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One English word used today to describe the work of a rabbi is “pastoral.” Pastoral is a word whose origins derive from the nomadic, shepherding origins of our people, and today it refers to a form of accompaniment — to, as Rabbi Dayle Friedman writes, offering “a spiritual presence to people in need, pain, or transition.” She continues: “We walk along with those we serve in the course of their journeys through suffering, illness, change, and joy.”
This work is not limited to rabbis. It extends to other Jewish professionals and volunteers — certainly to cantors, and really to all people engaged in Jewish communal life. By stepping into Jewish community with two feet, we take on the responsibility — and benefit, in turn, from others taking on the responsibility in response to our own needs — of being gently present to people as they experience highs and lows, transitions, distresses, and celebrations.
We are present to them, holding space for whatever happens, not with a sense that we will always be able to fix what is wrong (more often than not, we will emphatically not be able to), but through our presence, reminding community members that they are not alone, and with our presence praying (though not insisting) that they find meaning, resilience, and holiness, even in the midst of heartache, loss, and challenge.
This task is hard enough when we are facing one individual experiencing a challenging moment. Through patience, gentle listening, tenderness, and love, we can work to attune ourselves to whatever it is they are actually going through, and in meeting them where they are, help to ease the burden a little bit.
It is that much more challenging when we are talking about collectively providing pastoral support to an entire community going through a period of upheaval, transition, and pain.
I believe this dynamic describes at least one element of what has been going on in Jewish communities in response to two seismic shifts in the world, one being the horrors of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing war, and the other being the deeply-polarizing, norm-breaking US presidential elections of 2016, 2020, and 2024.
I say it is that much more challenging to provide communal — as opposed to individual — pastoral support, because there are many different spiritual responses within one community (“spiritual,” at the very least in the sense of how these events are having an impact upon our respective “spirits,” our internal senses of well-being).
Therefore, when speaking to the spiritual needs of a community, being present to — accompanying — people where they are, it’s worth naming the obvious, which is that people in one community are often in very different places.
Now, part of community is about finding people who share many of your experiences — your cultural touchstones, your religious rhythms, your interpretations of how to make sense of the world — and so a community that shares none or few of these is going to have a hard time supporting one another.
Still, even with a shared sense of story, purpose, and mission, there will be differences in interpretations of new events. So, too, with Society Hill Synagogue and other Jewish communities.
Our task is both to be clear about the values we hold and what we are striving for, while also recognizing that different events will land differently for different people, and we may have different spiritual needs in a given moment.
For example, as I wrote after the November 2024 election, we have a community that, without a doubt, has members who voted for one or the other major-party candidate in the highly consequential Jewish and human question of who would hold the office of President of the United States, home to one of the two largest Jewish populations in the world, and the most important ally of the other of the two.
As I wrote then, and as we were reminded this week, while some people experienced the election and inauguration with a sense of exaltation — some with the sense, for example, that this would mean greater support for Israel — many others experienced the election, and again during the inauguration and with the first set of executive actions this week, with a great deal of distress: concern that immigrants, with whom they feel a kinship, would be demonized and deported; concern that a fragile planet would be neglected; concern that the rights of transgender people will be diminished; and a concern that the justice system is being deployed to benefit those aligned with the President and may be used to persecute his enemies.
My heart hurts in this moment — in part because I share some of the concerns just described, and in part because I also feel deeply a desire for everybody, in this community and outside of it, to feel seen and accompanied and joined in the experiences they are having, whatever their source, even if their reactions are different from mine. That is part of community — that we shouldn’t have to be alone no matter what we are going through.
So the short version of this message is a desire to express my aspiration to see you, to be present to what you are going through — an aspiration shared by many in this community. We want to be present, in the modest ways we can, to each other’s needs, in this polarizing and often painful time. I believe we can do that, and that we can model for the larger community what it means to hold sacredness within difference.
Next, I’d like to share the D’var Torah I shared last Friday night, two days before three hostages — Emily Damari, Romi Gonen, and Doron Steinbrecher — were returned home to Israel.
As many of you may know, we recently began, as a community, to offer a prayer for the return of the hostages as part of our Shabbat morning Torah service.
We offer our prayers for the community when the Torah is out — the sacredness of the text serving to give us a sense that God’s presence is near, responsive, attuned, ready. In truth, tradition says that God’s presence is always here, always ready. And yet, while that might always be the case for God, it’s not always the case for us, and so the Torah serves as a reminder for the capacity of our mutual closeness.
So with the Torah out tomorrow, we will once again offer a prayer for a return of the hostages, in addition to an extended prayer for a just and lasting peace.
This Sunday, hostages will finally begin returning home. Many living, some not. It looks like a peace, albeit tentative, limited, and fragile, will settle in.
A confession I have made, and will make again, is that I have had a difficult time focusing on the hostages over the course of this war. And that’s for a couple of reasons. Superficially, it’s because when I’m following the news, my mind tends to gravitate to stories that speak to the big picture of an event or a conflict and away from individual stories — why is what is happening happening, and what’s going to happen next? What are the incentives of each party? What are the wise policy choices to ensure widespread safety and security and prosperity? I can feel my psyche, my spirit, feel more comfortable in this zone of the analytical, the strategic — head over heart.
Which is related to the second, more fundamental reason I have shied away from the plight of the hostages — not as an excuse, but as an explanation. For me, deeply engaging with their stories would mean opening up my heart to a profound level of suffering: for the hostages, for their families, for all those — Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs — impacted by this war. And that’s a level of suffering that is hard for me, and I imagine for many, to bear. Again, I say that not to excuse, only to explain.
Now, to be clear, it’s not that those analytical, strategic questions have no value — governance of a nation-state of course involves balancing, on a macro scale, all of the human beings involved in the course of any event; we can’t just focus on individual stories. But if we lose touch with those human stories, we’ve lost our humanity, too. That is a danger for me.
Which brings me back to this prayer for the hostages.
I want to share the text of that traditional prayer with you, in existence since the 12th century — yes it’s been that long and even longer that our people, and all peoples, have experienced captivity in this way — and to reflect on what it says, what it asks of God, and what it asks of us.
The traditional prayer says:
Aheinu kol beit Yisrael,
אַחֵינוּ כָּל בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל
Aheinu, our brothers, our sisters, our siblings, kol beit Yisrael, the whole house of Israel…
han’tunim b’tzarah uvashivyah,
הַנְתוּנִים בְּצָרָה וּבַשִׁבְיָה
…who are given over to tzarah — there’s that root again, tzar, from the word Mitzrayim, the narrow place, which Egypt represents — who are given over to constriction and captivity…
ha’omdim bein bayam uvein bayabashah,
הָעוֹמְדִים בֵּין בַּיָם וּבֵין בַּיַבָּשָׁה
…whether they abide on land or sea.
This, too, is a reference to the Exodus —
וַיָבֹאוּ בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל בְּתוֹךְ הַיָם בַּיַבָּשָׁה
vayavo’u b’nei-Yisrael b’tokh hayam bayabashah
And the Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.
Exodus 14:21
No matter where they’re experiencing captivity, we invoke the experience of the Exodus: may they journey to freedom, through land or through sea.
Hamakom yerahem
הַמָקוֹם יְרַחֵם
Hamakom, the prayer continues: may God, but not just any name for God, the name for God that means Makom, place, recognizing that wherever the people are for whom we’re praying, it’s not a place where they want to be, and yet the the Omnipresent is with them. “God” we seem to be saying, “Who knows the importance, the sacredness of place, of how disconcerting it can feel not to be in the right place,” extend compassion upon them. Yotzi’em — the verb meaning to bring out, both like yetzi’at mitzrayim, the Exodus from Egypt, and l’hotzi, like hamotizi lehem min ha’aretz, who brings forth bread from the earth.
Hamakom yerahem aleihem v’yotzi’em mitzarah lirvahah, ume’afelah l’orah
הַמָקוֹם יְרַחֵם עֲלֵיהֶם וְיוֹצִיאֵם מִצָרָה לִרְוָחָה וּמֵאֲפֵלָה לְאוֹרָה
God, facilitate their coming out from: mitzarah, there’s that word again, tzarah. Facilitate their coming out from distress, from constriction, lirvahah, to ease, from the word ru’ah, wind, spirit, openness, flow.
May Hamakom, may God, take them from constriction to openness, ume’afelah, from a plague-like darkness, also from the story of Exodus, l’orah, to light. To the light and gladness, this is invoked at the end of the Book of Esther:
Layehudim haytah orah v’sim’hah v’sason v’ikar
לַיְהוּדִים הָיְתָה אוֹרָה וְשִׂמְחָה וְשָׂשֹׂן וִיקָר
The Jews enjoyed light and gladness, happiness and honor.
Esther 8:16
umishi’ebud lig’ulah,
וּמִשִׁעְבּוּד לִגְאֻלָה
Bring them out, God, from darkness to light, mishi’ebud, from servitude, like avadim hayinu, lig’ulah, to redemption. To the redemption which we all pray for each and every day. Bring them from servitude to redemption…
hashta ba’agala uvizman kariv v’nomar: amen.
הַשְׁתָא בַּעֲגָלָא וּבִזְמַן קָרִיב וְנֹאמַר: אָמֵן
Now, speedily, and in a time that is near at hand. And let us say: Amen.
This is the prayer in its entirety. May it be so.
Clearly there is a way in which this prayer locates whatever the Jewish experience of the moment is — remember that this prayer his been a part of our tradition for nearly 1,000 years now — within the fabric of our foundation story; language from the Exodus is central to it, as is a reference to the Book of Esther.
But while there’s clarity, there is also an ambiguity, which does not come through in the English translation, and that ambiguity is as follows: to whom is the prayer directed? God is invoked, so the assumption is God, and in a sense, that is absolutely true. Traditionally understood, God plays a role in everything we do, so of course it’s directed in part to God.
But, as Rabbi Elie Kaunfer points out, the prayer begins: “Our siblings, kol beit Yisrael, the whole house of Israel, who are given over to constriction and captivity and…” Kol beit Yisrael? The whole house of Israel? Is it all of us who are in constriction and captivity?
On one level, you could answer, yes. Prayer language is often not only about a literal, physical translation; the strain of the world, the pain of all our life experiences, the universe being in exile — all of us experience some level of distress and constriction. God, we might be saying, allow each of us to break free from the pain and the suffering that is present, that keeps us captive, in each of our lives — the worry, the sadness, the existential angst: help us find light where we see dark, airiness where we feel claustrophobic, redemption where we feel bound up. One way of interpreting this prayer, in which we’re referring to aheinu kol beit Yisrael, our siblings the whole house of Israel, is that we’re all in distress in one form or another, and to make space for our collective prayers of redemption.
But another is that kol beit Yisrael is not who the prayer is about, it’s who the prayer is to.
As Rabbi Kaunfer points out, the prayer very plausibly could be: Aheinu kol beit Yisrael! Our siblings, the whole house of Israel! And then, implicitly, listen! Listen up!
I promise you, this is a more than plausible translation of the prayer.
In fact, in this way, it may very much be like that ultimate prayer of listening, the Sh’ma. The Sh’ma is not so much a prayer to God; it’s a prayer to the people of Israel. Sh’ma Yisrael, listen Israel, the prayer says, we all flow from the same source of oneness.
Aheinu kol beit Yisrael, our siblings the whole house of Israel, listen! Han’tunim b’tzarah uvashivyah, there are those who are given over to distress and captivity, and we’ve got to pay attention. This is a rebuke to people like me who shy away from it. A gentle rebuke, but a rebuke nonetheless. Our siblings, the whole house of Israel, there are those who are given over to distress and captivity, and we’ve got to do something about it.
Yes we invoke God — Hamakom yerahem, may God grant compassion. According to tradition, God is present in everything we do, the source of strength and inspiration for all we bring about. But this prayer isn’t to God. It’s to us.
Aheinu kol beit Yisrael, Our siblings, the whole house of Israel: that’s us, that’s me. Pay attention to those in distress. And yes, this starts with our fellow people of Israel. As Hillel famously teaches in Pirkei Avot: If I am not for myself, who will be for me? We start with the close-knit fabric of our people.
And then we extend outward. Hillel continues on with: If I am only for myself, what am I? We extend our attunement to those in distress beyond our people.
Aheinu kol beit Yisrael, that’s all of us.
There are those who are given over to constriction and captivity. Let’s bring them home.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi K.
