Me & Mr. Lulav - Chol HaMoed Sukkot 5772

Entertaining a baby for a moment is not necessarily the most difficult thing in the world to do. Keeping a baby entertained, however, is more often than not an incredibly challenging project. While I was clearly too young to remember, my mom tells the story of my first airplane flight. Desperate to occupy my attention and prevent my screaming and freaking out, my mom was resourceful, working with what was at hand. She grabbed the first thing she saw and quickly drew a smiley face on the paper bag in front of me. Thus was the birth and creation of Mr. Barf Bag. Somehow, some way, that dumb little character held my attention, and Mom’s goal of placating me was achieved. So to this day, in my family, Mr. Barf Bag is a lesson in necessity being the mother of invention, in resourcefulness being a key—not only to parenthood, but life as well.

This past Wednesday evening, we ushered in 5772’s version of Sukkot. I always feel bad for Sukkot. Worse than being overlooked, Sukkot is all-too-often intentionally neglected, something we’re not interested in doing because it’s just days after Yom Kippur and, frankly, we’re all “holidayed out.” Which is just a shame, because that’s exactly what Sukkot is supposed to be a release from. We’re supposed to be chillin’ in huts, eating meals together, enjoying nature, sleeping out under the stars if the weather isn’t too bad. It’s basically a week-long tailgate party, commanded by God, and who couldn’t use that after the intensity of the High Holy Days? Instead, we blow it off, we lament the bunching up of Jewish holidays in one month while having none the next, and we start the countdown to Chanukah.  

So, on this Shabbat Sukkot, as we take a look at the lulav and the etrog, ritual items somewhat more sacred than Mr. Barf Bag, we wonder: what do they teach us? What can we learn from the lulav and etrog that we can take with us long after we take down our respective sukkot?

Many of us know that the lulav’s three parts plus the etrog are known as the Four Species, representing all of the growth and vegetation we thank God for on this joyous occasion, the Festival of Ingathering, celebrating the harvest and the miracles of the natural world. Tonight I want to look at a midrash, a rabbinic interpretation, that likens each of the Four Species to one of our own body parts, and share something we can learn from each. Because, to quote the midrash directly, “There are none among all the limbs greater than these, for they outweigh the whole body in importance.”

First, the lulav. While the term lulav is used to refer to all three branches together, the lulav is actually the palm frond that forms the center. This, the rabbis say, is like the spine. If you look it at, the lulav branch is strong and powerful. In this aspect, the lulav teaches us how important it is to stand up for our principles, to straighten our backs and stand tall for what is right and good, even in—especially in—the face of challenges and obstacles that lie in our way. And yet, the lulav is also surprisingly fluid in its motions, in its shaking, considering how rigid it seems to be at rest. This teaches us that, as significant and essential it is to stand up for what we believe in, when there are things in our lives—in our relationships, our work environments, wherever—that aren’t such issues of principle, aren’t matters of life and death no matter how much they may seem to be in the moment, we need to be flexible and go with however the wind shakes us.

Second, the hadas, the myrtle. The leaf of the myrtle, the rabbis say, is like the eye. It reminds us that having eyes that are truly open is so much more than a physical act, and so much more easily said than done. Tali and I have noticed that Jonah, now almost 17 months old, just does not fall asleep in his stroller. And that’s cause when he sits in it, he’s staring at everyone and everything, waving and smiling at passersby, trying to drink in every ounce of the world with his eyes. And to sleep, to close his eyes, would be to miss all of that. When our eyes are wide open to all of the wonder and mystery of the world and everyone in it, open to just some of the infinite experiences it can offer us, then it becomes a powerful, spiritual experience.

Third, the aravah, the willow. The rabbis say the leaf of the willow is like a mouth. And this teaches us the tremendous power of our words. The harsh word—the insult, the lie, the deriding joke, the gossip, the inciting to violence—all of these remind us of the terrible destruction and utter devastation our speech can engender. But the kind word—considerate and thought-out, heartfelt and genuine and well-delivered—can make all of the difference in the world to someone, no matter what they’re going through.

And lastly, the etrog, the sweet-smelling citron. The etrog, the rabbis say, represents the heart. Our hearts, like our eyes, need to be open to all of the possibilities this world has to offer, to the personal encounters and relationships that can change our lives for the better. They are there, waiting for us to initiate them, to take hold of those moments and create new ones, to make each of our destinies not only an unending work-in-progress, but more importantly, a work of our own making. And those moments can only happen when our hearts are truly open, ready to receive the bounty of blessings and gifts that God has made available to each and every one of us.

May the lulav and the etrog inspire each of us—through our principles and flexibility, through the power of our words, through open eyes and open hearts, to be the best people we know how to be, and to make 5772 a happy, healthy, sweet, meaningful, and successful year for ourselves and each other.

AMEN.            

I Don't Give A Darn - Yom Kippur Afternoon - The Holiness Code

SHANAH TOVAH UM’TOOKAH, a healthy, happy, and sweet new year to you.

It’s actually amazing that, almost 75 years after its debut, Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s On First?” has held up as a brilliant and hysterical piece of comedy. Though I have listened to it probably hundreds of times, I still refuse to skip past it when it comes up on my iPod, and I still laugh just as hard, if not harder, than the first time I heard it when I wasn’t yet 10 years old.

Towards the end of the bit, when Costello is, maybe, finally getting it, he says, “I throw the ball to Who. Whoever it is drops the ball, and the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What, What throws it to I Don’t Know, I Don’t Know throws it back to Tomorrow—triple play! Another batter gets up and it’s a long fly ball to Because. Why? I Don’t Know, he’s on third, and I don’t give a darn.” Abbot says, “What?” Costello says, “I said, I—don’t—give—a darn!” And Abbott says, “Oh, that’s our shortstop!”  

With this year’s opportunity to take a closer look at the Holiness Code, the portion from Leviticus we read on Yom Kippur afternoon, two verses in particular stood out to me, and called to mind the conclusion of “Who’s On First?”:

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; le’ani, v’la-ger ta’azov otam, ani Adonai Eloheichem, you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the Eternal am your God.”

Here it is, literally commanded of us to give up some of what is technically ours for those in the community who need it more than we do. And, unfortunately, when we look at what we have, all that is in our figurative harvests and vineyards, all too many of us look away and say, “I don’t give a darn.”

There is no doubt that the slumping economy has impacted all of us, some more than others. But we absolutely, unequivocally, in no uncertain terms, have to give something. Simply put, there is always something we can give. We all have our indulgences—the things we do spend money on for ourselves because we want to—iPads, clothes, concerts, drinks with friends. And that’s not an indictment of anyone. Because life is to be enjoyed, and there’s nothing wrong with making ourselves happy.

But, my friends, the challenge—amid the High Holy Day themes of sacrifice and doing without—is to see where each of us could do just a little less of those things—one less gadget, one less concert, one less dinner or round of drinks, or pair of designer jeans, and put something—anything—away to give to charity. See if you can make one more contribution this year than you did last year. Even if it’s $18 or $36 or $72—whatever it is. Certainly the thought is not complete on its own, and certainly the amount of the contribution does matter, but it’s like any other human behavior—it’s something we learn by teaching ourselves, by getting ourselves into the regular habit, the custom of giving. The Sages teach that mitzvah goreret mitzvah, that one good deed leads to another, and another and another.            

Give a darn. Give a little now to one charity, next year give a little more, or give the same to two, and so on. And I bet you’ll find over time that you actually enjoy it; not only that it makes you feel good, but it makes you feel holy as well.

SHANAH TOVAH UM’TOOKAH, G’MAR CHATIMAH TOVAH.

The Same, But Different: Before Rosh HaShanah

“Ehhhhhhh….S’LICHAH!”   

If you’ve ever been to Israel or had any interaction with an Israeli, you’re familiar with the phrase. It is the Hebrew equivalent of “excuse me,” and Israelis use it for anything and everything, even when—especially when—they don’t really mean it. Once in Jerusalem I wasn’t bumped into, I was blatantly shoved by a woman trying to move past me, and when I looked at her incredulously, waiting for some kind of apology, she begrudgingly said, “Oh. Slicha.” As if just saying the word made it all okay.   

But s’lichah is—or at least, it’s supposed to be—more than just “excuse me,” more than just a necessary verbal offering in an effort to appear polite. It is, at its essence, a phrase, a concept we hear an awful lot this time of year on the Jewish calendar, most clearly tomorrow night for the observance of Selichot, but all throughout our High Holy Day liturgy. And that is forgiveness. We are, at the moment, in the final week of Elul, the month leading up to Rosh HaShanah, where we’re supposed to be taking a good, hard, deep look at ourselves, evaluating our lives—where we’ve been, where we are, where we’re headed. The rabbis call it cheshbon ha-nefesh, an accounting of the soul, a taking stock of who we are, as we prepare to enter into the new year. When this cheshbon ha-nefesh—this digging down into the deepest, darkest recesses of our entire beings, the places perhaps only God and each of us know—when it’s done honestly and truthfully, it is grueling and upsetting and scary as hell. But when it’s done right, there is, I believe, nothing more powerful, nothing more transformative in nature.   

So. How do we get ourselves to begin this most difficult of processes? How do we start to strive for the ultimate reward of this soul-searching, hoping to God it’s all worth the incredibly hard work it requires, the hurt and the pain we will inevitably discover along the way?   

We begin with the word shanah, the Hebrew word meaning “year.” A professor at HUC in Jerusalem told us to look at the word, and asked us what is its shoresh, its root? Taken one way, the root is shin-nun-hay, having to do with changes and differences, as in the Arik Einstein song Ani V’atah N’shaneh et Ha-olam, “You and I will change the world,” as well as the chorus of the Four Questions from Passover, Mah nishtanah ha-laila hazah mikol haleilot?, “What makes this night different from all other nights?” With this root in mind, the word shanah tells us that the new year is a chance to make changes in our lives, to do things differently in 5772 than we did in 5771. Whether the changes are as big as things like improving our time or stress management, or as small as cutting back your coffee intake by one cup a day, they’re all changes for the better. So shanah is an opportunity for change.   

But if we look at it another way, perhaps the root is shin-nun-nun, which has to do with repeating or doubling things, as in the verse from V’ahavta:  v’shinantam l’vanecha, literally “and you shall repeat them to your children,” and shnayim, the number two. For all of the things we could have—and maybe should have—done differently in the past year, there are so many things that we did right, that we did well. And it’s these things that we want to repeat, and double, and triple, if we can. Clearly we didn’t mess everything up, right? So what’s wrong with focusing some of our energy on what went right so that we can try to do even more, even better versions, of those?    

This is not to say that focusing on the good things we want to repeat is more important than the things we want to change. Not hardly. They are unequivocally halves of the same whole, both parts necessary if we really want to do this soul-searching thing right. But perhaps the emphasis on the good is exactly what we need to hear right now. After all, it’s this time of year, this point in our calendar, where the famous Jewish guilt first made a name for itself. And we spend so much of it focused on our shortcomings, our flaws, our mistakes, beating at our chests as we recite the communal confession of Ashamnu.

But we still did some good in there. That shouldn’t be overlooked by us, because it certainly isn’t by God. So maybe for each striking of our chest for what we did wrong this past year—for what we want to shoneh, to make different, for the coming year—maybe we can give ourselves a small pat on the back, for everything we did right, everything we want to shinan, to repeat again and again.   

May 5772 be a happy, healthy, sweet, successful, and meaningful year for all of us. May we find the strength and courage to embark on the difficult, but powerful and transformative journey that comes with a genuine cheshbon ha-nefesh, a true accounting of our souls. And when we come together, in the coming weeks and months, at the same time next year, may each of us find ourselves better people than we are right now.

AMEN.

Ten Years Later: Remembering 9/11

I remember back in 1996 when the blockbuster film Independence Day came out in theaters. It was, I believe, the first, or at least the most widely known, of a series of movies with an apocalyptic, End of Days-type theme, where each of them became identified with a major landmark being destroyed. For Independence Day, it was the White House. And I remember how incredibly upsetting I found it. I couldn’t have cared less for the amazing special effects that would eventually win the film an Oscar. It wasn’t cool or exciting to see something iconic, something so meaningful to so many people, explode in a million pieces. It wasn’t raising issues around security and self-defense, in the name of provoking thought and questioning and a critical approach to the systems and protocols in place. Not in this action/comedy, where crazy Randy Quaid saves humanity by sacrificing himself, flying right into the alien ship, crying out, “Hello boys! I’m baaaack!” No. Not fascinating. Not intriguing. Just downright upsetting. And terrifying, to say the least.

The question I do remember the film raising, however, was this: What would you do if the world was about to end? That, I thought, was intriguing. That, I thought, was worthy of contemplation and exploration. And yet, while the question could have been addressed in some deep, philosophical, theological, cosmological realm, that isn’t quite what happened. On MTV—you remember that, right?--well, on MTV, when they’d ask this question, you got all kinds of intelligent, selfless, and classy responses such as, “Well I’d throw a big ol’ bash and go out partying!” Or “I’d go try to get it on with every girl who’ll let me!” Or “I’d jump out of an airplane and then go bungee jumping!” Or the best one, which was something to the effect of, “I’d get all kinds of wasted and just let it happen.

Nonetheless, despite the juvenile responses to it, the question is still potentially very powerful: What would you do if the world was going to end? What would you do if you knew you were about to die?

Ten years ago this Sunday, for nearly 3,000 Americans, that question jolted violently from the hypothetical to the actual. Ten years ago this Sunday, 3,000 mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, left their homes—for work, for a plane trip—never to return there again. This time it wasn’t special effects, no CGI wizardry from a Hollywood studio. This was terribly, horrifyingly real. Surreal, even; I remember that being the word on everyone’s lips. And before any of us knew what had happened, gone were the towers of the World Trade Center. Gone were the lives of 3,000 innocent people. Gone was the America, the world, the life we always knew.

But what is not gone are the stories. The stories that came to light in the weeks and months that followed. The stories of unfathomable bravery—of police and firefighters and first responders who made the ultimate sacrifice, returning again and again and again into that fiery hell everyone else was running from, to help just one more person, save just one more soul. The stories of strength and courage—of the passengers of United Flight 93, who came together to take down their own flight, and the lives of everyone onboard, before it too could be used as a weapon of further terror. The stories of the purest, truest love—of final phone calls to family members telling them how much they loved them, how much they meant to them, how they would need to be strong to take care of each other; and that famous clip of the husband and wife, clutching each other’s hands, choosing to end it all, together, with one final leap of faith.

The stories live on. They live within each of us, within all of us, and they will stay with us forever—haunting us, yet giving us hope; breaking our hearts, yet opening them up to be full once again.

What would we do if it had been us? God willing, it’s a question we’ll never have to answer. But the question we do have to answer is this: What do we do with the time we have left? What do we do with the time we all too often take for granted, the time that was taken from all of them in a heartbeat?

I’d like to conclude tonight with a poem written by Rabbi Zoe Klein following September 11, 2001. It’s called “Two Candles.”

On Shabbat we would light two candles,

one for remembering Shabbat

and one for observing Shabbat.

Tonight we light two candles:

this one for Building One,

this one for Building Two;

this one for the Pentagon,

and this one for Pittsburgh;

this one for the hundreds of firefighters,

this one for the hundreds of police;

this one for all the men,

and this one for all the women;

this one for all the girls,

and this one for all the boys;

and these candles for the husband and wife

who leapt out of the tower holding hands;

this one for our luck running out,

this one for the New York skyline;

this one for the walking wounded,

this one for the critically wounded;

this one for the survivors,

this one for the dead;

this candle for Building One,

this candle for Building Two.

As we remember that fateful day that changed everything, we say zichronam livrachah, may their memory truly be a blessing for us all. Let us take a moment of silence to honor their memory, and then take it with us by living each moment of our lives as though it were our last.

What's In It For Me? - Eikev 5771

In the last scene of probably my favorite movie of all time, Field of Dreams, Ray Kinsella is incredulous. For a very brief moment, he thinks he’s being invited by Shoeless Joe Jackson out into the mysterious cornfield where the spirits of the former ballplayers reside. “Not you,” Jackson says, “him,” instead pointing to acclaimed writer Terrence Mann. “Why him?” Kinsella cries, “you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.” Told bluntly that he simply wasn’t invited, after months of strain on his life, his finances, his family, he finally breaks down. “No, wait,” he says. “I have done everything I've been asked to do. I didn't understand it, but I've done it. And I haven't once asked what's in it for me." “What are you saying, Ray?" "I'm saying...what's in it for me?" Jackson looks at him and says, “Is that why you did this? For you? I think you better stay here, Ray."

“What’s in it for me?” It’s a phrase that appears in various guises, on numerous occasions, throughout the entirety of the Torah. Our ancestors the Israelites are not exactly depicted in the best light. They complain that there’s no one to fight for them, no one to step to Pharaoh and lead them out of Egypt, but when given Moses, they challenge and try to unseat him, saying “who made you so important” and “why not me?” Slavery was so crushing, so brutally harsh that they’re literally dying to be free, willing to make any sacrifice to end their bondage; but then they’re free and saying life was better as slaves. There’s no food, God gives them manna, but then they want meat. So it is no wonder that at many instances in Deuteronomy, God and Moses call the Israelites “a stiff-necked people.”

So what does it mean? It means the Israelites are unbelievably stubborn, persistent in all of the wrong ways. It means the Israelites were either incapable or simply uninterested in even trying to learn from the mistakes of their past. But I think more than anything, we get the answer to what it means to be “a stiff-necked people” right here in Eikev, this week’s parasha.

We read, “When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Eternal your God—who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its seraph serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your ancestors had never known, in order to test you by hardships only to benefit you in the end—and you say to yourselves, ‘My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.’ Remember that it is the Eternal your God who gives you that power.”

And by that criteria, we too are a stiff-necked people. By that definition, maybe we’re even worse. After all, I’m sure you’ve seen the t-shirts, worn by people of all ages and types, proclaiming “it’s all about me” and “it’s my world, you’re just living in it” and “I can only please one person a day, and today’s not your day.” I’m sure you’ve been to services, movies, concerts, and performances where the people around you talk the whole time, in full volume, the light of their cell phones destroying the darkness needed to focus, crumbling the wrappers and packaging of food and drink they’re so proud of themselves for smuggling in. I’m sure you’ve seen dozens of subway riders pretending to ignore the older man struggling with a cane or a walker, or the visibly pregnant woman trying to keep from overheating in 100-degree weather, just cause they don’t want to give up their seat for a few minutes. This morning I watched a mother stroll her toddler son onto the train, and I noticed that she might as well have been carrying a dufflebag or a backpack, cause she had headphones on, listening to music so that she wouldn’t have to expend any energy interacting with her son.

Why? Cause it’s all about me, that’s why. No one’s gonna help me out, no one’s gonna lay it all out for me on a silver platter, so I have to take care of myself, and to hell with everyone else. iPhones, iPods, iPads, soandso@me.com. All Apple has done is put a label on what we already knew to be true: it’s an iGeneration living in an iWorld, and because of that, it can be a very lonely place to be.

The Sages teach that each of us has a yetzer tov, an inclination for good, and a yetzer hara, an inclination for evil, which I believe is where the old cartoon image of the angel and devil on each shoulder comes from. But it’s not so simple, not so black-and-white as we’d like it to be, to wish we could just shut it out or even get rid of it entirely. Because, the Sages say, we actually need the yetzer hara, the so-called evil inclination. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to be creative, to come up with new ideas, to fall in love and have children; heck, we wouldn’t even be able to eat.

So I have a different approach to this concept. Rather than call it yetzer hara, the “evil inclination,” I call it yetzer sheli, meaning, “the inclination for me.” We all need to look out for ourselves, to take care of ourselves, to reach for what will fulfill us with meaning and make us happy. There’s nothing wrong with that. After all, that’s what Hillel meant when he said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?"

And instead of yetzer tov, I call it yetzer shelanu, “the inclination for us.” Striving for the greatest good in the world around us, fighting to make it a reality, that is what the yetzer shelanu is all about. That is when we reach our highest potential, both as individuals and as a people. After all, “us” still includes “I,” still includes “me,” but now as part of something larger, with goals much loftier and far-reaching. After all, that’s exactly why Hillel’s very next line was, “If I am only for myself, what am I?”

My friends, I know that not all of us believe in God. And that’s okay. But even the atheists and agnostics among us have to acknowledge that there is something—something much greater than each of us, something that gave us the beauty of the natural world, the human capability to add to it, our bodies, our minds, our talents and gifts. Whether you call it God or the First Cause, spirituality or the soul of the universe, it doesn’t really matter. The message is one and the same: it’s not about you. It’s about us. All of us. It always has been, and always will be. And the question we should be asking, ourselves and each other, is, “What’s in it for us?"

AMEN.

Say It To My Face - D'varim 5771

I had dinner recently with a friend of mine from home. In getting caught up, somehow she and I ended up on a stroll down memory lane, recalling our experiences in middle and high school, the capricious twists and turns of cliques and friendships. She told me about the big end-of-the-year trip to Dorney Park for the 8^th graders, how excited she and everyone was to go, the group of girls with whom she thought she would be cruising the park on a glorious June day. Sadly, this was not the case. The girls had conspired against her, complaining to their teacher rather than speak to her, and suddenly, she was out. And a day she had looked forward to for so long, the chance to spend a school day with friends at an amusement park, was instead filled with hurt and sadness and loneliness.

Now, I’m not certain that it would have been any better, any less painful or hurtful, had the girls, or even just one of them, confronted her directly. I’m sure the sting would still have been palpable and crushing. But the social crimes of these middle-school girls were all the more devastating, because they didn’t even have the guts to say something to her face.

Tonight we begin D’varim, the final book of the Torah, and the name of its first parasha. It begins, Eileh had’varim, “These are the words that Moses addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan.” What follows, for the entirety of the book, is Moses’ own recounting of the Exodus, which is why the English name for it is Deuteronomy, meaning “a second telling.” Curiously, this time around, some of the details have been changed or, in certain cases, completely omitted, so that many see the book as a work of revisionist history. What’s more, it is packed to the gills with criticism and swipes at the Israelite people. It is Moses’ farewell speech, albeit a rather long one at 34 chapters, and while it is certainly focused on his legacy and the constant reminders to adhere to the law of God, much of his talk lambastes the people as stubborn, stiff-necked, selfish, faithless ingrates. Like Jacob’s deathbed speech to his sons at the conclusion of Genesis, both make me think of Marge Simpson’s mother, who says to Marge upon arrival at their home for a holiday celebration, “I have laryngitis and shouldn’t talk so I’ll only say one thing: you never do anything right.”

And yet, as I studied the parasha this week, specifically the beautiful commentary of Rabbi Melanie Aron for the Union’s Ten Minutes of Torah e-mail series, I’m trying to see this farewell speech of Moses in a different light. I say that I’m trying, because I admit that it’s a challenge for me to get past what seems like some real deep-seated bitterness on Moses’ part. After all, he is dying, and he knows that he’ll never set foot on the Promised Land, the thing for which he worked, lived, and breathed for essentially his entire life. So I get it; and that’s pretty much all I’ve seen in his oration, at least up until now.

Rabbi Aron wants us to see more than just bitterness, more than just bitching and moaning in Moses’ speech to the people. For her, this is rebuke. And what’s the difference? The difference is in the intention and the goal. The purpose of rebuke is to confront someone or someones directly, head-on, yet constructively, with an eye towards the positive, so that the person or persons can learn from their actions, and become better people.

And yet we know that is so much more easily said than done. Sure, technology is an easy scapegoat, as e-mail and text messaging and Facebook and even Twitter allow us to spout off frustration and aggravation at each other without picking up the phone or—God forbid—speaking to someone face-to-face. But long before these advances in communication, we still got upset with a co-worker and marched directly into the office…of another co-worker to talk about that person behind her back. We still took the hurt that a friend or family member caused us, intentionally or not, and, at best, buried it deep within ourselves; at worst, complained about it to anyone and everyone, except for the person himself. And it’s not just not productive, and it’s not even just counter-productive, which it is both of those things. More importantly, it’s a missed opportunity.

In the Holiness Code, found in Leviticus, we read the following: “You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove, rebuke your kin, but incur no guilt on their account. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. Love your fellow as yourself; I am the Eternal.”

The Torah’s message is clear: to confront someone, to rebuke them for the sake of bettering themselves, this is indeed a holy act. It is holy because, in the words of our old siddur, it helps us to “use our strength for good and not for evil.” It is holy because to do so must categorically mean that you care deeply about the person whom you’re confronting, that you truly love your fellow as yourself. And it is holy because it helps us raise each other up, to be better people, to be more God-like, when we see each other as God saw Moses, and as Moses perhaps tried to see the Israelites in his final words: panim el panim, face-to-face.

May we, in our lives, out of respect and love, have the courage and strength to confront our loved ones—constructively and positively—when we feel we have been wronged. Because when we do, we strengthen each other, we strengthen ourselves, and we bless ourselves with holiness.

AMEN.