As we struggle to deal with the horrific synagogue shooting this past Shabbat, we look to our leaders for words of caring and hope. Our President again disappointed us. In a scripted statement, the President’s first words attempted to be reassuring but they were measured and political. His statement felt inadequate to quell our pain. And then his later, unscripted words were inappropriate and offensive. I’ll examine those in a bit.

As I read Torah for next week and with the President’s ill-thought out statements in mind, I noticed an instance in the Torah of an incongruous and unsuitable greeting. Rebecca is about to leave her father’s home to meet her new husband, Isaac.  As she prepares to go, we are told that her family: “blessed Rebekah and said to her, “O sister! May you grow into thousands of myriads; May your offspring seize the gates of their foes.”

There is a tradition to greet a bride with the hope that her children grow into thousands of myriads. But looking at the complete sentence in Torah we notice that the second phrase has a different focus. Rebekah’s family also wishes that her descendants should be aggressive enough to overtake their enemies. The family could have offered many other wishes to the new bride: health, happiness, or longevity.  Instead, her family hopes that her children will be warriors who commandeer their enemies’ towns. How odd and inappropriate! And this message of bellicosity is coming from a family who appears to be motivated by greed and who later act duplicitously.

And what of the comments to the nation regarding the massacre in Pittsburgh? Our President’s response to a synagogue shooting was to admonish the community for their failure to have armed guards. Whatever the sympathy expressed in his earlier statement, his later words display his lack of morality. Rather than acting truly supportive, our nation’s leader offered a message designed to deploy even more guns. This statement was as absurd as wishing a bride that her grandchildren become warriors.

Even more offensive was the real meaning of that message to the Jewish community. As Rabbi Joshua Stanton offered on CNN, the President blamed the victims.

At times of violence, real leadership is compassionate without qualification and resolute in complete condemnation. Good people respond with wholehearted kindness and calls for justice. I pray that our current President learns this lesson . . . but my thoughts and prayers might not be realized.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

I often hear from families in turmoil. Sometimes it is children estranged from parents. At other times it is siblings at war over inheritances.  As a result of disagreements, families separate emotionally and even geographically.  Where can we find the wisdom to cope with family estrangement?

Stories of families that disassemble are not unique to modern times. In parshat Lech L’cha, a family splits up to end a conflict. When their herds compete for land, Abraham (then known as Abram) offers his nephew Lot the choice of moving his flocks in any direction Lot might choose. Lot opts for the well-watered plains of Jordan. Abraham heads the other direction toward the desert. Abraham demonstrated laudable characteristics of equanimity and steadfastness.

Later, Lot is taken prisoner by warring kings of the region. An escapee from the battles brings the news to Abraham. Abraham gathers allies and comes to Lot’s rescue. And then Lot returns to his home in Sodom.

Despite their earlier differences, Abraham was quick to cross the divide between them and come to Lot’s rescue. With his response to Lot’s capture, Abraham demonstrated additional traits of allegiance and courage.

Abraham appears to have coped well with the psychological pain of his family’s estrangement.  Even though he got the short end of the bargain, Abraham contained his resentment. Abraham separated from Lot without rancor and in generosity.  While he could have remained aggrieved, he nevertheless fought to release Lot from his captivity.

And yet Abraham can’t be an unconditional guarantor for Lot.  There is a limit to family loyalty. Some differences are insurmountable. Some wounds are too deep.  Some mistakes made are beyond rescue.  And when Lot is later assailed in his home in Sodom, angels and not Abraham come to his aide.  Lot and Abraham are not reunited again.

There will be more family estrangements. The next instance reported is when Abraham expelled his son Ishmael. In that instance, Abraham relied upon his faith to overcome his anguish.  Only upon Abraham’s death will Ishmael return to the land of his birth.

While we cannot always avoid family estrangements, we will have opportunities to consider if not control our own reactions. We might not be able to preserve a relationship but we can pursue self-control to protect ourselves from further emotional harm.  It just takes some grounding and spiritual vitality.

Torah offers a worthy lesson for those of us who experience difficult relationships with relatives.  Sometimes we must go separate ways from family.  If we can do so without acrimony, we will better sustain ourselves and perhaps leave the door open for reconciliation in the future.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

Before reading Bereshit (in the beginning) this week, the Torah scroll has to be rolled all the way from one end back to the other. It takes strong wrists and a careful eye to reset the Torah scroll back to its beginning. Part of the rolling experience is noticing the text as the parchment slides past. A year of stories unspools and lessons learned are recalled. This example of mindfully scrolling back the Torah offers a valuable lesson.

Our tradition affirms both our need to examine our past and commit to improving ourselves. The quality of our existence is static and remains so if we fail to do the preparatory work. We start the Jewish year reviewing our past as a prelude to teshuvah. We notice our failures in a commitment to improve. We can’t productively scroll forward unless we harvest lessons from the lives we’ve led.  Ultimately, recalling the past can make the next year better than the last.

Improving your life is easier when you begin with the knowledge you have acquired. Applied properly, the lessons learned help assure you become a better person than you have been. Add to that a sense of wonder, a longing for change and a feeling of hope.  You’ll be on a journey of growth and improvement.

We always have an opportunity to start again. The Jewish calendar reminds us to do so. And the cycle of Torah reading, even in the physical act of rolling the scroll, instructs us in a methodology of renewing ourselves. Each beginning informs the next.

Our tradition asks that we read the entire Torah each year. While the words of the Torah never change, there are new meanings waiting to be discovered. With each reading new insights can be unwrapped and new inspiration unfurled. Perhaps the same is true for us each year; we can improve our lives with opportunities for increased wisdom and expanding optimism. That’s the gift of a new beginning, an opportunity for growth and improvement.  It just takes a bit of willingness to scroll back through what has taken place to successfully begin again.

Evan J. Krame

Part of a yearlong series about resilience in Jewish spiritual life.

When are you most likely to ask “why” about your life?

Especially when life seems difficult or unfair, we ask “why” because we sense that understanding can help avoid pitfalls of meaninglessness.  A world we (think we) can explain is a world that seems less random and less scary, more ordered and more fair.  And as for the world, so too for (how we imagine) God.

Of course, “why” cuts both ways.  Some “why” questions – “Why would a loving God let this happen?” “Why do bad things happen to good people?” – offer no clear answers, and sometimes no answers.  Maybe that’s “why” some lose faith amidst pain and loss.

But “why” ask “why” only in hard times?  Ever notice that it’s most often despair and loss – not blessings and good fortune – that tend to turn us?  What if we turned spiritually not only amidst challenge but also amidst life’s good things?

That’s the call of this week’s Torah portion (Netzavim). “When all these things befall you – the blessingand the curse… – and you take them [both] to heart … and you return to God … then God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your offspring to love God with all your heart and soul, so that you will live” (Deut. 30:1-6).

The heart most open to love and spirit is not the heart that turns amidst only challenge or blessing, but both.  This kind of turning can be difficult because it asks us to cast away our transactional theology of good/bad: God is more than that, and so are we.  This turning asks us to lay theology itself on the eternal flame of the inexplicable – in a spiritual sense, to surrender (not in despair, but in love) to sometimes not knowing “why.”

This kind of letting go asks much of us – self-awareness without self-obsession, humility without paralysis, trust without control.  It takes time – say, the span of the High Holy Days, lifting our complex layers of mind and heart.  It asks all we’ve got.

The more we let go in this way, the more we shed (“circumcise”) the protective surface of our hearts.  We can reveal a love that doesn’t depend on the happenstance of “blessing” and “curse,” what we call “good” and what we call “bad.”

Our hearts become more resilient to life’s peaks and troughs.  Our love becomes more resilient, and so do we.  And then we truly can “live” – far more than we think possible.

Bad things do happen to good people: life sometimes is poignantly unfair.  Notice how your heart has become thickly protected against life’s bruises, and which protections have become jailors.  This week’s resilience calling is to turn not only when bad things happen to good people, but also when things happen to people – you, and now.

Just ask your tender heart, your resilience teacher this week – with blessings for a shanah tovah um’tukah – a sweet and good new year of turning.

– Rabbi David Evan Markus

Part of a yearlong series on resilience in Jewish spiritual life.

It’s just a few weeks until Rosh Hashanah.  The Jewish season of teshuvah (repentance, repair, return) is upon us. And of course, what we repent, repair and return (to) depends exquisitely on what we remember.

Truth be told, there are some things I’d rather not remember. I’d rather not remember who hurt me, or whom I hurt, or every time I said or did what I shouldn’t, or every time I didn’t say or do what I should. I’d rather not remember most of the news these days.

A little escapism (even selective amnesia) is a tried and true anti-hurt mechanism. (How often were you on social media today?) But escapism and amnesia aren’t long-term resilience strategies because ultimately, they don’t work. Consciously or not, we remember more than we may want.  And ultimately, that’s for the good: the Jewish High Holy Day season is transformative only in proportion to what we let ourselves remember and feel.

This week’s Torah portion (Ki Teitzei) is all about memory, though not on the surface. On the surface, it’s all about stuff gone wrong, as if ripped from today’s headlines – war, social plunder, wayward children, mistreatment of women, dishonest business practices, corruption, a fraying social safety net, environmental degradation and more. Only near the end do we read about memory: “Always remember that you were slaves in Egypt” (Deuteronomy 24:22); “always remember what Amalek [Torah’s euphemistic others] did to you” (Deuteronomy 25:17): “do not forget” (Deuteronomy 25:19).

Are we condemned always to rehash stuff gone wrong? Must we always carry past bondage around like badges of honor? Must we always remember every time we were wronged? Reading these verses, Torah seems to answer yes.

I understand this call to remember a bit differently. The spiritual intention, I like to think, is that we remember precisely not to repeat and not to re-live. The best we can hope of life’s hurts is that they both strengthen us and soften us – strengthen us to carry the memory, and soften us so that we’re more empathetic to others’ hurts and so we don’t lash our hurts on others.  So one measure of our spiritual (and collective social) resilience is the extent to which we harness those lessons for real, without being steeled by them.

But this hope goes only so far.

Last week, when a Pennsylvania grand jury issued a 900-page report about sexual abuse and official cover-ups in the Catholic Church, one victim’s response was heart rending.  CNN quoted her as saying, “When I hear the word ‘God,’ I get flashbacks of abuse.”  She remembers, and she re-lives – and she’s hardly alone.  How many women re-live sexual abuse?  How many soldiers relive traumas of war?  How many adults flash back to child abuse?  How many of us experienced religion and spirituality in ways that we wish we didn’t remember but do, driving us to steel ourselves to disappointments we experienced and thus also future possibilities?

Maybe Torah recounts stuff gone wrong in society (and still going wrong in society), before delving into the importance of memory, precisely to remind us that we keep reacting to memories unless and until we do the deep work of healing all that can be healed. Whether it’s our individual hurts and resentments, our societal stuff gone wrong, the journey to healing comes not in amnesia but through the straits of memory.

Resilience, it turns out, is the power to undertake this journey of memory and ultimately remember compassionately without re-living hurtfully.  Some will need professional support over a lifetime; for others healing might begin with just a phone call. This time of year is when we re-commit to the path of memory with the purpose to repair, to heal, to forgive, to do wise justice in the world – and thereby to better the world in every way that hearts and hands can.

– Rabbi David Evan Markus