Read + Listen / השראה
Israelis in our Dining Room:
War, Israel and Us
A message from Rabbi Noa Kushner on Monday, October 9th 2023
I am sitting in my house. There are six yartzeit candles burning on my dining room table — we would’ve lit more but that’s all we had in the drawer when the Israelis asked for them.
The candles are there because, just an hour ago today, a contingent of Israeli twenty-somethings were visiting. This is not unusual, we host groups from Israel all the time. But not like this, not at times in the world like this. Because there’s never been a time like this.
I was surprised this group was in town, given everything. But this war happened so fast, they had already arrived in the US last week, they were already here.
I did not know what to expect. They’re thousands of miles from home, their country is in a full scale war, the violence is unprecedented, the death count is rising by the hour, and their army is completely made up of people they know. Polite and gracious, they were trying to stick to the regular kinds of questions guests ask about The Kitchen, a script. But some were checking their phones, of course. Some were in tears.
I didn’t know what I wanted to happen but I knew it was absurd to talk about Jewish life when Jewish life was unfolding in our dining room.
Michael, my husband, also a rabbi, said he wanted to know their names and the names of those they were carrying. Now the veneer of having a polite US-Israeli conversation started to wear thin, it wore away. They had not yet been in a home on this trip, and something about being in our home reminded them of just how far away they were. We could feel their need to say these names out loud, they needed to tell each other these names. We stood, a makeshift ceremony in real time. Asher, our Hazzan, had the oud and we all sang אחינו כל בית ישראל. Then the names poured out of their mouths, the ones they were holding so tightly, the names of those who had died, names of those still in peril, the names of those held hostage, the kidnapped, the wounded: this one who was a neighbor, this one who is in a bomb shelter, this one who was a bartender at that rave, this one who lost his leg, this one for whom the psychic scars might not ever heal, Jewish names, they spoke in English and then gave up and spoke in Hebrew and the words and the names and the languages tumbled together in sprawling, sporadic waves, stopping and starting again, their open, young faces crumpled in pain. I could barely open my eyes.
No amount of checking the news, no social media post, no statistic in my life will ever compare to the experience of these pleading faces as they tried to put syllables together to make some meaning, any meaning, in such a violent world, while standing in the house of a rabbi they had never met, so very far away from home.
We lit all the candles we had in the house, I wish we had more. We said kaddish. We tried to help but I have never felt so inadequate in all my life, I could barely construct a sentence. So we made them promise they would return in better days, for shabbat, another day, any better day. I just wish I could have kept them a little longer, I keep thinking I should have made them stay here with me.
– Rabbi Noa Kushner
October 9, 2023 / Parashat Bereisheet, 5784
High Holiday Drashot
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Rabbi Noa Kushner
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Without anything whatsoever to guard him
He was supposed to bring something
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Rabbi Noa Kushner
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A sea of hundreds of people gracing the Tesla entrance, chanting “Democracy,” full throated, on behalf of Israel,
a sight I never imagined I’d see
A few of the Israeli flags graze the top of my head as I stand
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Rabbi Noa Kushner
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And we're already paying the price —
the accumulative and dramatic breakdown of social trust
in our institutions and in each other in this country
Doesn’t really matter who started it
The garden of America is beginning to evaporate around us
You see, like Eve, we have a choice:
It’s either ingesting the venom or being in the garden
We can’t do both
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Guest Rabbi Michael Lezak
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When floods came, when waters rose, when trauma or danger or peril forced their way to the front. These tzaddikim mimicked the Holy One when, God-like, they stayed put and present and proximate, and simply let a love from On High pulse through their every action.
Music
High Holiday Melodies
A series of prayers all about mercy and forgiveness recorded Hazzan Asher Shasho Levy.
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A torrent of ideas and emotions all came pouring out, and your mouths began to heal
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We're overjoyed to welcome some of the most engaging, powerful teachers in the US and Israel. Many are long time Kitchen favorites, some newer to us but all known for their ability to connect Torah to our lives right now. We'll spend a whole shabbat with these thinkers, like a retreat without having to pack. Check out upcoming scholars & past teachings here.
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Peter Beinart & Nadav Tamir
On Shabbat evening, May 5th, J Street’s Executive Director, Nadav Tamir, sat down with Peter Beinart to discuss Israel/Palestine, democracy, and us. Listen to the conversation below.
Sponsored by J Street
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We're overjoyed to welcome some of the most engaging, powerful teachers in the US and Israel. Many are long time Kitchen favorites, some newer to us but all known for their ability to connect Torah to our lives right now. We'll spend a whole shabbat with these thinkers, like a retreat without having to pack. Check out upcoming scholars & past teachings here.
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Why have a command for something so painfully, really embarrassingly obvious?
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Do we in America even have the courage to stand, not leaving the shore for a second
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Do we have the strength to tell the truth about the severity of the situation?
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We're overjoyed to welcome some of the most engaging, powerful teachers in the US and Israel. Many are long time Kitchen favorites, some newer to us but all known for their ability to connect Torah to our lives right now. We'll spend a whole shabbat with these thinkers, like a retreat without having to pack. Check out upcoming scholars & past teachings here.
Parashat Tzav / Mar 31
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We're overjoyed to welcome some of the most engaging, powerful teachers in the US and Israel. Many are long time Kitchen favorites, some newer to us but all known for their ability to connect Torah to our lives right now. We'll spend a whole shabbat with these thinkers, like a retreat without having to pack. Check out upcoming scholars & past teachings here.
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Where starting all over is no longer on the table
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And actually, if I am being completely honest,
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I want to own it
What if it never returns again?
See, and here we are, you don’t have to admit it but I will:
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I want to bind holiness and keep it safe where I can always have it
A little golden cage for the divine bird
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Parashat Vaera / Jan 20
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Moses is not being sent to Pharaoh
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We're overjoyed to welcome some of the most engaging, powerful teachers in the US and Israel. Many are long time Kitchen favorites, some newer to us but all known for their ability to connect Torah to our lives right now. We'll spend a whole shabbat with these thinkers, like a retreat without having to pack.
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We're overjoyed to welcome some of the most engaging, powerful teachers in the US and Israel. Many are long time Kitchen favorites, some newer to us but all known for their ability to connect Torah to our lives right now. We'll spend a whole shabbat with these thinkers, like a retreat without having to pack.
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But never mind that, the angel was right, is right
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Don’t doubt all that was and is in those dreams
Don’t doubt your ability to complete your missions in life
Parashat Vayishlach / Dec 10
Rabbi Noa Kushner
Room For All
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Esau’s pain at not receiving his intended blessing, true, but also
Esau’s determined insistence that he be blessed nevertheless
That there is always another blessing
That there is room for us all
Parashat Vayetze / Dec 2
Rabbi Noa Kushner
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What is the kind of prayer we pray when we are stopped, unable to run towards the next destination?
What is the kind of prayer we most need in the dark?
Parashat Chayyei Sarah / Nov 18
Rabbi Noa Kushner
Is Anyone Home?
And this kind of epic repetition, death and life, and death and life again is so fundamental, it is so enormous we don’t even see it
Even when it is framing one torah portion
Even when, especially when, it is framing our lives
Shabbat Drashot
