November, 2023 Megillah
RABBI'S NOTES
When Mickey was quite ill and in a lot of pain, there was a day when it was suggested that a certain very expensive and hard-to-acquire drug might bring him some relief. I headed to the pharmacy to see what I could do about getting the drug. It was a day when I was at my wits’ end anyhow, and standing in the long line at the pharmacy, I began to cry loudly and inconsolably. The beautiful Kelly, beloved pharmacist, heard me crying and came out from the back. She took me in her arms and held me for a long time while I wept. After a while I began to settle down, and she said, “Okay now, let’s think.”
I find myself remembering that moment now as, with all of us, I try to digest the horrors happening in Israel and Gaza and the surrounding areas. I have been away from you on vacation these past two weeks (most of it in bed with COVID, but that’s another story) and have not been available to hold you all during these initial terrible days and weeks. What I write now comes not from the inconsolable cry in my heart, which I know I share with all of you, but instead from “Okay now, let’s think.”
Like all of us, I’m sure, I’ve been reading the horrific headlines each day and some of the voluminous analysis and position-taking—some from voices I tend to align with, some with whom I tend to disagree. As a rabbi, I have also been following along as my colleagues in congregations have been trying to shepherd the huge and various passions of their congregants as they try to develop statements that express the views of their communities. I have also read with interest about universities, theater companies, magazine editorial staffs, cultural organizations, and others sundering because, to one contingent or another, statements they have issued do not feel adamant enough in their solidarity with one side or the other in this conflict.
I see no good coming to the world from this statement-jockeying. In the current nightmare landscape of murdered Israelis, hostages held and threatened, and increased global antisemitism—and in the current nightmare landscape of 2.3 million Gazans trapped and under siege, deprived of water, food and fuel and being brutally bombed day after day—different hearts and consciences among us will feel more aching solidarity with one part of the nightmare than with another. You may even have read a couple of sentences before this one and thought, “Margaret didn’t give enough weight in her words to the suffering of one side … or the other.” Some of us have deep roots in Israel. Some of us have spent important time there. Some of us have family or beloved friends there. Others of us have worked long and hard for Palestinian liberation and may have roots with this people and struggle.
There is a very natural impulse to expect that other people’s hearts will incline the same direction as our own,and, if they don’t, to try to find others with our own passionatelyheld sympathies. If I thought that we could save a single life by trying to rally each other to feel one kind of solidarity or another, I would encourage us to do so. But I don’t see any good coming from that, and much harm. So I encourage each of you to support any movement or effort that you feel is worthy: AIPAC or the Anti-Defamation League or Jewish Voice for Peace or T’ruah. Support aid to hungry Gazans or to Israeli soldiers: whatever you feel will be of use in this terrible moment. Sign statements, send money, go to demonstrations. Follow your own consciences.
When the MCJC Board of Directors had its annual Elul goals meeting—at which we try to step back from the minutia of the community life and consider where to point our energies in the coming year—we articulated these beautiful goals: “sustain and grow our community by offering a place of peace, facilitating interpersonal connections and, in a challenging world, providing sanctuary for the soul.” We certainly had no idea at that meeting how much our community would need to be a place of peace and sanctuary in the coming year. Let us try to be a refuge for each other’s hurting souls.
In a moment when we do not have a lot to offer directly toward any solution in Israel or Palestine, the most important gift we can offer to the world is an intact, loving, connected local Jewish community that is visibly and energetically Jewish. We need it for ourselves, and the world needs it too. We need it if things get worse, and we need it if, halevai, they don’t.
So I hope that we will each come to MCJC with as open a heart and mind as we can, knowing that we will be together with people who disagree with whatever pathway any of us may support. To be a sanctuary for each other’s souls, we may have to not say some of what is on our minds and hearts. We may have to pray for peace knowing that next to us is someone whose ideas about how to reach peace contradict our own. We may not have the comfort of knowing that we all agree with each other. We may not experience solidarity, butI hope we will feel community, acceptance and love.
In suggesting that we restrain our conversation about the current conflict, I realize that I am going against a commonplace wisdom that says it is always healthier to air differences, to allow them out in the open. Generally, I believe this wisdom. I hope that the day will come when we can all look back on this terrible time and share our thoughts and feelings together with openness and curiosity.But for now I urge that we trust each other as people of integrity and conscience and come together with goodwill to hold and nourish our Jewish community so that it will be alive for all of us, and for our larger community and world, whatever the days ahead may bring. I urge that we seek not unanimity of position with each other, but respect and love.
In the hardest days of Mickey’s illness I would chant to myself, Ein od mi’l’vado—“There is nothing but God”—and the English line that follows: “Love is all there is.”I return to that verse now: we don’t get to decide how things will go in Israel or in Gaza or points beyond, though we can and should do whatever we each think may be of help. The future is, in the truest sense, up to God, but we can do our best to love.
PAIGE NOTES
We enter into November with deep gratitude for the glorious rains we have already received, and hope for more to come. This Hebrew month of Cheshvan serves as the only moon cycle without any formal holidays, giving us spaciousness to catch our breath, to process and integrate all the spiritual richness of last month’s holidays. This year, we may also be using the extra time to hold our heavy hearts and pray together for peace. It can be jolting to go from a month packed with meaning to a more open month, from less intense headlines to much more intense headlines, so we may want to use the extra time to reach out to one another: to share a pot of tea, go on a walk, or even just send a loving text message.
People have been expressing their extreme feelings of loneliness and pain during these past few weeks, their sense of isolation and confusion, so may we take the extra steps to show one another that we’re not alone. No matter where we stand, we’re in this together ♡
with prayers for peace,
rabbi paige
