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A year ago, Rabbi Berezin and I sat down to workshop this Pride sermon. She said “You could talk about the legislative session,” and I said, “Absolutely not.” I needed time to figure out how to talk about it, first, so this is the sermon that I’ve spent a year figuring out how to write.

The 2023 session included attacks on drag performance, gender-affirming healthcare, and abortion access. Because of the sheer volume of these bills, and the repetitive process they went through - from the hearing to general file to select file - we ended up in Lincoln a lot. My friend Charlie and I organized trips for high schoolers from Central. I went with my parents, with Temple people, with my friends. We drove for an hour. We sang songs in the rotunda. We crammed into the benches of the balcony and heard senators say horrific things about us. We drove back in the dark. We drove for an hour. We filled the hallways with signs and chants. We pleaded before committees. We drove back in the dark.

At some point in the spring, this became a ritual. What brings ritual out of repetition? I learned that what makes a ritual work is its transformative nature. Something changes, internally or externally. For me, what changed is realizing the underlying meaning and communication in our actions, regardless of their results. I began to understand that, no matter what the legislature ended up doing, our presence was an act of communication - that LGBTQ+ people, and trans youth in particular, belong in Nebraska, are valued and loved, no matter what. 

This week’s parsha is Chukim - the laws that we have in Judaism that defy easy rationalization. Some Jewish laws, mishpatim, make really clear sense: no stealing, no murdering, et cetera. Other laws, not so much - mystifying, confusing, troubling - these are the chukim. At times, we follow them first, not fully understanding how their meaning might fit into our modern lives. Our understanding of their meaning often comes through our actions - through doing them without fully knowing why. I kept going back to Lincoln, even when we lost, even when it was the last thing I wanted to be doing - we kept returning.

The question, “What is the point?” is a valuable question. It’s a scary question to ask. It confronts the possibility that there might not be an answer. There is so much that we watch. On an international scale, we watch the continuing devastation of war, we grieve our children, all of them our children. We watch the violent forces of authoritarianism and ethnonationalism rise in our state, our nation and around the world. In many ways, we are powerless to this violence. Yet we are still drawn to try: to try to understand, to create change, to do “our part,” to do something more than watch, even knowing our relative powerlessness.

The point, the “why,” is the communication of meaning. There is the pragmatic aspect of activism, law and policy we try to impact. At the same time, the ritual aspect adds personal and communal meaning: a declaration of values to each other, and to ourselves. 

What are the ways, in all of the communities that we walk between, that our actions and symbols communicate value? Are they the values that we want to be communicating?

Tomorrow, I hope we’ll walk together in Pride. I hope we’ll talk to each other, to our neighbors, to people with similar and vastly different experiences and identities. I hope we challenge ourselves and each other, that we wrestle, that we are willing to learn. I hope that we refuse to let dehumanization infiltrate our communities and I hope that we show up for more than ourselves. In a vastly uncontrollable world, here, I think, is the point. 

Shabbat Shalom and Happy Pride. 

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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.