I would like to express my deepest condolences to all of you who are mourning for a loved one who died during this past year, as well as those of you who are mourning the loss of loved ones in years past, as we recall all that they meant to each of us.

For those of us who live in Center City Philadelphia, we love walking around and seeing the old homes and historic buildings which have been renovated and restored, and now provide the homes, restaurants, shops and offices for new generations of people. In an older city like Philadelphia, neighborhoods rise and fall along with macro-economic cycles.  This neighborhood around our very own Rodeph Shalom, has seen so many cycles it could make your head spin. When RS first moved here in the 1860’s, this was a neighborhood of well-to-do German Jews, and then over the years, it became industrial then blue collar residential, then many ups and downs, mostly downs.  Then in recent years, miraculously many people have started to move back into the city to enjoy all the wonderful facets of life here, until much of the older housing stock was renovated and this is once again a vibrant and exciting place to live, not only our little block, but many of the surrounding neighborhoods like Northern Liberties, Fishtown and so forth.

You could say that all this growth is the result of gentrification, a word that to some is pejorative.  From a purely economic standpoint, it is a real positive that so many people enjoy living in these renovated areas that formerly were less glamorous.  But to the people who had lived here and had to relocate to more affordable neighborhoods, gentrification was not so great.  It is said that many of the newcomers may be convinced that no one and nothing of value existed before they arrived.  Who lived here?  What were their lives like?

Most people leave so little trace as they pass through life.  If we really wanted to know who they were, how could we discover the traces of their lives?

At this Yizkor memorial service this is exactly what we do in our own way.  We try to discover the traces of our loved ones’ lives.  “Yizkor” means “remember” and by devoting our efforts during this waning time of Yom Kippur, we remember our loved ones.

There is nothing more precious than memory, as we search for the traces of our loved ones’ lives.  Today, at our Yizkor Service, it is almost as though we become archeologists – carefully sifting through the dust of our memory.  Archeologists search for traces of past civilizations.  In Center City Philadelphia, we search for the meaning of the lives of people who have lived here for a few hundred years.

In Israel, archeologists look for traces of ancient civilizations going back thousands of years, looking for traces of our ancestors’ lives, who have resided there since all the way back to the time of Abraham and Sarah, 1800 BCE.

But today at our Yizkor service we too become archeologists carefully sifting through the dust of our memories to try to find the traces of our loved ones’ lives.  It is their memory that inspires us to live better lives ourselves.  We do more than simply read their names and recite the mystical words of the Kaddish.  We sanctify their memory best by trying to take what was inspiring in their lives and weave that into the fabric of our own lives.

And this is the most important purpose of Yom Kippur, to try to find ways to improve our lives and to improve the life of the world around us.  In fact, you could say this is the very purpose of Judaism, to try to find ways to improve our lives and to improve the world.

But how can we tackle such a monumental task as improving the world?  We Jews are indeed fortunate to have so much profound wisdom of how to lead a better life.  All of Jewish sacred text:  Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, thousands of years of commentary from our sages, to our current day scholars, all focus on giving us guidance for improving and repairing our world.

To me, one of the best sources of this literature may be found in the “Middot” the “Jewish Moral Virtues.”  “Middah” is the Hebrew word meaning quality, character, measure, and it refers to the Jewish wisdom literature on the many ways to live a better life.  The main idea is that it applies traditional Jewish ethical wisdom to our life in today’s world.

I would like to give you one example today, which comes from one of my favorite teachings in Judaism, and it is called “Hashavat Aveidah,” “the return of lost objects.”

It comes from our Torah, Deuteronomy 22: 1-3.  [1]  “If you see your fellow’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it; you must take it back to your fellow…[3]  You shall do the same with his donkey or his garment or with anything that your fellow loses and you find:  you must not remain indifferent.”  [Deut. 22:1-3].

Now this may sound like a very simple thing to do.  I’m sure we’ve all found a lost object.  Once I was on the train to NYC, and I was sitting in a seat when I felt something bulging out of the seat.  I looked down and I found a wallet in my seat.  It was filled with cash and credit cards and pictures with the owner’s name and address inside.  So when I arrived at Penn Station in NY, I went to the UPS store in the concourse, and I sent it back to the owner overnight with a little note inside telling him I was returning his wallet with my name and phone number.  The next day he called me to thank me and offered to pay for the shipping, but I said I was glad to do it, as I would hope someone would do the same for me.

He said “Well I work for a large defense contractor, and if you ever need a nuclear submarine, just let me know!”

I guess I could’ve recited to him our verse from Deuteronomy about the return of lost objects!     But for us there is so much more involved in this teaching.  After telling us to return a person’s lost ox or sheep or garment or “anything that your fellow loses and you find…” there is one of the most important verses in all of Torah in three little Hebrew words, “Lo toochal L’hit-a-lem.”  Sometimes translated as “You must not remain indifferent.”  But the real meaning is so much more profound, “L’hit-alem” really means “You must not hide yourself.”

In other words, do not make yourself absent from a situation.  Do not block out a problem that is confronting you.  Don’t turn your head and try to ignore the fact that you saw something or someone who needs your help.

Or in the vernacular of today, do not walk down the sidewalk staring at your phone, oblivious to all that is going on around you, not seeing, not caring.  Or as the Holiness Code teaches us, “Do not stand idly by while your neighbor bleeds.”  [Lev. 19:16].

To paraphrase one of our great sages of today, Rabbi Donniel Hartman, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem said, “We are all created B’tzelem Elohim, in God’s image.  But to be created in God’s image is not a description of who we are, it is an expectation.  It is something to aspire to. “   And mitzvot, commandments, these ethical teachings are a pathway,  a guide for us to act like we are created in God’s image.  To act like a mensch, which is a human being of high integrity, of honor, and deep moral character.  And to quote a wise rabbi who said in her Rosh Hashanah morning sermon last week, I’m paraphrasing here:  “In a place where there are no mensches, strive to be a mensch.” [Mishnah Pirke Avot 2:5].

Rabbi Hartman said, “to be a mensch is defined by your ability to SEE PEOPLE, and not to remain indifferent when you see their needs.”

On Yom Kippur we reflect on the idea that we are judged by our actions.  Our actions shape who we are.

“Lo toochal L’hit-alem” Do not disappear, do not hide yourself.  Be a mensch. All this from the Jewish moral virtue of “Hashavat Aveidah,” “The return of lost objects.”

I believe this verse is all the more important on Yom Kippur, this day on which we focus on “teshuvah” “repentance.”  As Rabbi Lauren Berkun taught, the word “teshuvah” comes from the same Hebrew word meaning “to return” just as “Hashavat Aveidah,”  the “return of lost objects.”  On Yom Kippur the lost objects of our focus are “the return of your lost self, the return of your lost soul to its rightful place.  The return of a family member’s sense of dignity and honor, the return of a neighbor’s sense of self-worth, the return of a friend’s sense of trust.” [Berkun].

“Lo toochal L’hit-alem”   Do not hide yourself from the life going on all around you.

All of us who live in these beautifully gentrified neighborhoods may be convinced that no one or nothing of value existed before we arrived.  We leave so little trace as we pass through life.  And it takes a real effort to sift through the dust of memory to discover the traces left by those who have come before us.

Today at our Yizkor Memorial service, let us search for the lost objects of our loves ones’ lives, the traces of their character, so that we may learn from all that was good in their lives, and make their memory into the very fabric of our lives.

And by discovering the purpose of their lives, we may discover the purpose of our lives:  “Lo toochal L’hit-alem” do not hide yourself.  Reach out to another human being with love.  And strive to be worthy of our greatest gift, that we are created in God’s image.

AMEN.

MATERIAL GATHERED FROM:

Deuteronomy 22:1-3.
Talmud Baba Metzia 2a on “Hashavat Aveidah.”
Rabbi Donniel Hartman, Sermon on being a mensch.  Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, 2026.
“Lost Property and Lost Souls,” sermon by Rabbi Lauren Eichler Berkun, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, 2001.
Leviticus 19:16.
Pirke Avot 2:5.

 

We approach the end of the Yom Kippur service and these High Holy Days. This is the sixty-sixth year that I deliver a message on this Day of Atonement. Again, I remember: these years have seen many wars throughout the world, an attack directly against this country bringing down the world trade center, extraordinary development of technology, the ordination of female rabbis, and a host of other personal and national tragedies and blessings that we mourn and celebrate.  So, as I reflect on this life’s experience and attempt to see the present and the future through the lens of these many years, the Torah portion and the Haftarah portion help to provide profound meaning to that search.

We have read the nineteenth chapter of the book of Leviticus, known as the holiness code. It should be seen as a clear statement of who we are as the people of Israel. Atem Kedoshim, you are holy because I the lord your God am holy. The word kadosh means to be set aside for a purpose. The holiness code tells us that purpose.

You shall leave a portion of your field for the poor and for the ger, stranger. You shall be charitable to those who are in need and those who have not achieved citizenship in your community. You shall not steal and you shall not deceive – you shall not lie to one another and you shall not swear falsely. You shall not insult the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind. You shall not exploit your neighbor. You shall not do injustice in judgement. You shall not seek vengeance or bear a grudge. A ger, a stranger who dwells among you shall be like a citizen and you shall love that person as yourself, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt. Holiness is not just a feeling – it is action. It is refusing to exploit someone else’s weakness.

That is a synopsis of the holiness code. We read it because we believe we are bound to live by it. We also are the messengers to the world. These are the values by which all people should live.

Then we read the book of Jonah. God sends Jonah on a mission. He tells him to go to the city of Nineveh, a city where the people have forgotten the holiness code. It is a brutal place. Jonah is given the task of warning the people of impending doom if they do not change. Jonah does not want to be that savior. He tries to escape on a ship to Tarshish, but God creates a terrible storm. The sailors are confused, but they come to understand that Jonah is the cause of the devastating waves around them. They throw him overboard, a giant fish swallows Jonah and he survives for three days, eventually to be expelled onto shore. He must go to Nineveh. He does so and warns the people, but he does not want them to be saved. Jonah wants a world in which there are clear boundaries between those who are good and those who are evil. He does not believe in forgiveness. At the end of the book, the message is clear – be a messenger and change those who violate the values demanded of us. When they repent, welcome them into the world of caring and compassion and justice.

At no time during these many years of delivering a Yom Kippur message have I felt more sympathy for Jonah. He was angry that evil would be rewarded, that those who have lived their lives promoting only themselves would be forgiven. It was a task he did not want.

And yet – the prophets all have the same message – that we, the descendants of Abraham must speak out. Abraham challenged god at Sodom and Gemorrah – would god destroy the innocent with the guilty. Would this god act unjustly? Jacob wrestled with a being and his name became Israel – to struggle with God. We struggle because we see the evil in the world and we know that we have an obligation to be a messenger, but we like Jonah hesitate because those who are evil are not worth the trouble.

My message after these many years remains the same –we must confront those whose words, whose actions, whose lives represent a rejection of everything that the holiness code teaches. We see every day cruelty, dishonesty, corruption, revenge, the abuse of power, the destruction of our environment, lawlessness, theft, treating the stranger as someone sub-human, denying women the right to choose and all people the right define who they are, seeking to create a world where the few will control the many-a world where individual freedom and democracy is destroyed. Jonah was cynical – he did not believe that those who were evil would say al cheyt – for the sin we have committed. Jonah also was guilty. If he could not change them then he was obligated to make certain that they did not change him and to speak to those who were good that they would prevent that evil from destroying Nineveh and the world. We must not be guilty of having to say al cheyt for committing the sin of silence, or the sin of inaction. When Abraham walked with his son Isaac to the sacrificial altar, he saw hamakom from afar. The word makom means place, but it has been used in commentary to mean god. He saw holiness. Abraham believed there still was justice and compassion and honesty and welcoming the stranger and goodness in this world. He made certain at Sodom that it prevailed. This is our moment at Sodom. Let us too make certain that the evil that threatens this nation to which we arrived in 1654 and the nation born of our dreams in 1948, and that threatens life everywhere shall be abolished from this earth.

I have always loved Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference

Let us all take that road where our voices are heard and our actions bear witness to the values we represent, that road where we never will need to say al cheyt for the sin of silence and inaction, that road to a better world, that road where we see hamakom, the goodness that we believe must prevail, that road that gives

Shana Tova!

It is wonderful to look out and see so many of you here.

There is something very special about being together—in this beautiful sanctuary –built almost 100 years ago! — on these holy days, with people of so many different ages and stages all taking time to stop, reflect, and to begin again.

I am especially honored to be standing here as your Congregation President.

I want to begin with a story.

Some years ago, someone decided to introduce me to another member of Rodeph Shalom. Apparently, the reasoning was: the two of us were both psychologists, so surely, we would have a lot in common. Well… not exactly.

We came from very different theoretical backgrounds, and we had very different life experiences. At our meeting, we started talking about a sermon we had recently heard. She thought it was insightful. I thought it flew in the face of virtually everything I knew about cognition and memory. We could have decided right then and there that this relationship wasn’t going anywhere. Instead, we did something that turned out to be much more important. We listened to each other — really listened. I didn’t persuade her. She didn’t persuade me. We simply shared what we thought—and listened to why the other person thought differently. And somehow, out of that disagreement, came a friendship. Today, she is one of my very best friends.

Over the years, we have had plenty of difficult conversations. We still don’t always agree. But we share Shabbat. We celebrate Jewish holidays together. We learn together. We play together. We engage in moral action together. And through all of this, we have discovered something important: you don’t have to agree with someone to be deeply connected to them. It is easy to feel connected to people who agree with us.  Those relationships are comfortable. We value them.

But how many spaces are there in our lives where we can feel safe enough to truly disagree with someone else?

Where we can we say, “I don’t see it the way you do, but I want to understand why you see it that way.”

Our Jewish tradition has understood this for a very long time. Open a page of Talmud and you will find brilliant people disagreeing with other brilliant people. Sometimes passionately. It’s part of our tradition.

At RS, we share fundamental Jewish values and we still can arrive at very different conclusions about what those values require of us and that is one of the things I love most about Rodeph Shalom.

I’ve been a member since 1985, when Stuart and I were married here. Our two sons celebrated their B’nai Mitzvah and Confirmations here. When our children were young, I saw some things I thought we could improve in our Sunday School. Before long, I found myself chairing the Sunday School Committee. Soon after, I became Vice President for Education. I studied what it meant to be a Reform Jew with Rabbi Fuchs. I spent three years studying Torah with Rabbi Kuhn. And somewhere along the way, I realized that I wasn’t simply a member of Rodeph Shalom anymore. I had become part of it, and it had become a part of me.

I am deeply grateful to so many of you. You who have given so generously of your time and energy and to all of you who have supported RS financially –whether your gifts were large or small, they all have made a difference. Synagogues are places where we bring our souls.  We come here with joy, questions, hopes, sometimes disappointments and yes, sadness. While the synagogue can’t make everyone happy, [I’ve been Congregation President long enough to know that!], we can help people feel heard.

So as we enter this New Year, my request to all of you is simple: Reach out. Listen to someone you don’t normally talk to. Join an engagement group. Come to a program. Volunteer. Come to Shabbat Services. Study Torah. Or simply sit next to someone you don’t know and introduce yourself. You never know. You might disagree about something — and that might be the beginning of a profound connection.

As we enter this New Year, I hope each of you will find your place here at Rodeph Shalom and I hope you will help someone else find theirs.

Thanks to all of you for being here—for showing up, for caring, for contributing, for listening, and for being part of this community.

May this be a year of connection and may we all be written and sealed in the Book of Life for a sweet, healthy, meaningful, and peaceful New Year.

Shana Tova!

Last month, I left a piece of my heart in New York where my husband Len and I dropped off our daughter for her first semester in drama school.  The rigorous admissions journey was exciting for her, if grueling for her father.  To audition on multiple campuses, Len took her on what I called her “national tour.”  What followed was the real challenge: the waiting!  She realizes that if she goes into acting professionally, such limbo will be her perpetual existence.  She will need to tolerate the uncertainty, not allow the unknown future to spoil her present, she will even need to embrace the ambiguity.  And yet, as she reflects, isn’t that the existence of all our lives?!  Those of us who are not waiting on auditions may find it easier to live under the illusion of certainty, but audition or not, we face uncertainty, an unknowable future, ambiguity.  And on Yom Kippur, our sacred day of reflection and intention, there is no concealing it.

At the start of this evening’s service, barely settled into our seats, we rose for the haunting prayer of Kol Nidre. Both its beauty and its anguish meant to crack open our hearts, its words compel us to question everything we think we know.  We hear: “All vows, resolves and commitments, let them be discarded, forgiven…” Or perhaps an alternative translation: “Words matter, promises are important, yet still so much is out of our hands; so you do what you can do.”  Kol Nidre, then, compels us to with humility, face the truth of uncertainty.

In this time of global chaos, polarization, mistrust, antisemitism, authoritarianism, climate crisis, isolation– but  really, in any season of our lives—when we feel the ground beneath us shake, pessimism and paralysis can conspire to consume us.

How many of us catastrophize about the future?  Inspired by her Judaism, professor of strategic design Lisa Kay Solomon teaches Stanford students to imagine how they can shape the unknowable future by considering: what are the variables that are fixed, and what are the variables that are flexible—open to our influence.  Solomon would invite us to consider: How would you complete the sentence: “the future is…”  Try it out, just completing it with one word.  The future is…  anyone say: Bright? Bleak? Limitless? Ours? Hopeless?  Understandable if we are feeling doomed.  And yet… Instead of reacting to a future we don’t want to be a part of, can we transform the weight of discomfort into a state of possibility?  Can we transform a sense of helplessness into a sense of agency where we shape a hopeful future of compassion, community, connection?

For one of our congregants life’s uncertainty became more obvious with a job loss.  Feeling baffled, worried, and a little lost when laid off from a tech company as a young father, at first all he can see are the risks of the wilderness of unemployment.  He starts to network and finds he enjoys reconnecting with people.  In downtime he serves his community, volunteering for his child’s school, for the synagogue, and for a local election, discovering purpose in the experiences.  The man at once feels the stress of not knowing his next steps, and also the promise of possibility, and understands it is in the space of ambiguity, where spiritual journey happens; reflection on the past and intention for the future–reflection and intention — teshuvah.

As the man considers every option from becoming a stay-at-home parent to going back to school, he reflects that the job loss offers him an opportunity to make a mid-life shift that he might not have afforded himself.  What would it take for all of us to welcome uncertainty, invite such periods of contemplation and spiritual growth, set aside our assumptions about what is next, put all options on the table?

Most of us need help in reaching such a state of fruitful ambiguity. The very discomfort about uncertainty that wires humans, to prepare for the tiger lurking behind the tree, but obscures from us the fruit on that tree, might lead us to seek a world of predictability, simplicity.  Yet, that is not reality.

Jewish text conditions us to tolerate complexity. The first chapters of the Book of Genesis tell the story of creation.  Actually? the stories of creation. Society often folds the narratives together into one, but our origin myth is a pair of 2 distinct stories. Consider the question of human nature.  In the first story, after creating humans God says- we are very good.  Whereas, in the second story, in the middle of the Garden of Eden, God plants a tree of knowledge of good and evil…whether we are good, still yet to be determined.  So, to what extent are we humans good? And to what extent, do we struggle between good and evil?  We are still figuring that out–wrestling with interpretations.  From both creation stories we glean essential values, but there is no one neat and tidy conclusion about the world, about people, or about God–we do not claim to know.

Rejecting fundamentalism, our text demands a tolerance for discord, expanding our capacity for complexity.  I like to think of Torah Study as communal “ambiguity-training.” Torah Study conditions us to endure uncertainty, to take comfort in walking through the unknown together, to flourish in that shared space of ambiguity, to ground ourselves in our tradition’s teachings, so that we gain clarity about our values and find potential for fruitful ambiguity, as we embrace an unknowable future.

I have the honor of accompanying you through some of the most intense seasons in your lives. For many, health struggles mean extended periods when all you can do is take one day at a time, one day of treatment, of healing, of prayer, at a time… of overcoming ailments thought incurable, living with chronic illness, or facing the malady, that may not be treatable. So often, I am blown away by the volition you find, when so much is out of your hands. Illness, or even end of life, becomes precious time to do things that matter — to sit with friends, to receive meals and love from the community, to make amends or forgive, so that nothing is left unsaid, to make plans or leave an ethical will–a document of your values for those you leave behind.  You look this time of uncertainty square in the face, and turn it into a time of intimacy and holiness.

Ten days before her death, inspired by her Jewish values, writer Amy Krouse Rosenthal published a column in the NY Times Modern Love series, called: “You May Want to Marry My Husband.”  Dying of cancer and close to the end, in between morphine micro-naps Amy penned her version of a singles profile for her husband. She sought to help him find his next love story for the future she would not be able to share with him. Awaiting her untimely death and not knowing what the future would hold for the family she left behind, Amy reclaimed some power.  Not only did she tell the world how wonderful her husband was, attracting potential future mates, Amy made clear to her husband and their children that she gave her blessing for him to live his life fully after her death.  So much is fixed, inevitable, out of our hands; so then the question of our lives is, what will we do with, all that is not fixed, but is flexible, possible, open to our influence? Can we find empowerment, even as we live with uncertainty?

Yom Kippur’s response?  A great shofar will cry and a still small voice will be heard. Who shall live and who shall die. Who will rest and who will wander. We do not claim to know.  The Unetaneh Tokef prayer that we will recite tomorrow morning reminds us: the ground has always been shaky.  When we ask: Who shall live and who shall die. Who will rest and who will wander…Unetane Tokef, proclaims: Do something. Repentance, prayer, and righteousness.  The essence of the High Holy Days, and of all of Jewish life– teshuvah, tfilah, tzedakah. There’s always something we can do. Even in a harsh, uncertain, complex, anxious, incomprehensible reality, we have agency.

Jewish text conditions us to tolerate complexity.  A story from the Talmud.  During the Roman siege of ancient Jerusalem, the city was controlled by Jewish zealots who forced the war to continue even as the Jewish community suffered violence, starvation, and defeat. By this point of the war, the destruction of the ancient Temple was inevitable and there was no possibility for Jewish life within the walls of the city.  Still, the zealots refused to surrender. The rabbis of the time, longing to save Judaism, started to imagine a Jewish life that might be possible outside of Jerusalem.

Rabbi Yochonon ben Zakkai concocted a plan. Knowing that the Romans and the zealots allowed dead bodies to be carried out of the city at night for burial, Rabbi Yochonon and his students conspired to fake his death. They placed Rabbi Yochonon in a coffin, and in a funeral processional he was smuggled out of the city.  Once free of the battle, Rabbi Yochonon ben Zakkai settled in the north in Yavneh where he established a Jewish community and Torah academy that preserved Jewish life, and transformed it into the beginnings of the Judaism we know today. The story is tragic for Jerusalem. Still, in the worst of circumstances, with no good choices and no clear solutions, the community, resolute in its vision to bring Judaism to the next generation finds a way to be the ancestors their descendants need them to be.  In a coffin, brushing up with death in a way our Yom Kippur rituals lead us, our ancestors build a future for an unknown world.

Yom Kippur offers rituals of death – wearing white, fasting, emptying the ark of its Torah scrolls as if it becomes a coffin for all of us –we brush up against death, so that we do not forsake life.  We cannot deny all that is real – the volatility, complexity, ambiguity.  We claim it – and we claim life. We find comfort in the ways our tradition conditions us to endure ambiguity together, even to devote the time of uncertainty to spiritual growth. Together, we find agency amid the ambiguity, for teshuvah, tfilah, tzedakah. There is always something we can do.

The Jewish calendar prescribes the time for reflection and intention is now.  And the Jewish calendar teaches, at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, what is the very next thing we do?  The moment Yom Kippur ends we put the first nail into the sukkah, acting out the connections, between reflection and resolve.

We build the sukkah; it is in a fragile hut, exposed to the elements but together with community –it is there, where we find the comfort of connection, and we celebrate abundance and joy.  Amid uncertainty? Agency.  Yom Kippur cannot exist without Sukkot.  Today we reflect.  Then moments later in our imperfect, unsettling world, together, we build.