This week we begin the Exodus story which offers humanity a one-two punch.

There is a new form of loss in the world, and it is spreading like wildfire.

We know what it is like to lose a person we love. Our mother dies. Our father dies. Our grandparent or sibling or friend dies. There is a Hebrew word for that, and it comes from the Joseph story. After the brothers sold Joseph into slavery, older brother Reuben observes hayeled einenu, Joseph is no more.

And when that happens, the person we love dies and is no more, it is usually sad, sometimes tragic, and always a huge, paradigm-shifting change. The one we love is no more. How will we do life without the one we love? But we are set up for it. Our tradition has equipped us with the rituals that will help us get through it. We have shiva. We have sheloshim. We have minyan. We have kaddish. We have yahrtzeit. We have the words to say and the deeds to do in the comfort of a community that enable us both to mourn our loss and also affirm our life.

But now there is a new form of loss. We don’t have the rituals and traditions and know-how, because we have not seen this epic loss, on this epic scale, before. What happens when it is not a person who is no more, but a house, and all that it contains, that is no more?

The house we grew up in is no more. The house that we wake up in and go to sleep in and do life in is no more. The ketubah on the wall is no more. The artwork gathered over a lifetime of going to art galleries in special places is no more. The Judaica is no more. The challah trays and challah covers, the kiddush cups, the Shabbat candlesticks that are a family heirloom from a beloved departed grandmother is no more. The seder plates, the Elijah cups and Miriam cups, the haggadot are no more. The benchers, the kippot, the tallitot are no more. The kitchen table and the dining room table on which we had 1,000 beautiful meals with our loved ones is no more. The cards and letters and photographs and memories are no more. The relics of our children’s childhood—the macaroni-encrusted pencil holders spray-painted gold that they would give us for Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, are no more. The home is gone. And with it the physical manifestation of the life we used to live is no more.

Multiply that by all the businesses that are no more.

Add to that the synagogue in Pacific Palisades where Elias’s friend and cantorial colleague Ruth works, a 100-year old congregation, that is no more. Thank God the Torah scroll was saved from the wreckage, but the rest of the House of the Lord is no more.

We have members who grew up in Pacific Palisades. They came to the special prayer service for LA we held in the Gann Chapel on Thursday night. Before the service, she showed me on her cell phone what einenu, what is no more, looks like when homes, businesses, and every structure that used to stand is no more. Where a city block used to be, it is no more. Apocalyptic emptiness.

The loss is so enormous. Where do people whose house is no more go to live? What clothes do they wear when their clothes are incinerated? What food do they eat? How do they go to work and do a day of life when their entire foundation has been so cruelly overturned? And that is not even dealing with the deep, deep, super scary, terrifying financial implications. From what I have read, and heard from my family in Los Angeles, most residents who lost their homes do not have insurance that covers a home destroyed by fire. They lost everything. There is no insurance.

What happens now?

How is it with your soul?

January 4, 2025

Earlier in the year, Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote about her father's friend who was kidnapped at knife-point 50 years ago. It was a powerful piece--both for the thoughtful discussion of this original trauma and its impact on her and on her family friend. But the real story wasn't the kidnapping, nor the way the kidnapping re-ignited memories of her own lived traumas. The real story was that her article inspired countless emails from total strangers who reached out to share their own stories of trauma. Six months after her original article, Taffy published a second reflection titled, "I Published a Story about Trauma. I Heard About Everyone Else's."

One of the most magnetic moments drawing us to shul is the observance of a yahrtzeit, the anniversary of our loved one’s passing, which offers us a precious opportunity to show up again for our beloved departed, to say a few words about them, and to recite Kaddish in their memory. Ordinary people who do not show up at shul all that much the rest of the year show up for their loved one’s yahrtzeit. That is through all the seasons. That is through the snow and the cold and the ice. And they do that for years, for decades, sometimes even remembering their loved one in death far longer than they were blessed to have them in life.

And when somebody comes to mark their loved one’s yahrtzeit, a thing we often say is: may you continue to be your loved one’s living legacy. May your father’s beautiful values live on in you. May your mother’s beautiful values live on in you. We say it. We mean it. It is beautiful and true.

I have been saying it, and I have been receiving it when others say it to me, for many years. But this year, for the first time, I experienced a wrinkle, a complexity, that I had never noticed before. What happens if we and our beloved departed mother or father or grandparent have a real disagreement over a matter of principle? They lived. They died. We know where they stand. Their legacy is now ours. But on a fundamental question of principle, we disagree.

For the first time ten days ago, I felt this tension myself.

I have a thought experiment for you. In honor of Hanukkah, which begins Wednesday night, find a photograph of you lighting Hanukkah candles with your family from 25 years ago. Take a good long look at that old photo. How does it make you feel? For many of us, it can be complicated.

Immediately ahead are seven years of great abundance in all the land of Egypt. After them will come seven years of famine, and all the abundance in the land of Egypt will be forgotten. (Genesis 41: 29-30)

The volume of outrage in our world has hit a crescendo. All the time I hear questions like, “how can you bear to be around someone who voted like that?!” or “how can you stand working with people who are so anti-Zionist or who are so pro-Israel?” As if people who do not rage against those they disagree with are somehow condoning or supporting evil perspectives. Young people, already stressed by the pressures of their own lives, feel pressured to respond to hateful social media posts and/or to present content that will fight against what they see as evil lies. Everything is pitched as though the conversation is an existential battle between good and evil and each one of us is either fighting for good or conceding to forces of evil.

We saw this so sharply this week. When Luigi Mangione murdered Brian Thompson in broad daylight, the story on the street and on social media wasn’t about a horrific crime against humanity. People lionized Luigi, they asked him on dates, they offered to be his alibi, they fundraised for his legal costs, they even competed in dress-alike competitions. Why? Because they see him as someone willing to take decisive action against the evils of our world, never mind that he committed an atrocious crime and never mind that killing Brian Thompson does nothing to fix our broken health care system nor address the real pain of the American people.

There’s a word for this energy in our tradition: zealotry. Zealots are people who are inspired by passion, who take action without due process, and who force the world to align with their vision.

The most famous zealots in our tradition arose in a tumultuous time in our history. Way back in the first century, during the Second Temple Period, our ancestors were fighting to build a life in the shadow of the Roman Empire. At the time, the future of Judaism and Jewish community was precarious and there were different groups that had different ideas about what should happen. Some groups fought for justice and against elitism and classism that they felt were destroying society. Some believed that the Roman Empire was the way of the future. They promoted assimilation and Hellenization and worked to try to suppress Jewish revolt against the occupying power. While others raged against Roman rule, encouraging resistance to Roman culture and strict adherence to Jewish cultic rites.

According to the Talmud, the elders of the Jewish community wanted to mobilize their community thoughtfully. But the zealots didn’t have the patience for this. They felt an existential threat and believed it was their duty to force the Jewish community into action. They provoked and attacked the Romans, trying to incite violence. And when their guerilla tactics worked and the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, the zealots burned the granaries and food stores in the city so our ancestors would be forced to fight for their lives.

When we tell this story, we focus on our survival. We focus on Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s improbable escape in a coffin. We focus on his heroic journey to Yavne and the way he preserved the Judaism that he and the other rabbis believed in. But that leaves out a critical piece of our history. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai had to escape because of the zealots, because their radical ideology created a toxic culture of violence which threatened our very existence.

Today, more than ever, we need to remember the zealots.

The murder last week of CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York in broad daylight inspired large-scale celebration. The article from the Times and social media posts show delight in his murder; the celebration of his murderer as a hero.