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Did you ever have a week where it felt like everything was leading to basically the same conversation or the same point? Well, this week was like that for me. I got the opportunity to start reading yet another new book (I’m now in the middle, ok just finished the first chapter, of about 5 books at the same time), and once again a theme emerged. Values in conflict or at least in need of balance.  

Rabbi Donniel Hartman’s new book: Who are the Jews—and who can we become? Explores the divide between what he calls Genesis Judaism, which is the tribal Jewish people nature of Judaism, from Exodus Judaism which he describes as the God centered, commandment practice of Judaism, and he is exploring the challenges of relying too much on one aspect of Judaism to the detriment of the other. 

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s book on Repentance and repair is exploring the values of centering the victims and centering the journey of repentance of the perpetrator. In chapters I have not yet gotten too she will explore being witness, perpetrator and victim all in the same human. 

Rabbi Sack’s essays about this weeks Torah portion Behar depict the values of freedom and equality as values in tension. He teaches that the beauty of Torah, and specifically this portion is the insistence that while equality and freedom cannot be achieved simultaneously, they must both be achieved. For this the cycle of time is used as Torah teaches us to have a shmita year, a year where debts are remitted, slaves are freed, and the land lays fallow. And every 50 years to have a Jubilee where all land is returned to its original owner, for all of the land is only on loan from God. Rabbi Sacks teaches that inequality and poverty are inevitable, but that Torah teaches they must not be permanent conditions and constrains our freedoms with commandments to return property and remit debts. Behar teaches that the tension between Freedom and Equality can be alleviated with time, in this case a regular cycle of timed equalizers.  

This week I also explored the idea of a future Sabbatical for myself. I explored the concept of what happens when Jews disagree as I began to prepare for our Leil Tikkun Shavuot, I felt the conflict of giving my daughter the freedom to choose a decision I don’t think was wise. I had conversations about the cycle of human destruction and the struggle to balance it with hope and help. 

From the uplifting Cantors Concert on Sunday afternoon until today, I feel like I’ve been revisiting the same conversation. What happens when our values are in conflict with each other? How do we balance two (or even more) values with each other? How do we maintain or build relationships with people who prioritize values we disagree with, or seem in great tension with ours? 

I wonder if, like in Behar, the answer is time. Certainly, in the long arc of history the pendulum swings: sometimes more conservative, sometimes more liberal. Certainly, humans have always had great capacity to destroy one another, and also the capacity to love, create, and heal. While I struggle with the thought that we are once again on the pendulum heading towards a dark and destructive future; I do have hope, I do have faith, that like we have throughout history, we will swing back the other way, the values of building bridges will overcome the fear of the other; the value of sharing resources will overcome our fear of having too little for ourselves. The value of learning of someone else’s’ pain, struggle and heart, will overcome our fear and discomfort of being wrong, or hearing that we have caused pain, or knowing that when our value was on top someone else was suffering its consequence.  

This week I was also at the Samuel Bak Museum speaking to the curator regarding a potential future collaboration, she was explaining some of the themes of Sam’s art and his current struggles with the actions of October 7th and the response. She told me he has dedicated his work towards witnessing the destruction of the holocaust, towards inspiring a better future and towards the hope that tikkun, that repair may be possible. But like the cyclical nature of human destruction, he is struggling to find hope and find repair in this 91st year of life.  

Like Sam I am struggling, feeling that I am correct about the oncoming cliff does not make riding the waterfall better or safer. So I turn towards the small things I can control. The small parts of life that need not feel as disastrous as the national and international values conflicts, we are witnessing.  

In my Omer prayer from today I wrote: 

Lo Bashamayim hi: She is not in the heavens! 
Torah, instruction, access to God  
This is not in the heavens or across the sea, it is not out of reach from you. 
Torah, instruction, access to God  
How do I connect? 
Through daily acts, through daily prayers, through daily reminders of life. 
Thank you God for the air we breath, 
Thank you God for the love in my heart. 
Thank you God for the food available to me. 
 
It is the everyday acts, the consciousness of their blessing that brings us closer to Torah, instruction and access to God… 
 
Lo Bashamayim Hi: Torah, instruction, and access to God; she is not in the heavens, but she does depend on us taking steps towards her mysteries, towards her oneness, and towards her guidance for our lives. 

Torah is not so far but sometimes reaching for hope can be as difficult as asking for help. Reaching for balance when every value feels like the end of the world, reaching for compromise when the pain that causes damages the already vulnerable; and finding the humanity, not only in the other, but in the other whose values are so different. These prospects feel very far away, and yet also something that can be done one person at a time, one conversation at a time, one opening of heart, opening of mind, opening of spirit at a time.  

Let us find a Sh’mita year for ourselves, let us lean into the things that bring us hope; and away from the things that bring us fear, and pain and despair. Let us know that when values are in tension, inequality does ensue, but we can choose to rebalance, wipe the scales and return human dignity; again, and again and again. Then perhaps we can rekindle our private hopes, renew our communal gratitude, and become the tikkun the repair needed to swing the pendulum back the other way. 

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Watch the entirety of Friday’s service here.

Temple Talk is a recap of sermons given from the Bimah for those who missed a Sermon or who wanted to revisit the words spoken at a previous sermon.