Monday September 28, 2020
Congregation Netivot Shalom, Berkeley CA
Rabbi Chai Levy
Turning this upside-down world right-side up
It’s been six months since we last met in person as a community.
Remember Purim? The last day our building was fully open?
We gathered in our costumes to read the megillah and boo Haman,
filling our sanctuary with laughter and revelry,
along with some fear and trepidation about the new coronavirus, not yet knowing
just how much the coming pandemic was about to change our lives.
The previous Shabbat, Shabbat Zachor, I spoke about Amalek,
the ancestor of Haman who preyed upon the vulnerable
as we made our way through the midbar.
I described Amalek as the archetypal villain who represents,
based on Rashi’s commentary, the cruelty of random chance,
like the random lots of the Purim story that decree the destruction of the Jews.
I described Amalek as that spiritual state of doubt, meaninglessness, chaos,
that spiritual state that we have come to know all too well in these last 6 months.
And on that last Shabbat in our sanctuary,
We talked about how we fight Amalek,
How we find faith when the world seems haphazardly cruel.
And we concluded that Purim was the antidote to Amalek:
the triumph of caring over cruelty, community over chaos,
and goodness over random chance,
all made possible through courage and action,
as exemplified by Queen Esther.
By the end of the Purim story, with all of its twists and turns,
the Megillah says Nahafoch Hu (Esther 9:1),
“the opposite happened,” or, literally, “everything turned upside down,”
and instead of the Jews being slaughtered, they are saved.
Courage overturns cruelty, and Amalek is defeated with Nahafoch Hu;
Everything is turned right-side up and goodness is restored in the world.
But six months later,
we now know that the world was just beginning to really turn upside down.
And it just keeps getting more and more topsy-turvy.
The pandemic has raged out of control.
Death, illness, and racial injustice.
Our economy in shambles; our country divided; our democracy in question,
Our trusted institutions have proven unreliable and downright dangerous.
The impact on schools, businesses, and mental health has been devastating.
And then, here in California, another wildfire season,
our air filled with smoke and ash.
We are living in a topsy-turvy, upside down time, like Purim minus the fun,
With the spiritual state of Amalek alive and well.
And now, 6 months later, it is Yom Kippur.
The Torah (Leviticus 23:27) refers to this day as Yom HaKippurim, in the plural –
as we say in Kol Nidre “mi Yom Kippurim zeh…”
Tikkunei haZohar, one of the central Kabbalistic midrashim of our tradition,
makes the famous linguistic connection between Purim and Yom HaKippurim, rendering: Yom Kippurim as Yom K’Purim, that is, a day that is like Purim!
My question for us on this Yom HaKippurim,
this solemn day that may seem so opposite of Purim,
is how can this day be Yom K’Purim, a day that is like Purim –
in restoring our faith in the rightness of the world and the promise of the future?
With courage and action defeating cruelty and destruction?
How can we get to nahafoch hu, turning right side up, all that is upside down?
Unfortunately, there is no magic wand that we can wave and
“abracadabra: nahafoch hu!” and restore order, justice, and health
to our chaotic and broken world.
But what I want to offer on this Yom Kippur is guidance from our tradition
That the world’s brokenness is an opportunity for new beginnings and change.
That is what teshuva, the work of the High Holy Days, is all about:
The possibility of transformation and repair.
Teshuva means returning, but it doesn’t mean returning to the old.
One thing we’ve learned during this pandemic is that
not all of the old ways were working so well.
The human impact on our planet has been unsustainable.
The structures of our country have been unjust to people of color.
Much is uncertain about the future, but it’s fairly certain that we’re not
going “back to normal.”
This Yom Kippurim, nahafoch hu, turning things around,
means considering new ways, new paths, new possibilities.
Our tradition understands that we humans are resilient,
that we’ve been through times of devastation before and that through hope and courage and creativity, we can forge new beginnings.
I want to share two stories from our tradition of creating new beginnings.
The first is the talmudic story of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai (Gittin 56a-b)
who escaped from Jerusalem in a coffin by faking his death.
In the years leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, the city was in turmoil.
The people were crushed under Roman occupation,
hunger and disease were rampant, and the Jews within Jerusalem were divided.
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai could see that Jerusalem was doomed and that
he had to get creative for Judaism to survive.
Zealous extremists blocked the exit to the city,
so Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai asked his students to fake his death and
smuggle him out of the besieged city in a coffin.
He avoids a few mishaps with the zealots who want to make sure he’s really dead, makes it out of Jerusalem, jumps out of his coffin, and runs to the Roman camp to meet Vespasian, the Roman general who will soon become the emperor.
Yochanan convinces the general to allow him to move the Sanhedrin,
the Jewish court, to Yavneh, a small town on the Mediterranean,
where he establishes a new center of Torah.
As Jerusalem is destroyed, and along with it,
the Temple and its priestly system of sacrifice,
Rabbi Yochanan’s creativity establishes rabbinic Judaism,
and allows for a new way of Jewish life that would become the future of Judaism that has survived for the past two-thousand years to this day.
The image of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai,
jumping out of his coffin to say to the Roman general “give me Yavneh!”,
is a striking one – it’s an image of revival,
of awakening from the old and dead ways,
to a new beginning, to the birth of new possibilities and a thriving future.
Two-thousand years later, Valarie Kaur, the American Sikh social justice activist
spoke of the brokenness of our country like this:
“What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb,
but the darkness of the womb?
What if our America is not dead but a country that is waiting to be born?
What if we just need to listen to the midwife whispering in our ears:
you are brave… Breathe, and then push.”
(see: https://valariekaur.com/2017/01/watch-night-speech-breathe-push/)
Breathe, and then push.
We’ve been through devastation and rebirth before.
We’ve seen the destruction of the world as we know it.
We don’t have to go back 2000 years, we can look back 75 years to the devastation of the Shoah and the establishment of the State of Israel
to see how we’ve used our creativity and resilience
to find new ways to survive and thrive.
In dark times, we’ve given birth to something new.
What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb,
but the darkness of the womb?
Breathe, and then push.
The biblical word mashber,* meaning crisis, breaking, shattering, or destruction
is also used in Tanach to mean childbirth. (Isaiah 37:7)
Because breaking leads to birthing, and birthing involves breaking.
Our world is so broken, so upside down.
How might this breaking be a birthing – of a new way of life?
Can we be like Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and jump out of this coffin
and say Give me Yavneh!
The old ways are broken, let’s do this differently.
Even if we don’t yet know what Yavneh will look like.
Let’s find the courage and creativity to give birth to something new.
Breathe and push.
My second story is a tale of the Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav.
Rebbe Nachman was a great mystic and spiritual teacher
Who told folk tales about kings, princesses and beggars that were allegories
For both kabbalistic myths and for his own spiritual struggles and suffering.
One part of Rebbe Nachman’s story* “the Master of Prayer,” goes like this:
Once upon a time, a great storm blew up throughout the world.
The storm was so powerful that it overturned the whole world.
It turned the dry land into sea, and the sea into dry land…
V’hafach et kol ha’olam kulo – it turned the whole world upside down.
The storm blew through the King’s palace and, in the chaos, everyone –
the King, the Queen, the Princess – they all got separated.
And because the whole world became hafuch (upside down),
the maps were lost; none of the old paths worked;
Now, concludes Rebbe Nachman, we have to use new paths,
according to the rearranging of the world.
Rebbe Nachman told this story two hundred years ago,
but it couldn’t be truer today.
The storms, the droughts, the dry land turning into sea,
the whole world is upside down, hafuch (our same word from the megillah),
and we are all separated from each other –
like the king, queen, and princess in the story.
The old maps don’t work anymore. How do we get out of this mess?
Rebbe Nachman’s answer: we need new paths.
On Yom Kippur, we say slichot prayers,
Where we plead with God and quote the famous line from Eicha, Lamentations:
Hashivenu Adonai Elecha V’nashuva, Hadesh Yameinu Kekedem
Turn us toward you and we will return, make our days new, as of old.
We beg God to care for us and not cast us away.
We ask for help with teshuva, with returning.
But when we say Hadesh Yameinu Kekedem, we can’t mean just
“let’s go back to how things were before.”
How things were before is what got us into this mess!
Whether it’s our world, our country, or our own individual messy lives.
As Rebbe Nachman said: our world is upside down, and new paths are needed. Hadesh Yameinu, means make our days new.
And Kekedem means not just “as of old” –
the other meaning of the word kedem is:
the beginning, the front, and the east, the direction of the rising sun!
Doing teshuva doesn’t mean let’s return to our old ways.
In this broken world, Hadesh Yameinu keKedem means:
“Make our days new, as a new beginning.”
Help us look towards the future with courage and creativity to get to
nahafoch hu, and turn the world right-side up again.
Breathe and push.
Giving birth requires courage.
I remember being in the delivery room after 2 days of labor,
pushing for three and a half hours and feeling like I couldn’t go on.
And the midwife kept saying: you can do this. Breathe and push.
Breathing and pushing was the hardest thing I ever did in my life.
But we can do hard things.
What choice do we have? We either give birth or we give up.
Let’s get creative and courageous.
Creating new paths also requires us to be willing to change.
When the world was less upside down,
lots of us had the luxury and privilege of getting comfortable,
but a sustainable and just world requires change and sacrifice,
as we all know from these last six months of learning to stay home and
wear masks for the greater good.
Are we willing to change to create the new paths our world desperately needs?
Which brings me back to Purim, where we began.
When does the Purim story begin to turn toward nahafoch hu and
the saving of the Jews and the rectification of the world?
The turning point is when Esther musters up the courage to approach the king.
At first, she is afraid; after all, no one can approach the king in his inner chamber without having been summoned.
Mordechai gives her pep talk: You can do this, Esther.
“And who knows? Mi Yodea? He says,
maybe you have attained your royal position just for this crisis.” (Esther 4:14)
And sure enough, Esther decrees a fast and finds her courage
to approach the king and save the Jews.
Remember the Tikkunei Zohar,
our text that says Yom Kippurim is a day like Purim?
It goes on to connect the fast of Esther and
her courageously entering the inner sanctum of the king to…
you guessed it – the fast of Yom Kippur and the high priest, the cohen gadol,
entering the inner sanctum of the holy holies.
They both put on their special clothing and muster up their courage
to approach the Melech, the King.
And the Tikkunei Zohar concludes: that is why Yom Kippur is like Purim –
they are days of transforming suffering into joy. (Tikkunei Zohar 57b)
So, Mi Yodea? As Mordechai says, Who knows?
Maybe we have reached this moment for nahafoch hu,
for turning this upside down world right side up.
Maybe amidst all of this brokenness, new beginnings are possible.
Maybe if we are willing to change and
to be courageous like Esther and
like the cohen gadol, entering the inner sanctum of the Divine,
seeking forgiveness for this broken world…
Maybe if we are willing to be creative like Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai,
Jumping out of his coffin to give birth to a new world,
we can create new paths to lead us out of this upside-down world.
This is a hard time that we are living in,
A really hard time,
and we can do hard things, as my midwife said.
What if this darkness if not the darkness of the tomb
but the darkness of the womb?
Breathe, and then push.
*Gratitude to my teacher, Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed, for her 7/20/20 Hartman Institute session on “Mashber,” which included Rebbe Nachman’s “Master of Prayer” story and inspired this drash.
Rabbi Chai Levy
Kol Nidre 5781-2020
Turning this upside-down world right-side up
It’s been six months since we last met in person as a community.
Remember Purim? The last day our building was fully open?
We gathered in our costumes to read the megillah and boo Haman,
filling our sanctuary with laughter and revelry,
along with some fear and trepidation about the new coronavirus, not yet knowing
just how much the coming pandemic was about to change our lives.
The previous Shabbat, Shabbat Zachor, I spoke about Amalek,
the ancestor of Haman who preyed upon the vulnerable
as we made our way through the midbar.
I described Amalek as the archetypal villain who represents,
based on Rashi’s commentary, the cruelty of random chance,
like the random lots of the Purim story that decree the destruction of the Jews.
I described Amalek as that spiritual state of doubt, meaninglessness, chaos,
that spiritual state that we have come to know all too well in these last 6 months.
And on that last Shabbat in our sanctuary,
We talked about how we fight Amalek,
How we find faith when the world seems haphazardly cruel.
And we concluded that Purim was the antidote to Amalek:
the triumph of caring over cruelty, community over chaos,
and goodness over random chance,
all made possible through courage and action,
as exemplified by Queen Esther.
By the end of the Purim story, with all of its twists and turns,
the Megillah says Nahafoch Hu (Esther 9:1),
“the opposite happened,” or, literally, “everything turned upside down,”
and instead of the Jews being slaughtered, they are saved.
Courage overturns cruelty, and Amalek is defeated with Nahafoch Hu;
Everything is turned right-side up and goodness is restored in the world.
But six months later,
we now know that the world was just beginning to really turn upside down.
And it just keeps getting more and more topsy-turvy.
The pandemic has raged out of control.
Death, illness, and racial injustice.
Our economy in shambles; our country divided; our democracy in question,
Our trusted institutions have proven unreliable and downright dangerous.
The impact on schools, businesses, and mental health has been devastating.
And then, here in California, another wildfire season,
our air filled with smoke and ash.
We are living in a topsy-turvy, upside down time, like Purim minus the fun,
With the spiritual state of Amalek alive and well.
And now, 6 months later, it is Yom Kippur.
The Torah (Leviticus 23:27) refers to this day as Yom HaKippurim, in the plural –
as we say in Kol Nidre “mi Yom Kippurim zeh…”
Tikkunei haZohar, one of the central Kabbalistic midrashim of our tradition,
makes the famous linguistic connection between Purim and Yom HaKippurim, rendering: Yom Kippurim as Yom K’Purim, that is, a day that is like Purim!
My question for us on this Yom HaKippurim,
this solemn day that may seem so opposite of Purim,
is how can this day be Yom K’Purim, a day that is like Purim –
in restoring our faith in the rightness of the world and the promise of the future?
With courage and action defeating cruelty and destruction?
How can we get to nahafoch hu, turning right side up, all that is upside down?
Unfortunately, there is no magic wand that we can wave and
“abracadabra: nahafoch hu!” and restore order, justice, and health
to our chaotic and broken world.
But what I want to offer on this Yom Kippur is guidance from our tradition
That the world’s brokenness is an opportunity for new beginnings and change.
That is what teshuva, the work of the High Holy Days, is all about:
The possibility of transformation and repair.
Teshuva means returning, but it doesn’t mean returning to the old.
One thing we’ve learned during this pandemic is that
not all of the old ways were working so well.
The human impact on our planet has been unsustainable.
The structures of our country have been unjust to people of color.
Much is uncertain about the future, but it’s fairly certain that we’re not
going “back to normal.”
This Yom Kippurim, nahafoch hu, turning things around,
means considering new ways, new paths, new possibilities.
Our tradition understands that we humans are resilient,
that we’ve been through times of devastation before and that through hope and courage and creativity, we can forge new beginnings.
I want to share two stories from our tradition of creating new beginnings.
The first is the talmudic story of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai (Gittin 56a-b)
who escaped from Jerusalem in a coffin by faking his death.
In the years leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE, the city was in turmoil.
The people were crushed under Roman occupation,
hunger and disease were rampant, and the Jews within Jerusalem were divided.
Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai could see that Jerusalem was doomed and that
he had to get creative for Judaism to survive.
Zealous extremists blocked the exit to the city,
so Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai asked his students to fake his death and
smuggle him out of the besieged city in a coffin.
He avoids a few mishaps with the zealots who want to make sure he’s really dead, makes it out of Jerusalem, jumps out of his coffin, and runs to the Roman camp to meet Vespasian, the Roman general who will soon become the emperor.
Yochanan convinces the general to allow him to move the Sanhedrin,
the Jewish court, to Yavneh, a small town on the Mediterranean,
where he establishes a new center of Torah.
As Jerusalem is destroyed, and along with it,
the Temple and its priestly system of sacrifice,
Rabbi Yochanan’s creativity establishes rabbinic Judaism,
and allows for a new way of Jewish life that would become the future of Judaism that has survived for the past two-thousand years to this day.
The image of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai,
jumping out of his coffin to say to the Roman general “give me Yavneh!”,
is a striking one – it’s an image of revival,
of awakening from the old and dead ways,
to a new beginning, to the birth of new possibilities and a thriving future.
Two-thousand years later, Valarie Kaur, the American Sikh social justice activist
spoke of the brokenness of our country like this:
“What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb,
but the darkness of the womb?
What if our America is not dead but a country that is waiting to be born?
What if we just need to listen to the midwife whispering in our ears:
you are brave… Breathe, and then push.”
(see: https://valariekaur.com/2017/01/watch-night-speech-breathe-push/)
Breathe, and then push.
We’ve been through devastation and rebirth before.
We’ve seen the destruction of the world as we know it.
We don’t have to go back 2000 years, we can look back 75 years to the devastation of the Shoah and the establishment of the State of Israel
to see how we’ve used our creativity and resilience
to find new ways to survive and thrive.
In dark times, we’ve given birth to something new.
What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb,
but the darkness of the womb?
Breathe, and then push.
The biblical word mashber,* meaning crisis, breaking, shattering, or destruction
is also used in Tanach to mean childbirth. (Isaiah 37:7)
Because breaking leads to birthing, and birthing involves breaking.
Our world is so broken, so upside down.
How might this breaking be a birthing – of a new way of life?
Can we be like Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and jump out of this coffin
and say Give me Yavneh!
The old ways are broken, let’s do this differently.
Even if we don’t yet know what Yavneh will look like.
Let’s find the courage and creativity to give birth to something new.
Breathe and push.
My second story is a tale of the Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav.
Rebbe Nachman was a great mystic and spiritual teacher
Who told folk tales about kings, princesses and beggars that were allegories
For both kabbalistic myths and for his own spiritual struggles and suffering.
One part of Rebbe Nachman’s story* “the Master of Prayer,” goes like this:
Once upon a time, a great storm blew up throughout the world.
The storm was so powerful that it overturned the whole world.
It turned the dry land into sea, and the sea into dry land…
V’hafach et kol ha’olam kulo – it turned the whole world upside down.
The storm blew through the King’s palace and, in the chaos, everyone –
the King, the Queen, the Princess – they all got separated.
And because the whole world became hafuch (upside down),
the maps were lost; none of the old paths worked;
Now, concludes Rebbe Nachman, we have to use new paths,
according to the rearranging of the world.
Rebbe Nachman told this story two hundred years ago,
but it couldn’t be truer today.
The storms, the droughts, the dry land turning into sea,
the whole world is upside down, hafuch (our same word from the megillah),
and we are all separated from each other –
like the king, queen, and princess in the story.
The old maps don’t work anymore. How do we get out of this mess?
Rebbe Nachman’s answer: we need new paths.
On Yom Kippur, we say slichot prayers,
Where we plead with God and quote the famous line from Eicha, Lamentations:
Hashivenu Adonai Elecha V’nashuva, Hadesh Yameinu Kekedem
Turn us toward you and we will return, make our days new, as of old.
We beg God to care for us and not cast us away.
We ask for help with teshuva, with returning.
But when we say Hadesh Yameinu Kekedem, we can’t mean just
“let’s go back to how things were before.”
How things were before is what got us into this mess!
Whether it’s our world, our country, or our own individual messy lives.
As Rebbe Nachman said: our world is upside down, and new paths are needed. Hadesh Yameinu, means make our days new.
And Kekedem means not just “as of old” –
the other meaning of the word kedem is:
the beginning, the front, and the east, the direction of the rising sun!
Doing teshuva doesn’t mean let’s return to our old ways.
In this broken world, Hadesh Yameinu keKedem means:
“Make our days new, as a new beginning.”
Help us look towards the future with courage and creativity to get to
nahafoch hu, and turn the world right-side up again.
Breathe and push.
Giving birth requires courage.
I remember being in the delivery room after 2 days of labor,
pushing for three and a half hours and feeling like I couldn’t go on.
And the midwife kept saying: you can do this. Breathe and push.
Breathing and pushing was the hardest thing I ever did in my life.
But we can do hard things.
What choice do we have? We either give birth or we give up.
Let’s get creative and courageous.
Creating new paths also requires us to be willing to change.
When the world was less upside down,
lots of us had the luxury and privilege of getting comfortable,
but a sustainable and just world requires change and sacrifice,
as we all know from these last six months of learning to stay home and
wear masks for the greater good.
Are we willing to change to create the new paths our world desperately needs?
Which brings me back to Purim, where we began.
When does the Purim story begin to turn toward nahafoch hu and
the saving of the Jews and the rectification of the world?
The turning point is when Esther musters up the courage to approach the king.
At first, she is afraid; after all, no one can approach the king in his inner chamber without having been summoned.
Mordechai gives her pep talk: You can do this, Esther.
“And who knows? Mi Yodea? He says,
maybe you have attained your royal position just for this crisis.” (Esther 4:14)
And sure enough, Esther decrees a fast and finds her courage
to approach the king and save the Jews.
Remember the Tikkunei Zohar,
our text that says Yom Kippurim is a day like Purim?
It goes on to connect the fast of Esther and
her courageously entering the inner sanctum of the king to…
you guessed it – the fast of Yom Kippur and the high priest, the cohen gadol,
entering the inner sanctum of the holy holies.
They both put on their special clothing and muster up their courage
to approach the Melech, the King.
And the Tikkunei Zohar concludes: that is why Yom Kippur is like Purim –
they are days of transforming suffering into joy. (Tikkunei Zohar 57b)
So, Mi Yodea? As Mordechai says, Who knows?
Maybe we have reached this moment for nahafoch hu,
for turning this upside down world right side up.
Maybe amidst all of this brokenness, new beginnings are possible.
Maybe if we are willing to change and
to be courageous like Esther and
like the cohen gadol, entering the inner sanctum of the Divine,
seeking forgiveness for this broken world…
Maybe if we are willing to be creative like Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai,
Jumping out of his coffin to give birth to a new world,
we can create new paths to lead us out of this upside-down world.
This is a hard time that we are living in,
A really hard time,
and we can do hard things, as my midwife said.
What if this darkness if not the darkness of the tomb
but the darkness of the womb?
Breathe, and then push.
*Gratitude to my teacher, Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed, for her 7/20/20 Hartman Institute session on “Mashber,” which included Rebbe Nachman’s “Master of Prayer” story and inspired this drash.