I gave a d'var torah a couple weeks ago on shortish notice and forgot to post it here. This is for Bo, the parsha that contains the last three plagues and the actual exodus from Egypt.

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The pattern is familiar: Moshe goes to Paro to demand freedom, Paro refuses, Moshe announces the next plague, and God carries it out. Paro says he's sorry and asks for relief, God lifts the plague, and then Paro hardens his heart and we start all over again. There's no change; the oppression never seems to end.

Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky points out that for most of the plagues these negotiations are strained but civil. Moshe and Paro are on opposite sides of an argument, but nobody is throwing tantrums as far as we can tell. But their last meeting is different: after telling Paro what is to come, the torah tells us that Moshe went out from Paro in hot anger.

Was he angry about Paro's stubborn refusal to let the people go? That doesn't seem likely; they've had that well-worn exchange many times before. No, what is different this time is the cost of Paro's recalcitrance.

The first nine plagues caused extensive damage to Mitzrayim, to the point where even Paro's advisors are urging him to give up because Egypt is surely lost. The first nine plagues destroyed crops and livestock, caused injury and sickness, and massively inconvenienced people -- but they weren't fatal to anyone who heeded the warnings to come in out of the hailstorm.

The last plague is different: there is an unavoidable human cost. The last plague targets based on who you are, not on what wrongs you did, and it kills. It's not individual punishment; it's a tax on those living in Egypt. Surely not all of the dead deserved it, even in a society with many evildoers and oppressors.

God does not want the death of sinners, our prophets tell us, but that they should repent. God wouldn't be sending this last plague if there were an alternative. Moshe sees this, Rabbi Kamenetzky points out, and it fills him with anger at the Paro who causes widespread death. This could have been avoided. These deaths are Paro's fault.

But wait, one might say -- it is God who sends this plague, and thus God could avert this widespread loss of human life. It's God's fault, not Paro's, right?

My father, of blessed memory, taught me many things. One of them is that we solve problems with words, not with fists. Another of them is that giving bullies what they demand does not end the bullying. There was a kid in my grade who, starting in kindergarten, was physically abusive to me, and in the many parental conferences that followed, his parents told my parents that boys will be boys and if I didn't react he would probably stop. My father said that was unacceptable. This went on for years, until I was given permission to respond. The bullying ended the day I decked that kid with my large-print dictionary. We don't solve problems with violence, except that sometimes we have to.

I hit the kid; did that make it my fault he got hurt? Absolutely not, according to me, my parents, and the school principal. Lesser interventions had failed. Now my attack didn't do permanent damage, didn't even break his nose -- nothing like the last plague in that regard. But the principle is the same: the oppressor is culpable for the consequences of his behavior. The blood of the victims of collateral damage is on the hands of the evildoers who refuse to resolve conflicts peacefully.

Rabbi Elie Kaunfer from Hadar points out a surprising passage near the end of the parsha, after the final plague, when Paro asks Moshe and Aharon to pray for him. Say what now? The Paro who has done so much damage asks his victims to pray for his welfare? Why would they do that?

Rabbi Kaunfer points out a rabbinic tradition that Paro did not die at the Sea of Reeds with his army. Through the midrashic principle of the conservation of biblical personalities (that's not Rabbi Kaunfer's label), Paro went on to become the king of Nineveh. When Yonah comes to Nineveh to announce their impending destruction, it is the king who asks for forgiveness and leads his nation in teshuva to avert the decree.

Perhaps Moshe and Aharon did pray for Paro like he asked. More specifically, perhaps they prayed that he repent and do teshuva, like we pray our enemies will do in the daily Amidah. That's a prayer I can get behind -- that oppressors big and small soften their hearts, stop doing harm, and turn toward the right path. Ken y'hi ratzono.

D'var torah given in the minyan yesterday morning.

Ten generations.

At the beginning of this parsha, God created humanity as the pinnacle of creation, and declared it tov meod -- very good. Before even the first Shabbat, Adam had transgressed the divine will and been expelled from the garden, but that didn't merit further destruction. Adam and Chava produced children and their descendants began to fill the earth, as commanded. It might not have been tov meodany more, but it was apparently still ok with God.

Ten generations later, at the end of this same parsha, things have descended to the point where God is ready to blot it all out. The world had become corrupt and lawless, filled with wickedness and violence.

Ten generations isn't a lot. Many of us are blessed to have known three or four generations of our families, maybe more. As a child I met a great-grandparent and my niece now has a child -- that's six. It's hard to imagine that the distance from my grandparents to my grand-niece spans half the distance from tov meod to unredeemable evil.

And yet... it's been roughly ten generations since the founding of the United States. The US didn't start out as tov meod -- slavery was normal, native peoples were badly mistreated, and sexism and racism were the way of the world. But the people of that generation also pursued values we would call at least tov: basic freedoms of speech and assembly and religion and personal autonomy, protections from government abuses, and fostering a society where people could live securely and pursue happiness.

Ten generations later, how are we doing? We've made progress in some areas, but we've also done a lot of harm. We've pursued the destruction of the planet we were given to care for, there is widespread corruption and injustice from local jurisdictions all the way up to the international level, crusaders on both the left and the right seek to blot out perspectives they disagree with, and we've become a polarized, combative, and intolerant society. I'm going to focus on this last one, both because it's the one we can do the most about at an individual level and because I want to avoid the appearance of political advocacy in a tax-exempt synagogue right before an election.

Within just a single generation, we've become more polarized, more isolated in our bubbles, and more certain that we are right and anybody who doesn't agree with us completely is evil. We could blame social media for filtering what we see, but aren't we complicit? There was Internet before Twitter and there was mass media before the Internet, and we've always tended to gravitate toward people like us, haven't we? And yet, we used to more easily have civil conversations with people we disagreed with; we used to be better at respectful discourse and its give-and-take. Going farther back, Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai disagreed with each other on almost everything, yet they found common ground in the study hall, maintained friendships, and intermarried. They taught each other's positions, not just their own, to their students. They disagreed, vehemently, without being disagreeable.

Very few issues in our society are cut-and-dried. We can't stay in echo chambers, only hearing perspectives we already agree with, and expect to get anywhere. We need to be open to diversity. Diversity means people and ideas that aren't exactly like us. Diversity means complexity. It means setting aside the goal of "winning" in favor of the goal of understanding the human beings we're interacting with. It means having civil conversations that are nuanced and complex. It means being open to new ideas. It means asking questions rather than jumping to the conclusions that would be most convenient for us, like "he's a bigot" or "she hates America" or "you're not capable of understanding". The results won't align completely with any side's talking points, but they just might help us move forward together constructively.

Try it. Try having a conversation with someone who disagrees with you on something. It doesn't have to be something extreme and emotional.
Try asking the person to explain the reasoning.
Try asking questions.
Try to understand, and resist the urge to prepare your counter-arguments while half-listening for keywords to pounce on.
Assume your conversational partner is as principled, ethical, and thoughtful as you are.
Assume good intentions.
See how long you can keep it up. Then ask yourself: based on what I've learned, do I need to re-evaluate anything in my own thinking?

It's hard, isn't it? But what's the alternative? Can we afford to continue our descent? What comes after "uncivil"? How many generations do we have before our society is unredeemable?

Ten generations of social decay, hatred, and violence led from Adam to Noach. But that wasn't the end. After the flood, another ten generations led from Noach to Avraham. After sinking to the depths of evil, society climbed back toward tov.

Our society hasn't sunk as far as Noach's generation -- yet. We do not need to reach bottom, when only the divine promise prevents the heavens and the depths opening up again, in order to start climbing back up. At Yom Kippur we confessed to many sins including sinat chinam, baseless hatred, and we also said that we can return from our errors. We can turn from ways that are uncivil or worse – individually, one interaction at a time. We are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free from trying. Let's see how far we can get together.

Yesterday's d'var torah for the minyan (recorded in advance):

Ha'azinu consists primarily of Moshe's final poem, recited to the people before he ascends the mountain to see the land and die.

The language is very different from what I'm used to in the torah. It is not the language of events and facts and commands; it is the poetry of evocative images and allegory. It resembles the writings of the prophets -- which makes sense, as Moshe was a prophet too and these are his final words. Prophets give us words of admonition and words of comfort, and Moshe here does both.

The plain reading, the p'shat, of this text is a recounting of Yisreal's relationship with God. It's mostly focused on the negative -- God did all these good things and Israel rebelled and worshipped false gods and so on, and God withdrew. While it's mostly written in the past tense, it also predicts future events. And in the end there is a nechemta, a consolation -- that if the people return from those evil ways, God will be there for them. This was the case for the people Moshe was speaking to -- they were redeemed from the sins of their parents and granted entry into the land of Israel.

It seems possible to read this on another level, too. Moshe is at the end of a long life, the last third of which has been filled with contention and challenges. He, too, rebelled against God and cried out at the apparent unfairness of the punishment he received. But here, at the very end, it is clear that he has accepted God's authority, praising Tzur Yisrael, the Rock of Israel, repeatedly. He has returned to God, and when he dies God Himself takes Moshe's final breath with a kiss.

We usually read this portion on Shabbat Shuva, the Shabbat before Yom Kippur, when we too are focused on reflection of the past and aspirations for the future. We are especially challenged this year, when our our world, our country, our society, and perhaps our personal lives have seen many challenges. We face plague, violence, turmoil, corruption from our national leaders, personal losses, fear and uncertainty. But while we pray and confess in the plural, Shabbat Shuva and the whole season of repentance really call on us to take a personal accounting and not just a societal one.

There are two things I think are important about that personal accounting. The first is that it's important to look in both directions. We look back on the past year, on places where we missed the mark, and we try to make amends for the damage we've caused, try to set things right, seek and grant forgiveness. It's a mix of depressing, embarrassing, and cleansing. Sometimes we've strayed from each other and strayed from God. But then we look ahead -- teshuva is about returning to the right path, so what will we do differently in the coming year? What will we be more careful of? What hazards do we now know are waiting to trip us up so we should look out for them? What will we learn from the past, and how will we apply it?

The second thing is that we don't have to do it all at once. If we can repair one relationship, make amends for one thing we've done wrong, accept amends and forgive one person who has wronged us, that is progress. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Our Yom Kippur liturgy includes a blanket forgiveness clause where we say that we forgive people who have wronged us, even if they didn't ask like they're required to. When I say that passage, I quietly insert "except...". There are a few people who have wronged me severely -- I'm not talking about passing slights here -- and until they do teshuva then no, I do not forgive them. I'm not holding a grudge; I'm just waiting for them to make amends. There were five people on that list last year, people I was waiting to see positive change from, sometimes for years, and this year I was able to remove three of them. It feels great to be able to make those repairs, which require both parties to help. Unfortunately there are additions to my list this year, all rooted in a single evil, hurtful source, but maybe someday they, too, will see the harm they're doing and want to fix it. It's not under my control, so there's no point in focusing on it and letting it pull me down.

Ha'azinu is, on its face, about Yisrael's failings and teshuva, its path. On another level, it's about Moshe's path too. And maybe on yet another level it's about us, our path. Looking back we see failures and rebellion and wrongs done and received -- but looking ahead, we see return and renewed relationships.

Israel returned, and will again in the future. Moshe returned. May we also be able to return, one step at a time.

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Adapted and reposted on Judaism Codidact.

I gave this d'var torah the Shabbat before last, for parshat Pinchas (Numbers 25:10–30:1). For context, read chapter 25 from the beginning; the break between weekly portions is in the middle of the episode.

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And it was that when Moshe came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the law in his hand, when he descended, Moshe did not know that the skin of his face sent forth rays of light when he talked with Him. When Aharon and all Israel saw that his face sent forth rays of light, they were afraid to come near. Moshe called to them, and Aharon and the chiefs of the people returned to him and he spoke to them, and after that, all Israel came and Moshe commanded to them all that God had spoken on Mount Sinai. And when Moshe was done speaking with them he put a veil over his face. (Exodus 34:29-33)

Moshe had a problem. Ok, he had several problems -- the people who had encountered God built themselves the golden calf only forty days later, lots of them died, God wanted to destroy the rest and start over, and Moshe persuaded Him to relent. But Moshe also had another problem, covered in just a few sentences at the end of the parsha.

Moshe was different, different in a way that bothered other people. He had come down from the mountain the second time literally aglow with God's splendor. The bright light shining from his face was painful to look at. His abnormal condition frightened the people and prevented them from working with him.

This condition -- this disability -- was not under his control and it wasn't his fault. It's just the way God made him.

So what did Moshe do? He could have said to the community "this is from God; suck it up" and expect them to deal with it. It wasn't his fault, after all; there was nothing wrong with him. He could have placed the burden and the guilt on them. If they were sensitive, caring, and inclusive people they would just ignore his disability no matter what effect it had on them, right?

But that's not what he did. Instead, Moshe put on a veil. He took on some extra work and inconvenience to mitigate what he could mitigate. This allowed him to meet the community part-way -- he adjusted what he could adjust and they adjusted what they could adjust.

Moshe and Yisrael are a model for how communities can function and be inclusive. Everybody does what he can and we all meet in the middle. Nobody places the burden entirely on the other.

I have some vision problems. To mitigate this, I have to sit in the front row if a presenter is using slides -- even though I would otherwise sit farther back, even though it can be ostracizing to sit alone up front. (C'mon, we all know nobody likes the front row.) I carry a magnifying glass to read smaller print. The community, in turn, provides large-print copies of the siddur and paper copies of the Visual T'filah slides, and is understanding if my torah reading is a little bumpy sometimes. And I, in turn, understand that if things get too bad, if my torah-reading moves from "occasional problem" to "near-certain failure", it's not fair for me to insist, to impose. Not all people can do all things, and that's ok. So we work together. It's not my burden alone and it's not the community's burden alone.

A friend tried for years to have a child and finally succeeded -- but her daughter has cerebral palsy. She has good days and bad days and sometimes has uncontrollable outbursts. My friend and her daughter go to Shabbat services -- and are ready to step out of the room if need be. This is a burden for my friend, but it's what decent people do. The community, in turn, understands that there will be some noise sometimes.

My friend doesn't demand that the community smile and nod and say nothing if her child has a prolonged crying burst; she takes her daughter out into the hall. I don't demand that presenters avoid using visual materials if I can get my own copy and follow along. Moshe didn't demand that the people just shut up and avert their eyes until sunglasses could be invented; he put on a veil. All of us also make some demands on the community, expecting the community to make accommodations, but we have to do our part first.

Inclusive communities do not place the whole burden of dealing with disabilities on the disabled. But well-functioning inclusive communities also don't place the whole burden on their other members. The whole point of being in a community is that we work together, each contributing what we can and striving to be flexible.

A veil is inconvenient and probably uncomfortable, but because Moshe wore it the people were able to stay together and ultimately enter the promised land. It is my hope and prayer that, when we're the ones who are unintentionally and unavoidably placing some challenge before others, we too can take the steps we're able to take instead of expecting others to take on the whole task.

I gave (approximately) this d'var torah back in October for Parshat Vayeira, Genesis 18-22, but it took me this long to get around to cleaning it up for publication. (Specifically, I had to "vague-ify" some references; there are details I'm willing to share "live" with 30 or so friends that I'm not willing to publish for posterity to the Internet, y'know?)

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There is a prayer/song in the Yom Kippur liturgy called "Ki Anu Amecha", of the form: "we are your people, you are our king; we are your flock, you are our shepherd; we are your children, you are our father" etc. Last year for Kol Nidrei my rabbi asked me to write a short kavanah, or intention, to read at the service before singing this. (In a great display of trust of which I am quite mindful, he did not screen this before I read it in front of 900 people.) I didn't post this here at the time; I meant to post it before Yom Kippur this year instead. But I didn't, so here it is now.

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The Avinu Malkeinu prayer describes what God is to us -- our father and king. Both of these are one-sided; there is nothing about our role, our place in God's realm. The caring father and the just king both act upon us, not with us. So after days of pleading to the frightening, distant Avinu Malkeinu, it is time to add new images to our conception of God. It is time for us to be actors and not just acted-upon.

Ki Anu Amecha adds the relationship that has been missing until now. God is still Malkeinu, but we are his people. Still Avinu, but we are his children. Now we matter, taking our place as partners with God. Further, our view of God is not limited now to Avinu and Malkeinu -- God is shepherd to our flock, portion to our congregation, and most powerfully, our friend.

Friend? I don't know if I'm ready for God to be my friend. That's even more intimidating than Avinu and Malkeinu -- a true friend knows me as well as, or better than, I know myself. I am flawed, broken, not the best person I can be, and it's all laid bare for a true friend. Can I stand up to the scrutiny of a divine friend? On this Yom Kippur I look more for the divine teacher or the divine shepherd. I am grateful that God offers us so many ways to relate to each other; if one does not resonate for me this year, another will. What is most important is that the relationship exists; in Ki Anu Amecha God reaches out to us as surely as we reach out to him, true partners in teshuva and atonement on this grave night of Kol Nidrei.