Tag: Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar

As we head into Shabbat and read Parashat Toldot, I have found myself thinking about the premiere of Wicked: Part Two – For Good. Many of you know that the world of Oz has been part of my thinking for a long time. My graduate thesis focused on The Wizard of Oz and its presence throughout American culture, and last year I wrote aboutChanukah, light, and the lessons we draw from Wicked and “defying gravity.” With part two of the Wicked phenomenon being released this week, the timing feels especially fitting to circle back to the narrative and its misunderstood main character. Parashat Toldot tells the story of Jacob and Esau, two brothers who grow up in the same home yet experience the world in very different ways.

“Chessed (kindness) begins at home.” This saying has begun making its way around Jewish schools and seminaries over the past decade or two. I remember vividly hearing it after many years of studying in Yeshiva, at the time I had begun dating. Out with a young lady who had studied in the finest of seminaries in Israel, I was told: “chessed begins at home.” Since then, I have heard it several times, and it struck me as odd every time I heard it. No one argues that one should make sure to be responsible for those around them before seeking other opportunities for kindness. The problems begin when “chessed begins at home”, becomes chessed also ends at home. Why is it a problem? Because if chessed began and ended at home, the Jewish people would never come into being.

An Israeli friend and teacher tells the following story: He was about to make a sandwich for his young daughter – using a well-known luncheon meat. When he told her what he would be serving her, she asked him: “What’s a post-trauma sandwich?” You get it, of course. Israelis, even young children, know what it means to live in a post-trauma time. So, let’s talk about post-trauma. Jews have been living that way since the very beginning. It was on the morning when Isaac awoke and sensed something was different. The camp was too still, the air too empty. Someone was missing.

When asked about the foundations of a Torah-observant life, most of us would likely point to Shabbat, the laws of kashrut (Jewish dietary practice), regular prayer, and Torah study. These, indeed, have stood at the heart of Jewish life for centuries. Yet, they do not fully capture the broader vision that the Torah first sets forth in this week’s parasha, Lech Lecha. “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you.” (Genesis 12:1-3). Here, God calls upon Abram (later Abraham) to leave the comfort and familiarity of his home—to uproot himself from his country, his birthplace, and his family—and embark upon a journey to an unknown land.

I went to Jewish day school from pre-kindergarten through high school — the kind where we sang Hatikvah before math, debated Torah before lunch, and learned to spell “chutzpah” before “committee.” And every October, without fail, the famous Halloween memo would arrive —reminding families that Halloween was a pagan holiday and that Jewish kids should skip the costumes and candy. At the time, it felt a little extreme. What was so wrong with one night of fun — sugar, masks, and pretending to be someone else? It took me years to understand that it wasn’t about the candy. It was about the costume. About whether we wear our Jewishness like a mask — something we take on and off — or like a mission, something we live every day. And that question — of identity, conviction, and courage — is at the heart of Parashat Noach.

When I read the news that the hostages had indeed been released as planned, I shed tears of relief, tears of joy, tears of sorrow for those who were lost, so many tears filled with such a mix of intense emotions. The co-mingling of joy and sorrow is a leitmotif in Jewish life. From breaking a glass under the chuppah to Monday’s release of the hostages, we Jews live with a mix of complex emotions at the heights of our happiness and the depths of our despair. Hagai Luber, whose son made the ultimate sacrifice for the Jewish people, in the poem he wrote "With Unmixed Feelings," invites us to reflect on a complex reality where joy and grief coexist, and each moment presents emotional and ethical choices. May this be a new beginning (a kind of Bereisheet or Genesis) for the hostages and their families, the people of Israel, and the Jewish people around the world.

On Oct. 14, 1663, the English civil servant Samuel Pepys decided to pay a visit to the Jewish synagogue in London’s Creechurch Lane. Jews were a novelty in Restoration England. They had been expelled from the realm nearly four centuries earlier, and it was only in 1656 that they had once again been permitted to live on English soil. Pepys, knowing nothing of Judaism, wasn’t aware that his excursion happened to coincide with the most euphoric day in the Jewish calendar – the festival of Simchat Torah, or “rejoicing with the Law.” What he saw bewildered him.

One of the privileges and responsibilities that I have as a congregational professional is serving on the faculty of the Union for Reform Judaism's summer camps. Imagine my surprise when three summers ago, my first serving in the unit at Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute (OSRUI) that focuses on the arts for students in the seventh through tenth grades-that our topic was Kohelet, the Book of Ecclesiastes. My immediate reaction was: "It's so dark. This is summer camp where they are supposed to have fun! What are they going to get out of the ramblings of an older person reviewing and lamenting on life?" Three summers later, the staff members-and even some of the campers-are still talking about the session. The mere mention of the word Kohelet evokes a nod, a knowing utterance, of something that was deep yet accessible, provocative yet distressing, memorable and powerful.

Parashat Ha’azinu, which we read this Shabbat, is almost entirely poetry: Moses’ farewell song to the people. At the end of his life, he does not leave them with laws or lectures, but with words to be sung. Moses understood that songs linger. A melody can echo in our minds for years, touching the heart as much as the mind. He wanted his message to endure not only as teaching but as music — something that could be carried in memory and spirit. Commenting on a verse that could sound quite bleak - “See now that I, I am He… I put to death and I bring to life” (Deut. 32:39) - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z”l, explained that it reveals the rhythm of covenantal life: brokenness and renewal are always intertwined. As we have just emerged from the Ten Days of Repentance, we know this rhythm well. We faced our flaws, our brokenness, and then celebrated the possibility of renewal.

The sound of the shofar is primal & ancient. It produces a strange sense of awe and reverence. Think back to that moment before the first blast is sounded; a hushed expectancy fills the synagogue. At the moment we hear the first piercing note, we are struck with an almost childlike wonderment. And for most of us, it is one of our earliest childhood memories. The notes of the shofar are not beautiful by any musical standard, but somehow, we find in their thin piercing blasts something that calls to us. We feel connected to the shepherds and kings, the prophets and prophetesses, who first heard these same notes in the land of Israel more than 3000 years ago. But what is the call of the shofar?

The Practice of Gratitude: Parashat Ki Tavo opens with Bikkurim, the offering of first fruits. Israelite farmers were instructed to take the first fruits of their harvest and bring them to the Temple in Jerusalem. They would present their baskets to the priest and recite a formal declaration: a brief retelling of Jewish history, from wandering to slavery to our arrival in the Land, culminating in gratitude to God for the Land and its abundance. But Bikkurim wasn’t just a personal act — it became a ritual of public celebration.

I was eight years old in Basel, Switzerland, the day I learned about the way places have layers. It was a chilly, autumn Shabbos, and my father and I were on a walk by the river. My father pointed out different sights as we walked: there is the house where his elementary school friend lived. There is the gate they walked through to get to school, there is the shop run by the woman rumored to be a witch. And there, he said, pointing to a small, shady area, is the place where they burned the Jews in the 14th century. The rest of the afternoon was like a double exposure... For the first time, I began to understand what it is like when something so beautiful becomes, while retaining all its magic, something terrible as well.

Life moves in cycles. The world around us is never static: days rise and fall, seasons turn, tides ebb and flow. Scientists tell us that even the tiniest parts of our bodies - every cell - operate on a circadian rhythm, a 24-hour clock that governs sleep, metabolism, mood, and even immunity. When we live in harmony with these rhythms, we thrive. When we ignore them, everything feels out of balance. The natural world preaches the same lesson. Trees shed their leaves in autumn, not in despair, but in preparation. By letting go, they conserve energy, store life within their roots, and ready themselves for renewal in the spring. What looks like loss is in fact a cycle of strength. The Jewish year is built on this wisdom of cycles.

It is a rabbinic dictum not to attempt to weigh the value of one mitzvah against the other. Rather than saying that this mitzvah is more important than another, we are to recognize that all mitzvot are grounded in our brit (covenant) with the Holy One and derive their authority out of our chosen response to God's will. And yet... it is hard to resist the temptation to create a hierarchy. So, at least in the popular mind, there are some mitzvot so central to Jewish identity that they are almost synonymous with Judaism itself. Lighting Shabbat candles, wearing a head covering, and kashrut, the dietary laws. So central, in fact, is kashrut, that it has become the way to refer to any action or person that is moral, upright, and proper. In that sense, it has even entered the English language.

Let’s be honest: sometimes it takes losing something to truly appreciate what we had. For many of us, gratitude only kicks in when the Wi-Fi drops… or worse, the phone drops (!), and we brace ourselves for the worst only to flip it over and realize it’s not broken. That moment of relief? That’s modern-day gratitude. On a more serious note, when health, mobility, or time slip away, the fragility of these things becomes starkly clear. At 50, facing a terminal neurological condition (PSP – Progressive Supranuclear Palsy) and having just experienced the first need to use a wheelchair, life has come into sharper focus. And I can honestly say I feel enormous gratitude for the blessings I have and continue to receive. It’s a perspective shift forced upon me one I’m not sure I would have arrived at on my own.

Each year, in the dog days of summer, our text and our tradition point us towards love. Coming out of the intense mourning of Tisha B’Av, we find ourselves poised at the nexus of Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of Comfort and Shabbat Vaetchanan, this Shabbat on which we read the Torah’s commandment to love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength. And tonight, largely unnoticed outside of Israel, we’ll celebrate Tu B’Av…. And, while the modern celebrations mirror our Hallmark holiday, Tu B’Av appears in rabbinic literature and beyond as a day of comfort and healing, a return to love after the pain and grief of Tisha B’Av — commemorating tragedies in Jewish history and considered to be the saddest day on the Jewish calendar.

There’s a well-known story (apocryphal or true, we’ll never know) of Napoleon riding by a synagogue on Tisha B’Av (which falls tomorrow night through Sunday) and hearing wailing and crying from within. When he asked an aide what was going on, he was told the Jews were mourning the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem 2,000 years before. His response: “A nation that cries and fasts for over 2,000 years for their land and Temple will surely be rewarded with both.” I heard that story for the first time at Camp Pembroke, the Jewish girls camp I attended from ages 9 to 19. And the main question that I remember thinking about the story at the time was: Why were they crying so loudly that Napoleon could hear them from outside!?!

Most of us remember playing hide-and-seek as children. I often thought of the game as one that revealed the difference between those of us who relished being “it” (trying to find their friends after the proper period of counting) and those for whom being “it” came with severe anxiety. As far as the hiders went, growing up was marked by being able to find ever more sophisticated places to take refuge. It was only when the cry of “Ollie Ollie oxen free!” could be heard that we knew it was safe to come out. And it all began again from there. This Shabbat we read the Torah portions Matot-Masei, which taken together, bring the book of Numbers to a close. Among the many matters discussed — such as the rules for entering a foreign city and the taking-on and annulling of vows — are the cities of refuge to be established once the Israelites settle in Canaan.