blog by Rabbi Treu

I watched “The Bachelor” finale with my daughter this week. How emotionally intense it wanted to be! Daisy was brought to tears in one scene; after the commercial break, it was her rival Kelsey’s turn. We watched as Joey struggled with fierce emotion. How could he possibly decide between the two, knowing that he’d hurt one? Cue the violins. The clip of his tears on the beach was in every commercial and lead-up promo. I won’t spoil it beyond telling you that he chose one of them. And they all cried.

The other reality television phenomenon that happened this week was the opening of the Major League Baseball season. Which teams will shine, which players will rise to the top, who will win the pennant? (As I write, it’s Yankees 1, Astros 0, just saying.) The MLB changed the rules last year to give the game more action and a shorter run time; fandom was down in an era of ADD and penchant for speed. It worked; attendance rose by 10% last season and TV viewership was up, as well. Last weekend, though, as I was chatting with friends, they admitted they haven’t registered their kids for baseball because they don’t want to commit to a game that takes so long. “It’s so boring,” they said.

“This world is forever calling us to the surface of things with its drama, seduction, humor, and entertaining dilemmas,” Rabbi Shefa Gold has written. “Constantly bombarded with stimulation, we begin to rely on that stimulation to keep us from boredom and dreaded emptiness.” 

When I think about my own inner life – the life of the spirit – I wonder: is there a connection?

Is it possible that our aversion to boredom is somehow related to our yearning for more meaning in our daily lives? That our manic craving for emotional intensity (as in “The Bachelor”) keeps us “on the surface,” far from the hidden recesses of the soul?

Is avoiding boredom keeping us from achieving spiritual depth?

Speaking of things boring and emotionally flat, there’s this week’s parasha, Tzav (Leviticus chapters 6-8). For context: the concern of Leviticus is the sacrificial system of the Temple, the mainstay of Jewish worship for the 1,000 years in which the Temple cult operated in Jerusalem, as well as at other shrines for a thousand or so years prior. Within this system, there are lots of animals and foodstuffs offered on the altar at various times, for various reasons. But here’s the thing to notice, as we think about boredom and stimulation and all: the parasha opens with an all-night, every-night offering. This is the korban olah, or burnt offering. This means that the fire of the altar would be going all night. It would need tending. And in the morning, every morning, a mess of scorched ashes would need to be cleaned up. (Sort of like my kitchen. Didn’t we just clean up this mess??!!)

The daily clean-up, we read, was the job of the kohen (priest). First thing in the morning, every single day, the priest would move the ashes to the side of the altar. They were to stay there, next to the altar, where all the action of the sacrifices took place. Only once the pile became too large would the priest move it outside.

So wait. You mean to tell me that the priest, the one whose life is spent in devotion to God, is the one who does the boring drudge work?

Yes. Because our boring, daily acts of devotion are the key to our spiritual lives.

Brushing your teeth? Absolutely. Shlepping the kids to school? Yep. Laundry, errands, the dishes… What Tzav is telling us is this: don’t discount that stuff. Yes, it’s boring, but it, too, can be an offering.

Rabbi Dr. Erin Lieb Smokler writes:

“Every night, throughout the entire night, an animal would burn down to ashes on the altar, keeping the mishkan aglow continuously. Even during the depths of nighttime darkness, there was always a little devotional light flickering, ensuring that that hallowed space never ceased to be a place of active worship. "אֵשׁ תָּמִיד תּוּקַד עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּחַ לֹא תִכְבֶּה"– a fire burned incessantly on the altar, never extinguishing.

“The pious act of terumat ha-deshen, of shoveling the detritus of fiery consumption from the center of the altar to its side… moves the light [excitement, stimulation, satisfaction] from center stage to a more peripheral place, and then honors it there. The altar juxtaposes fire and ashes... Not to ignore, throw away, or deny those parts of ourselves that threaten passion, but to give them their place. If we can cultivate an excitement that acknowledges boredom; a commitment that allows for alienation; an enthusiasm that makes space for malaise, we just might find a more sustainable, more integrated way to keep our fires burning tamid, continuously…”

How might we each cultivate our offerings of drudgery and boredom? Daily life cannot consist of constant emotional fixation. We can’t always shorten the game or make it more exciting. We have to go to work, mow the lawn, and stand in line. We have chores that are dreary and obligations we resent. What blessing is hidden in each of these activities? What offering of gratitude, patience, or aspiration might we offer as we begin each one? Can we stand at the kitchen sink and offer up thanks for the food eaten, the running water, the use of our hands? Can we suffer through the super long meeting by composing silent blessings for each person in the room? What if we whisper a little prayer for patience when we feel boredom creep in?

When I pray in the mornings, or meditate, or exercise, or choose foods that conform to my Jewish eating practice – all mainstays of my spiritual life – I assure you that much of the time, it is mundane, routine… in other words, boring. But the effort of keeping the fire of a steady practice is itself a spiritual practice. We miss that when we rely on things to keep moving, entertain, keep us from feeling that boredom.

The Maggid of Mezerich was once asked how a person can sustain a passionate spiritual practice or connection to God. He responded, “He who needs fire should look in the ashes.” It might not make for riveting entertainment, but that boredom might contain the very sparks we seek.

My intention this week had been to keep it light. After all, we brought in the month of Adar this week, the month designated for mirth. How I wish that my phone had exploded with “Purim Torah” on Monday – jokes and silliness – instead of what crashed it: the news of an unfortunate antisemitic memo sent to the faculty of a local high school by an administrator. While Dr. Gilbert, the acting superintendent, quickly issued an appropriate response reiterating that there is no room for hate of any kind in this district or town, NBC covered the story and it is making the rounds in the broader community.

So much for telling a few jokes or wondering what’s up with Princess Kate.

I am deeply grateful to Dr. Gilbert for issuing his statement, and for taking the time to meet regularly these past months with me and a group of local Jewish parents and rabbis. So instead of focusing on the particulars of this school district or this incident, I’d like us to use it as an opportunity to go internal.

How does it feel to you right now to be Jewish, or part of the Jewish community? And how much of that response is shaped by what the non-Jewish world says about us?

Let me back up a bit. There are 15.9 million (with an m) Jews in the entire world. To contextualize, there are 2.3 billion (with a b) Christians, 1.9 billion (with a b) Muslims, and 1.2 billion (with a b) Hindus. Even the “unaffiliated” category listed in the World Population Review, from which I took these numbers, totals 1.2 billion (with a b).

My point: we are a teeny tiny minority. The entire Jewish community constitutes less than 0.2% of the world population. In the US, we are (at most) 2.4%.

This is confusing, because in the NYC metropolitan area it doesn’t feel that way.

And it is confusing, because when the majority culture has a story about a minority culture, the minority culture absorbs it as part of its own self-identity. The doll experiment is one classic example (YouTube video here if you don’t know what I’m talking about. It makes me cry every time.) So right now, with the war in Israel and Gaza bringing to the forefront classic antisemitic tropes in new clothing (genocide the new blood libel; oppressors the updated myth of Jewish power), in what ways have we internalized anti-semitism?

I want to be clear: we are a beautifully diverse community. Plenty of us are critical of Israel’s government and policies now and/or have been for years. That is not what I’m interested in here. Right now I’m curious about something else: how do the ways in which the majority culture speaks about the war affect how we feel about ourselves as a minority culture?

Ben M. Freeman has a few lenses for us to try on as we grapple with these questions. I heard him last week at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Never is Now Conference, and I’d like to share them with you now. I offer them as springboards for our inner work. He calls them the 3D Test of Internalized Anti-Semitism:

Diminishment: sometimes we make ourselves smaller, Jewishly. We change our names, or our noses. We say “I’m Jewish, but… I’m not religious” or “I’m Jewish, but not really Jewish.” In what ways do we distance ourselves from the stereotypes handed to us by the majority culture by diminishing our own Jewishness?

Denial: in past generations, this has meant conversion to other religions. In our day, you don’t need to convert out… you just opt out. “I’m Jewish, but it doesn’t really mean anything to me.” Or: “I love being Jewish, and I don’t need to join any organization to prove it. I do my own thing.” How do we hold our multiple commitments and identities, and in what ways does our independence stand at odds with proud belonging to a people?

Deployment: using our Jewish identities against the Jewish community. “I’m Jewish, and I stand against [insert here whatever part of the Jewish community makes you nuts].” Deployment is about using our Jewish identities as a weapon against other Jews, in order to make ourselves feel better, cooler, more accepted by the majority culture. In what ways do we subconsciously align with a majority culture which may have unwittingly abetted an internalized self-hate? 

These 3 lenses and the questions they raise are food for thought as we figure out how we hold our Jewish identities in this moment. I pose them in my continued insistence that our main job as humans on the planet right now is stretching our hearts as big as they will go. I pose them in my continued insistence that pluralism and diversity of opinions – including around Israel and how we hold the various aspects of our Jewish identities – is holy.

Part of our inner work as a minority community is to encourage in ourselves and our children a sense of pride in who we are. No matter what the government of Israel says or does, no matter how we relate to Zionism, and no matter what people here in the US convey to us about ourselves. Even as a tiny minority, the Jewish contribution to world civilization has been, and continues to be, tremendous. May we each be blessed with the courage to grapple with our own sense of self, our multiple identities and commitments, and emerge with a self-love and self-image that enables us to go into the world with our heads held high and our hearts ready to give, to love, and to shine.

“Rabbi, the message is not getting through.” Sitting with one of the more deeply involved Oheb Shalom members, I was surprised and not surprised. With so much information (and misinformation) overload, it’s hard for most messages to get through. 

What message was he talking about? The message I’ve been hoping to share loud and wide and clearly, which is that in the turmoil of what it feels like and means to be part of the Jewish community since October 7, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. That Oheb Shalom is a pluralistic, diverse community which holds Zionism as a core value and also wrestles with how to hold that value, what it looks like and means. This was true during peacetime, and it is all the more true during war.  

We seem, though, to have gotten stuck. We seem to be caught in a binary sense of our commitments. Not just at Oheb, but in the broader community and world. But the truth is: most of the congregation just doesn’t relate to that.  

In speaking with so many of you these past 72 days, the message is this: we are diverse. Some people feel totally sure of their convictions. Others are unsure, disoriented, wrestling with conflicting ideas and feelings. Many are mourning loved ones in Israel, or are worrying about loved ones serving in the IDF.  Many are also unsure what to do with the images and reports from Gaza. These categorizations are not mutually exclusive. It needs to be said: Most people who support Israel also care about Palestinian civilians. It is not binary. It is complex and nuanced. And so are we. 

Layered on top of all of that is the sense of total disorientation by many whose core identity as Jews is bound up with the fight for social justice. Suddenly, caring about Israel has cast us as outcasts in the progressive circles many proudly worked to build. Add to the mix as well that many of us have never lived through a time when anti-Semitism was front-page news for weeks on end, and we are reeling and anxious, unsure how to hold it all with any coherence.  

Even as I write this, I know: there will be some who will read this and think: wait, she got it all wrong, that doesn’t capture me at all. Yes, I suppose that is my point. We can’t all be characterized in any one way. It’s much too complex for that. We are much too complex for that. 

I’m writing this now because after much deliberation, we will be mounting new banners outside of the Oheb Shalom building. Some congregants advocated loudly for signs that read We Stand with Israel. Others advocated loudly that such signs would not capture the nuance of what they are feeling right now; that standing with Israel’s right to exist is perhaps different than standing behind every aspect of the Israeli government’s actions. What slogan could possibly capture that? Some argued for no signs at all; some took umbrage at the lack of a sign. Some congregants are committed more than anything to peace-making; others felt that signs calling for peace were premature until the hostages come home. I fantasized that we might find a way for every one of us to write our own sign and hang that up outside – to show the world our nuance, our pluralism, that there is no one way to feel or think right now at Oheb Shalom or in the broader Jewish world. To help everyone in the congregation have a voice. It turned out to be impractical. Too bad.  

In the end, we settled on the following: an Israeli flag and an American flag. Also, two signs. One that reads: Bring Them Home Now. And one that offers up nothing more or less than our name: Oheb Shalom. Love. Peace.* **

I love that we have four signs. I love that we don’t pretend that we can – collectively or individually – be reduced down to just one slogan or idea. The war in Israel and Gaza is so much more complex than that. Who we are as a Jewish community is so much more nuanced and diverse. Who we are at Oheb is, too. 

Rabbi Yosi bar Hanina taught:  God’s word comes to each person according to their uniqueness. Don’t be surprised about this! When the manna fell, it tasted differently to everyone. (Pesikta d’Rav Kahana 12:25; 5th-6th century AD, Israel) 

The flags and the signs will mean something different to each of us, and to each person who drives or walks by. Collectively, I hope they tell the story of a congregation holding on to our ideals as Americans and as a Jewish community. We hang the flags not because our countries are perfect, but as a sign of loyal commitment to bringing them closer to the ideals on which they were founded. We post flags and banners because we want to contribute to the broader community conversation, and help us all get unstuck from feeling we have to be defined as being just “one thing.”  

The manna tasted differently to everyone because we are each unique, and to each and every one of you wondering “wait, is Oheb the place for me? I think they’re too [fill in the blank]…” The message I’m trying convey is this: you belong here. Whatever you hold in your heart and head about this war, about the intersection of what’s happening with Israel and anti-Semitism, about Jews and political ideology… if you are someone who believes in diversity, in pluralism, in nuance; in coming together with people who think and feel differently than you do; in coming together with open-hearted, kind people, who wrestle with ideas but also walk gently through the world so everyone involved feels less alone, and want to do all of that through the lens of Torah and Jewish culture: you belong here.  

My door is open to all who wish to be in conversation about this (or anything else). In January we will be sharing a lineup of programming around Israel; ideas are welcome and can be directed to our program chairs, Doug Magid and Leo Gordon. We will hold another Listening Circle, which – for those who weren't able to join the last one – is a heart-centered way of gathering and talking across difference. And we will continue to gather, pray, share meals and sacred space, having nothing to do with politics or Israel or any of this, but just because that’s we do as a Jewish community, week in and week out. 

Am Yisrael Chai – may the Jewish people live on in and through each and all of us. 

As many of you know, I served at a congregation in Ohio as an interim rabbi the year prior to joining Oheb Shalom. There I met Diana and Romi and their 12-year-old daughter. This was during the height of COVID, and I only met them once in person. Not because they were COVID-cautious, but because they did not believe it was real. In their objection to their sense of government interference with personal liberty, they also therefore refused to attend zoom programming and had pulled their daughter from school. Romi hung out in QAnon circles. You get the picture. Despite their political differences from the rest of the congregation, they were beloved and had many close friendships in the generally blue-leaning, progressive community.

Halfway through my time there, Diana was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer. They did not trust the medical establishment and so treated her at home with herbal remedies. In the days and weeks that followed, one thing became super clear: no matter what, Romi and their daughter needed a community and they needed a rabbi. They needed me to show up and not care about their politics or ideas about medicine. The only thing that mattered was that Diana was dying. Romi and I spoke daily after Diana passed. As he worked through his grief, much of our conversations involved QAnon and other political ideas I did not share. It didn’t matter; Romi needed to talk, and my role was not his political advisor but his rabbi. Just a few months later, Romi died of a sudden heart attack. Because I’d stuck around, this suddenly orphaned 12-year-old had a rabbi, too. Her first zoom was the congregational shiva visit we organized for her to dial into, from her uncle’s home in another state. Her new life began surrounded by the community that loved her no matter what her parents’ politics had been.

Over the past weeks, since war broke out on October 7, my job has completely shifted. The pastoral care that had been focused entirely on people’s personal needs has become infused with anguish over what is going on now at the peoplehood level. For some, the anguish is about the hostages, the terror attack by Hamas, the IDF soldiers risking their lives to defend Israel. For others, the anguish is about the suffering in Gaza, the war being waged there, and a sense of rage and betrayal that Israel would cause such suffering. The overlay of the 400% rise in antisemitic attacks here in the US over the past five weeks – including a friend being shoved last night in a nearby town and called “f-ing Jew” – has many on edge, or over the edge. Our hearts hurt, our heads spin, many are anxious and afraid, and many don’t know what to do or think.

My job is not to judge anyone as right or wrong in our ideas about Israel or anything else. My job is to hold all of us in community and love. My sense of responsibility as a leader of the Jewish community does mean I stand publicly with Israel, where half of the world’s Jewish population lives, and a spot on earth that has been part of the Jewish story since the first chapters of Genesis. It does not mean, though, that my heart is closed. The images of the suffering and destruction in Gaza touch the deepest parts of our humanity and it is hard to know how to hold both – caring for Israel and caring for Palestinian life – in a way that has intellectual cogency. I’ve sat with many of you who are confused how to hold it all, how to care for Jews and Palestinians, how to get through the day without this taking over, how to feel and function.

For me, the work feels like it is about learning to hold multiple truths. Truths that are complete opposites, truths that don’t work together and logically can’t all be true. That is a feature of deep truth, that something and its opposite can both be true. For me, the work right now feels like it is about stretching my heart as big as it will go. I leave the political solution-izing to others.

We are a diverse group with lots of different ideas and feelings about Israel, as with everything else in Jewish life (and life life). We seem to love our pluralism in other areas – some of us keep kosher, some don’t; some pray every day, some don’t. We treasure our diversity in gender expression and sexuality, in the colors of our skin, in our marital statuses and neurotypes and in so many other ways. I hope we can treasure our political differences, too. I hope we are able to hold pluralism here with as much love as we do in other areas of our communal life. I hope that our sense of commitment to Jewish life and community trumps our need to feel right and to be with only people who agree with us. I hope we can create safe space for all of us to show up and feel that we all belong here at Oheb and in Jewish community. Because we do.

On Sunday morning, December 3, at 9:30 am, I will host a Listening Circle. This program, which will take the place of my regularly scheduled Sunday morning class,  will be a highly structured, facilitated gathering, designed to support participants in sharing from the heart, and will be appropriate for teens and adults. The goal is not to work towards common ground or any particular outcome, but rather to share, honor and listen to the authentic multiplicity of views that make up our community.

With a big heart, prayers for peace, and much love for all of us whose hearts are hurting and heads are spinning,

To view the full playlist of Rabbi Treu's sermons, visit our YouTube channel.

On Heartbreak and Hope

Rabbi Treu joined a small group of clergy for a 36-hour Solidarity Mission to Israel organized by Greater MetroWest Federation on November 1-2, 2023. The following is her reflections upon her return, shared at Shabbat services (Friday night).

The first thing we noticed, upon arrival at Ben Gurion airport early Tuesday morning, was how empty it was. Our El Al flight was full, but as we walked down that long hallway, we realized we were the only arrival. The El Al planes the only ones lined up on the tarmac, rows of white and blue stripes.

The streets are quiet, almost empty. No tourists, no school, and anyway people are scared and hunkering down at home. There are flags everywhere, and banners: Am Yisrael Chai. And a new one, that has become a slogan of sorts for this war: ננצח ביחד. N’natzeach – we will win, we will succeed; b’yachad – together.

You don’t realize it at first but then you do: that there are very few men. There are not a lot of young adult women around, either. The only young adults around at all are the mothers of young children, especially in the hotels in Jerusalem, where entire border towns like Sederot are now housed, and in the Negev where we visited our sister communities Kibbutz Erez, Ofakim and Merchavim – three places where our Greater MetroWest Federation has for decades created partnerships.

Greater MetroWest Federation has an office at Ofakim, and many of us know Michal Zur who works there. Of course she didn’t meet us in her hometown, Kibbutz Erez – she met us miles away, in Mitzpeh Ramon. This town of 5,000 people has taken in 3,500 evacuees. We stood with Michal overlooking the beautiful Ramon Crater and she said to us: “Kibbutz Erez was our home. We were there because we believed that the Gazans, just over the border, wanted what we wanted. Now, we don’t know. We are full of questions. Can we go back home one day? Will we be too traumatized, having seen terrorists inside our homes? And we have questions of faith – where was God? And also questions of miracles, thank God, for saving me. Thank God they entered from the left not the right, they would have hit the Simchat Torah celebration at the school, thank God. Questions of compassion,” she said, “how to locate it again inside our hearts, and questions of values.” She described the past two weeks, 400 families in their circles sitting shiva.  You leave the kids with a friend, she said, you head to a hotel where in the lobby there are signs like for a bar mitzvah – this family in this ballroom, another family over here, every room taken. All sitting shiva. “It’s all we’ve been doing now for weeks.”

Over and over again we heard, about that Oct 7 which is now called Shabbat Shechorah, the Dark Shabbat: we just didn’t know what was happening. That was the first trauma, the not knowing. Hearing a siren and thinking – it will pass, something must be happening somewhere else, and then the second trauma, realizing there was a terrorist on your street, and then realizing there were dozens of terrorists on your street. Sagit, a woman about my age wearing jeans and a t-shirt, is in charge of emergency operations in Kibbutz Erez. From the situation room there she called the ambulance when one, then two, then three people with gunshot and then grenade wounds entered the kibbutz’s situation room – but then halfway through her request for the ambulance she said wait, how will the ambulance get here, they will get shot if they come on the road, and that’s when she realized she had to shut the gate, that’s when she realized there would be no ambulance, that they were alone. If she hadn’t decided to close the gates there would have been slaughter.

In Jerusalem, at Hadassah Hospital, we met Michal. Michal is a pediatric nurse by profession, the mother of 10 children. Wearing a jean skirt to her ankles, her hair wrapped in a yellow scarf wound high up on top of her head, her blue eyes are bright and watery. Her left arm is in a sling and she is teary as she shares her story with us. She and her husband like to volunteer with the children as a family, and sometimes they go to army bases to relieve the rabbi there, give the soldiers some love and the rabbi a shabbat off. This shabbat, she said, “Hashem brought us to Zikim” army base. Her daughter was nervous because it’s so close to Gaza, but Michal told her no, it’s quiet, the rockets go right over. They made a beautiful Simhat Torah with the soldiers, they made them treats and an oneg shabbat, it was very beautiful. At 6:20 in the morning she woke up from a big boom – and then a voice over the loudspeaker, tzeva adom, red alert, over and over again. She heard bombs all around and that voice non-stop, tzeva adom. It was shabbat but they picked up the phone;  they didn’t know if their room was secure. It was not; a few minutes later a soldier came and escorted them out to the safe-room. Michal grabbed a pacifier for the baby and they ran out and the soldier told them to stay there, it will be over in 2-3 hours but they never came back, just the bombs and that voice tzeva adom over and over and over. She heard a soldier injured outside, and her kids said – ima you’re a nurse, go help her, so she left them in the safe room and went outside. At this point in telling us the story Michal broke down, the memory so traumatic and fresh, and I will skip the description of what she saw, but she realized that this young woman, this soldier had taken a bullet through her face and it was now stuck in her head. Terrorists are shooting and this wounded soldier, this young woman is saying my head hurts, I need the bathroom. With another soldier Michal moved her, got her to a bathroom and then she was calmer and they lay her on a bed and then this soldier, her name is Noa, passed out which Michal said was a relief, that she was asleep. Michal watched as the soldier guarding the door staggered into the room, shot, the soldier next to Michal said – we have to do something, save him, but Michal knew, there were nothing to be done, they watched him die before them. She knew she should go and hide but she just couldn’t leave Noa there alone and then she saw another soldier coming, she made eye contact with him and she thought – he’s a little older, maybe he’s coming to help me and then he walked up to her and it clicked. He shot her, three times. Michal and Noa are now at Hadassah hospital recovering; they will both be fine, and Michal hopes that with rehab she will one day regain the use of her left hand. She said: my children and my husband weren’t hurt. I sit here crying but it’s just my hand. Am Yisrael will become stronger because of this.

At Hadassah hospital we met Oshry, 22 years old, dark curls and slender, smooth dark skin and enormous round brown eyes. Oshry led his unit into Ofakim and also Kissufim army base. When they arrived terrorists had already taken over the army base; they were forced to kill 15 terrorists in order to evacuate 32 female soldiers, 14 wounded Israeli soldiers, men and women, three civilian women and a baby. He described fighting for 40 minutes to save two of the women in a room directly next door to terrorists. Oshry was shot in the shoulder, because terrorists were up on the roofs, the bullet traveled through his stomach to lodge in his leg. At the end of the operation, his unit evacuated themselves – they found a car, drove it to an ambulance. He was first treated at a Hospital in Beer Sheva where more than 700 injured arrived; the hospital’s emergency plans for a mass event are for 100. We asked Oshry: how is your head, and your heart? He answered: I lost 3 soldiers. Even if we’d managed to save 3,000 people the price was too high.

Later in the day we met the family of Ron Sherman. Ron is 19, and was serving on the border of Gaza in a base set up to help with the economy there. He is asthmatic so he is not in a combat unit; his job is to check the goods going back and forth across the border. On October 7 he called home to say something was not normal. His mother, Ma’ayan, who sat stone-faced as she spoke with us, said he then texted her: there are terrorists at the base. He sounded worried. His mother told him: there’s nothing on the news, you’re in the safest place in Israel; don’t worry. He said – I can hear Arabic. I just hope they don’t kidnap me. At 7:12 he texted her: I love you, with a red heart emoji; it’s over. That’s the last they’ve heard from him.

Hamas posted the video of his capture, so she knows they took him in the shorts and t-shirt he slept in. He has a very good personality, she said, everyone loves him. She said: I hope that is helping him now.

How does she cope, we asked? By holding on to hope. That his personality is helping him through this. That he is alive. That he will come home.  

After they left, the room was silent. We’d been listening to stories like these for most of our 36 hours there. At first we just sat, not making eye contact, not speaking. And then I lay my head down on the table before me and cried. I cried from witnessing so much pain. I cried for the trauma of this nation. I cried because it is so unfair, the plight of the Jewish people, we thought we were different, this generation which has not known this, the anti-Semitism, the Jew-hating, the war. I cried because of what our friend Amit shared with us the night before, how his family goes back 11 generations in Tz’fat, how as a left-leaning person he could never understand why his grandmother could never forgive the Arabs. She said it was the Arab riots in 1936. The two boys that her mother had breastfed came after her family. She could never get over it. He said: “I am very left politically and I never understood it, and now I do. And I don’t know what to think, I don’t know how to forgive.”

And I cried because I want so badly to have something beautiful to hand you, some story of beauty and light to get us through.

A colleague came over and held me. I wasn’t the only one crying, we were in it together. And that’s, I’ve decided, where the beauty is. That op-ed I co-authored, about our sense of being alone after October 7? It’s not true. So many good people, friends of the Jews and friends of ours have reached out. So many leaders have spoken up for the Jewish people and the state of Israel. But more than all of that – we have each other.

N’natzeach b’yachad. The only good to come out of this, is the unity of the Jewish people. I have never witnessed a sense of peoplehood as fierce or as deep. Right, left, orthodox, Reform, Conservative, secular, religious, Israeli, Diaspora, the ones who have been protesting Israel these past weeks and the ones protesting for years – we are united now. There is beauty in that. There is beauty in comforting one another, in showing up because we are all now miluim, reservists, the on-call force waiting until we are needed to come serve. We are all called on to fight because the battle that was started by terrorists killing 1,400 and wounding thousands more and capturing hundreds is now being fought here, too. On social media, in all media, in the classroom, on college campuses and in our towns. We are all called on to take our commitment to tikkun olam, to building a better world, that tikkun olam we’ve been shining from ourselves out to help other communities, we need now to turn it to ourselves, too, to make this world safe for the Jewish people just as we want it to be safe for all people.

That is where I place my hope, and that is where I hope you will join me. The national anthem of Israel is called HaTikvah – The Hope. Od lo avdah tikvatenu – our hope will never be lost. Or rather: WE will never lose OUR hope. In the plural. Because that is how we cope, that is how we survive, as a Jewish people. By hoping, in the plural, all together. If Ron’s mom needs us to hope, we will hope. If Michal needs us to be strong, we will be strong. B’yachad n’natzeach. Together we will win, together we will prevail, together we will endure. Am Yisrael chai. Amen.

It has been hard, hearing the awful news reports coming in, to refrain from checking in on all of you with family in Israel and sending out a note. Now that the Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah holiday is over and I am back online with access to my phone, I am adding my voice to the chorus of Jewish communal leaders who are heartbroken, terrified, despairing, and also clinging to hope as this war in Israel unfolds.

Yesterday and today at services we recited psalms, prayers for the State of Israel, and sang the Hatikvah. It will take all of our energy to stand by Israel publicly and to hold all we are feeling in our hearts. I encourage everyone to join me in contributing to the Greater MetroWest Federation’s emergency campaign and annual campaign which supports communities in Israel, in particular the southern towns of Erez and Ofakim.  These are longtime sister cities of MetroWest, and their residents were among the first to be abducted, injured and killed this weekend.

We hold in our hearts and prayers all in our community with children and grandchildren, brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews and cousins, called up to fight. We pray in particular for Aaron Cooper, Rabbi Cooper and Amy’s son, who was sent into Gaza yesterday. We pray for peace for the sake of peace-seeking Palestinians and Israelis, and for all of the factions that cannot see one another now in our shared humanity to find a way to end this violence and find a path to peace.

May God grant peace in Israel and among all nations.

Rabbi Abigail Treu
Cantor Eliana Kissner

Who remembers Norman Cousins?

Norman Cousins was a nice Jewish boy, who grew up not far from here in Union City, to become a famous journalist and author. In 1964 Norman was diagnosed with a rare and debilitating disease. His doctors gave him only a few weeks to live.

Norman did something extraordinary when he heard the news. He laughed. 

In fact, he made it a point to laugh every day.

For 30 minutes. 

Until the day he died. 

26 years after the diagnosis.

I share this story not because we are all granted miracles and extra time on this earth. I’m sharing this story because of Norman’s response. Who responds to bad news with a laugh? Who decides that laughter is going to be a part of their march into an uncertain future?

Maybe we all should. 

Weeks ago, I was all set with my sermon topic for today. I’d done my sleuthing around bookstores and blogs, and noticed just how much is being written about anger, rage, blame, our toxic culture and lack of civility. I’m collecting sources about how we all need to stop being so angry. How we need to change, to find love and forgiveness… Great. It’s writing itself. And by that, I mean that ChatGPT is writing it.  

And then, something happened. 

Actually, a lot of things happened. We packed up, moved, unpacked. We collected two kids from camp, unpacked, did 200 loads of laundry, and then packed again, this time to send our two older children to college. One year apart but both freshmen now. We packed, we drove to Boston, we unpacked, we drove home, crying a little on the way. We packed again. We drove to Saratoga. We unpacked. We drove home, crying a little on the way. We came home to an emptier house. We pulled ourselves together.  We launched our youngest at a new high school. And then my restful vacation was over.  

That I got a cold was not a surprise nor was it anything but funny when, driving the youngest to school on day two, we smelled something terrible in the car. Like, really, really awful. After some searching it turned out that – well, you know the piles of shopping bags we all keep hoarding now, and maybe some of us have bags inside of bags inside of bags shoved in the back of the car because maybe we’ll need all 400 of them the next time we go to Target? I’m saying hypothetically. Well after some searching we found the source of the odor: a wheel of brie cheese that had been sitting there for a week… in 90 degree heat… sort of a long story involving the college move-in and the bags being in the garage… but that’s not the point, the point is sometimes you have a lot going on and then you end up with a car that smells like rotten brie cheese and then because you’ve been driving in it and touching those bags your hands smell for days and you know what? It’s kind of funny. 

I wrote this sermon because I found myself doubled over laughing at the ShopRite, next to the garbage bins into which I finally did deposit the brie cheese, and 400 shopping bags. Doubled over, gasping for breath. A total release.

And suddenly I knew: I’m going to write about laughter. Because laughter is what the world needs right now. What we need. Laughter is the best medicine. Although whoever said that, as the comedian Greg Kettner said, obviously never had diarrhea. 

Laughter, it turns out, strengthens the immune system and brain. Laughter decreases one’s chances of developing dementia, decreases stress hormones, and increases endorphins and dopamine, the same hormones that produce the runners high. Laughing helps protect the heart and lungs, and if done consistently has similar results of a light cardio workout and actually burns calories even as it strengthens your abs. Move over, Peloton.

And, neurological studies show that those who laugh more live longer.

Laughter only works when everyone joins in; when one person in a group is laughing alone, it’s not so funny. But laughing together is an effective way of improving the positive mood of individuals and a group, a way to bond and boost optimism and hope.

So if I want to stand here and preach that we are going to change the world by changing ourselves… if I’m trying to inspire us to do teshuvah, make ourselves and this world a better place… well, why be so serious? 

What if the way to fixing the world – to getting over our anger problem, and our fear, our toxic culture and stress overdrive – is as simple as… a good laugh?

So now I’m writing a sermon on laughter. Except, I’m all serious. My first draft was a highbrow discourse on the proper modalities of laughter. The Shulchan Aruch on the halakha of laughter. I showed it to some friends and they actually fell asleep. Next idea:  I’m going to do a stand-up routine for my sermon! I’ll get us all rolling in the aisles!

But here’s the thing – I’m not very funny.

So I called my friend Ethan. Rabbi Ethan Linden did stand up comedy in college and he’s hilarious, and I said: teach me how to be funny. 

And he told me – well the key to being funny is to be yourself.

And I thought, that’s too bad.

And then he said: you have to be willing to laugh at yourself.

There’s so much to that. That sounds like teshuvah to me. That’s a comment about humility, and how we carry ourselves in our own hearts and also with one another. If I’m willing to laugh at myself - well, maybe it will help me take life a little less seriously. Maybe it will help me get along with other people better, and not take things so personally. So Rosh Hashanah Laughter Lesson #1: be willing to laugh at yourself a little more this coming year.

Rosh Hashanah Laughter Lesson #2: Laugh at the unexpected, and share that laugh with others. Laughter, it turns out is a theme of the Torah readings today.

The root “laugh” occurs seven times in the story, that magical number seven that signals to us to pay attention.

• In the opening verses of today’s Torah reading, Abraham names his son Isaac, Yitzhak – it means “he will laugh.”
• Sarah explains, when they name him: “God has brought me laughter; everyone who hears will laugh with me” – kol hashomeah yitzhak li.  This is a completely unexpected turn of events, and they are laughing. 
• They are laughing together, Sarah and Abraham, parents in their old age. They are laughing because they are joyful, and they want to share this feeling with others. This is exuberant laughter, the kind that is contagious, communal. Everyone who hears will laugh with us: isn’t this what the best kind of laughter is? When you get the giggles, and it infects the whole class
  • Laughter, it turns out, is communal. We are 30 times as likely to laugh with others as we are alone. In fact part of what’s making our culture so toxic is the watching from home phenomenon; Hollywood isn’t making big-budget comedies anymore because when we watch alone we don’t enjoy the joke as much.
  • So God finally gave them a child after telling Abraham his whole life that he’d be the father of a multitude of nations and Sarah’s menopausal? That’s pretty funny.
  • One midrash (Breishit Rabbah 53:8) captures this contagious laugh of joy: The rabbis imagined that when Sarah laughed this laugh, others who also hadn’t had been able to have children before gave birth; that when she laughed the deaf gained their hearing and the blind were able to see. The laugh itself caused this, caused joy and healing in other people’s lives. This is what a laugh can do.
• You know who else laughs in today’s reading? Yishmael. Sarah sees Ishmael m’tzahek. Unclear what that is, actually, but we can assume that like most older brothers he found a few things to laugh it when it came to his younger sibling. This laugh is different, maybe. We don’t really know. But it feels different, because bad things happen afterwards, sad and hard things; Sarah sees Yishmael laughing and becomes jealous or angry or something, that’s what triggers her to call on Abraham to send Yishmael and Hagar away. A laugh. 
• Which brings us to the other laugh of Genesis, one that happened before the curtain rose on our story today. A few chapters ago, messengers came to tell Abraham that Sarah will have a child and she hears this and says, I’m 90 years old, that’s absurd, and – she laughs. Like Yishmael, she is laughing alone – vatizhak, in the singular. Was she cynical? Nervous? Scornful? Snarky? God overhears – turns out she’s not really alone, as the ark behind me says, “know before whom you stand” – and God does not join in the laughter. God asks her a question: "Why are you laughing?" And instead of answering, she denies it.  "I didn’t laugh." "Yes, you did," God says. And then grants her a child whom she names Laughter. Sarah kept her reasons private.
• I wonder if that’s why she kicked Yishmael out. As someone who laughed alone, perhaps she recognized something in him that she knew well and didn’t like.  Watching him laugh alone, m’tzahek in the singular, was the kind of laughter she didn’t want in her house. Maybe she read the study I did, about teenage boys at risk for psychopathy, ones with major behavior problems, how they tend not to laugh when other people around them laugh. Sociologists teach that we use laughter to show belonging to a group, and also to convey that we understand that someone else wants us to laugh and that we want what they want. 
• Perhaps the Torah is suggesting: notice when you’re laughing alone too much. It’s a sign that something is off. God made us to laugh together. Not at one another, not by ourselves. But together, passing our giggles around the room like candy.

So lesson #1: laugh at yourself.

Lesson #2: laugh at the unexpected, and share that laugh with others. 

So Abraham laughs, Sarah laughs, Yishmael laughs.

And one child, named Laughter. 

Laughter, Yitzhak, is the answer to Abraham and Sarah’s prayers. Yitzhak, Laughter, is Redemption. Redemption is brought into this world by a child named Laughter. 

But – do we ever see him laugh?

In all of Torah and rabbinic literature – the answer is: no.

And this, my friends, is Rosh Hashanah Laughter Lesson #3 –no matter how tough it gets, no matter how bad the diagnosis, no matter how rotten the cheese, keep laughing.

Isaac has a tough life. He has a pretty traumatic childhood, born into a rather weird family dynamic with a step brother and his mother living with them, super elderly parents who probably needed the car keys taken away before they were ready; there’s the trauma of tomorrow’s Torah reading, the whole we’re-going-on-a-trip-son-actually-I-might-kill-you-wait-never mind episode; his mom dies, his dad remarries, starts a big new family. Isaac grows up, can’t have kids, then has twins but they are constantly bickering and finally he goes blind and his wife and one of the kids conspire to lie and cheat him and then one of the sons runs away…I mean this is not an easy life. For a kid named He will laugh. 

And yet – and here is where I need you all to lean in a little, listen up: Isaac is the one patriarch whose name does not change. Abraham started life as Avram; Jacob ends up being named Israel. Isaac stays Isaac. He will laugh. Even when his life is not so funny. He will laugh. 

And so must we.

Life is hard. For Isaac, and for all of us. Life is full of unexpected twists, traumas, loss. One natural response is anger and outrage, fear and stress; but another natural, God-given response is: to laugh. Yitzhak never changes his name - God never changes Isaac’s name - to teach us: no matter what comes our way, keep laughing. 

We don’t get to choose a whole lot about how this year unfolds. But God has given us the thing we need most to handle whatever comes our way: a sense of humor.

Let our Rosh Hashanah resolution be to laugh more this year. 

At ourselves, and with one another. 

May we learn from Abraham and Sarah and Yishmael and Yitzhak to laugh no matter what happens. To laugh at ourselves, to laugh with one another, to heal ourselves and this world by spreading smiles that turn to laughs that turn to joy.

Shana tova u’metuka. May this year be full of laughter for us all.

Tornados, School Shootings and Israeli Protests...