Parashat Ki Tavo / Sep 20
Rabbi Noa Kushner
Ready or Not

Perhaps now we can start to understand why it is our hands are mentioned
We can understand why the priest has to take the basket from our hands
It is because we cannot offer it all by ourselves

That is, to offer it ourselves is simply too much to ask of us
To grow something like that and then let it go without any help

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Parashat Ki Tetzei / Sep 14
Rabbi Noa Kushner
Now You See Me, Now You Don't 

“Sometimes what needs to be revealed begins with the not-finding.”

With the moon that sets
Or even, is hidden in the sky

Because the not-finding reminds us of our longing
That as much as we love the light of the moon, we desire more than the moon

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Parashat Shoftim / Sep 6
Rabbi Noa Kushner
עַ֤יִן בְּעַ֙יִן֙ / Eye to Eye 

If I accept that this giant swath of the Israeli population,
Many of whom are grieving personal family members and friends,
Including the hostages and hundreds of soldiers who have been slain,
If I accept, as Netanyahu suggests, that this giant swath of the Israeli population are all Hamas sympathizers —

And the only other choice I am offered is continuing to fight Hamas, which requires life after life after life
More war and force

Accepting this kind of cheap truth, cheap choice
Would be as preposterous as choosing between one of my two eyes
Any way I choose will blind

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Parashat Ekev / Aug 23
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 slavery will end
That even these oppressions will end
Because we will work to end them

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Parashat Devarim / Aug 9
Rabbi Noa Kushner
What Took Us So Long

It's not that we are back here again
It's that we're standing in the spot where our parents made their biggest mistakes
Where our parents were presented with what seemed inconceivable at the time — and good
But they could not overcome their own lack of חזון / vision

They just couldn’t see it

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Parashat Bechukotai / May 31
Rabbi Noa Kushner
The rock on the mouth of the well

We cannot move this kind of stone with blame
We cannot move it with force
We cannot move it with power alone, it does not matter how powerful we become
We cannot even move this kind of stone with demonstrating our victimhood, by accruing power based in real pain

If anything, the more we fight it, the more fixed it gets, the more set in its place

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Parashat Aharei Mot / May 3
Rabbi Noa Kushner
וַיִּתְרֹֽצְצ֤וּ הַבָּנִים֙ בְּקִרְבָּ֔הּ / The twins were struggling in her womb: Israel and Palestine there and here

?אִם־כֵּ֔ן לָ֥מָּה זֶּ֖ה אָנֹ֑כִנֹ֑וּ / Why are we here? 
I want to suggest that we have now really tried the answer of self-protection and violence 
And as much as I have stood by Israel in her need for self-defense and will 
I want to suggest this moment requires another kind of answer 
Another kind of way to get from here to there 
And in order to find this new answer 
we will need more discipline than we have exhibited in this country 

→ Click here to read + listen to the full drash

Parashat Metzora / Shabbat HaGadol / April 19
Rabbi Noa Kushner
How to prepare to be free

People have been confiding in me that they're afraid to have Passover seder
They're afraid of destroying friendships and family over the arguments see
Because in recent years we have all taken on a polarized, untrusting mentality
We’ve become afraid to say what we think lest we are cancelled by our own friends
This is truly where we are
And this mentality is hard to break
Maybe, they tell me, better to not have seder this year

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Parashat Shmini / April 5
Rabbi Noa Kushner
Those of Us Left Behind

Who was Moses fooling anyway?
Wasn’t he also shattered by the deaths of these young men, his brother’s children?
Couldn’t he have just sat with his older brother, quietly, for a little while?

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Parashat Tzav / March 30
Rabbi Noa Kushner
?מִ֣י זֹ֗את עֹלָה֙ מִן־הַמִּדְבָּ֔ר / Who is she that arises from the desert?

Maybe it is the prayer that cannot be classified
We don’t know what it is for
It doesn’t fit neatly into a category
Maybe it is an unwieldy prayer for things to just get better
Maybe it is a prayer born from confusion or fear about our world
Maybe it is prayer concerned for those we love
And even for those in distant, far away places, empathy and love for those we don’t know, will never know
Maybe it is prayer born out of exhaustion, a prayer not fully formed, a prayer without all the proper words

→ Click here to read + listen to the full drash

Parashat Ki Tisa / March 1
Rabbi Noa Kushner
Notes on Jerusalem

He said, "Peace has to come with honor and dignity — and not humiliation"

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Parashat Yitro / February 3
Rabbi Noa Kushner
Divine Recognition

One family told me that on Kol Nidrei when we were in lockdown — 

They got dressed up in white and feeling a bit self-conscious, It was all so strange, they turned on their computers and stood near their window to pray

But as they neared their window, onto a porchThey heard something across the park where they lived — they heard Kol Nidrei And they looked out and across the park…

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Parashat Shemot / January 5
Rabbi Noa Kushner
שִׁבְתִּ֣י בְּבֵית־יְ֭הוָה / To Live in the House of God

Pharoah’s Egypt and all its modern imitators try to insist that to help another person, to help ourselves, to have faith standing by a river, to ask for help from an unlikely source — any of these are fools' errands, 
Better to stay in our lanes, say the Pharaohs of the world
Don’t risk, don’t trust, don’t save anyone, least of all yourself 

But our Torah insists otherwise  

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Parashat Miketz / December 15
Rabbi Noa Kushner
לְעֵת מְצֹא / In the Time of Finding

The rabbis say this phrase means a person who has not given up hope
In other words, someone who prays לְעֵת מְצֹא
“In a time when God can be found”
Means a person who did not stop hoping for something 
until they truly knew, without a doubt, the end of the story 

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Parashat Vayeshev / December 8
Hanukkah 5784
Rabbi Noa Kushner
וְעֵ֥ץ הַזַּ֖יִת לֹ֣א נָשָׂ֑א / Nothing on the Tree

In our moment where war
Is not abstract but frighteningly real
We can see how easily — no matter your position on the war —
We can see how easily religion and holiness and even something like our understanding of a miracle
can get mixed into what’s happening on the battlefield.

→ Click here to read + listen to the full drash