With this week’s Torah portion, the book of Genesis comes to an end. Both Jacob and Joseph, and the Egyptian rulers who knew them, pass away, setting up the story of slavery and Exodus coming in the next chapter of our story.

Joseph learns that Jacob’s death is near, and he goes to see his father, with his sons Ephraim and Menasseh. Jacob recounts to Joseph the promises God made to Jacob, and he informs Joseph that he is adopting Joseph’s sons, whom he mentions by name, so they will have a full portion of the inheritance Jacob leaves to his sons. Jacob is well aware that Joseph’s sons were born to Joseph and an Egyptian mother and that they are growing up in Egypt, yet he feels so strongly tied to them he claims them as his own. However, after saying all of this to Joseph, Jacob does not recognize his grandsons Ephraim and Menasseh, standing next to Joseph. He has to ask “Who are these?”

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I’ve been waiting my whole career to start a D’var Torah with a reference to baseball.

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In the spring of my senior year of high school, after the stress of college applications and acceptance were over, my best friend and I both had the overwhelming urge to…color.

We went to the drugstore and bought a brand-new 64 pack of Crayola crayons and a couple of those super-sized coloring books, the ones that are as big as our entire upper bodies. Mine had Sesame Street characters. We took them back to my house, sat on the floor stretched over the pages, and colored.

We wanted at that moment in our lives, I believe, to break free from the pressure to produce a product and instead to enjoy the process of taking a black and white outline, choosing only a place to start and a color to start with, and watching the picture emerge.

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Remember. It’s one of our first Jewish lessons. It’s in the Ten Commandments, it’s in the poem L’cha Dodi with which we greet Shabbat each week, and it’s repeated throughout the liturgy of these High Holy Days. In our worship on Rosh HaShanah, the sound of the shofar awakens us specifically to remember our covenant with God. We return now to memory in our Yizkor service which allows us to honor those whom we have lost, to remember them.

But what if memories hold us hostage? What if our memories are the stumbling blocks that obstruct our future? As the Israeli novelist Amos Oz wrote, “Apart from the obligation to remember, is there also a right to forget?” (The Slopes of Lebanon)

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This whole summer, each Shabbat, we have been talking about Judaism’s relevance. Judaism is all around us. We can become attuned to it, and we can learn Jewishly from the stories in the news, the conversations we have with our loved ones and co-workers, the experiences we encounter in our everyday lives.

Never am I more attuned to the Judaism around me than when I’m listening to music. In my mind, during this month of Elul leading up to the High Holy Days, I have been hearing again and again a certain musical refrain.

Awake My Soul

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Our tradition sometimes speaks to us in a still, small voice. In a passage from the prophets, God illustrates to the prophet Elijah, Eliyahu HaNavi, where to find God’s presence. God creates a furious wind, but God is not in the wind. God then creates an earthquake, but God is not in the earthquake. God then creates a fire, but God is not in the fire. After the fire, there was a Kol D’mamah Dakah, a still, small voice.

I hear and feel that Kol D’mamah Dakah, that still small voice, stirring within me when something resonates with me in a Jewish way. It’s telling me to pay attention, to consider carefully, to try to reach some new understanding based on Jewish teaching.

This week the Kol D’mamah Dakah stirred with the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial. How am I to understand this terrible tragedy and the complicated national emotional response from a Jewish perspective?

While there are so many aspects in which this is a difficult story of murder, racial profiling and racial tension and so many questions about the nature of human behavior, the Kol D’mamah Dakah, the Jewish perspective within me has been stirred by trying to determine what to think about two things: George Zimmerman and Stand your Ground Legislation.

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It’s graduation season. Those of us who have the opportunity to address a group of college graduates, high school graduates or Confirmation students consider how to reduce all of life’s lessons down to a few simple rules.  While it may be a trite endeavor, it’s a powerful opportunity to remind ourselves of a central question: What is the ikar, the central point, the most meaningful essence, of life?Continue reading