Ki Tisa,” means “When you raise up” – the beginning of the portion deals how to do a census of the people. Then comes the part that makes Ki Tisa famous: dancing around the Golden Calf, saying “this is the god that took you out of Egypt”. In the scale of bad Jewish behavior, this takes the cake. Just saying. The portion continues with Moshe’s interceding for the people, calming God down, getting God to forgive, punishing the people and God giving Moshe the second tablets.

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There is a phrase in this week’s parashah that appears four times, and the repetition is not accidental. Am kshe oref — a stiff-necked people. God says it first, three times in rapid succession, and each time it sounds like a verdict. A diagnosis. A reason for distance.

“I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people.” (Shemot 32:9)

“For I will not go up in your midst, because you are a stiff-necked people, lest I consume you on the way.” (33:3)

“You are a stiff-necked people.” (33:5)

God’s conclusion about this people seems final: there is something fundamentally rigid about Bnei Israel. Something that refuses to bend toward the divine will. Something, perhaps, unredeemable.

And then — in one of the most breathtaking reversals in all of Torah — Moshe picks up the very same words. He uses them not as an indictment but as a plea:

“If I have found favor in Your eyes, my Lord, let my Lord go now in our midst — for it is a stiff-necked people — and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.” (34:9)

Ki am kshe oref hu. Because they are stiff-necked. The same phrase. The same people. But now it is not a reason for distance. It is an argument for presence and forgiveness.

How does Moshe make this move? What does he understand about this people that God, speaking from outside and above, cannot fully see in this moment?

There is something telling about where Moshe stands when he speaks these words. He has been inside — inside the camp, inside the grief, inside the chaos. He has heard the people’s anguish when they were told that the Shechinah, the divine presence had withdrawn. Moshe that the same stubbornness that built the calf is the stubbornness that makes this people unable to let go of God. The neck that refused to wait quietly at Sinai is the same neck that will, through every exile and every catastrophe, refuse to turn entirely away.

Moshe is using this very flaw is our deepest spiritual signature. Precisely because we cannot bend we need God’s presence. And we will keep needing it. And we will never stop seeking it.

This is the reading the Mei HaShiloach, Rav Mordechai Yosef Leiner of Izbicza, opens up for us. What the world sees as defect, the Izbiczer sees as the hidden face of a divine gift.

The stiff neck is not, at its root, about arrogance or disobedience. It is about the impossibility of full assimilation, the constitutional inability to become entirely something else. The oref — the back of the neck — is the place you cannot easily turn. And Israel’s oref is hardened, the Izbiczer suggests, because there is something at the core of Jewish identity that has been made by God to resist dissolution. God, he says, is the one that put this characteristic inside this people. The people will sin. They will wander. They will, in moments of despair and confusion, even build golden calves. But they will not, in the end, disappear. The neck will not bow all the way down.

What looks from the outside like stubbornness is, from the inside, resilience. What looks like the refusal to listen is, actually, the refusal to disappear completely. Am kshe oref is not a character flaw — it is a theological fact about a people who carry something so deep it cannot be negotiated away.

Now, there is a letter in the Bintel Brief — the beloved advice column of the Forverts, where Jewish immigrants poured out the anguish of their new American lives — that reads like a parable written precisely for this teaching.

A recording secretary of an Orthodox shul in a Western city writes in with a remarkable story. A man had recently come to their rabbi, a man everyone in the city knew well — known for his large pork business, known for his role in local politics, known by his Irish-sounding name. He was in his late sixties, six feet tall, respected and connected everywhere he went. Nobody, in thirty years, had suspected this man of being Jewish.

He had come from a small Jewish town in Eastern Europe — in fact, from the same town as the rabbi himself. He had arrived in America as a young man, shortened his name until it sounded Gentile, married a Christian woman. When she complained that he never went to church, he told her quietly: he was a Jew. She kept the secret. He kept the secret. They built a life, had daughters, became prosperous.

And then Hitler came to power.

The letter describes what happened next with almost unbearable simplicity: “his Jewishness was awakened.” He began to donate money — anonymously, so that no one could trace it — to Jewish institutions, to relief efforts for the Jews of Europe. He wanted to come forward openly, but his wife begged him not to, for the sake of their daughters’ standing in the community. He agreed. He waited.

After his wife died, he walked into the rabbi’s study and began speaking Yiddish. He wanted to come home. He wanted to join the shul — the Orthodox shul. He wanted to come back to a community that prayed in the language he had grown up hearing. And he wanted to endow it generously.

The rabbi said he could join — but first, he would have to give up the pork market.

The recording secretary is troubled by this, and a reader from Manchester, New Hampshire writes in to say so even more sharply. His argument is worth sitting with: “When a lost Jew wants to find his way back to his people, it is our duty to help him and accept him with open arms.”

And then, the observation: if the shul demanded kashrut from every member before accepting them, there would not be a minyan. The rabbi knows that Shabbat desecration is a greater sin than dealing in pork — does he check for that at the door? The recording secretary helpfully suggested to the man to join the Reform temple down the street, but the man refuses.

What I find most extraordinary in this letter is not the halakhic debate. It is this man’s oref.

He had done everything right, from the perspective of disappearance. He had changed his name. He had married out. He had built his livelihood on the very animal that stands as the symbol of everything outside the covenant. For thirty years. And still — still — when the Jews of Europe began to burn, something in him broke open that he could not close again. The donations flowed out of him anonymously, secretly, helplessly. He could not explain it. He could not stop it. He had never stopped being a Jew. The neck would not turn all the way.

And notice: he does not go to the Reform temple. He goes to the Orthodox shul, the one where the old rabbi speaks in Yiddish, the one that smells like the town he came from sixty years ago. The oref does not bring him back to a convenient Judaism. It brings him back to the one that feels true to his kishkes, to his gut.

The Manchester reader closes his letter with a phrase that has echoed through Jewish law for centuries: Yisrael, af al pi shechita, Yisrael hu. “A Jew, even when he has sinned, is still a Jew.”

It is a legal principle — but in this context, in this story, it becomes something more than law. It becomes a description of the oref itself. The stiff neck is not just stubbornness toward God. It is the stubborn persistence of Jewish being, the ontological refusal of full erasure. You can change your name. You can sell pork. You can live for decades in a life that has no visible Jewish content. And something — unnamed, unnameable — remains. When the moment of testing comes, it surfaces.

This is precisely what Moshe understands at Sinai. He does not come before God with a defense of the people’s behavior. He comes with a description of their nature. Ki am kshe oref hu — because they are stiff-necked. Because there is something in them that will always return. Because they cannot, in the end, be separated from You. Therefore, u’salachta la’avoneinu u’l’chatatenu u’nchaltanu — forgive our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.

The answer that Moshe gets echoes throughout our history – the 13 attributes of mercy, that we sing on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

The stiff neck is not a barrier to the covenant. It is the covenant’s most durable vessel. The very quality that makes the people difficult to lead, impossible to control, maddening to govern — is the quality that ensures they will still be standing at the end of every catastrophe, walking back toward the shul they grew up in, ready to come home.

There is a question that has puzzled commentators for generations, and I think it sits at the very heart of this week’s parasha. God says to Moses: “V’asu li mikdash v’shachanti b’tocham” — “Make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.” Not within it. Among them.

The text doesn’t say God will dwell within the Mishkan, within the walls and the curtains and the golden ark. God will dwell among the people. The sanctuary is not the destination — the real destination are the people. And that changes everything about how we read this parasha.

Terumah opens with an invitation. God tells Moses to speak to the Israelites and ask them to bring gifts — but only from those whose hearts move them to give. “Kol ish asher yidvenu libo” — every person whose heart is willing. This is not a tax. This is not a demand. This is not a repayment. It is a calling. And the list of materials is astonishing in its diversity: gold and silver and copper, blue and purple and crimson yarns, fine linen, goat hair, tanned skins, acacia wood, oil, spices, precious stones. No single person could have brought all of this. No single family. The Mishkan could only be built by everyone, each person contributing what they had, what they were, what they could give.

This is deeply intentional. The rabbis teach that the Mishkan was a kind of mirror of creation — that its construction echoed the seven days of the world’s making. But if creation was God’s work, the Mishkan was humanity’s answer. God built the world; we build the space where God and humanity meet. And just as creation required the full breadth of existence — light and darkness, water and land, creature and human — the Mishkan also required everyone in the community.

And notice this: for the first time since leaving Egypt, the Israelites are not being led somewhere. They are not following a pillar of fire or receiving commandments from a mountaintop. They are being invited to build something — together, as a people. The Mishkan was the first act of collective Jewish intentionality. It was the moment when a group of freed slaves became a kahal — a sacred community with a shared purpose and a shared vision of who they wanted to be.

Because that is what an intentional community does. It holds up a mirror. It says: this is who we are when we are at our best. The Mishkan was not a dwelling place for God — it was a dwelling place for the highest version of the Jewish people. Every beam of acacia wood, every thread of crimson yarn, every drop of anointing oil was an act of collective aspiration. When they built it, they were saying: we are capable of beauty. We are capable of holiness. We are capable of meeting the divine — not as scattered individuals, but as a people.

This matters because we do not encounter God alone. Of course there is personal prayer, personal study, personal wrestling with faith. All of that is real and all of that is sacred. But the Torah is telling us here that there is something that only happens b’tocham — in the midst of an intentional community. There is a version of the divine encounter that is only available to us together. We need each other not just for support, but for revelation.

This means that a community is not a building. It is not a membership roster. It is not a budget or a calendar of events. A community is built in the same way the Mishkan was built — through the willing hearts of its people, through the offering of what each person has to give. Some give gold. Some give goat hair. The Mishkan needed both. Our community needs both.

We often fall into the habit of thinking that contributing means writing a check. And yes — financial support matters. The ancient Israelites knew this. You cannot build a sanctuary on good intentions alone; you need gold, silver and the acacia wood. We need resources to do the sacred work we are called to do, and each of us is asked to give as we are able. There is no shame in giving less, and yet there is great responsibility in being able to give more.

The Torah is careful: the Text does not list what is impossible to quantify: time, skill, presence. Betzalel and Oholiav did not just donate money — they donated their hands, their artistry, their wisdom. The women who spun the goat hair gave their labor. The leaders who brought the precious stones gave their status in service of something larger than themselves. A community is woven from all of these threads.

So we understand that the Mishkan was not the goal. The Mishkan was the process. The goal is V’shachanti b’tocham. I will dwell among them. Between them. In the intentional space they created together.

The Israelites didn’t stumble into holiness — they designed it. They made choices, together, about what kind of people they wanted to be and what kind of community they wanted to inhabit. Every measurement of the Mishkan, every specification for its furnishings, speaks to this: holiness requires intention. A sacred community is not one where people simply coexist — it is one where people have made a conscious commitment to bring out the best in one another, to hold one another to a vision of what is possible.

That is our long term work here at Adath Israel. We are an intentional community. We have made a choice — each of us, in our own way — to seek something here, to be here tonight. And in doing so, we become a mirror for one another. When you walk through these doors, you are not just coming to pray or to learn or to mark a life cycle moment. You are coming to meet God as part of our people. You are coming to be seen — in your searching, in your growing, in your becoming — by a community that is committed to seeing the best in you, even when you cannot yet see it in yourself.

We are committed to being a community where every person can explore their connection to Judaism in their own way, at their own pace, on their own path. Some of you are here every Shabbat. Some of you are finding your way back after years away. Some of you are asking questions you have never asked before. Some of you are not sure what you believe, but something brought you through the door. You belong here. Your offering — whatever it is — belongs here.

The last thing I will add is that belonging is not passive. The Israelites did not receive the Mishkan. They built it. And we build this community together — with our time, with our resources, with our presence, with our questions and our doubt and our faith. We can only have the community we dream of when we show up for it, when we invest in it, when we treat it as the sacred project that it is. The community we dream of is built from the materials we each bring — and it reflects back to us who we are capable of being.

The Mishkan taught the Jewish people something they would carry through every exile and every century that followed: that God does not live in any fixed place. V’shachanti b’tocham. I will dwell among them.

God lives in the relationships we build toward something greater than ourselves. God lives in the intentional gathering of people who have decided, together, to reach for their highest selves. Every time we gather, every time we study, every time we support one another, every time we give — we are laying another beam of that ancient, eternal structure called the Jewish people. Shabbat Shalom.

Yitro: Summary – The name of the Parshah, “Yitro,” means “Jethro”, and this is the name of Moshe’s father-in-law. He comes from Midian to the Israelite camp, bringing with him Moshe’s wife and two sons. Yitro advises Moshe to appoint a hierarchy of magistrates and judges to assist him in the task of governing and administering justice to the people. The Aseret Hadevarim, the Ten Sayings, which Christians call the Ten Commandments, are given. The children of Israel are told that G d has chosen them to be a “kingdom of priests” and “holy nation.” The people respond by proclaiming, “All that G d has spoken, we shall do.” And this is a reminder that chosenness in the Jewish tradition means responsibility, and not privilege.

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I always wondered about the name of our portion, Yitro. The rabbis could have chosen a different name, as a verb. We have a very important verb at the beginning: and he heard. Vayishma. If you recall, we have several portions that are named after the first verb: Vayishlach, Vayigash, Vayeshev – to name a few. But the rabbis decided to name this after a person, Yitro – in the beginning of the portion, a non-Jew. After a few verses, it is clear that he becames a Jew.

Another story we read about someone who becomes Jewish is the haftarah for Shelach, which brings the story of the spies. The haftarah contrasts Moshe’s spies to Yehoshua, or Joshua’s, spies, bringing the story of Rahav. Rahav, a Canaanite prostitute, tells the two spies sent by Joshua: “We have heard how God split the Sea before you” (Joshua 2:10). She heard about a miracle – God’s power saving the oppressed.

Yitro, the Midianite prist, the father of Tzipporah, the father in law of Moshe, he comes to join Israel after he “heard all that God did” (Exodus 18:1). The Talmud debates what he heard. Rabbi Yehoshua says: the splitting of the sea. Rabbi Elazar HaModa’i says: the war with Amalek. But Rabbi Eliezer says: he heard the giving of the Torah (Zevachim 116a).

These two present a profound contrast: Rahav heard what God did. She heard about chesed in action – liberation, redemption, impossible salvation. Her heart melted from the stories of God’s compassion. Yitro heard what God said. He heard the Ten Commandments – structure, law, covenant, divine speech. He was drawn to revelation itself.

One converted because of God’s deeds. One converted because of God’s words.

But the Talmud knows there’s a third door too. In Menachot 44a, we meet a student of Rabbi Chyia who traveled to see a prostitute. At the moment of temptation, his tzitzit slapped him in the face – a physical reminder of mitzvot, and he tells her she can keep the moey but he’s not going to do the deed. The prostitute asked: “What flaw did you see in me?” He answered: “I saw no flaw in you, but God commanded us about tzitzit.” The Talmud then says that she then gathers her wealth, shares a third with the poor, uses a third to pay her way out and goes to Rabbi Chiya: “I wish to convert.” He asks: “have you set your eyes on one of my students?” And at the affirmative, he marries them.

This is the third door: she came because of love. She converted, and eventually married that scholar. Her door was ahavah – human connection that awakened divine connection.

Today, there are those who sometimes speak carefully about this path, nervous about “insincere” conversions. But here’s what we know: many people first encounter Judaism through dating, through love, through a relationship that made them curious. And sometimes  that relationship doesn’t last. The engagement ends. The marriage dissolves.

And yet the Judaism remains.

The person who started learning for a partner discovers they’re learning for themselves. The doorway was love; what they found inside was Torah. Their relationship with the Jewish people outlasts their relationship with that particular Jewish person.

This too is a valid door. This too is holy.

And then Elie Wiesel tells us about a fourth door – perhaps the most mysterious of all.

He was visiting Saragossa, Spain. A Catholic tour guide approached him, offered to show him the magnificent cathedral for free. When the guide learned Wiesel was Jewish and knew Hebrew, he rushed home to his apartment. From a drawer he pulled out a fragment of yellowed parchment, passed down in his family for generations. “Can you read this?”

Wiesel began to tremble. The parchment was 500 years old. It read:

“I, Moshe Ben Avraham, forced to break all ties with my people and my faith, leave these lines to the children of my children and theirs, in order that on the day when Israel will be able to walk again, its head held high under the sun without fear and without remorse, they will know where their roots lie. Written at Saragossa, the 9th day of Av, in the year of punishment and exile.”

Tisha B’Av, 1492. The day of the Spanish expulsion. A forced convert, leaving a message in a bottle for descendants he would never meet.

Five years later, Wiesel is walking in Jerusalem. A man stops him on the street, speaking Hebrew: “Don’t you remember me? Saragossa!”

The tour guide. He had learned Hebrew. He had converted. He had made aliyah.

He took Wiesel to his apartment. There on the wall, framed: the yellowed parchment.

And then the man said: “You forgot to ask me my name. I want you to know my name. It is Moshe Ben Avraham. Moses, son of Abraham.”

He heard his family calling to him across five centuries.

So we have four paths:

Rahav – moved by witnessing God’s deeds
Yitro – drawn by hearing God’s words
The woman in Menachot – awakened by love for a person
Moshe Ben Avraham – called home by ancestors he never knew

The question for us: What do we let others hear? What do we let them see? Whom do we let them love? And what messages are we leaving for those who will someday need to find their way home?

Because that tour guide in Spain? He didn’t convert despite the relationship ending. He didn’t even have a relationship to begin with. He had a piece of paper, words in a language he couldn’t read, passed down by people who told him: “If you lose this, a curse will come upon the family.”

He guarded something he didn’t understand. Until one day, someone could read it to him. And the words said: Remember who you are.

There are many doorways into Jewish life. We don’t get to choose which one opens for someone else.

Our job is to make sure that when any door opens – whether through witnessing justice, studying Torah, falling in love, or finding a forgotten parchment – there is something worth finding on the other side.

Shabbat shalom.

Summary: The name of the Parshah, “Bo,” means “Come [to Pharaoh]”. This is God commanding Moshe to “come to Pharaoh” and tell him of the next set of plagues, the last three of the Ten Plagues: a swarm of locusts devours all the leftover crops and greenery; a thick, palpable darkness envelops the land; and all the firstborn die. The protion tells us about the first Passover, the first Pesach, in Egypt, and the process of going out: at midnight, the death of the firstborn happens and the exodus begins. The portion ends with several mitzvot attributed to this moment: the seder every year, not eating hametz during the days of Pesach, eating matzah, wearing tefilin, redeeming the firstborn.

“People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where they were; but all the Israelites had light in their dwellings.” (Exodus 10:23)

The plague of darkness in parashat Bo is terrifying in its totality. The Torah describes a darkness so thick, so complete, that people couldn’t see each other or move from their places for three days. But then comes that stunning contrast: ul’chol b’nei Yisrael hayah or b’moshvotam – “but all the Israelites had light in their dwellings.”

The obvious question: Why did the Israelites have light? What made their homes different?

Rashi, quoting the midrash, offers a fascinating answer: they had light because they were meant to see where their Egyptian neighbors kept their valuables, so they could later ask to “borrow” them during the exodus. But that feels almost… transactional. Surely there’s something deeper here.

Rabbi Israel Yitzhak Kalish of Vorki, the 19th-century Hasidic master, offers a striking interpretation. He teaches: “There is no darkness or gloom greater in the world than this: that people do not see, and do not want to see, others, their neighbors – they each worry only about themselves. When no one sees the Other, and worries only about themselves, then ‘no one could get up from their place,’ for there is no hope.”

The Vorker Rebbe is reading the verse carefully. The Egyptians “could not see one another” – lo ra’u ish et achiv. Their darkness wasn’t just physical. It was the darkness of isolation, of being so consumed by their own suffering that they couldn’t see each other. And that spiritual blindness left them paralyzed, unable to move.

But the Israelites had light. Why? Because they saw each other. They maintained connection even in Egypt’s darkness.

Here’s what strikes me: The Torah doesn’t say the Israelites had light outside. It says they had light b’moshvotam – in their dwellings, in their homes, in their inner spaces. When the world outside is dark – and sometimes the darkness feels so thick we can barely move – the question becomes: where are we cultivating light inside?

I think many of us know what that Egypt-darkness feels like. When illness strikes. When we lose someone we love. When we care for those who are slipping away from us. When antisemitism feels emboldened. When we’re just… running on empty. The darkness can feel so complete that we can’t see each other, can’t move, can’t find our way forward.

But here’s what the Israelites teach us: Even in Egypt, even in slavery, even surrounded by darkness, they maintained light in their homes. How?

I think it’s this: They stayed connected. The Torah emphasizes they could see each other while the Egyptians could not. In darkness, we forget we’re not alone. We become frozen, isolated. But light begins when we reach out, when we let others see us, when we remember we’re part of something larger than our individual suffering.

They held onto hope. Not naive optimism, but that deeper thing Viktor Frankl wrote about – the ability to find meaning even in suffering, to believe that this darkness is not the final word of our story.

They did the next small thing. They prepared their homes. They taught their children. They observed Shabbat. When we’re in darkness, we don’t need to find a spotlight – we just need to light one candle, do one mitzvah, take one step.

The Hasidic masters teach that the Hebrew word for Egypt – Mitzrayim – means “narrow places.” We all have our mitzrayim, those tight, dark, constricted spaces where we feel trapped. But parashat Bo reminds us: Even there, especially there, light is possible. Not necessarily outside in the public square, but b’moshvotam – in our dwellings, in our inner lives, in our homes and hearts.

So when life is dark and hard, we do what the Israelites did: We don’t wait for the darkness to lift on its own. We create light in our dwellings. We see each other. We gather together. We do the next small sacred thing. We remember this is not forever. We prepare for redemption even when we’re still in Egypt.

And sometimes, that’s enough. Sometimes, one home with light in it is exactly what the world needs.

Shabbat shalom.

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Morning: We will read the plague of darkness.

~ it’s only a few verses. Why is this a miracle? How do you understand this specific plague? Look at the commentary. Make your own.

~ A general question: why do we need these 10 miracles at all? If God could take out the Jews from Egypt in a flash, why this? And – do you think it worked?

Vaera – “Va’era,” means “and I appeared”. This is God revealing Godself to Moses, making a promise of redemption using four verbs that are the source for the four cups on Pesach. The parsha continues with 7 of the 10 plagues, Moshe and Aharon coming to Pharaoh many times saying Let my people go. Blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, animal plague, boils, and hail follow.

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In this week’s parsha, we witness something strange. God commands Moshe to bring the first plague upon Egypt, but then says: “Say to Aharon: ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt.'” Why Aharon? Why not Moshe himself?

Rashi, quoting the midrash Shemot Rabbah, explains: “It is not proper that the waters which protected you when you were cast into the river should now be smitten by you.” The same with the third plague, lice – Aharon strikes the dust, not Moshe. This is because that dust once hid the body of the Egyptian Moshe had killed.

But here’s the question: The Nile is water. Dust is dirt. They have no consciousness, no memory, no feelings. They didn’t choose to save Moshe. So why does it matter? Why should Moshe be constrained by gratitude to inanimate objects?

The answer is that the Jewish value of Hakarat hatov – recognizing the good – isn’t about the recipient. It’s about the recognizer. It’s about who we become when we cultivate gratitude, and who we become when we don’t.

The Meiri on Bava Kamma teaches us that while we should be careful never to disgrace anyone, we must be especially careful regarding that which has honored us and from which we’ve benefited. To disgrace what helped us reveals, in his words, ‘פחיתות מדה’ – a lowliness of character, an inferior nature. As our sages said: ‘A well from which you drank water, do not throw a clod of dirt into it. It doesn’t matter if the Nile intended to save Moshe. What matters is that Moshe experienced being saved by the Nile. To strike it now would damage something essential in Moshe himself: his capacity to remember, to acknowledge, to honor what helped him.

Rav Eliyahu Dessler takes this further: A person with gratitude is someone capable of recognizing that they received something. Someone who denies gratitude, someone who says “I did this myself” or “it was just luck” or “it doesn’t matter”, that person is training themselves in a dangerous art: the art of forgetting. And the Jewish people are a people of memory, of remembering. The Midrash warns us: “Anyone who denies the good of his fellow will eventually deny the good of God.”

Think about what this means. Becoming ungrateful happensin, indeed, a process that we call slippery slope: if Moshe could strike the river that saved him, what’s next?

If this water that bore my basket means nothing, then maybe Yocheved’s and Miriam’s courage means nothing. Maybe Batya’s, the daughter of Pharaoh – maybe her compassion means nothing. Maybe even God’s intervention means nothing: maybe it was “just a coincidence”. Ingratitude is a slippery slope. It begins with “just water” and ends with “just my own efforts. My own bootstraps. I owe nothing to the world.”

So God doesn’t let Moshe strike the water. Not because the water would be hurt. But because Moshe would be hurt in his soul: his hakarat hatov – his character trait of gratitude – would be compromised. Diminished. And a leader without gratitude is a leader who will eventually believe their own power comes from themselves alone.

And there is another question: the Nile didn’t intend to save Moshe – but it did. And this opens us up a profound idea: We live in a web of unintended kindnesses. We marinate in love. Our very existence depends on a million things that didn’t try to help us, but helped us anyway.

The air you’re breathing right now didn’t decide to give you oxygen. The ground beneath your feet didn’t choose to hold you up. The sun didn’t vote on whether to shine this morning. Yet without these – without this complex choreography of elements and forces – you wouldn’t be here.

Jewish mysticism teaches us that everything in creation contains divine sparks. The water, the dust, the stones – all of it pulses with divine energy. When the Nile protected Moshe, it wasn’t random physics. It was the Nile fulfilling its purpose in the cosmic order, participating in the unfolding of redemption.

This is why Moshe cannot strike it. Because to strike the water is to deny that everything matters. It’s to say: “This was just matter in motion. This meant nothing.” But in a universe where everything is infused with divine purpose, nothing means nothing. The basket floating downstream wasn’t coincidence – it was God’s love disguised in a river. The reeds that held, the current that carried, the exact moment Batya came to bathe – all of it was part of a larger web of love.

When we practice hakarat hatov to the river, we’re not actually thanking the river itself – we’re recognizing God’s hand in unexpected places.  And when we don’t recognize the good in what seems small, unconscious, inanimate – we train ourselves to miss the miracles hiding in plain sight. It is easy to forget that in every moment of our lives, God is working through the natural world to sustain us, protect us, guide us.

So what does this mean for us, here, now?

It means we need to expand our circle of gratitude. We’re pretty good at thanking people who intentionally help us. We send thank-you notes, we buy gifts, we acknowledge acts of kindness. But what about the unintentional kindnesses? The infrastructure we inherit? The systems we didn’t build but benefit from? The people whose names we don’t know but whose work sustains us?

The teacher who taught your teacher. The person who translated the siddur you pray from. The ancestors who preserved Judaism through persecution so you could inherit it in peace. The earth that grows your food. The people who maintain the roads you drive on, the water you drink, the electricity that powers your life.

Or think about this: How many of us have left communities, institutions, teachers—left them with bitterness or dismissal, because we outgrew them or they disappointed us? We forget that they once sheltered us. They once were our Nile.

I think about my own journey sometimes. The communities that held me when I was just beginning. The teachers whose names I barely remember but whose words shaped me. The books I read once and never returned to, but that opened doors I still walk through. Do I honor them? Do I remember them with gratitude? Or do I just move on, striking the water that once saved me because now I’m swimming just fine on my own?

Hakarat hatov asks us to remember. Even when we’ve moved beyond. Even when we’ve been hurt. Even when the help was imperfect, unconscious, unintentional—we remember the good.

This week, I want to challenge you: Look at something ordinary in your life – your home, your car, the ground you walk on – and thank God for working through it. Not “thank you, house” but “Thank You, God, for sheltering me through this home.” “Thank You for getting me here safely through this car.” “Thank You for the food You provide through farmers and soil and rain.”

Look at your life – and do not take anything for granted. If you can recognize the good in the simple things, then you’re training yourself in a practice that will transform you – you are becoming someone who can see blessing everywhere. Someone who remembers the good. Someone whose power is tempered by gratitude.

Because that’s what God was teaching Moshe at the Nile: True strength isn’t about what you can destroy. It’s about what you remember, how you thank, what you don’t take for granted. It’s about recognizing that you didn’t get here alone – not even close. And that recognition, that hakarat hatov, makes you realize: we are all marinating in love. It is, indeed, the little things that matter.

Shabbat shalom.

Morning discussion:

~ From our reading, the four cups of wine for Passover are derived, through four different verbs. Can you find them? They are called “the four expressions of redemption”.

~ There is yet another expression for Eiahu’s cup, or Elija’s cup. Can you find it?

~ Who needs to know God, in our triennial reading? Why?

Vayechi: Summary

The name of the Parshah, “Vayechi,” means “And he lived”. Jacob lives the final 17 years of his life in Egypt. He asks Joseph to take an oath that he will bury him in eretz Israel. He blesses Joseph’s two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, elevating them to the status of his own sons as tribes. He then calls his sons and givves them his last words. After his embalming, Yosef gers permission from Pharaoh to bury him, and with a huge funeral processionYaakov is buried in the Machpelah Cave in Hebron. The portion continues with the deaths of Yosef and all his brothers. Yosef also instructs that his bones be taken out of Egypt and buried in the Holy Land, but this would come to pass only with Moses, at least 200 years later.

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Vayechi literally means “and he lived.” But if you open to this portion, you discover immediately that Vayechi is the parashah of Jacob’s death. It chronicles his final days in Egypt, his deathbed blessings to his sons, his insistence on burial in the land of Canaan, and finally his death and the elaborate mourning that follows.

Why does the Torah do this? Why introduce a narrative about death with the word for life?

This isn’t the only time. Earlier in Bereshit, in Genesis, we have Chayei Sarah – “the life of Sarah.” The portion opens with those words: “Vayihiyu chayei Sarah” – “And the life of Sarah was one hundred and twenty-seven years.” And then, in the very next verse, we read: “And Sarah died.” The portion named for her life is really the portion of her death and burial.

The Torah is teaching us something profound. Death and life are not opposites. They are intertwined. And the awareness of our mortality – the confrontation with our finitude – is not separate from life but essential to understanding what it means to truly live.

For most of human history, people understood this intuitively. Because death happened at home. People died in their own beds, surrounded by family – children, grandchildren, siblings gathered around. Death was sad, painful even, yes, but it was witnessed. It was integrated into the fabric of daily life. Everyone understood that life had an ending because they had sat with the dying, heard their final words, held their hands as they slipped away.

But in our era, death has been removed. We die in hospitals, often isolated. We’ve excluded death from our homes – because, understandably, we want to avoid pain and extend life as long as possible. Yet by doing so, we’ve lost something crucial – the visceral reminder of our own mortality that once grounded every generation.

Meaning in life is tie to a meaningful death awareness

Look at what happens in Vayechi. Jacob doesn’t die privately. The text says: “Vayikrevu yemei Yisrael lamut” – “Israel’s days drew near to death,” and knowing this, and moe than knowing, accepting that as a reality, Jacob acts with urgency and clarity: he is called Israel precisely because he reaches to his overarching view of the future. He calls his sons to his bedside – all twelve of them – and speaks to each one individually. Intimate. Direct.

To Reuben, his firstborn, Jacob speaks harsh truth: “Unstable as water, you shall not excel.” These aren’t the words in a hallmark card. This is a father telling his son what he needs to hear, even when it’s difficult: ground yourself and don’t let desires destroy the best of what you can be.

Shimon and Levi are rebuked for their violence at Shechem: “In their anger they killed men.”

To Judah a prophecy: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah.” To each son, words that will shape the destiny of their clans and later, tribes. And they carry their weight not despite Jacob’s impending death, but because of it. There’s a tradition in Judaism that words spoken on one’s deathbed have special power. At the threshold of death, we speak truth. The masks fall away. What matters becomes clear.

Viktor Frankl understood this from the depths of Auschwitz. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he writes that it is our very finitude – the reality that our time is limited – that gives life its urgency and meaning. If we had infinite time, every choice would be reversible, every relationship could be postponed, every act of kindness could wait for tomorrow. But because our days are numbered, each one matters. Each choice is significant. Each moment with those we love is precious.

The awareness of death, Frankl teaches, is not morbid. It is clarifying.

And yet, we live in an age designed to help us avoid this awareness. Our phones offer infinite scrolling, endless content, perpetual connectivity. We can fill every quiet moment with noise. The algorithms feed us the illusion of infinite time – there’s always another episode, another article, another distraction waiting.

But Jacob in Vayechi has no such luxury. Time is finite, and that knowledge strips away everything trivial. He doesn’t scroll through meaningless content. He doesn’t put off difficult conversations. He calls his sons together and speaks truth to them. He arranges his burial. Every action matters because time has become precious.

Frankl would say we’ve created a culture of distraction precisely because we’re terrified of confronting what Jacob faced: our own finitude. We fill our calendars, our screens, our minds with noise to avoid the existential questions. But in doing so, we rob ourselves of exactly what gave Jacob’s final days their power – the clarity that comes from knowing our time is limited.

So here’s my challenge to us: What if we lived with a bit more of Vayechi’s awareness? Not morbidly, but honestly.

What if we asked ourselves: If these were my final weeks, what would I say to my children? What relationships would I heal? What would I stop putting off? What truth would I finally speak?

The rabbis could have called this portion by a neutral name, they could have chose the next word “Yaakov”. And yet they called it “Vayechi” – “and he lived” – because facing our finitude is what allows us to truly live. Jacob’s confrontation with death was not the end of his life; they are teaching us, it was the culmination of it. His final chapter, lived with full awareness that it was his final chapter, was perhaps his most authentic, most purposeful, most alive.

We cannot return to the era when death happened at home, when every generation witnessed mortality as part of daily life. But we can choose to stop hiding from the reality of our finitude. We can turn off the distractions, even if only for a moment of clarity, silence the noise for a few minutes every day, and sit with the questions that matter: How do we want to be remembered? What do we want to leave behind? What needs to be said while there’s still time?

The portion is called Vayechi because Jacob lived – fully, honestly, purposefully, striving to be his best – right up until his last breath. And the Torah invites us to do the same.

Shabbat shalom.

==

~ Our triennial forces us to focus on the scene of the moment of awareness of Yaakov’s mortality, when he blesses Yosef’s two sons, Ephrayim and Menashe.

Notice the use of names of Yaakov and Israel. What do you make of it?

Awareness of national destiny

Israel’s eyes heavy from old age: reframing as all the sages sensing the Shechinah. The rabbis understand that to be a sage you have to strive for meaning above and beyond your personal drama.

Jacob begins aware of the mortality of his petty, small minded self first, and then pivots for the role of patriarch, seeing things in the long term.

Verse 8 – seen as a different document, or a redactor’s hand, but traditionally seen as the two sides of Yaakov, his Jacob side and his Israel side. The raising towards the long term view is such that he sees the two boys anew.

Parshat Vayigash

Summary: Vayigash,” means “And he approached”. This is Yehudah approaching Yosef to plead for the release of Binyamin, offering himself as a slave to the Egyptian ruler in Binyamin’s stead. When he sees this demonstration of loyalty to one another, Yosef reveals his identity to the brothers. “I am Yosef,” he declares. “Is my father still alive?” The brothers are overcome by shame and remorse, but Yosef tells them that this is all part of God’s plan. The brothers rush back to Canaan with the news. Yaakov at first refuses to believe but eventually the whole family comes down. Yosef then collects all the wealth of Egypt by selling food and seed during the famine. Pharaoh gives Jacob’s family the county of Goshen, the children of Israel prosper in their Egyptian exile.

There is a moment in this week’s parsha that takes your breath away. Yehudah steps forward—vayigash, he draws near—and begins to plead for his brother Benjamin. And Yosef, who has orchestrated this entire drama, who has watched his brothers squirm and tested them and pushed them to the breaking point, suddenly cannot hold it together anymore.

“Hotzi’u kol ish me’alay—Send everyone out!” he cries. And then, alone with his brothers, he weeps so loudly that all of Egypt can hear him, and he says those words that have echoed through the generations: “Ani Yosef. Ha’od avi chai?—I am Yosef. Is my father still alive?”

We often focus on Yosef’s magnanimity in this moment, his famous declaration that “it was not you who sent me here, but God.” But I want us to look more carefully at the geography of forgiveness in this scene—the physical and emotional distance that must be crossed.

The parsha is called Vayigash—”and he drew near.” Yehudah draws near to Yosef. But what kind of nearness is this? Rashi tells us that Yehudah approached “for war, for appeasement, or for prayer.” All three at once. He comes close enough to fight, close enough to beg, close enough to pray. This is the uncomfortable proximity that forgiveness requires.

Yosef makes everyone leave the room. The Sfat Emet asks: Why? If Yosef wanted to show his brothers that he forgave them, why not proclaim it publicly, in front of his entire court? Wouldn’t that be the greater act of magnanimity?

But the Sfat Emet teaches us something profound: Real forgiveness happens in privacy. It happens when there are no witnesses to applaud our virtue, no audience to admire our nobility. Yosef clears the room because forgiveness is not a performance. It is an intimate act, almost as intimate as the original wound.

And notice – Yosef doesn’t wait for his brothers to apologize. They don’t even know they need to apologize to him! They think he’s the Egyptian viceroy. The words “salachti – I forgive you” never appear in the text. Instead, Yosef says: Ani Yosef. I am Yosef. I am still here. I am still your brother.

This is perhaps the deepest teaching about forgiveness in our parsha: Forgiveness is not about erasing the past. It’s about revealing who we still are to each other, despite the past.

Let me share with you a story from the Hasidic tradition:

Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev once had a terrible dispute with another rabbi in his community. The disagreement was bitter, and harsh words were exchanged. The two men stopped speaking to each other entirely.

Years passed. One Yom Kippur eve, just before Kol Nidre, Reb Levi Yitzchak stood before his congregation and said: “I cannot lead you in prayer tonight. There is a Jew in this town with whom I have been at odds, and I must seek reconciliation before I can stand before the Holy One.”

He walked through the streets to the other rabbi’s home and knocked on the door. When the rabbi answered, Reb Levi Yitzchak said: “I have come to ask your forgiveness.”

The other rabbi was shocked. “But Rebbe,” he said, “you were right in our argument! I was wrong. If anyone should apologize, it should be me!”

Reb Levi Yitzchak smiled. “Perhaps you are correct. Perhaps I was right, and perhaps you were wrong. But I will tell you what I have learned: There is a question that is more important than ‘Who was right?’—and that question is, “ווער וועט ערשטער ווידער ווערן אַ מענטש?”

“Ver vet ershter vider vern a mentsh?” ‘Who will be first to be human again?'” or Who will be the first to become a mentsch again?

Who will be first to be human again?

This is the question of Vayigash. Not who was right. Not even who should apologize first. But rather: Who will take the first step back toward relationship? Who will vayigash – draw near – across the chasm that betrayal has created?

Yosef takes that step. He reveals himself. And in that revelation, he makes reconciliation possible.

But notice what Yosef does after he reveals himself. The text tells us: ” He fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept.” And then: ” He kissed all his brothers and wept.” Only after the tears—only after the weeping—does it say: —And after this, his brothers spoke with him.”

The Hasidic master Reb Simcha Bunim of Peshischa teaches: Before words can flow, tears must flow first. Forgiveness begins not with explanations or justifications, but with the recognition of shared pain. Yosef weeps for what was lost—the years they could have been brothers, the father who mourned unnecessarily, the family that was torn apart. His brothers cannot speak until they, too, recognize what was lost. Tears create the common ground on which reconciliation can be built.

We live in a time when forgiveness seems almost countercultural. We are more practiced at call-out culture, at calling names to one another, at cancel culture, than at the culture of reconciliation. We are better at maintaining our walls than at building bridges. But Vayigash reminds us: Sometimes the holiest act is to clear the room, to create private space for the messy work of reconnection. Sometimes the bravest question is not “Who was right?” but “Who will be first to be human again?”

This doesn’t mean there are no real victims or that all wounds can be healed. Yosef’s slavery was real. The pit was real. The years of anguish were real. The text doesn’t erase any of that. But it does show us that even real wounds can become doorways to transformation, as long as one of the two parties is willing to draw near.

Redemption Vayigash tells us, begins with drawing near. It begins when someone takes the first step across the distance, when someone risks being a mentsch again.

May we all find the courage to draw near—vayigash—to those from whom we have been estranged. May we learn to clear the room of our own need to be right, so that we can discover who we still are to each other. And may we remember that sometimes the deepest truth we can speak is the simplest: Ani Yosef. I am still here. Ready to reconnect.

Shabbat Shalom.

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Shabbat morning

• Why do you think Yaakov does not believe his sons?
• What does it take, according to the text, for hm to believe?

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Bereshit Rabbah – “They went up from Egypt…. They told him, saying: Joseph is still alive…his heart was faint” – Rabbi Ḥiyya taught: What is the plight of the liar? Even if he says truthful matters, he is not believed.

The midrash speaks of Serah’s great beauty and wisdom: when Joseph was reunited with his brothers and sent them to the land of Canaan to bring his father Jacob to him in Egypt, he ordered them not to alarm their aged father. The brothers summoned Serah and asked her to sit before Jacob and play for him on the lyre, in this manner revealing to him that Joseph was still alive. Serah played well and sang gently: “Joseph my uncle did not die, he lives and rules all the land of Egypt.”

She played thus for Jacob two and three times, and he was pleased by what he heard. Joy filled his heart, the spirit of God rested on him, and he sensed the truth of her words. He bade her: “Continue to play for me, for you have heartened me with all that you said.” While he was speaking with her, his sons came to him with horses, chariots, and royal garments, with slaves running before them and told him: “[We bring] glad tidings, for Joseph still lives and he rules all the land of Egypt.” When Jacob saw all that Joseph had sent, he knew that they spoke truthfully. He was exceedingly happy and he said (Gen. 45:28): “[This is] enough [for me]! My son Joseph is still alive! I must go and see him before I die” (Sefer ha-Yashar, Vayigash, chap. 14).

== This is a midrash that brings alive names of women who just show up – Serach bat Asher is in the lists of coming down to Egypt and going back, 210 years later. So the blessing of Yaakov makes her live that long. But it is her own care and ability with granddad that brings the blessing upon her.

Another midrash says – the Shechinah had left Yaakov from the moment he had learned his son was dead. And now he received the news that it was not so, from Serach bat Asher, and the Shechinah came back.

==

Next verse, cut from our triennial: Rav, says Yaakov – called here Yisrael – Israel said: Enough, Joseph my son is still alive; I will go and see him before I die” (Genesis 45:28).
“Israel said: Enough [rav]” – the power of my son Joseph is great [rav], as many troubles befell him, but still he remained in his righteousness much more than I did, as I sinned when I said: “My way is hidden from the Lord” (Isaiah 40:27). But I am certain that I have a portion in “how great is Your goodness” (Psalms 31:20)

Miketz – summary

Yosef interprets Pharaoh’s dreams of seven fat cows and seven thin cows, predicting seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine. Pharaoh appoints Yosef as viceroy of Egypt, and Yosef stores grain during the abundant years. When famine strikes, Yosef’s brothers come to Egypt to buy food but don’t recognize him; he tests them by accusing them of being spies, keeping Shimon hostage, and demanding they bring Binyamin. When they return with Binyamin, Yosef frames him as a thief by planting his goblet in Binyamin’s sack, setting up the ultimate test of whether his brothers will abandon Binyamin as they once abandoned him.

This is also Shabbat of Chanukah, and the beginning of a new month, Tevet, so we read not from one, not from two, but from three scrolls!!!

Miketz – Yosef, God and God’s names

I want to open tonight by saying that Miketz is the first portion I ever learned. So I have a soft spot in my heart for MIketz, and every year I feel like I’m seeing an old friend when I read Miketz.

One of the intersting aspects of Miketz is that when Yosef stands before Pharaoh and interprets his dreams, he consistently uses the name Elohim for God: “Biladi Elohim ya’aneh et shlom Paro’ah” – “God will give Pharaoh a favorable answer” (Genesis 41:16). Not once does he use the Tetragrammaton, the name Havaya that represents God’s infinite mercy and transcendence. This is true throughout the Yosef saga.

This is not accidental. Yosef understood something profound about where he stood and whom he addressed.

Centuries later, when Moshe comes before another Pharaoh with God’s message, that Pharaoh will declare: “Lo yadati et Ad-nai” – “I do not know Ad-nai” (Exodus 5:2), using the Name of Four Letters, Yud and Hey and Vav and hey. Pharaoh knows and recognizes God as Elohim – the God of nature, of power, of judgment and limitation. But Yud Hey Vav and Hey, that is pronounced as Ad-nai or Havaya, is the name that speaks of God’s intimate presence, of transcendence beyond nature, of the One who was, is, and will be – this, Pharaoh cannot know.

Yosef, with the wisdom that makes him worthy to lead, speaks in the language his audience can hear. Elohim is the name associated with din, with judgment, with the forces of nature and governance. It represents God operating through the structures of the world – through cause and effect, through the seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. This is a God Pharaoh can understand: a God of order, of dreams that predict futures, of natural cycles.

But there’s something deeper here about Yosef himself.

Jewish mystical teachings see Yosef as a symbol of the Jewish soul in galut, in exile. The dungeon where he languished for years represents the darkness and constriction of this physical world, where the soul finds itself imprisoned in a body, surrounded by forces that seem to obscure the Divine light. And Pharaoh – not as villain, but as the structure of reality itself – represents those very limitations and difficulties through which we grow.

In Hasidic thought, we learn a paradox: it is specifically through tzimtzum, through divine constriction and concealment, that creation becomes possible. The infinite light had to contract to make space for finite beings. Similarly, it is through the gevurot, the forces of limitation and judgment represented by the name Elohim, that we develop and grow.

Rabbi Abraham Twerski taught a deep lesson about this through the life of a lobster. A lobster is a soft creature living inside a rigid shell. As the lobster grows, that shell becomes confining and uncomfortable. The lobster feels pressure and discomfort. It retreats under a rock for protection, sheds its shell, and grows a new one. Eventually, that shell too becomes uncomfortable, and the process repeats. The stimulus for growth is discomfort – the lobster only grows because it feels constricted.

So too with us. Without resistance, there can be no strength. Without darkness, we cannot learn to seek light. Without the pressure of limitation, we would never shed our old shells and grow into who we are meant to become.

This is the deep wisdom we acknowledge twice daily when we recite the Shema. “Shema Yisrael, Havaya Elokeinu, Havaya Echad” – Hear O Israel, Havaya is our Elohim, Havaya is One. We are declaring that the God of infinite transcendence (Yud-Hey-Vav-Hey) and the God of limitation and constriction (Elohim) are not two separate forces, but One. The very constrictions we experience, the very dificulties, the very gevurot that press against us like the lobster’s shell, are expressions of the same divine love that sustains us, that lovingly calls us to grow. Through recognizing this oneness – that Elohim is Havaya in concealment, that dificulties are love in disguise – we transform our struggles into catalysts for growth.

Yosef in the dungeon is each of us in this world. The descent is necessary for the ascent. Yosef had to go down to the pit, down to Egypt, down to the dungeon, precisely so that he could rise to become the sustainer of life during famine. His personal trials prepared him to save the world. The same thing happens to our souls: we need to descend and experience constrictions in order to grow. Constrictions are always there – it is in our hands how we respond to them. Can we see constrictions as coming from God’s love, from God’s invitation for our souls to grow?

When Yosef speaks of Elohim to Pharaoh, he is acknowledging this truth: we are in a world governed by Elohim-consciousness, by apparent limitation and natural law. But for one who has spiritual vision, we ,arinate in God’s love. Even the strictures and difficulties contain holiness. Even in the dungeon, God is present.

The difference between Yosef and the later Pharaoh of the Exodus is this: Yosef knows that Elohim is not separate from Yud-Hey-Vav and Hey. The God of nature and the God beyond nature are One. Limitation itself comes from infinite compassion. But Pharaoh, locked in his palace of power, can only see the surface – the name Elohim, the forces of control – and mistakes them for ultimate reality.

This is our goal: like Yosef, to recognize the divine even in the constriction, even in the darkness, even in our dificulties. To know that when we speak of Elohim in this world, we are really speaking about Havaya concealed in the garments of nature. The dungeon becomes a place of preparation. Egypt’s challenges become catalysts for growth. And we, like Yosef emerging from prison to palace, discover that the descent was always part of the ascent.

When we feel the pressure of our own confining shells, when life feels constricted and difficult, we can remember both the lobster and Yosef: the discomfort is not punishment but invitation. It’s time to grow. And in that moment of pressure, we proclaim: Echad – it is all One, all divine, all part of the journey from dungeon to palace, from constriction to expansion, from exile to redemption.

May this be a week in which we find ways of coming out of darkness and bringing light to the world, each of us, with the special and specific light of our own growth. Shabbat Shalom

Welcome  and Shabbat Shalom.  Thank you all for coming to share this special day with me.

My parashah is Vayishlach. You could say Vayishlach is basically the original WWE episode of the Torah.

Jacob — or Yaakov — is on his way home, stressed out because his twin brother, Esau, is coming to meet him after twenty years. That might sound nice, like a family reunion, except the last time they saw each other, Esau wanted to kill him. And now Esau is coming… with 400 men. That’s not a family reunion — that’s a battle scene.

So Jacob prepares. He sends gifts,  splits his camp,  and prays to God.  He’s anxious, unsure if this meeting will bring forgiveness or disaster. And then that night, something mysterious happens — Jacob wrestles with a man, or maybe an angel, until dawn.

Can you imagine what that looked like? Two guys rolling around in the desert all night.

If that happened today, it would definitely end up on YouTube with the title   “Angel vs. Patriarch: Who Will Win?”

In the end, Jacob wins — kind of. He’s limping, but he’s also transformed. The angel blesses him and gives him a new name: Yisrael, meaning “one who struggles with God and prevails.”

But here’s the part that matters most — what happens after the wrestling.  The next morning, Jacob meets Esau. After all that fear and planning, something amazing happens: Esau runs to him, embraces him, and they weep together. No battle,  no revenge — just two brothers finding peace after years of anger and pain.

To me, that’s the real heart of Vayishlach: reconciliation. It’s not just about wrestling; it’s about what comes after — the courage to forgive, to let go, and to start again.

We all wrestle with things in our own lives. Maybe not angels in the desert,  but definitely alarm clocks,  bad WiFi,  or people who take 18 items into the “10 items or less” line. [wait for laughs]

And sometimes, the hardest wrestling matches are with ourselves — our fears, doubts, and pride.

Like Jacob, we struggle through the night, and hopefully, by morning, we’ve grown just a little bit stronger or a little bit wiser.

But the story reminds us that the struggle isn’t just about winning.  It’s about finding peace — with others and within ourselves. It’s about saying,   “I’m sorry,” or “I forgive you,” or even just,     “Let’s start over.” That’s not weakness — that’s strength.

Being Jewish doesn’t mean we never struggle. It means we keep wrestling — with faith,  with courage, with forgiveness — and we still show up the next morning to try again.

So, whether you’re wrestling with your alarm clock, your homework, or your own heart,  remember Jacob.

Hold on, stay in the fight, and when the morning comes, you’ll walk away stronger — even if you’re limping to the coffee machine.

Becoming a Bat Mitzvah is a special moment in my life — a time when I begin to take responsibility for my own actions and choices as a Jewish person. When Yaakov receives a new name, Yisrael, that moment sparks a change in his life — a transformation that shows his strength, growth, and new sense of purpose.

I feel like my Bat Mitzvah is a little bit like that.  I may not be getting a new name, but I am stepping into a new identity — one where I take ownership of my Jewish values, my learning, and the kind of person I want to be.

Just like Yaakov’s new name connected him more deeply to his faith and to the future of the Jewish people, my Bat Mitzvah connects me more deeply to my community, my heritage, and my own journey.  It reminds me that being Jewish means striving, learning, and growing — just like Yaakov did.

This day celebrates not just what I’ve accomplished, but who I am becoming.

For my Bat Mitzvah project, I chose to raise money for guide dogs for the blind in Israel. This cause is especially close to my heart because my uncle Ken was blind, and I’ve seen how much independence and confidence guide dogs can give to people who can’t see. Through this project, I’ve learned that doing a mitzvah isn’t just about helping others — it’s also about showing love, compassion, and making a real difference in someone’s life.

My Bat Mitzvah reminds me that being Jewish means learning,  caring, and striving to be my best self. This moment connects me more deeply to my family, my community, and the generations before me. It’s both a celebration of who I am and a promise of who I want to become.

I want to thank all of you for being here.

Thank you to my mom and dad for helping me through this journey, to my siblings for always being there for me, to my teachers for their guidance and patience,

and to my friends at school and at Hebrew school for making every moment more fun. Thank you to Joanna for helping us organize this event, and last but not least, thank you to Sandra Beckman for helping me make and edit my speech.

Shabbat Shalom!

Vayetze – thick of Yaakov’s cycle. The famous dream of the stairs to heaven, marriages, children – 12 out of 13, flight from Lavan’s house after 20 years.

Our portion opens with Yaakov fleeing into the wilderness – alone, afraid, going into exile, leaving his family behind. He has nothing but his staff, used for walking and shepherding. He gathers stones fr a pillow and, exhausted, falls asleep. There, in that desolate place, he dreams one of the most famous and consequential dreams for the Jewish people in particular and for humanity in general:  a ladder connecting earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending.

Notice: the angels go up first, then down. The movement begins from below, and then reaches heaven.

Viktor Frankl, who survived the darkness of Auschwitz, taught us something present in the kernel of Yaakov’s dream: idealists are the ultimate realists. Those who clung only to physical reality in the camps—who saw only the hunger, the cold, the cruelty—they often perished first. But those who held onto meaning, who found purpose even in suffering, who believed in something beyond the immediate horror—they were a lot more likely to endure and survive. Frakl was an example himself: he had his PhD thesis confiscated by the Nazis when he and his family were taken to the camps. He knew his father, mother and brother had died,but clung to two things: the possibility of his pregnant wife having survived and recreating his thesis in his mind while surviving four different camps.

Cynics call themselves realists. They see this broken world and say, “This is all there is.” They see human beings and say, “We are all only moved by selfish reasons”. But Yaakov and Frankl both show us a deeper reality, a meaningful one: even in our darkest wilderness, the ladder stands. Heaven and earth remain connected. The question isn’t whether the connection exists – it’s whether we choose to climb. The question isn’t if there is meaning in this existence – it’s whether we work internally enough to find meaning.

Frankl wrote that between any external stimulus and our response, there is a space – and in that space lies our freedom. It is the space of the moment of our personal choice: we chose our actions, our attitude, our mindset, we chose to follow our deepest yarnings, our soul. The ladder in the dream is that space made visible. It is asking Yaakov to respond to the question that life asks of us: what response will you chose? Who will you become, day after day, as you walk through life? We cannot control what happens to us, but we can always control whether we ascend or remain lying on stones.

So today, I want to invite you to

1. Find your “nevertheless.” Each day, identify one thing you’ll do not because the world is good, but to make it good. Visit someone lonely. Study one line of Torah. Perform one act of justice. Not because it’s easy or because you’ll be rewarded, but because meaning demands it.
2. Be an ascending soul. Share one story of hope, resilience, or goodness each week – with your children, your friends, our community, online. Not to deny the darkness, but to testify that the ladder still stands. When we bring light to despair, we ascend the ladder and bring heaven’s blessing down.

The scene of the dream ends with Yaakov awakening and saying, “God was in this place, and I did not know it.” Our work, like Yaakov’s, is to open our eyes and feel God’s presence. And then, with open eyes, to climb towards meaning.

Shabbat Shalom.

Shabbat morning:

Read the dream and its aftermath. What does it signal, to you – opinion – regarding Yaakov’s relationship with God?