Learning

Parashat Toldot - 23 Cheshvan 5772

Rabbi Jonathan Freirich — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 14:37:54 +0000

Torah thought of the day.

Some of our family traditions are worth abandoning. Isaac fears for his life on account of Rebecca’s beauty, something that Abraham his father feared before him, and poses as Rebecca’s brother instead of her husband. While this turns out alright for Isaac, as it had profited his father before him, family traditions of bad behavior should be left behind, not perpetuated.

More on this as we examine traditions of deception in the rest of this week’s reading of Toldot, Genesis 25:19-28:9. See the full text here.

Sukkot & Simchat Torah for Kids

Rabbi Jonathan Freirich — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:37:11 +0000

My colleague Cantor Mary Thomas and I address 1st graders on Sukkot about that holiday and Simchat Torah, enjoy:

Video

Learning in front of everyone

Rabbi Jonathan Freirich — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:44:11 +0000

Here I am, attempting to learn and share what I learned on Yom Kippur:

[photo copywritten 2011 David E. Powers]

Jewish Ethics on the 'Ger'

Rabbi Jonathan Freirich — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:34:27 +0000

Parashat Ki Teitzei 5771 - Saturday, September 10, 2011
On the occasion of the B’nei Mitzvah of Gil Gerber and Daniel Gershen

One might suspect, considering the closeness of your last names, that Daniel and Gil’s date had been determined by alphabetical order.

What I find most interesting about your names though, is how we can connect the letters in common - G-E-R - to the parashah that you just read, and to our Haftarah reading.

The Haftarah continues the cycle of consolation that lead us from the lowest point on the Jewish calendar - Tisha be-Av, the Ninth of Av, the worst day of Jewish history, in mid-summer - to arguably the highest point, our High Holy Day Season starting at the end of this month. All our Haftarah readings at this time remind us of our blessings after revisiting the stories of tragedy in our history. Today’s reading, from Isaiah Chapter 54, continues in that theme, and reminds us of the divine promise made to Noah to never destroy the world again. On this weekend of commemoration, we get to strike a hopeful chord.

As to the meaning of your names - the Hebrew word “Ger” refers to the stranger, the traveler between communities. In your parashah, in addition to all of the commandments that you read, we find on other instruction in this phrase in Deuteronomy 23:8: “You are not to oppress the Egyptian, for your were a stranger in their land.”

With all of the other wonderful messages you sent us about this week’s reading, here is one more - all of them are supported by this central ethic in Judaism. Do not oppress others because we have sympathy for the oppressed - we were oppressed before. More importantly, do not oppress others who once oppressed you either!

Both of you have not only read and led admirably today, you also gave of your time and efforts freely in your Tzedakah projects - working with survivors of domestic abuse and the families of our soldiers. You embraced this ethic, this notion that we should not only not oppress others, but that people in difficulty deserve our assistance. That the extension of not oppressing others can be found in working towards a world in which no one is oppressed, either by what we do, or what we allow to happen around us.

Whether by pursuing justice through good deeds, through learning, or through the leadership that you have shown us all today, we honor you both, Gil and Daniel.

Getting out of the way

Rabbi Jonathan Freirich — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 01:40:29 +0000

Parashat Re-eh 5771 - Friday, August 26, 2011 - Posted a little late

Shabbat Shalom!

I am starting with two stories tonight - one about me, and one about Moses - please don’t get the impression that I am drawing any comparisons whatsoever.

Many of you know that I used to do a lot of cycling. Last year, while on a long training ride, coming down a very big hill in Tahoe, and going pretty fast, I approached an intersection where someone made a left turn in front of me. I wasn’t really cut off, but I began to get a little irritated. With my heritage as a recovering inhabitant of New York City, I almost offered a rude gesture in response to my near-inconvenience.

On that same ride I had been listening to some music on my phone, in this case a song by a band called Gogol Bordello. One line in that song is: “There is no us and them”. That line stood out as I realized that this person driving may have had other things on her or his mind. Perhaps they had an emergency, maybe they didn’t see me, and more importantly, if we are all in it together, if there is really “no us and them” then this event on the road wasn’t about me. I stopped the process of getting irritated, and had a better day because of it.

Moses had an anger problem. Way back in the book of Numbers, Moses faces a horde of grumbling and complaining and most importantly, thirsty, Israelites, and provides water for them from a rock. Instead of following God’s instructions and speaking to the rock, invoking God’s name, Moses strikes the rock with his staff to bring forth the water. Considering how annoying the Israelites have been, hitting something didn’t seem like a totally unreasonable reaction, and yet God uses this incident to refuse Moses entrance into Israel. That day, Moses may have thought it was all about him and his importance in front of the people, not about the people and their needs.

So Moses understands the importance of getting out of the way, of not being in the center, of identifying with the bigger picture that includes everyone. Moses spends the entirety of the Book of Deuteronomy sharing his version of the lessons we need to succeed without him.

This week we read from Deuteronomy, particularly Re-eh. Here’s a little section:

12:2 You are to demolish, yes, demolish, all the (sacred) places where the nations that you are dispossessing served their gods, on the high hills and on the mountains and beneath every luxuriant tree;
3 you are to wreck their slaughter-sites, you are to smash their standing-pillars, their Asherot/Sacred-poles you are to burn with fire, and the carved-images of their gods, you are to cut-to-shreds- so that you cause their name to perish from that place!

This is not the first time Moses rails against idolatry, and certainly won’t be the last time a prophet stands in front of the Israelites telling them to avoid idol worship, or abandon it.

Why does our Torah focus so much on this, and what can we do with it today?

Certainly few of us erect tree idols in our homes or back yards, so what can we learn from this?

Let’s expand our understanding of idolatry beyond the simplistic idea of bowing down to physical idols. The attachment of importance, too much or too little, to things and people inappropriately, seems like a good working definition of an idolatry for us to avoid.

Perhaps Moses struggled with this most - he placed too much importance on himself, his hurt feelings, and his abilities, and too little on being part of the group.

How many times do we take a suggestion, a friendly or constructive one, as criticism? Couldn’t it just be that our friends and family really want to help us out? What kind of difficulties might we avoid by seeing a comment as an offer to help, instead of a critique?

How important are our feelings, our sense of self, in the context of working in a team where we all aim to succeed, even if that team might be our closest family?

So the idolatry to avoid becomes self-importance. We often tell each other that we need “thicker skins” as a way of living with comments that may or may not be directed at us. When we take ourselves out of the way of the comment, we need not absorb it. We are no longer in the center.

Even better, let us see whatever the interaction may be as good for the group. When there is no us and them, or “no ‘I’ in team”, then we can pull back to a bigger picture and see ourselves as the beneficiaries of a comment meant to improve the whole, as opposed to the target of a criticism.

Let’s forget being thick skinned, and move towards seeing ourselves in a bigger picture.

Let’s get out of the way, leave an idolatrous treatment of our self behind.

May this Shabbat bring us opportunities to reflect on our place in the long view, allow us to better see the forest for the trees, and not mistake ourselves for the object of all things. In growing a little smaller, may our lives grow bigger.

This Week's Torah Portion - Ki Teitzei

Rabbi Jonathan Freirich — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 02:48:31 +0000

This week’s parasha, Ki Teitzei, continues the long summary of laws and regulations that Moses sets out for the Israelites before they enter the Promised Land.

We reject many of these rules, and have for centuries - for example, we don’t bring rebellious children before the local authorities to have them stoned for rowdy behavior.

Nonetheless, most of these guidelines offer us relevant teachings today, like the strong insistence on fair weights and measures in Deuteronomy 25:13-16, where committing corruption is declared an abomination.

We have thoroughly standardized weights so that purchases in our markets are fair and equal, and yet still unfair influence tends to persist throughout our society. We can take heart from the improvements we have made to our conduct of business while still taking note of how much progress we need to make so that money and connections don’t outweigh fairness in our everyday dealings.

Full Torah portion here

Journeys and Struggles towards Justice

Rabbi Jonathan Freirich — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 02:33:38 +0000

Parashat Masei 5771

   Parashat Masei chronicles our journeys in at least two ways - it forms a bridge between the Israelites’ trek across the wilderness into the Promised Land, and moves them from wanderers to settlers. Both transitions, of place and role, bear meaning for us today.
   As descendants of Israel, Jacob who struggled with the divine and got renamed God-wrestler, we could say that struggle is both our right and our responsibility. Transitions challenge us - change can be a struggle. Moving from one place to another, as well as from one mode of behavior to another - in Masei the Israelites start both transitions - represent extreme upheavals in their existence.
   Let’s look at the issue of location for us - namely our ties to the Land of Israel.
   Historically, we feel deeply tied to the Land of Israel. We grapple with this relationship. How can we support Israel as Jews in the Diaspora? Should we even try when Israel may not be the country we would prefer it to be?
   Some more orthodox Jews object to Israel’s secular government as not religious enough. Jews on different political parts of the spectrum object to Israel’s policies as either too lax or too harsh, depending upon the issue and our different perspectives. Israeli Jews often dismiss our opinions because we have opted to not join them by living there and supporting the struggle alongside them.
   In addition to the many trips I’ve taken there, Ginny and I have lived in Israel for more than three years as students. We embraced life in Israel as an education beyond the classes we took. As many of you know, Israel tends to grab us in ways that force us to learn as well. We walked the streets of downtown Jerusalem as Israelis cleaned it in the wake of a terror attack. We nervously rode buses to Hebrew University. We rented a car and braved Israeli traffic. We visited Palestinian refugee camps and endeavored to sympathize with a people not so unlike ours, still longing to be free in their homeland.
   Israel became our home, and not our home. Israelis our fellow Jews, and also Jews of a different flavor. Our ties to the place, our sense of family, all of it, raises complications, and so we endeavor to support Israel even as we question its actions. In our support of Israel we wrestle with what’s right and what we should do.
   As the Israelites prepare to physically enter the land, Moses also works to educate them about life as responsible citizens. Masei concludes the Book of Numbers, Bemidbar, “in the wilderness” in Hebrew, and leads us to Deuteronomy, Devarim, “matters” or “words” . Moses offers words of instruction about life as free people with individual and communal responsibility. Moses knows how much the Israelites struggled to be a people worthy of our contract with the divine that demands good behavior, and spends the last book of the Torah elaborating on the importance of that goal of ethical conduct. Moving from wanderers to a settled people, from slaves to free individuals - these transitions require great effort and negotiation.
   We struggle with these questions still. The Jewish message starts with questions of good communal conduct, and we pursue these questions in every area of our lives. As individuals we think, feel, and pray on our decisions. As members of families we negotiate and wrestle with each other, often in joy as well as difficulty, in bringing productive harmony into our homes. And as participants in formal and informal communities we debate, vote, and compromise in committees, congregations and congresses for the sake of a world that might get better by our efforts.
   The conclusion of our prayer service includes the Aleinu. In the Aleinu we outline our hope for a future that we may bring to the world together. Aleinu means “it is on us” - we assert that repairing the world, tikkun olam, comes from human efforts and declare ourselves responsible for making this change. We turn to the divine, to the mystery of the universe for assistance, for strength, for insight and lay the actions on ourselves.
   The text of the Aleinu itself offers us struggle. A view of the world as we hope it will be when healed, and a bold claim of our uniqueness, our chosen-ness as descendants of Israel the God-wrestler. How can we set the highest goal as justice for all and still start with the notion that we are better in some way than all others?
   In such a fundamental struggle we see the essence of Jewish thinking. Our liturgy, by prompting us to struggle, asks us to think. We may not agree with every statement in our prayers. Should our disagreement lead us to think more deeply about our striving to be better individuals and improve our communities in new ways, then perhaps that was the purpose of the prayer.
   When we grapple with difficulties, we learn and offer our learning to others, only to strive again, grow again, evolve again, and learn again.
   Tonight, Beth El offers us another opportunity to learn and grow about the topic of Israel - the Schloss Summer Lecture series brings us two fascinating speakers, Dr. Alexa Royden and Dr. Rafi Danziger, to further our understanding, and our striving.
   Shabbat itself offers us a weekly opportunity to cease the everyday hustle and tussle, and raise our sights to loftier questions, deeper insights, and new opportunities to wrestle with the divine.
   May our Shabbat be filled with fruitful, constructive, and reflective wrestling, Shabbat Shalom.

Circles of Responsibility

Rabbi Jonathan Freirich — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:58:39 +0000

Parashat Matot 5771 - [On the occasion of Gabriel Hansen’s Bar Mitzvah]

   Rabbi Schindler spoke last night of the power of vows in this week’s portion, and the antiquated ideas of men being able to veto a woman’s vow. Let’s look at another aspect of these laws.
   The Torah tends towards a strong degree of sexism, and we egalitarian Jews often find it jarring. Reading for a different lesson, we might see that the nature of these relationships teaches us also about the nature of communal protection and responsibility.
   Yes, a woman’s father, and then her husband, as it reads in Numbers, Chapter 30, can annul her vows, providing he does so quickly. Should the man keep silent, not protest, for a full day, then he must abide by the vows made by the woman.
   Remembering that Ancient Israelite society holds a man responsible for all the people in his household, including the women, allows us to see this in a different context. The man must agree to whatever obligations the woman makes, because in that society the ultimate responsibility for the welfare of the household was not shared, the man bore it alone.
   In truth, this follows the way of all obligations and contracts - agreements of any sort do not occur in a vacuum. A vow impacts those around us. When we get called upon to uphold that agreement, we may have to subtract from the rest of our life - sometimes money, sometimes time, sometimes objects - and that subtraction will force changes upon those with whom we share our lives.
   An egalitarian relationship often benefits from clear communications and discussions about obligations entered into - how we spend our free time and our money, for example. Time and effort obligated outside of a parent’s relationship with a child clearly changes the nature of the time and effort that the parent can offer the child.
   In each of these cases, we show loyalty and responsibility to those around us through thoughtful engagement and maintenance of our obligations. We create a circle of responsibility through which we celebrate and attend to the value we place in each other.
   When we act responsibly or irresponsibly we can alter each other’s lives drastically.
   I heard a story on NPR about a 59-year old Jordanian-American professor, Omar al-Omari. Al-Omari wasn’t just any professor though, he ran a Muslim outreach program for the State of Ohio that the Department of Public Safety considered so effective at combating Muslim extremism, that officials in Washington sent al-Omari overseas to promote it.
   In the course of a training on anti-terrorism given to the Columbus Division of Police in April 2010, the instructor, who was neither certified nor vetted by other anti-terrorism officials or experts, named al-Omari as a person with links to terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas. One of the most visible Muslims in Ohio, who had worked closely with law enforcement throughout the State, had now been fingered as a person of suspicion, and despite everyone in the room knowing him, al-Omari’s reputation would never recover. This led to al-Omari’s firing, on account of the tiny matter of omissions in his application to the State of Ohio. He had left off courses he had taught that he considered irrelevant to the position for which he applied. This would be recommended procedure for any of us putting together a resume.
   The head of training at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point identified this as part of larger problem: “The Muslim-American community is being preyed upon from two different directions. One, the jihadist recruitment and radicalization that is actively preying on their sons and daughters; and two, the elevated levels of Islamophobia — Islamophobia at worst and distrust and alienation at best.”
   When a person known by others gets impugned to the point of losing their livelihood because people don’t honor their obligations to another community member - even when those obligations may be nothing more than honestly reporting on a person’s integrity, a circle of responsibility has been broken.
   All of those people who knew al-Omari failed him by allowing someone to abuse his reputation in public. Jews call this lashon hara, evil speech, and we see it as a serious violation of the circles of responsibility between all of us.
   Gabriel, on the other hand, you have upheld your responsibilities today. Everyone here knows the seriousness with which you have fulfilled your obligations to yourself, your family, your friends and your Beth El community. By so profoundly completing the work of your Bar Mitzvah, you honor your relationships. You show us that you understand the weight of responsibility that comes with being a young adult, and we celebrate that and wish you and your family a hearty mazal tov!
   I feel most honored to share the bimah with you, to call you a fellow Jew, and to include you, and be included by you, in a circle of supportive responsibilities for each other and for all of us here today.
   Mazal tov again, and Shabbat Shalom.

[The NPR news piece mentioned here can be found at this link:
http://www.npr.org/2011/07/18/137712352/terrorism-training-casts-pall-over-muslim-employee]

Attend to Our Own Zealots First

Rabbi Jonathan Freirich — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 20:28:56 +0000

This week we read from Parashat Pinchas, named after the Levite who enthusiastically skewered an Israelite man and a Midianite woman who were consorting near the entrance of the Tabernacle, the portable home for our holy objects in the desert. In last week’s parasha we read the full story, I will summarize quickly.

The Israelites socialized with some Midianites and began to eat their foods and worship their gods. God sent a plague to punish the Israelites for their idolatry and demanded that those worshipping other gods be killed, and their heads impaled on stakes to appease God’s wrath. Moses delegated, asking each Israelite leader to kill the wrongful worshippers in each of their tribes. Before anyone could carry this out, Pinchas observed this particular couple, the Israelite man and his Midianite girlfriend, in the most prominent place in front of the entire community. Pinchas grabbed a spear and ran them through. The plague that God had sent ceases, still killing 24,000 Israelites.

That takes us up to this week, which begins with these four verses:

10 Now Adonai spoke to Moses, saying:
11 Pinchas son of Elazar son of Aaron the priest has turned my venomous-anger from the Israelites in his being-zealous with my jealousy in their midst, so that I did not finish off the Israelites in my jealousy.
12 Therefore say: Here, I give him my covenant of shalom;
13 it will be for him and for his seed after him a covenant of everlasting priesthood - because he was zealous for his God and effected-appeasement for the Israelites.

God’s wrath ceased against the Israelites, who God quickly commanded to turn their vengeance towards the Midianites.

God apparently rewarded Pinchas for murdering two people in a public position, so as to stem the tide of the divine anger that killed so many more. God absolved Pinchas of murder, and created a “covenant of shalom”, that seemed to result in Pinchas and his descendants staying in the high priesthood forever, his birthright as a grandson of Aaron, despite his murderous actions.

What’s going on here?

I have a theory that the Levites, who were given the role of priests, in general, and the Cohen’s, the high priests, in specific - and these are the family of Aaron and his male descendants, like Pinchas - may have been difficult people.

In Exodus they went out and started killing the worshippers of the Golden Calf as soon as Moses returned and got angry with the community.

Israelite society cooked up a very interesting solution for those people who seemed so quick to take up the sword against their own fellow community members - the larger community gave them a special task, and took them out of circulation.

The Levites and the Cohen’s got the highest honors - they attended the Tabernacle in the desert, and eventually the Temple in Jerusalem. In order to keep this honor they had to obey some very rigorous rules of ritual cleanliness that prevented them from holding other jobs, and they forfeited the right to own land or join the military. Throughout ancient Israelite history this separation of powers persisted and its violation caused great unrest when the Hasmonean Dynasty, the one founded by the Maccabees, united the monarchy and the priesthood for the first time.

This arrangement of separating the Levities doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Take the people most likely to take the law into their own hands and kill people out of their enthusiasm for the divine, and give them a very detail-oriented job that prevents them from ever having the capacity to disturb the civic order with their overactive senses of righteousness.

Today we resist such “profiling” for many good reasons. We offer people the opportunity to choose their paths through life, to make careers and options for themselves. As Reform Jews we uphold at the heart of our identity a universal freedom to make our own ways as Jews, Americans and humans.

We identify as people of moderation, moderates if you will, and decry the extremists who take the law into their own hands.

We even have our own options for self-selection by which our most pious can choose different paths within Judaism, pursuing whatever best suits their level of devotion to their more rigorous interpretations of mitzvot, of our commandments.

And then, we wash our hands of the whole thing. We can easily turn to fellow Jews in other groups and say - “They’re too strict for me, what zealots they are!” or “They’re to lenient for me, what heretics they are!” and be content with our own middle path, whatever it might be.

Perhaps we should take a lesson from the Torah here, perhaps we all bear responsibility for the shape of the entire community, even its extremes. As another scholar once told me, “We must attend to our own fundamentalists before we ask anyone to attend to theirs.” We can easily see that the role of the Levites may have been the Ancient Israelite solution to their zealot and fundamentalist factions.

We know how to do this - when the orthodox establishment in Israel threatened to take away the right of return from non-orthodox converts, we as Reform Jews took action. Let us raise our voices more often, let us not allow our zealots, our fundamentalists to define who we are, or who is authentically Jewish. Let us claim our Judaism as not merely “OK”, but profoundly inspired by and connected to the wisdom of our ancestors. Let us stand up and demand civility and equality as the norm, not merely an exception.

Pinchas and his spiritual descendants offer radical and sometimes violent solutions to the challenges of new diversities in Judaism, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. We must loudly counter with voices of compassion and celebration for the abundance of beauty in a more colorful and complicated Jewish population, and with new visions of co-existence gently and convincingly offered to our leaders here and in Israel.

If Shabbat offers us a model of change from the everyday, a taste of a dynamic and different world of variety and color, then perhaps we can use Shabbat as a pause to recognize our own need to find helpful places for all of our differences in a functioning community, and within our broader community of communities. May this Shabbat offer us the space to reflect on how we can be agents of positive change for ourselves, and even for those with whom we disagree most.

Shabbat Shalom!

Anger Issues in Chukat

Rabbi Jonathan Freirich — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 11:47:36 +0000

[Here's my Devar Torah from last night at Temple Beth El, enjoy!]

Shabbat Shalom everyone.

Thank you so much for the warm welcome to the Temple Beth El community - all of you have been wonderful, and Ginny, Jude, and I continue to be thrilled to be here and excited about everything. I have faith that our excitement will continue.

We will learn much about each other in the coming weeks and months, and I look forward to many conversations. I have a passion for discussion and learning, and look at all of you as opportunities for great chats soon to be had.

When we grow close to people the benefits of our time together increase, as do our vulnerabilities to each other. Shabbat offers us a time to reflect on how well we do in even the closest of relationships. The people nearest us often get our best and our worst selves, our deepest love, and our hottest anger.

All of us work to leave our difficulties of the week behind us and enter into a Shabbat of wholeness and peace. We may find ourselves reflecting on those moments when we didn’t perform at our best. I least like coping with anger, my own and that from my loved ones, and so often it is anger that requires the greatest energy and attention to overcome.

This week we read from Parashat Chukat, in Numbers, and return to one of the most famous, angry exchanges in our tradition: Moses’ deed that prevents him from entering the Promised Land.

The story starts in a familiar fashion: the Israelites kvetch about not having enough water and wanting to return to Egypt, yet again. This occurs late in the journey, almost through the forty years of wandering and the Israelites still don’t seem to trust Moses or God. God instructs Moses to speak to a rock and produce water to quench the thirst of the Israelites - the Torah continues, from Numbers, Chapter 20:

9 So Moses took the staff from before the presence of Adonai, as God had commanded him.
10 And Moses and Aaron assembled the assembly facing the boulder. He said to them: Now hear, (you) rebels, from this boulder must we bring you out water?
11 And Moses raised his hand and struck the boulder with his staff, twice, so that abundant water came out; and the community and their cattle drank.
12 Now Adonai said to Moses and to Aaron: Because you did not have-trust in me to treat-me-as-holy before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore: you (two) shall not bring this assembly into the land that I am giving them!

Isn’t this a little extreme? In one moment Moses violates God’s trust so grievously that neither Moses nor Aaron will get to enter the Promised Land?

Jewish scholars throughout history question the reason for this punishment. Most of them rationalize God’s actions by coming up with all sorts of reasons to explain God’s harsh judgement against Moses and Aaron. A contemporary colleague, Rabbi David Hoffman explained this week that Moses failed as a leader because even after all of these years in the desert he still hadn’t trained the Israelites to stop grumbling.

Moses and Aaron form only one part of this drama though - I think we should be questioning God’s role too. I recognize questioning God seems risky, although it is a fundamental Jewish prerogative to argue, even with God, and as I mentioned, one of my passions.

God continues to be incredibly grumpy and difficult in this story. This situation seems like “one strike and you’re out,” and the violators are no regular criminals, these are Aaron and Moses, God’s closest confidants who have served as the loyal buffer between an angry Creator of the Universe and a ragtag group of former slaves and their descendants shlepping through the desert. How can we explain God’s knee jerk reaction and extreme punishment?

Here, God goes over the edge in a quick flare of anger and then we spend the rest of Jewish history justifying the divine over-reaction.

Many of us, I am sure, encounter anger like this as partners and spouses, parents and children. A small thing, at the wrong time, can set us off. A small thing, that we thought was nothing, can land us in hot water. Profound relationships often lead to serious friction, and such friction can lead us to say things we regret.

On top of that, we can often paint ourselves into a corner with our angry reactions. It seems so easy to imagine ourselves in God’s shoes, coming up with the worst possible punishment we can in our momentary fit. Our profound closeness allowing us to stab our loved ones where it hurts most. Striking out at someone with harsh words that become very difficult to go back on.

And since this is God, there’s no reversing this punishment without ruining the reputation of the divine, something which God has worried about before. We have an easier time than God does apologizing and coming back from the brink. Yet we must be careful with our loved ones, especially as parents, since our words often have an almost divine-like impact, and pulling them back often proves to be incredibly difficult.

Let’s learn from God’s negative model this week, and recognize when even God doesn’t get it right. Let’s admit our anger to ourselves before we act on it, whether we are frustrated with difficult people, like Moses who strikes the rock instead of speaking, or angry at those closest to us, like God, who severely punishes Moses without thought. Let’s enter Shabbat with the hope of overcoming our initial angry responses and answering from our better selves.

Shabbat Shalom!