Read + Listen / השראה

R. Jessica Kate Meyer
The Day the High Priest shared the Secret of Forgiveness
September 16, 2021 / Yom Kippur, 5782

R. Noa Kushner
Revealed
September 15, 2021 / Kol Nidrei, 5782

But I have come to believe that this social crisis, this economic crisis
This crisis of unimaginable disparity
Is so pervasive and so, accepted
It requires our spiritual attention
It requires us to reveal all the lies we’ve been telling ourselves for so long.

R. Noa Kushner
Living Through Creation
September 7, 2021 / Rosh Hashanah Morning, 5782

I’m talking about the kind of creation that assumes chaos is already here

The kind that assumes things need to changeI’m not talking about a shiny new creation

I’m talking about re-creation It’s already started
This re-creation has already started The only question is: What kind of a creation story is it going to be?

R. Jessica Kate Meyer
Teshuvah from the Undertow
September 6, 2021 / Erev Rosh Hashanah, 5782

Parashat Bo
Rabbi Noa Kushner

We Are Marked
The mark, the reminder in the Torah is that we left Egypt once and so we will leave it again

That even this plague will end

That even this plague will end

That even this plague will end

Rabbi Noa Kushner
Little Vessels: Hanukkah, 2021

Vessels of oil / small, vessels, cruises of oil
The kind of vessels that once, long ago, gave us just enough hope to try to change everything in our world
Just enough hope to get us to the next miracle

Parashat Toldot
Rabbi Noa Kushner

Nothing is Lost
There are two life changing prayers in the parasha, one from Isaac and one from Rebecca. Both ask, “If this is the way it is, then why am I here?”

Parashat Lech-Lecha
Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer
October 15th, 2021

Rabbi Noa Kushner
Parashat Re’eh
August 6, 2021 / Open all the doors

Parshat Va'etchanan
Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer
July 23rd 2021

In the journey from Tisha B’Av to Tu B’Av, we come to understand love differently. In the face of death and destruction and existential fear, we remember how to love each other. 

Defenses down.

Parashat Matot-Masei
Rabbi Noa Kushner
July 9th, 2021

Four Basic Rules for Moving Through The Wilderness / Life
Rule #1: You Can’t Leave Until You Journey
Rule #2: You Cannot Name the Station Until You’re Done With It
Rule #3: Sometimes Backwards is Forwards
Rule #4: Every Station is Essential

We’re All Mourning Something
Parashat Chukat

A teaching about the consequence of skipping grief and going to the next crisis, how we might instead shoulder the losses and build new/old ways to be together again.

Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer
Parashat Sh’lach

But what about the damage we do to others, and to the world, to God, when we sink into the victim place, make like Gregor Samsa and morph into grasshoppers, not taking the impact of our actions seriously? When there is a discrepancy between perceived impact and actual impact, things get dangerous.

To silence prayer is to silence a soul.
So many bad actors and bad actions have been amplified - spewing hate - while prayer is quieted.
And we know that what gets amplified draws us toward it.

Can You Hear Me Now?: Walking in the Garden

If you run you'll be far from me, says God
But you don’t have to run
No one is actually chasing you

Parashat Tazria-Metzora

Our skin, our boundaries,
must be permeable to receive nutrients from the sun,
from light reflected in one another’s faces, from touch.

Porous enough to breathe in and release out.

Facing the Field

When the plague is gone
When we have declared it safe
How do we avoid the strong pull towards endless self protection?
How do we return to life?
What direction do we face?

Going Out the Door We Came In

Parashat Shmini
In our holiest places
It's not even that everyone is welcome —
But that everyone is flawed, no one is unblemished, everyone can make t’shuvah
and that is the point

Parashat Chol Hamoed

What would you pack in the middle of the night, in hipazon/frenzy? What do you drop at the edge of the sea before crossing?

What are your non-negotiables?

Parashat Vayikra

Even when we think we’re standing on the outside looking in,

even when we can’t hear the divine voice calling our name,

we use our own voice to call someone else’s.

The act of inviting brings us all inside.

Parashat Ki Tissa

In that moment Moses knows

God is mistaken

For God, like it or not, is always with us

Parashat Terumah

If the space between the wings of the כרובים were too close, obscuring the Divine Presence titrating through the schach, the keruvim themselves would become idols--masechot--as heretical as the golden calf. Key difference? The schach.

Parashat Yitro

I imagine hearing that voice was like finding a long lost relative

Only, we realized, still trying to shake slavery off, we had been the lost ones

Parashat Shemot

There is one thing Pharaoh does not do —

he never appeals to the moral sense of the midwives

He never tries to make the case that he is doing the right thing,

Only that he has the power to get away with doing what he wants

Parashat Vayishlach

Sometimes we miss the miracles

Even really obvious ones

Sometimes we need other people to tell us:

“That thing that happened? The fact that you are a totally different person now? That was a miracle. Say the blessing.”

Parashat Toldot

Parashat Vayera

Maybe, just maybe, there is the America we know

And there is also a second America

An America of Not Yet

An America of the Possible

Parashat Noach

It couldn’t have taken God 40 days and 40 nights to flood the world. There must have been something else.

For life, and not for death. May it be for satiety and not for lack. For your sake, and the sake of all your people. Do not withhold water.

Parashat Shoftim

As we stand in our foggy oasis, surrounded on all sides by raging fires whose glow casts an eerie light at sunset and whose smell seeps in through our closed windows, as we see images of bumper to bumper traffic of mass evacuation, with ash falling down, and read about Torah scrolls swiftly wrapped in tallitot and whisked to safety, how do we show up? What is our responsibility?

Parashat Ekev

Because these moments in the desert are just the moments are most interested in now

Because we too are looking for clues

As to how to live in an in-between time

Parashat Pinchas

It’s been 38 + years since the original Israelite census, the one before everyone over 20 was condemned to die in the wilderness because they couldn’t hold onto faith for five minutes before getting distracted.