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by Rabbi Nathan Kamesar
Two rabbinic leadership organizations of which I am a part, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association, joined together in a cross-denominational statement, along with all other major institutions in the Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements, against violent immigration enforcement.
You can read the statement in full here, and I am providing an excerpt of it below. I fully support this statement:
וַאֲהַבְתֶם אֶת-הַגֵר כִּי-גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם
Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:19)
Adding our voices to millions of others across the United States, leaders of the Reform, Conservative/Masorti, and Reconstructionist Movements of Judaism condemn, in the strongest terms, the violence with which the Department of Homeland Security is enforcing American immigration law — above all, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as well as in cities and towns across the nation.
Many Americans are deeply disturbed as they see their neighbors targeted for detention and deportation in their homes, at work, at their schools, and at their houses of worship. They are deeply concerned about numerous accounts of the use of intimidating and violent detention tactics, dangerous and unhealthy holding facilities, lack of appropriate warrants or due process, and wrongful apprehension of US citizens or individuals with proper visas based on appearance or language…
Immigrants are members of our congregations, our families, and people with whom we interact in our broader communities. American Jews cherish our own families’ immigration stories. We recall that, like many being expelled from America today, we or our ancestors came to this country to escape oppression and find opportunity. That is why so many Jewish congregations, rabbis, cantors, and lay leaders have engaged in a variety of legal actions to protect immigrants in our midst. We grieve an American promise that seems to be no more…
We call on President Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to pursue immigration enforcement and their response to protest through just and non-violent means, upholding our nation’s highest values and commitment to due process and the rule of law.
While those who have courageously taken to the streets through nonviolent protest and civil disobedience are too often met with violence, I am so proud of many such demonstrators. We are witnessing a healthy, vibrant expression of dissent in response to policy enforcement that many see as unjust and inhumane.
Disturbingly, on the other side of the world, in Iran, similar expressions of dissent — in their case rejecting an authoritarian, clerical regime — have been met by a violent crackdown that is hard to fathom. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported that over 4,500 people had been killed in the anti-government demonstrations. Here, too, the CCAR released a statement “in support of the brave people who are risking their lives to protest the terrorist regime that governs Iran,” a statement which I also fully support. It notes, “we grieve the deaths of all whom the regime has brutally murdered, in response to the current uprising and before it, in Iran and around the world, and stand in awe of those who continue to oppose the regime.”
Unfortunately, a mere week after the statement was released, the government has already brutally suppressed the protests. My prayers are with the people of Iran, who stood up to the regime. The statement can be read in full here.
I’d also like to share the D’var Torah I delivered at this past Friday night’s musical Shabbat service, always followed by dinner, which everyone is always welcome and encouraged to attend.
Note also that going forward, all Saturday morning Shabbat services will begin at 9:30 am instead of 9:45. This will allow us to incorporate our popular intergenerational Torah discussions into each and every Shabbat service, including B’nei Mitzvah celebrations, enabling us to celebrate our B’nei Mitzvah honorees within the ongoing rhythm of our community. We hope you’ll join us!
Those who have studied with me before know that among my favorite texts in Jewish tradition are those which depict God as, like us, experiencing a sense of struggle, yearning, imperfection.
On the one hand, I am operating with the presumption in Jewish tradition of a God who is all powerful, all knowing, the God of creation, the God who split the sea, redeeming the people of Israel, the God who is the ein sof, that which has no beginning, no middle and no end, the infinite, a God, therefore, whom we can turn to in times of need.
On the other hand, I am always drawn to the texts in Jewish tradition which depict God with a profound sense of pathos, even sadness, a God yearning for connection, a God who yearns for us to find God, as in the story of the grandchild of Rabbi Baruch:
The grandchild of Rabbi Baruch was playing hide-and-seek with another boy. He hid himself and stayed in his hiding place for a long time, assuming that his friend would look for him. Finally, he went out and saw that his friend was gone, apparently not having looked for him at all, and that his own hiding had been in vain. He ran into the study of his grandfather, crying and complaining about his friend. Upon hearing the story, Rabbi Baruch broke into tears and said: “God, too, says: ‘I hide, but there is no one to look for me.'”
It’s perhaps the marriage of these two qualities of God, the all powerful and the vulnerable, the transcendent and the intimate, which speak so profoundly to me and invite me into relationship.
It’s why when I was preparing this week for my Stories of the Ancient Rabbis class that I was drawn so irresistibly to the following midrash, rabbinic teaching:
A Roman noblewoman asked Rabbi Yose ben Halafta a basic question. She said to him: “In how many days did the Holy One blessed be God create this world?”
“In six days,” he responds, and he cites to her the very words we sang just now before the Amidah:
For in six days Adonai made the heavens and the earth
Ki sheshet yamim asah Adonai et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz
כִּי שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים עָשָׂה יְהֹוָה אֶת הַשָׁמַיִם וְאֶת הָאָרֶץ
(Exodus 31:17)
Six days.
The noblewoman was ready with a follow-up question, perhaps one many of us have been wondering: “And from that time until now,” she asks, “what has God been sitting and doing?” implicitly asking, “Is God still concerned with God’s creation? Is God present? Is God distant? What has God been doing since creation, if anything?”
The rabbi’s answer takes things in a different direction than we might have been imagining. “From that time until now, what has God been doing?” He says to her: “God is…
pairing pairs
M’zaveg zivugim
מְזַוֵג זִווּגִים
… matching matches, God is matchmaking.” The daughter of so and so is allotted to so and so, the son of Ploni is allotted to the daughter of a different Ploni, and so forth.
The noblewoman can’t believe it. “Is that all?” she scoffs. “I can do that. I have many, many servants, and I can make matches between them in a short time.”
“Perhaps it appears simple in your eyes,” he responds. “For the Holy One blessed be God, it is as difficult as the parting of the Red Sea.” And he cites to her a verse from the Psalms:
God restores the lonely to their homes… others find themselves in a parched land.
Elohim moshiv yehidim baytah… akh sorerim shakhnu tz’hihah
אֱלֹהִים מוֹשִׁיב יְחִידִים בַּיְתָה… אַךְ סוֹרֲרִים שָׁכְנוּ צְחִיחָה
The “parched land,” he implies, refers to the dry ground the Israelites traversed while crossing the Red Sea; “God restores the lonely to their homes” is God making matches. The verse teaches the rabbi that for God, forging successful relationships is as difficult as was the moment of the splitting of the sea, the most miraculous, earth shattering moment in the entire story of the people of Israel. For God, the rabbi teaches, forging relationships is just as difficult.
The noblewoman can’t believe it. So she sends and brings together two thousand servants and stands them in several lines. She says to them: “So-and-so shall marry so-and-so, and so-and-so [shall marry] so-and-so.” She made matches between them in one night. In the morning they came to her.
And what do we think happened? (And here you’ll have to bear with the ancient context of the story.) This one’s head was wounded, this one’s eye was gouged, this one’s elbow was shattered, and this one’s leg was broken. This one said: “I do not want that one.” That one said: “I do not want this one.”
Immediately, she sent for and brought Rabbi Yose ben Halafta. She said to him: “Rabbi, your Torah is true; it is fine and praiseworthy.”
He said to her: “Is that not what I said to you: If it appears simple in your eyes, before the Holy One blessed be God, it is as difficult as the parting of the Red Sea.”
While yes, a bit silly, I actually find this midrash profoundly moving. It tells us that the ancient rabbis who offered these teachings recognized the reality of the profound difficulty of a working relationship. Even God struggles with this, they taught. What has God been doing since the creation of the world? Just trying to help make a relationship between two human beings work, which teaches, as scholar Jeffrey Rubenstein notes, in equating it to the splitting of the sea, that a successful relationship is nothing short of a miracle.
What moves me about this teaching is the profound empathy it embodies: the deep compassion the ancient rabbis — those who laid the foundations of Judaism — felt for their fellow human beings, recognizing the challenges of making partnerships work. Equally striking is the empathy they extended toward God, who, for the rabbis, though capable of establishing the foundations of the earth, was not without struggle.
To me, this is a sophisticated theology, one which doesn’t decry the absence of simplicity in the world or ask why the great father figure in the sky can’t just fix everything for us. Instead, it’s a theology that recognizes a role for the divine while also acknowledging, at least in the world as we know it, limits to that role. On the one hand, God, according to Jewish tradition, sustains all that we say and do; on the other hand, there is a role for humanity in picking up the broken pieces of the world and of our lives.
And the most difficult problems we face, according to this midrash, are relational. What is more difficult, and yet more rewarding, more miraculous, than sustaining a relationship — any relationship, not just husband and wife or spouse and spouse, but parent and child, friend and friend, colleague and colleague?
Judaism gives great weight to the importance and the challenge of sustaining our relationships, recognizing how much work they take, between two people; no one can do it alone. If God expends God’s considerable energy initiating relationships, it’s reasonable that each of our relationships would need loving care in turn, and even that is no guarantee. Working relationships are miracles.
Wishing you a Shabbat filled with the miraculous. Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi K.
