Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller

The parasha this week features huge dramatic motion and emotion – Joseph, favored by his father Jacob, dreams of ruling over his brothers, who sell him into slavery in Egypt. This was terrible, but not as bad as their earlier intent to kill him! Tamar disguises herself as a prostitute in order to conceive a child with her father-in-law, Judah. This sounds terrible, but in context of the rest of that story, she is the heroine. In Egypt, the wife of Joseph’s owner tries to seduce Joseph, and when he rejects her, she accuses him of trying to rape her and has him sent to prison. This too is terrible, but in the end, Joseph will say that everything that happened was part of God’s plan to place him in the position where he was able to save the people from famine.

Our Judaism undoubtedly teaches responsibility for our actions. But this thread of our story places in front of us questions about causality, as well as about the possibility of teshuvah, forgiveness, and our ability to change the course of our lives even when we are in dire straits. This parasha in particular teaches us to read for nuance and to allow the text to ask us questions. 

Shabbat shalom, 

Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller

This week’s Torah reading continues the dramatic journey of Jacob, who is fleeing from his brother after stealing his blessing and manipulating him out of his birthright. Now, he divides his family to protect them, as he has heard that his brother is headed to meet him with 400 men. Jacob wrestles some kind of opponent in the night, and he prevails. Tradition identifies the opponent as an angel, some say specifically Esau’s angel, or possibly Jacob’s own conscience. Jacob survives and even wins his request for a blessing.

Much later in the reading, God instructs Jacob to return to Beit El – where his earlier dream of the ladder occurred – and to settle there. Jacob not only does this but he instructs his entire household to engage in a process of cleansing themselves and giving up their foreign idols before they set out for Beth El. Amazingly, they do this immediately.

Maybe the ordeal of facing his own conscience and the reality of needing to face his brother enable him to act with integrity and to lead others. The story of Jacob’s wrestling match is iconic – the idea of a ‘dark night of the soul’ is powerful. One of the great questions of spiritual life is that of what enables a dark night of self-doubt, fear and struggle to turn into one of transformation. While we may face those nights feeling alone, sharing the doubts and fears can give us courage, and knowledge that we are truly not alone. May our community be a place for this kind of support and deep connection, as well as one of celebration, joy and creativity. See you at shul!

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller

This week’s parasha brings us Jacob’s dream – “a stairway was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and messengers of God were going up and down on it” (Gen. 28:11). The scene is captivating in itself, portraying God standing immediately next to Jacob and blessing Jacob with land, descendants and protection. But a close read of the Hebrew enables more possibilities. The messengers of God were going up and down – but because the pronoun used can apply to the ladder or to Jacob himself, it is not clear whether the angels traveled on the ladder or through Jacob himself.

This idea that Jacob not only experienced a divine encounter but he himself became a conduit of connection with the Divine, receiving blessing and new understanding, became an important interpretation in Hasidic and later in modern Jewish thought. Further, if Jacob is the ladder, perhaps through spiritual practice, we too can become such a conduit, grounded in our physical world and also accessing spiritual insight and understanding from beyond where we sit.

This past week, several TBH members and I heard Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger and Khaled Abu Awwad share stories from their lives and work with Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank, through their organization Roots. They are deeply grounded in their communities there, and they hold a profoundly hopeful perspective that through learning about each other, these communities can eventually transcend the conflicts between them. It was an honor to hear them both speak, and to be reminded that both ends of the ladder are vital.

Wishing everyone a holiday of gratitude and sharing, particularly one in which we take note of the land we live on and the people who have stewarded this land for centuries,

Rabbi Julie

There is a fascinating dialogue in the Torah portion this week. Sarah, Abraham’s beloved spouse, has died, and he owns no plot of land for burying her. He is bereft and at the mercy of the Hittites, on whose land he is at the time she dies. He is in need of a burial plot, one that he can be sure he will be able to return to, so he aims to purchase land from the Hittites. But they repeatedly insist that they respect him and offer him a plot as a gift rather than selling it. He does not trust their apparent generosity, and in the end, he is proven right by the high price that Ephron, the owner of the plot, finally indicates.

There are countless pages of commentary on this scene, but here I will point to Abraham’s combination of vulnerability and boldness. Some cultural models teach that vulnerability connotes weakness. But Abraham, in the midst of grief, models self-respect, power and graciousness at the same time as he openly shares his status as a guest in another people’s land and his urgent need to buy a burial plot. He  succeeds in negotiating the purchase of the plot, and the sale is completed “before the eyes of of the Hittites, in the presence of all who had come within the gate of Ephron’s city” (Genesis 23:4). As Abraham teaches, openly sharing our humanity with others can be part of inspiring both empathy and respect.

An Additional Note: To follow up from my invitation some weeks ago to work in solidarity with interfaith communities to protect immigrants, some TBH members will be joining a talk this Saturday afternoon at 1:15pm after services at Congregation Netivot Shalom in Berkeley, to learn about ways to support immigrants under threat of unlawful detention, family separation and deportation. The talk will be by Julie Litwin of the Kehilla Community Synagogue Immigration Committee. All are welcome to join me and the other TBH members who plan to attend.

Rabbi Julie Saxe-Taller

This week, we begin reading the narrative of Abraham and Sarah. They are the first Jews, (though they don’t yet go by this name) and the first of the ancestors we invoke in prayer. When, in the opening blessing of the Amidah, we invoke their names by saying that God is the God of Abraham, and the God of Sarah, it is to remind God that we are descended from them. It is our way of saying we are family – like name dropping when you meet someone new, to build trust or boost our reputation through our connection with someone already known by the other person.

This “name dropping” can be used disingenuously, but it can also be very powerful and positive when we do it honestly. There is a teaching in many circles that organizations grow at the speed of relationships, and relationships grow at the speed of trust.

In Jewish prayer, this tool also works as a reminder to ourselves. In citing the names of our biblical ancestors, we can remember that we come from people who have sought connection, inspiration, guidance from the Source of Life throughout Jewish history and throughout our family histories.

Who do you invoke or remember when you need support to reach for your spiritual connection? Are there ancestors, family or friends who inspire you in this way?

Let us call on our biblical and more recent ancestors to be with us as we begin to read this story again.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Julie

I wish I could share an interpretation of the Torah portion with a lighter touch this week. But as we read the story of a devastating flood, the building of an ark to save one human family, and the rescue of animals to preserve the bio-diversity of creation, dramatic actions are also occurring in our country.

According to government reports, 100+ Immigration & Customs Enforcement officials are arriving this week in the Bay Area, including the East Bay. Their actions and goals will likely follow those we are witnessing in other cities, where community members are being seized without due process, and whole neighborhoods and communities are plagued by fear.

As Jews, we know the experience of being blamed for large-scale social problems, portrayed as dangerous and targeted with violence and exclusion – this is the essence of antisemitism, and it continues in our time. In this moment, we are not the primary target of ICE, but we know that a society that is acting in this way is dangerous for all.

The instruction that we must protect the vulnerable among us, and particularly the immigrant, is the most prominent thread in the entire Torah. It flows from the central teaching that every person is created in the Divine image, and from the knowledge that we know the heart of the stranger for we have been strangers. It is a sacred responsibility – a central mitzvah – not only to welcome the stranger but to prevent their mistreatment.

If you are interested in taking action together to protect immigrants in our own and other local communities, please contact me by email. We have immigrants in our community, our congregation, and our families. This is a time to reach out, to ask about their experiences and what we can do to support them. And it is a time to speak out and to stand for what we know from both our Torah and our history: our treatment of immigrants is a reflection of our humanity and the course of our society.

This week, we hope with all our hearts that the Israeli hostages will return home beginning Monday and that and that the ceasefire agreement will lead to an end to the violence and suffering of Israelis and Palestinians. With all our souls we hope, pray and envision the coming year as a time when healing can begin for all who have lost so many loved ones. If that healing feels impossible to imagine, as it may for many of us, it can be helpful to look to Simchat Torah, the last of our fall season of festivals.

This coming Tuesday night is Simchat Torah, when we celebrate the Torah and read both the last and the first verses from the scroll. I hope you will join us for it. It is a holiday of rejoicing, but we will never again celebrate it without also remembering that it became the yahrzeit of 1200 Israelis and others in the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023.  As Rabbi Elie Kaunfer wrote on the first anniversary of the massacre, “A day meant to celebrate our love of tradition, embodied in the Torah, was forever altered… [Yet we] cannot fully convert Simchat Torah to a time of sadness. We have to balance these two emotions — joy and devastation.”

We will mark the yahrzeit with a brief ritual, connecting us with Jewish communities all over the world who will be gathering both to celebrate and remember. The rest of our evening will include a casual dinner (please RSVP!) and joyful dancing to live music by the TBH troupe of musicians who have been excitedly rehearsing. Don’t miss it!

The Torah reading this week, Ki Tavo/“When you enter,” continues to lay out laws to be fulfilled when the Israelites enter the land toward which they have headed for forty years. It is hard to imagine a journey of this length, with its births and deaths, the multiple milestones in every life. And maybe just as hard to imagine living in an extended familial community that, despite disagreements, functions and moves from place to place together.

When they enter the land, they are to perform a ritual, using the dramatic backdrop of the two mountains surrounding the valley where they assemble, and enumerating the curses and blessings that are promised depending on the fulfillment of the mitzvot or the failure to fulfill them. There are several sections of laws, curses and blessings, some that apply to individuals based on particular actions, and others that are clearly addressed to the community and are based on an overall communal adherence (or lack thereof) to the full covenant of laws. To experience the powerful, public cataloging of these curses and blessings must have shaken the community of Israelites, as it was meant to do. For many readers, the text leaves us wondering about the power of threats and promises, and what are the most effective ways for authority to inspire respect.

With the New Year almost here, we will soon connect with similarly dramatic questions and metaphors in our High Holy Day liturgy. In this context, we will celebrate and also reflect on mistakes and challenges. We will wonder about big questions of life and death, and we will try to find the most effective ways to hold ourselves accountable. I look forward to celebrating and engaging these very real questions in community with all of you.