose first letters of the title spell Shla in an acronym); the Shla’s work focused on law, ethics and spirituality and his words, like the Rambam’s, has filled my studies.

It was only when I saw the grave of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakai when I felt a sudden stirring.

Who was Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zakai?

Rav Yohanan ben Zakai, 1st century CE, was one of the most influential and important sages of the destruction of the Second Temple period.

Talmudic legend tells that as Jerusalem was under siege, he instructed his students to place him in a hearse to escape the burning city where he sought a meeting with the Roman general Vespasian outside the city’s walls. There he advocated for the city of Yavneh and its sages, which later became the center of Jewish learning and life post the Temple’s destruction - thanks to his leadership.

Suddenly, I breathed deeply, feeling a spaciousness in my heart.

Rav Yohanan fought for his people, his cause, for Torah study and exploration to continue (and not in the Zealots’ manner of fighting the Romans).

Today the battle against the “Romans” continues spiritually: political violence, cultural pitfalls, antisemitism looms large but Rav Yohanan, to me, represented a type of fierce spiritual resistance which is called for today. Continuity. Learning. Growth through adversity.

Of course, Judaism endures, Torah continues, Jewish peoplehood too, even if we cannot see how, but the charge to find a personal reason for continuity in our moments of despair is just as warranted.

On my way out of the cemetery, I noticed the words of the Shla inscribed:

“It is fitting for man to remember one’s old age during one’s youth, during successful days to remember his lowly days, in his joy to remember his sighs, during his marriage recall his shame, during his good days remember his pain, during his wealthy days remember his poverty, during his glory days remember his misfortune…”

It reminded me of Rebbe Tom Hanks recalling the best advice he ever received: “everything passes.” You’re feeling high, on top of the world? That’ll pass. You’re feeling low, the worst of the barrel? That’ll pass too.

Sometimes because of the intensity in which I feel I dwell in that eternal truth: we are but “dust and ashes” and return to dust and ashes. But the flip side, the zealousness of Zakai: is also important: “the world was created for me” too, and it’s worth fighting every last breath for it.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayeshev, describes the moment in which Joseph is sold into slavery (as well as a story that doesn’t make its way into Hebrew school: Judah and Tamar’s romantic rendezvous). Far more than merely marking Joseph’s travels to Egypt, Jewish tradition understands these episodes as the beginning of the ancient Israelites’ descent into slavery.

However, the Midrash in Bresheet Rabbah claims that it was at this precise moment of devastation and despair regarding the upcoming perilous enslavement of the Jewish people that God was preparing for the Messiah’s arrival! Indeed, King David is a descendant from the house of Judah and Tamar, and the Messiah is said to come through the Davidic line.

At first glance, though, this notion seems preposterous. How is it that at the beginning of exile and depression, redemption and freedom are also introduced?

Rebbe Nachman of Bretzlov teaches that all distance is closeness, that the dualities which inform our spirituality are one, emanating from the same source albeit with different glows depending on your perspective. In this reading, hope is not that far from despair.

I think the Midrash’s point that suffering is the beginning of healing is particularly noteworthy as well.

When distressed it can feel impossible to see the potential of possibility.

Enter Hanukkah’s precious lights which arrive in the dead of winter.

Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach quoting Rabbi Leybeleh Eger offers the following understanding: there are two types of “seeing” in the world. Seeing that which there is and seeing what is possible. Hanukkah is the time where we see both.

There is a halacha, a Jewish law, which teaches that when one sees any Hanukkah candles lit, one recites the blessing: “Blessed are You, Adonoy, our God, king of the world, who performed miracles for our ancestors, in those days, in these times.”

We may not have lit candles yet, we may feel low in our own resolve, but when we see another flame lit, we are compelled to bless.

In those days, in these times.

The Jewish assertion for millennia is that miracles continue to exist: "In every moment, evening, morning and afternoon,” as is part of our daily liturgy.

The holidays of Hanukkah and Purim are considered rabbinic holidays in their nature, created by the people, for the people. The rabbis who instituted these blessings were operating in a world where seas weren’t being split but still imagined the miracles of Egypt and Sinai, asserting that these —their— stories of human action, belonged within the overall Jewish canon.

When we light the candles this upcoming Hanukkah, when we mark the miracles appearing even in these dire times, we too are claiming our place within the unfolding story of our people.

Recently, I learned that the late Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the many people taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7, 2023 attack at the Nova music festival in Israel, would repeat the following quote (from philosopher Nietzsche echoed by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl) to his fellow hostages during his over 300 days in captivity in Gaza: “When you have a why, you can endure any how.” Surviving hostages shared this story, noting how Hersh’s charge gave them encouragement to hold on, finding some morsel of strength to survive.

Antisemitism abounds, darkness engulfs in all its ways, but hope remains the identifying characteristic of the Jewish people. This Hanukkah, no matter how dark it may appear, let us be each other’s lights.

The Hebrew month of Kislev has arrived and embedded in it is Hanukkah, the festival of lights. The start of the month, Rosh Chodesh Kislev, marks the anniversary of my Bubby Chana Mlotek’s passing - her yortzeit.

Rashi, the French leading commentator of the Middle Ages, wrote on the Torah portion Vayetzei that when a tzadik, a righteous person leaves a place, the imprint of their uniqueness or holiness remains, often giving the very spaces they were a part of enduring significance.

This couldn’t be more true for my Bubby’s impact.

A musicologist and scholar of Yiddish song, her several books and anthologies of Yiddish music became digitized recently thanks to a project my uncle, Moish, and brother, Elisha, championed. The songs she (and my grandfather Yosl Mlotek) uncovered were made available to a much wider audience online after her passing. www.yiddishsongs.org.

What is a song? Rebbe Nachman teaches that song is prayer. Yiddish song is like a time machine, transporting us to a different time and place. While my Bubby was not religious, she understood this better than most rabbis.

“O ir kleyne likhtelekh, ayere geshikhtelekh, mayselekh on a tsol…

Oh, you little lights, your little histories, uncountable stories, you tell of bloodshed, resourcefulness and courage, miracles of long ago,” wrote Morris Rosenfeld at the turn of the 19th Century, in a poem that is featured in one of my grandmother’s books, a compilation of Yiddish holiday songs for children.

Each light tells a different story, every song depicts a different tale.

In honor of my Bubby’s yortzeit I enlisted my cousin Moishe Rosenfeld’s help in translating Peter, Paul and Mary’s Light One Candle to Yiddish. This was a song my family would sing at the many festive Hanukkah parties my Bubby presided over. Truthfully, at every gathering, holiday or not, Bubby would conduct, instructing different grandchildren to sing. (“Missy: Les Mis!, Avram: Joseph!” I hear her say.) She derived tremendous nakhes, prideful joy, from our singing and sharing in our heritage but more so, our being together.

“Don’t let the light go out!” Peter Yarrow wrote. “It’s lasted for so many years.”

Towards the end of my Bubby’s life I asked her what had kept her going, her fire (so to speak) so alive, after so many years.

“My work and my family,” she answered.

Fire can have an erosive destructive quality, but it also has a creative, sustaining one. And for that creative light to continue to shine, it must be kindled and nurtured. Our songs need to be sung and our stories told. My Bubby understood this and passed that love of song onto her family.

Please give our song a listen and don’t let the light go out.

I concluded both rationally (and dramatically): I looked for help and there was no help to be found.

This episode reminded me of the rabbinic teaching (okay, clearly my hand was doing okay, for those concerned): “רפואה קודם למכה – the remedy comes before the blow,” (Midrash Tehilim 94:12). The idea is found elsewhere in rabbinic literature. The verse in Exodus states, “I am the Lord, your healer,” and the Midrash in Exodus Rabbah 21:6 asserts that “the Holy One blessed Be does not strike Israel unless he first creates for them a healing.”

“Who runs the world?” asks Beyonce. “God,” reverberates the rabbinic response through the millenia.

Both blessing and curse, healing and detriment. All of it. God’s love may feel hidden at first but the path out of adversity is also possible. Or, to try and say it differently, as Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav once did, “If you believe you have the capacity to destroy, believe you have the capacity to repair.”

“But where is the damn bandaid?!”

The impulse to look for help is reasonable, understandable, and even necessary, though, right? “I raise my eyes to the mountains; from whence will my help come?” asks the Psalmist. And again, that age-old-time-religion reply, “My help comes from the Lord, maker of heaven and earth.”

As children, we learn to ask for help, if and when we need it. As we grow, we are expected to do more individually, understandably. And when we falter along the way, as life inevitably flows, it can be harder to reach out to ask for assistance, depending on our spiritual DNA, the problem, the moment. In these times, it can feel like we are alone.

I take great relief that my spiritual tradition asserts that asking for help is always reasonable, that tikun and teshuva, remedy, repair and return, are always present, even when the High Holidays are long over, even when the bandaid can’t be found in its wrapper.

For some time now I’ve had the privilege of leading congregations in songful prayer, especially on the Days of Awe or commonly referred to as the High Holidays.

In Hebrew the term yamim noraim captures the gravity of these days, in my humble opinion, more than the High Holiday term. Nora means, terror or awesome, and these days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur can evoke that kind of intensity, hope and wonder.

There are so many piyutim/liturgical poems used (and unused) in the machzor, the special guide book for these days.

In honor of where we are, where we’ve been, where we may be headed, here are a couple of my own “piyutim” I’ve composed.

And perhaps, like any poem, you’ll feel lost and/or at home, as you read, leaving you curious. If so, dayenu. (Wrong holiday?) Consider leaving a trolling remark in the comment section, the safest and friendliest place in the internet, and we’ll all be a little more confused, together!

Shana Tova, a gut yor. May it be a better year for all.

*

Alef.

This grief I carry.

Like Messiah I tarry.

Will I ever remarry?

Like a referee, I judge,

(Judge) favorably, say the Hasidic masters.

I am my harshest critic.

Can’t healing come faster?

Can’t patience be plastered onto each other’s hearts?

That’s a decent start.

*

Bet (as seen on InstaFace)

Here is a ram,

R abbi

A vram

M lotek,

like a wandering sheep full of life and pain.

But no horn on this Jew for gain nor blasting purposes, blasphemous curses come easily

when swayed by fright.

You’re both right!

How can you both be right?

Draw near, my people.

Sanctify your steeple!

We all weep-le a little.

Feeling fatigued and feeble.

Overwhelmed by evil.

Heart is a sea-full.

“Remember us for life…”

Welcome, Jewish new year.

Casting away breadcrumbs of fear.

Steering near - teshuva - again.

Here is a ram I am.

*

Gimel.

Trigger Warnings.

Pundits and podcast,

Genocides, all bombast.

World, let’s cancel her fast.

A fading grass lasts last.

Language is precious so might as well rape that too!

Look, there’s a Jew!

Easy does it, Av, they could be talking about you.

Nu, I’m talking about all of you.

ICE agents and online hecklers,

Hilltop Israeli(/) settlers of Tel Aviv,

Where is safe for a Jew to live?

We are all immigrants to life - from our mothers.

Newsflash: corrupt politicians govern worldwide.

But not: Palestinians criticize Hamas oppression?

So.

Let’s criticize!

Seethe the lies.

Note to humanity: when a child cries, just empathize,

then politicize.

Grow wise.

Remember your first genocide.

Stench still wreaks from your ovens not bombed.

Everyone’s got a hand in oppression.

You’re welcome, don’t mention it!

Power defies gravity

because this is where you belong.

In a song,

In a psalm,

In a qualm,

In a TikTok billion feeding famine

of simplicity,

of online rigidity

of stupidity, passivity…

So some humility (civility?)

in this climate of heated humidity and humiliation and hatred,

Just remember,

every now and then, to shut off your phone.

When I returned from Israel, a family friend teased me, “What was your favorite part, Yad VaShem (Israel’s Holocaust museum)?”

It actually was Ein Gedi, the waterfall oasis in the middle of the Negev desert, but more on that in a bit.

It’s true. I’m a grandchild of Holocaust survivors and a native Yiddish speaker and singer; the language and culture of the six million is ingrained in my soul.

Still, Yad VaShem wasn’t going to be the first stop on my kids’ trip to Israel. But our first Shabbat in Israel marked a year since my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah. Now as a thirteen year old, she chanted her portion again from a Torah book in my sister’s Naharia apartment and I realized I ought make a change in our itinerary.

Ravi (my 13 year old daughter) and my father (74 year young) and I (38 year eternal) walked together into Yad Vashem, Israel’s (77 year old state, 3000+ year people, history) Holocaust (80 years ago) museum (68 years since opened to the public) on a hot summer day (over 100 degrees).

If you’re on the right or left side of political matters one thing I pray we agree upon is a shared sense of grief over this horrific period of history and how “never again is now” (whatever that means) but for my family, the personal nature of the Khurbn, Yiddish for Holocaust, literally meaning destruction, feels more like a birthright sometimes than a free trip to Israel might.

The museum stands as a beacon of the Eastern European Jewish civilization that was decimated by German fanaticism and Jew hatred and walking through with my father who has devoted his life to the culture of that people and time (who spent his summer this year in London, Sweden and Israel for Yiddish cultural work) and my daughter whose Yiddishe neshome, Jewish soul, and innocence radiates through her love of Camp Yavneh, Jewish song and reading Torah tore my heart open.

Our three hour visit went by quickly, we all remarked, and we even walked through the museum relatively quickly.

When we left Yad Vashem, my father said, “Coming here should be mandatory.”

“For who?” I said.

His reply: “For humanity.”

Cue the water springs of the desert.

Just a couple days later, I drove down with my three kids to revisit one of my most favorite locations in this planet: Ein Gedi. Ein Gedi suffered a terrible flood recently, unlike anything it had ever seen in its history, and so the first waterfall was only open to the public, the other two sites were closed, which have larger waterfalls and some say even more breathtaking.

Shvitzing in the desert, stopping for water breaks, we finally arrived at the “smallest” waterfall still open to visitors. Each of us took a turn underneath its herculean like stream and basked in its wonder. We then sat down together in the waters as I tried to explain why this place was so meaningful to me.

The pshat (the simple/plain reading of the text) is apparent and poignant enough: a waterfall in the middle of a desert is nisht keyn kleynikayt (no small feature)! But the deeper meanings are not lost on me either. The idea that hope perseveres despite hardship, depression and adversity, like water quells in a desert, water being a symbol of life. Life! Here in the desert, despite the August heat and this site being partially closed, we shared those waters with Hasidim, Arabs, religious and secular, all kinds of people.

As we began to leave Ein Gedi, I was stumbling through rocks and mistakenly made my way into a large Arab family’s picture.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said, “ana asif,” in the little Arabic I knew. One of the gentlemen smiled, and said teasingly, “Come into our picture.”

We weren’t at Yad VaShem technically (though as that family friend knew I’m always a little bit there), and yet, here we were, all together, for a temporary, fleeting moment of that “humanity” my father was aching for.

The lessons of the Shoah, like the ripples of a waterfall, are endless.

• Photos from our visits below

Waiting for a barrage of Iranian missiles to pass, my mom poured wine for kiddush, the blessing over Shabbat wine.

“More?” she asked my sister, who moved to Haifa after making aliyah. Yes, more, was her and her husband’s reply, as they sat together inside the ma’amad, shelter, waiting.

As my mom kept pouring, the cup overflowed.

“Revaya,” she noted.

Revaya is Hebrew for overflowing as in Psalm 23, “my cup overflows.” It’s also the name of my daughter, my mom’s first grandchild, who turns thirteen today.

My mom arrived in Israel shortly before the war with Iran began to assist my sister as she recently gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Adva, Hebrew for ripple.

“And as the wine overflowed,” my mom shared with me on a call later, “I noticed all the ripples in the cup and suddenly felt strengthened as we sang together.”

Meanwhile, across the ocean, around my Shabbat table’s singing, my Revaya shared how fearful she feels these days of potentially traveling to Israel and asked how her Nana and relatives were faring.

Connected moments despite thousands of miles apart. Who initiated this cosmic remembering of the other which took place at the same spiritual time? Mother or daughter? In Jewish mysticism, there is the notion of the mashpia, the influencer, and the mekabel, the receiver. So, who was mashpia who here? Who influenced who? Who received it? Who was revaya, overflowing? And who adva, a ripple?

We are all characters in each other’s stories. Like my mom later said to me: “within the overflowing wine, there were ripples.” Our physical presence, words, even the way we look at one another can have a profound impact on us, especially a loved one. Here, in this Friday night vignette were grandmother and granddaughter linked through ritual, Shabbat and love, an ocean and generations apart.

As New York City is consumed with a primary election, I’m thinking about responsibility, in addition to connectedness and community. Who are we responsible for? Who are the people in “your neighborhood” as Sesame Street’s elders invited us to know? And who is included in your “we”?

The Mishna in Pirkei Avot shares the timeless teaching of the elder sage Hillel who famously said:

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

And if I am for myself [alone], what am I?

And if not now, when?”

“Who will be for me?” Are these the fiscally mindful conservatives or the extreme isolationists advocating for our own whatever that may mean at whatever costs?

“And if I am for myself alone?” Are these the progressive voices, those who advocate for greater inclusivity without fail?

“And if not now, when?” What a quintessentially Jewish invitation into living, into the present, with all its ripples and overflowing stresses and blessings. Now is the time to face our moment, whatever it may be, whatever we have to do.

What’s special, though, about the Mishna’s teaching is what immediately follows. Hillel’s historical intellectual adversary Shamai’s own remarks follow Hillel’s epic charge. Shamai states: “Make your [study of the] Torah a fixed practice; speak little, but do much; and receive all with a pleasant countenance.”

Shamai is often cast as conservative, not as bold or vision oriented as Hillel, but in this example, I find his advice poignant, simple and direct. It’s almost as if he knew Hillel’s aforementioned questions were unanswerable at their surface, so, here, take some takhlis. Some practical Torah. 1) Be committed to your learning. 2) Don’t pretend like you know how to fix everything. Fix what you can. And last and perhaps most significant? 3) Be a mentsh. You never know the impact or ripple of your revaya.

May the ripples and overflowings we face be for a blessing in these trying times.

These words of Torah are dedicated to my mother Dvora Shoshana, my daughter Revaya Maayan, and my niece Adva Chana.

And then, something miraculous took place. I cracked the cookie open and inside was not one sliver of white paper with my destiny inscribed but two! Two slivers of paper! And they were attached together ever so gently by the seams. (Have you ever heard of such a thing?!) I was dumbfounded.

“How many notes are inside your cookie?” I asked my dinner partner.

He looked at me concerned. One, there’s only one. There’s always only one.

What could this possibly mean, this joining of fates so close to my dinner plate?

Of course, you’re curious what the fortunes’ sentiments were. Worry not; we’ll get there.

The presence of two fates reminded me of an idea from the writings of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, a leading Talmudist, Orthodox teacher and Jewish philosopher of the 20th Century.

Soloveitchik writes about the concept of a “covenant of fate” and a “covenant of destiny” that the Jewish people carry. Fate: this is Egypt, the perils the people Israel face simply because they are Jews, inescapable, undeniable. Destiny: this is Sinai, the forming of a new covenant, the possibility we face as individuals by manifesting our own free will.

Was that why I got my two slivers? To remind me, as my new book, Butterfly (get your copy today), hints: “it’s all in your hands.” Agency and human choice is fundamental to our faith as Jews. Nu, so go ahead and pick your paper, pick your poison? Chart your future, Mlotek!

Too much theorizing and pontification perhaps for a light dessert.

“Your endeavors will look fruitful,” said the top sliver.

“This month, you’ll experience moments of deep insight,” said tweedle dum.

I should certainly hope so! May it be Jah’s will, I pray.

It is nearly the Hebrew month of Nisan, where the ancient Israelites experienced redemption for the first time in our timeless Passover story. (It also happens to be my birthday month. Let’s go Aries babies!). As Rebbe Nachman of Bretzlov taught: “the Exodus takes place always: in every generation, in every hour, in every minute.” Yes, redemption is always possible, as constant as the myriad of choices before us.

I am lucky (or destined?) to have been a patron at this dinner of a fine fusion of Asian foods for reminding me these timeless truths.

Regardless, the cookie tasted the same.

I remember a New Yorker cartoon by David Borchart which portrayed Isaac bound on the altar with Abraham looking up to the heavens asking, “Must I sacrifice family for career?”

Isaac, whose Hebrew name is Yitzchak is named by his mother Sarah. Laughter is at the root of his Hebrew name reflecting Sarah’s reaction upon learning from her OGBYN on high about her unexpected geriatric pregnancy.

What is the relationship between laughter and trauma? (The great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem said laughter was like medicine).

And are the Isaacs of the world predestined to grapple with their parents’ mess? (“Yes,” - Freud).

The truth is while Abraham was busy changing the world, arguing with God and fighting kings to save his beloved cousin who had been kidnapped, Isaac was responding to what came before him but in his own way (re-digging his father’s wells, establishing the afternoon prayer cycle, etc.)

Sure, Isaac was scarred and left inhibited as he bestowed his own brother drama with Yishmael to his sons Jacob and Esav (more on that saga another time). But Kabbalistically, Isaac represents more than mere trauma and living his life in his father’s shadow; Isaac represents gevura or strengthened restraint. A caution to his father’s expansiveness or chesed, loving kindness.

I love these Torah portions of Genesis (not that this will always be the sole subject matter of these posts) because we become reintroduced yearly to the archetypal timeless characters of the soul. Yes, we meet “characters” of “history” but we are also learning about the Torah of individuation. When do I say yes most eagerly? When do I instinctively withdraw? These questions along with the characters who inspire them are at the root of our Torah learning.

Also, my name is Avram Isaac. My paternal great uncle Abram was known as a shtiler, a quiet man, a writer, a sensitive person, a Holocaust refugee and survivor, while my maternal great-grandfather Isaac gruffly fled the antisemitism of Ukraine and worked seven days a week providing for his family as an immigrant. That’s all to say, wherever the holy hustle and silent strength come from, ultimately, it’s all part of us.

- Genesis 12:1

One of my favorite ideas from the mystical tradition of Hasidism comes from the Sfat Emet, the Warsaw based Gerer Rebbe, who upon reflecting on the above verse from this week’s Torah portion wrote that every human being is a “go-er,” a walker, and needs to be on a journey of spiritual movement.

He goes on to say that even (especially) in our religious commitments, we grow accustomed to rote and habituation. Insodoing, we miss the opportunity for learning, growth, God, connection.

I have always felt like a go-er. Shpilkes can do that. Today, we might call it ADHD. In any event, I’ve long valued the importance of challenging our preconceived notions of what is meant to be.

I could write a book about the things I thought I knew to be true.

The certainties of life that didn’t quite pan out as expected (happy post-election, by the way).

And still…

Hineni. Here I am.

This is the remark of the Biblical Avram and the prophets asserting their arrival, or better yet, their readiness for the mission and task at hand, for the journey ahead. It’s also the prayer recited by the cantor during the Days of Awe. “Here I am, impoverished of deeds, terrified, standing before…”

The fear *and* the hope.

The dread *and* the readiness.

We carry all these in our spiritual DNA.

I submit these words as a reminder to myself, letting you all listen (or read)…

“There is a season for everything under the sun,” King Solomon said. “A time to break and a time to heal.”

Or as Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlov taught: “If you believe you have the capacity to destroy, believe you have the capacity to repair.”

So, wherever our journey has landed us at this point, let’s remember the importance of lech lecha: “go toward yourself.” Becoming takes a lifetime.

As our country reels, as terrorism steals our humanity, as our hearts heal from heartache, may we remember the future at stake and simply, keep on going.

P.S. Thanks to my uncle rebbe for this song, one my namesake Abram Mlotek z’l loved, from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel:

“When you walk through the rain, hold your head up high and don’t be afraid of the dark.

At the end of the storm there’s a golden sky and the sweet silver song of a lark.

Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain.

For your dreams be tossed and blown.

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart, and you’ll never walk alone.”