As we enter the month of Elul, Rabbi Karyn D. Kedar, author of Unfolding: A High Holy Day Companion from CCAR Press, shares a reflection on beginning the journey toward the High Holy Days with intention, openness, and love.
Our holidays are based upon three layers of meaning. They draw their roots from history, their grounding from the land and people of Israel, and they are air to the spirits seeking transcendence.
I wrote Unfolding: A High Holy Day Companion because I needed to consider—to contemplate my place in the world, to dwell in beauty, to forgive and be forgiven. To breathe.
And so I begin on the ninth of Av. The history of this date is well known to us; we teach its events (including the fall of the two Temples) and consider their relevance for today. So relevant today. But as a student of the spirit, I was drawn to the third layer: the metaphor of destruction. I was looking for a spiritual trajectory that begins in the dust and ashes of hurt, of brokenness, of years of accumulated pain and disappointment. Lingering in those places softens the heart and opens our vulnerabilities, preparing us for a month-long contemplation of the Elul lessons of love—love of self, love of others, love of God. To be beloved.
Elul inevitably coincides with our secular busyness: the end of vacations and camp, the beginning of school and college, High Holy Day cue sheets and choir rehearsals. We forget to breathe. And yet, to begin again, to create again, to renew and revitalize and marvel at an ever-evolving creation—these are the spiritual themes of Rosh Hashanah, and we need that entire month to think about love. Then a quick ten days to repent, repent, repent, reaching toward Yom Kippur and her swinging gates of forgiveness and joyful living.
We teach what we need to learn. I have learned to sit by a window every day, or nearly, during the months leading up to the holiest days of the year. To offer air to my distracted spirit and prepare myself to change a little, to shift a bit, to better my days and deepen their purpose, their meaning.
From Unfolding: A High Holy Day Companion, I offer this intention as we take our place by the windows of meaning:
A Thousand Sparks of Light
I am a thousand sparks of light and have traveled an ancient distance of time and space.
I am connected to the Source.
I am a thousand sparks of light carried upon waves of darkness— chaotic void.
I am in formation.
And every day I am invited to listen for my calling
to be and to do and to create and to love and to forgive and to remember
that I have traveled a great distance to be called
As we begin a new book of Torah with D’varim, I find myself reflecting upon how many of us have walked through loss in the past year. Just last week marked my mother’s first yahrzeit, and I know that recently many of us have buried a parent, or someone deeply beloved, as well. Perhaps that is why this opening parashah feels especially poignant to me this year.
D’varim stands at the edge of a threshold. Moses is looking back over a lifetime and looking forward to a future he will never see. The Israelites stand poised to enter the Promised Land, but Moses—and the generation that began the journey with him—will not cross over with them.
Every year I come back to this text and find myself feeling sad for Moses. After all he has endured, all he has given, all he has carried, he never gets to arrive. And yet, perhaps that sadness comes from our modern assumption that the goal is always the destination. Moses seems to be teaching something more complicated. This year, while studying the parashah I got distracted by commentators and parables trying to explain why the Israelites and Moses were punished. Instead of focusing on the just nature of this “punishment,” I rather would like to focus on the journey.
The book opens, “These are the words…” Such an understated beginning for what follows: Moses’s final act of leadership. His last great accomplishment is not another miracle, not another confrontation with Pharaoh, not even entry into the land. It is interpretation. It is memory. It is testimony.
He stands before the people and tells the story again. His last great lecture. Or three.
As rabbis, we know that memory is never simply recollection. Memory is selection. Moses chooses what to emphasize, what lessons to draw, what wisdom his people will need when he is no longer there. His final gift is not a map. It is a framework.
And that, it seems to me, is an extraordinary act of g’vurah.
We often translate g’vurah as strength, but not the strength of conquest or domination. It is inner strength. Restraint. Courage. The capacity to accept what cannot be changed while continuing to give what only we can give.
Moses displays that kind of strength throughout D’varim. He accepts that Joshua will lead the people forward. He relinquishes authority. He recounts his own failures without defensiveness. He warns against concentrating too much power in a single leader and reminds the people to establish wise judges and shared systems of governance. His ego gradually yields to the future.
I think that may be one of the hardest spiritual tasks any of us ever face.
A few years ago, after my mother was diagnosed with cancer, I asked her what she still wanted to accomplish. It was actually my colleague Rabbi Dan Levin’s mentorship to me. Was there one more trip? One more item on the bucket list? One unfinished dream?
Her answer surprised me: There wasn’t anything.
She had traveled the world. She had built a family. She had lived a rich life. There was no great achievement left undone.
She simply wanted more time. She was not ready to go.
More time to watch her grandchildren grow. More time to see who they would become. More birthdays, more simchahs, more ordinary days watching the nightly news with her dogs on her lap. Not because life had been incomplete, but because it had been meaningful.
I think Moses understands that longing. Standing on the plains of Moab, he surely wants more time. He surely wants to see what comes next. He wants to witness the fulfillment of promises that have defined his entire existence.
But instead of clinging to what he cannot have, he turns his attention to what he can still give.
That inner g’vurah.
One of the questions I encountered while preparing this reflection asked whether ignorance is sometimes preferable to knowledge. Is naiveté ever a blessing?
I think many of us know moments when it is. New parents often enter pregnancy and child-rearing with a measure of naiveté that allows them to move forward despite all the things that could go wrong. At bedsides, we have accompanied families who do not yet fully understand the diagnosis or the road ahead, and sometimes that limited knowledge gives them room to breathe, to hope, to be present.
But D’varim suggests that the Promised Land ultimately belongs not to the naive but to those who have learned from the journey. The wilderness generation carried burdens, traumas, and habits that could not make the crossing. Yet the lessons of the wilderness mattered. The memories mattered.
The challenge is discerning which memories must be carried forward and which must be released.
That, too, requires g’vurah.
One of the profound privileges of our rabbinate is that we accompany people through this work. We sit with congregants as they take stock of their lives. We help them tell their stories. We witness them passing on blessings, values, and memories to the next generation. Again and again, we stand with people who discover that the final task of life is not achieving immortality but transmitting legacy.
In that sense, all of us become a little like Moses.
None of us gets to enter every promised land. None of us gets to see the final chapter of the stories we begin. If we are fortunate, we catch a glimpse of the next generation taking up the torch. We offer our sermons, our teachings, our blessings, our love, and trust that they will travel farther than we can.
As I complete this year of firsts without my mother, I find myself startled by the small ways she remains present. I catch myself yawning exactly like her. I reach for the phone before remembering. A story from my childhood surfaces, and suddenly I realize that the only people who were there were my parents—and now I am the keeper of that memory.
There is sadness in that realization.
But there is also responsibility (an ocean of memories, an imperative to pass them down).
And so Moses teaches. And blesses. And remembers.
And somehow, standing at the edge of everything he loves, he finds the strength to let go.
That may be the deepest expression of g’vurah of all.
At a Jewish ceremony, it is under the chuppah, the nuptial canopy, that the extraordinary transformation marked by kiddushin traditionally occurs. Originally, a bride’s arrival under the chuppah symbolized her entrance into her husband’s domain and becoming a member of her husband’s household. In the grand scheme of Jewish history, the central place of the portable chuppah at a Jewish wedding is fairly recent, dating only from sometime in the sixteenth century. Nonetheless, today in America, most Jews and many non-Jews recognize the chuppah as one of the most distinctive and enduring ritual objects and symbols of a Jewish wedding. As we explore some of the meanings that the chuppah has had and some of the forms that it has taken, perhaps you will be inspired to look at the chuppah in new and meaningful ways.
Chuppah literally means “covering.” This covering demarcates the holy space in which a Jewish couple affirms the sanctity of their relationship. In earlier times, when Jews often held weddings on market days, the chuppah was a physical means of distinguishing the special area in which the wedding ceremony occurred from the surrounding hubbub. In a very real sense, no matter where your wedding takes place, there will be inherent distractions for all who are present; the chuppah continues to focus attention upon you and the holy space in which your lives together will be transformed.
Chuppot (the plural) have taken a wide variety of forms, from the canopied couches for brides and grooms of medieval Central Europe, to an embroidered parochet, or ark cover, to simple but luxurious cloths, such as silks and velvets suspended on poles or draped over a couple’s shoulders. In some Jewish communities in Asia, a tallit was placed over the heads of the couple until after the Sheva B’rachot, when it was removed. In other communities, the bride’s family bought the groom a new tallit, which both sets of parents placed on their children’s heads at the start of the ceremony. Standing under a bower of flowers also has a long history. Unlike the case for many other Jewish ritual objects, there are no requirements for chuppot.
Today, from an egalitarian perspective, the chuppah is most commonly understood as a symbol of the new home that you are establishing together through your kiddushin. As such, your chuppah can convey some of the qualities you hope to enjoy in your future life together.
A large chuppah is reminiscent of the nomadic tents used long ago by our Jewish ancestors. Such a tent roof with no walls might seem to lack form and strength, much like the new family and the new home you are establishing. However, such a tent is also flexible; it can adapt to variable circumstances and withstand harsh, abrupt changes that a more rigid structure might not. Your new home can be filled with acts of love and kindness, a place in which guests are always welcome, as they were in the tents of our ancestors Abraham and Sarah.
Like the chuppah, your new home will be inhabited by you, surrounded by your family and friends, honored by representatives of the many communities to which you belong, and protected by the sheltering presence of God. Your chuppah may be of any size, so it is up to you to decide whether it will cover only you, you and the rabbi, you and your immediate families, or you and your entire wedding party. The options are numerous, as are the meanings you are choosing to convey. To help figure out the right size for you, ask yourselves: what is the relationship between you and your new home, you and your family, you and your community? Agreeing on answers to these questions can serve as a practical guide to your decision regarding the size of your chuppah.
In some communities it is customary for the chuppah to be freestanding; in others, it is hand-held by members of the wedding party. In either case, it is considered an honor to be a chuppah holder, whether the task is real or symbolic. Some communities own chuppot that members can rent or borrow. In areas with sizeable Jewish communities, florists have chuppot that they use or make.
Alternatively, many couples choose to make or buy their own, or they ask family or friends to join in creating one for (or with) them. As a ceremonial object, it is intended to heighten the beauty of your. marriage ceremony, to be a reflection of the enduring Jewish custom of hidur mitzvah, the embellishing of a holy act. Therefore, your chuppah can reflect your aesthetic sense; you can choose the design, the material, the decoration, and the poles. In ancient Jewish communities the poles were made from trees, a cedar for a boy and an acacia for a girl, which parents had planted when their children were born. There are many artists who design and make chuppot, either for or with the couple.
As we enter into Pride Month, the CCAR reaffirms our commitment to and celebration of our LGBTQ Reform rabbis, their families, and the members of our Jewish and secular queer communities in America, Canada, Israel, and globally.The CCAR continues our advocacy for the equal rights, full inclusion, and safety of the LGBTQ community. And we continue our commitment to inclusive liturgy so that everyone feels welcome in our houses of worship and sees themselves reflected in the image of God.
What Does the New Month Hold?, by Rabbi Daniel Mikelberg
On the eve of Rosh Chodesh, we often look to 1 Samuel 20:18-42 and the story of the friendship shared between David and Jonathan. With Pride month upon us, we feel anxious and unsettled, unsure of what days ahead will bring. We can seek inspiration from this beautiful bond, a chosen family, companions who pledge to serve one another in dangerous days.
Jonathan said to him, “Tomorrow will be the new moon…” (1 Samuel 20:18)
We tell ourselves these words each day like a mantra, weighted down by trauma, we try our best to look forward not back.
But do we believe the call, might tomorrow be different, a respite from the pain?
For we feel helpless, unable to chart a renewed path.
David and Jonathan remind us, that is not the case, darkness need not overwhelm.
As for the promise we made to each other, may the Eternal be [witness] between you and me together. (1 Samuel 20:23)
Allied as one: trusting, creative, and strong, we are bound by a brit of love, the spirit of the Divine accompanies our travels.
We pledge to open our hearts, to explore a new Promised Land, built on the trust between neighbors and friends. The light that we all carry within shines bright and beams as one.
Go in peace! For we have sworn to each other in the name of the Eternal…” (1 Samuel 20:41)
Yes, tomorrow will be the new moon, and we are ready to embrace this new day.
Holy One who made us all, tonight we celebrate the LGBTQ com-munity. Quench our thirst for acceptance of self. Help us to feel Your Divine Presence when others question the righteousness of our lives. Let us come to know that all things are possible in our lives: love and hope, caring and friendship and family. May those of us who are deep within the closet find courage and comfort through You. Bless our community and its leaders. Grant us, O God, health and prosperity. Keep us strong as we pursue justice and civil rights. Ease the pain of those who are ill, and inspire each of us to perform acts of loving-kindness and tzedakah each and every day. Fountain of life, we praise You and thank You for creating us in Your image.
וְנֹאמַר: אָמֵן. V’nomar: amein. And let us say: Amen.
I look back into history, pouring over our texts, sacred and profane, searching for some kind of opening where I can see myself, where I can see us.
I search and find rejection from our communities and leaders, our existence hidden, shamed, criminalized, excommunicated, jailed, killed.
I keep searching and catch a glimpse of our vitality, our desire, our love, our bliss, our rebellion, our chosen family.
In these glimpses I see a sliver of light pouring out of the opening. I sprint toward it—our past, our present, our future— and, with all my might, break the door off its hinges.
I pant, breathless, on the other side. I want to scream, but instead, I whisper: “We are here. We are here.”
Each year, the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ annual Convention brings together hundreds of Reform rabbis from across North America and beyond for a communal rabbinic experience difficult to replicate anywhere else. In the midst of demanding congregational and organizational lives, CCAR Convention offers CCAR members dedicated time for deep learning, professional development and skill building, and meaningful engagement with the critical questions facing Jewish life today.
This year at CCAR Convention 2026 in the San Francisco Bay Area, over 400 Reform rabbis gathered for four days of davening, learning, connecting, and showing up for one another. They arrived carrying the weight of this moment: rising antisemitism, the strains on American democracy, and the very real demands of leading Jewish communities through an extraordinarily difficult time. They returned home renewed, reconnected, and ready to lead, with practical tools, fresh perspectives, and new ideas ready to apply in their communities.
In addition to the programmatic richness of CCAR Convention, CCAR members consistently share that there is profound value of being in community with rabbinic peers who understand the unique challenges, responsibilities, and rewards of rabbinic leadership. As this year’s CCAR Convention reflections attest, CCAR Convention serves as both a professional resource and a source of renewal for Reform rabbis.
Rabbi Erica Asch “Each year when I attend CCAR Convention, I feel like I get a chance to take a deep breath and reset. It is a time to connect with colleagues, to engage in meaningful learning, to deepen relationships, and to find joy. The skills I learned and the connections I make at Convention help me in my rabbinate throughout the year.” —Rabbi Erica Asch serves Temple Beth El in Augusta, Maine and is the Immediate Past President of the CCAR
Rabbi Jeff Brown “My biggest takeaway from Convention is the transformational impact of being in one room with so many cherished friends and colleagues. As we celebrate the rich diversity of rabbinates represented in the CCAR and at Convention, we also acknowledge that Reform rabbis are often the only ones who really ‘get’ the work we’re trying to do in the world—and the toll that it sometimes takes on us. There is so much strength and healing in being together.” —Rabbi Jeff Brown serves Scarsdale Synagogue-Temples Tremont and Emanu-El in New York and is the 2026 CCAR Convention Chair.
Rabbi Jason Fenster “Alongside the joy of being with friends from around the globe, the camaraderie, and the laughter, is the gift of being a student again, learning with those who share in the complexities, challenges, and sweetness of rabbinic life. We have time for important conversations. Convention refills the tank of rabbinic calling and purpose. I came back this year buzzing with ideas, conversation to have with leaders, and renewed commitments to caring for the Jewish people and the wider community.” —Rabbi Jason Fenster serves Congregation Kol Ami in White Plains, New York.
Rabbi Rick Kellner “The CCAR continues to be at the cutting edge of rabbinic growth and professional development. From conversations about future thinking, to big questions facing Jewish life, to diving deeper into the concerns we care so deeply about, CCAR Convention provides Reform rabbis opportunities to engage in meaningful conversation and connect to colleagues.” —Rabbi Rick Kellner serves Congregation Beth Tikvah in Worthington, Ohio and is President Elect of the CCAR.
Rabbi Stephanie Kramer “I brought home so much from Convention—fresh ideas for re‑engaging our teens, new ways to deepen interfaith connections, and real excitement about so many things but especially ways to connect with teens. I’m inspired to build deeper, more meaningful connections with my congregants in times of need.” —Rabbi Stephanie Kramer serves The Temple, Congregation B’nai Jehudah in Overland Park, Kansasand also serves on the CCAR Board.
Rabbi Jacqueline Mates-Muchin “It is hard to express how meaningful it was to be in a room where I didn’t have to explain the unique challenges of being a rabbi at this moment in history. This year, the CCAR Convention was particularly important for the comfort and support of colleagues.” —Rabbi Jaqueline Mates-Muchin serves Temple Sinai in Oakland, Californiaand also serves on the CCAR Board.
Rabbi Daniel Mikelberg “It’s easy to lament this moment in time: Our world is crumbling. However, gathering with colleagues at the CCAR Convention and learning from experts in the field, I returned home with hope that we will emerge from this dark period. Our strength and resilience are undefeatable. Reform rabbis are uniquely suited to hear the cries in our midst and march as one towards freedom.” —Rabbi Daniel Mikelberg serves Temple Israel of Ottawa in Ontario, Canada and also serves on the CCAR Board.
Rabbi Hernán Rustein “CCAR Convention challenged us to describe Judaism using a new vocabulary. I am eager to explore how viewing Judaism as a ‘conversation’ can help us understand ourselves and explain our tradition to others—especially in a context where Jewish literacy is limited, and many non-Jews are interested in learning or even joining our community.” —Rabbi Hernán Rustein serves Temple Beth Shalom in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Rabbi Deena Silverstone “I loved attending my first CCAR Convention and immediately felt so welcomed! The most impactful part of the experience was the connections I made with new colleagues, as well as the ones I deepened with classmates and friends. It was a gift to be surrounded by such thoughtful colleagues who lead their communities and organizations with wisdom and courage. I was invigorated by the ideas we shared, and I’m excited to stay connected to friends old and new!” —Rabbi Deenna Silverstone serves the Center for Jewish Life in Lower Manhattan.
Rabbi Rachel Van Thyn (RVT) “I’m bringing home new relationships with colleagues old and new! I also am bringing home learnings from some of Convention’s major programs, like learning about futurism, and thinking about how to apply it to my work. It was so good to pause for high-level creative thinking rather than being caught in the day-to-day of our roles.My biggest takeaway? Not to underestimate the meaning and joyfulness of praying, learning, and spending time with rabbinic colleagues.”—Rabbi Rachel Van Thyn (RVT) is a Clinical Pastoral Educator in New York and serves on the CCAR Board.
Michael A. Meyer, PhD, is the author of Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindlerfrom CCAR Press. Rabbi Schindler (1925–2000) was an extraordinarily influential leader in the history of Reform Judaism. From 1973 to 1996, he served as president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (today’s Union for Reform Judaism), where his charisma and vision raised the Reform Movement to unprecedented influence. Never afraid to be controversial, he argued for recognizing patrilineal descent, institutionalized outreach to interfaith families and non-Jews, and championed LGBTQ rights and racial equality. He was a tireless advocate for Israel while maintaining diaspora Jews’ right to speak out independently on the Jewish state. In this interview, Professor Meyer discusses what inspired him to write a biography of this Jewish leader and what readers can learn from Rabbi Schindler today.
What inspired you to write a biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindler? I was inspired to write this biography because Rabbi Schindler was such a significant figure in the Reform Movement and in the history of American Judaism as a whole. I was also motivated by the fact that there was no previous biography and that his papers were readily available in the American Jewish Archives.
The title of your book is a quotation from Rabbi Schindler, Above All, We Are Jews. What does this quote reveal about his vision of Jewish identity? I chose Above All, We Are Jews as the title because it represents Rabbi Schindler’s belief that Jewishness is—or should be—more basic than other identities that Jews hold. He was an American Jew, not a Jewish American.
How did Rabbi Schindler shape the direction of Reform Judaism? Rabbi Schindler made Reform Judaism more open to those who were looking in from the outside. He also turned it toward a greater appreciation of the emotional element within the Jewish religion.
What lessons can Rabbi Schindler teach us as we think about the future of Judaism? From Rabbi Schindler we can learn that love of the Jewish people is as much a part of Jewish identity as is love of God. We can also learn that love of Israel does not exclude critique of its moral shortcomings.
Michael A. Meyer holds a doctorate in Jewish history from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where he served as professor of Jewish history for fifty years. He is the author of Above All, We Are Jews: A Biography of Rabbi Alexander Schindlerfrom CCAR Press.
Three years ago, during the first Pesach since the war began, I wrote this midrash for the Maggid— hoping it might offer some comfort, and open a space for hope in the midst of pain and war.
Sadly, that need is still with us.
And yet, the women of Exodus remind us that another way is possible, a reality grounded in the sanctity of life, in compassion, and in human connection.
Miriam and Pharaoh’s daughter met to save Moses and the future.
Like Shifra and Puah before them, they chose conscience over obedience, life over fear.
Together, these women challenge us, then and now, to choose differently: to resist despair, to act with courage and compassion, and to nurture hope for our children, on all sides.
Because another way is possible!
You are warmly invited to read this midrash as part of your Seder, and to open a moment for reflection on freedom and hope.
Maggid: Recounting the Passover Story, by Rabbi Sivan Navon-Shoval
“All who recount the story of the Exodus from Egypt in great depth is worthy of praise.” (Passover Haggadah)
And thou recount to tell your son and daughter on that day, saying: It is because of that which God did for me when I came forth out of Egypt, because of the leadership of Miriam and the daughter of Pharaoh. (According to Exodus 13:8)
“And his sister stood, from a distance, to know what would be done to him.”(Exodus 2:4)
And she ‘stood’: Miriam stood, upright and firm, in her faith and in her strength to act for the future of her people; and in her steadfast stance, she proclaimed: “Here I am.” With this, she upheld the covenant of Israel. For it is said: “You shall stand this day, all of you.” (Deuteronomy 29:9)
His ‘sister’: Miriam dedicated herself for the sake of all her brothers and sisters. She knew that if she did not stand there for them, it would be as though she herself had shed their blood. As it is written: “Where is Abel, your brother?… The sound of your brother’s blood cries to me from the earth.” (Genesis 4:9–10).
From a distance, to know what would be done to him: Miriam the prophetess stood and beheld, from a distance, all that would be done to her people in their deliverance from Egypt. She directed her heart to that place and saw the cries of their souls and the affliction of their bodies. Thus, she embraced the virtue of compassion into heart; the same virtue with which the Holy One would later redeem Israel from the land of Egypt. As it is written: “I have seen and beheld the plight of my people in Egypt, and I have heeded their cry from their affliction; for I knew their pain. ” (Exodus 3:7).
Miriam stood for the sanctity of life, and the daughter of Pharaoh stood beside her, defying the words of her father the Pharaoh, and proclaiming to all of humankind that the time had come for tikkun olam (repairing the world) and darchei shalom (followingthe path of peace). As it is written: “And when she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the young boy wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, ‘This is one of the Hebrew children.’” (Exodus 2:6)
Rabbi Sivan Navon-Shoval lives in Jerusalem and was ordained at HUC, Jerusalem in 2022. She is the author of the Hebrew collection of liturgical poetry, Elohima (Carmel, 2026). Her work brings together teaching, writing, and research, alongside officiating life-cycle ceremonies. She previously served as the rabbi of Kehillat Shir Chadash in Tzur Hadassah.
The 137th annual Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis was held March 2026, in the San Francisco Bay Area, where 400 Reform rabbis gathered in person and online. Here, we share CCAR Chief Executive Rabbi Hara Person’s address to the Conference, urging the rabbinate to balance fear with bravery and gratitude, in hopes for our redemption.
Watch the video, or read the address below.
For those keeping track, and fair enough if that’s just me, this is the first year in a while that P’kudei hasn’t been the Convention parashah. Here we are this year in Vayikra, surrounded by entrails and suet, the cutting up into sections, all the dashing and draining of blood, the flaying and pinching, the tearing without severing, the kidney and loins, the fat, the broadtail.
This pivot between the lofty and gloriously detailed tabernacle building of P’kudei and the gory and highly detailed viscera of the offerings in Vayikra is a strangely familiar dance. One day we’re exalted, planning the blueprint for the future, dreaming big with great excitement about what can be and how we’re going to get there with what bountiful resources, and the next day we’re knee deep in the muck.
Both of these modalities, the P’kudei moments and the Vayikra moments, are based on hard work, on getting the details just right, so that we can be in proper covenantal relationship with God and with our community. Different methodologies, shared goals. Much of what we aim to do at the CCAR is find ways to support rabbis through both of these modes, and everything in between, through the periods of big, beautiful possibilities, and the days of trudging through the mucky mess.
As rabbis, we often teeter between these two poles of P’kudei and Vayikra, reminding ourselves even as we make our way through the mess that there is some greater purpose and goal. Both the edifice building and the sacrifices of our yields are ultimately kinds of offerings—examples of the unique human ability to produce shelter, creativity, and sustenance, remarkable acts of human skill and ingenuity that build upon the raw material provided by God. All this work has a greater purpose, to weave us into a covenantal tapestry in which both humans and God have obligation toward one another.
What are offerings but the manifestations of our hopes and fears: Take this and make my days plentiful; accept this and may I merit beneficence; receive this on account of what I meant to do but didn’t, or what I did but wish I hadn’t, and may all be well with me. We make our offerings and we pray for good outcomes, for safety, for the banishment of our daily dread.
Though we are, of course, very far from the days of the Temple and the priesthood, and thankfully (says this vegetarian) no longer required to slaughter animals as part of our religious practice, in many ways offerings are still our work as rabbis. No matter what kind of rabbinic work you do, in one of the many forms of chaplaincy or counseling, in a school or summer camp or college campus, in a congregation or organization, in retirement, we all bring forms of offerings, and we all want to get it right. Our sermons, acts of service, pastoral care, teaching, fundraising, strategic planning, life cycle officiation—all of these are our rabbinic offerings regardless of where and how we serve. As with the biblical priests, our offerings are for the greater good of the community, meant to enable our communities to flourish and thrive.
Our portion this week speaks of not just the variety of offerings, but also the right ways to bring them. The rules are plentiful and specific: an unblemished male animal from the herd or the flock, or a bird of the air. We learn how to slaughter the animal, and what to do with it. The text exhibits angst about making sure we get the offerings right, and the level of detail conveys a deep sense of anxiety about getting it wrong. Offerings are instrumental for the proper health and functioning of the community. The stakes are high, but there is a path to repair. Make amends for your wrongdoing, and a way forward opens up. This rule-bound system allows for our flawed humanity and encourages us to try again.
There is delicate choreography involved in these offerings, choices about what can be brought, with a welcome sense of justice embedded in the allowance made for those without the means to bring the costliest offerings. And if it is to be a meal offering, the most modest of the offerings, it must be prepared with flour and oil, but without leavening and honey (Leviticus 2:11). As a baker, I find curious the requirement to leave out that which makes it rise, and that which makes it sweet.
Challah and babka, my baking go-tos, are basically two versions of the same thing, the result of the reaction of yeast, salt, flour, eggs, oil, and water. Probably like a lot of you, my challah and babka baking exploded with creativity during the Pandemic, resulting in all kinds of, if I may so, delicious things like scallion pancake challah and chocolate tahina babka. However, take away all those extras, and other than the addition of leavening and sweetness, challah and babka aren’t all that different from the meal offering being described in our parashah. You could perhaps not use eggs—the Shammai position to my Hillelian recipe—or substitute butter for oil. At the end of the day though, it’s all about the yeast and sweetener. Without the yeast and sugar, you’ve basically got matzah, our primal paradigmatic sustenance.
Our ancestors have a great time debating the significance of the leavening and honey. It’s date honey, opine Ibn Ezra and Rashbam. It’s the juice from ripe fruit, says Rashi. Either way, there are essentially two issues here: one is that the sugar in the honey can cause flour to become leavened (great to see the rabbis of old try to understand the essentials of baking), but also a concern with not sweetening the offering because that’s what idolators did.
Perhaps another issue—that just as leavening is a move toward culture and away from the primal essence of flour, oil, and water, sweetening also removes the offering from its essential essence. As Nechama Leibowitz writes, “…the sacrifices as such—the slaughtering, sprinkling of the blood and the offering up on the altar—have no other function than to portend a change of heart and the wish to draw closer to the Creator.” Basically, the leavening and the sweetener are distractions; they get in the way of a direct, unmediated relationship between our exposed, vulnerable soul and the divine.
Leavening puffs up our loaves, and it puffs us up; it distances us from that which is elemental in ourselves and thus creates distance between us and God at the very moment when, by engaging in offerings, we are trying to connect with God. The Talmud, in B’rachot 17a, goes so far as to posit that it is yeast in the dough that prevents us from doing God’s will, equating it with the evil inclination within each person. Leaven is a metaphor for the evil inclination, as Rabbi Alexandri said in his prayer: “It is our will to do Your will, but the leaven in the dough prevents it” (B’rachot 17a). It is not the leavening in and of itself that is evil, but that it inflates us, it distances us from our essential, raw self, and thus must be used in moderation, and only at certain time like on Shavuot. B’rachot 34a teaches:There are three things that are harmful in excess but are beneficial when used sparingly. The first is: Leavening in dough…
In just a few weeks, we’re going to be ridding ourselves of chameitz. Passover is our annual journey of cleansing, getting rid of that which distances us from our essential selves. Ridding ourselves of excess, leavening helps us turn back to our core mission. Leavening takes up room—remove the leavening, and we have more room for God, for one another, and for that which matters most.
We are living in a time of terrible fear and uncertainty. We have been through a lot in recent years, even in recent days, and I’m not going to list it all for you because you know it and live it. The empty chairs in this room that should have been filled with beloved colleagues who could not get here are a testament to some of what we are living with right now. There are real things to be afraid of, plenty to make us anxious and scared.
Fear is totally reasonable. There are those who wish to harm us, as we are painfully reminded again and again. We must acknowledge that reality and take the steps necessary to be as vigilant and prepared as possible. But we can’t lead from fear. The question for us as leaders is what we do with that fear. Because one of the companions of fear is anger, and another companion is self-righteousness. As rabbis we must recognize fear, our own fear and that of those around us. But we can’t nurture our fear like it is soeir, sourdough starter that must be tended and fed, we can’t let it become leavened and rise to fill all the hollow spaces. Our job is to inspire hope and thereby lead with and toward courage.
Are the lives of those of us who live in North America in danger? Is Jewish life as we know it coming to end in North America? Is democracy both here and in Israel in its death throes? Is Israel under existential threat like never before? Does the ever-growing violence perpetrated by Jews against Palestinians on the West Bank portend a future of government sanctioned Jewish supremacy? Is this American and Israeli war against Iran justified and necessary? Perhaps, and perhaps not. We have predictions and theories and desired outcomes about all of these things, but we don’t yet know. I don’t want to minimize the danger of what we are experiencing, but our job as rabbis is not to be purveyors of fear. Our job as rabbis is not to encourage people to become either immobilized by fear or to give into anger-fueled actions and reactions, but rather to inspire, to help people find comfort and the courage to face the future with hope and creativity, and to take action.
The 137th annual Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis was held in March 2026 in the San Francisco Bay Area, where over 400 Reform rabbis gathered in person and online. Here, we share CCAR President Rabbi David Lyon’s moving address acknowledging the challenges of being a rabbi in this moment and a reminder to counter hate with courage and Jewish joy.
Only two weeks ago, we celebrated Purim. In ancient times, Persia returned the Jews to Judah; today, Jews seek to return Persians to Iran. It’s a topsy-turvy world sometimes. It’s not always ours to understand, but it’s always ours to make meaning. If only it didn’t take so long to return to our ancestral home in Israel, to repay the favor to Persia, or to anticipate peace after war in the Middle East. Apparently, it’s also going to be a while before Jewish institutions and the people who serve them can stop worrying and spending for security.
Our work, though, is a marathon, not a sprint, another sports metaphor that had to be explained to me by my colleague, Rabbi Adrienne Scott, who runs. I don’t run, unless I’m being chased. Esther, of course, was chased, but Mordechai had to remind her, in a horrible moment, that she had come to royalty “for a moment such as this.”
But, really? Under our circumstances, who hasn’t asked, “Have we come into the rabbinate for THIS?” Or maybe someone asked us, “For this YOU became a rabbi?” It’s rarely easy. So let’s be clear, today: For this and more WE were created.
Our learning begins in Vayikra where the Israelites and their priests managed their own sacred relationships with God through sacrifice. First among them, Moses brought different kinds of offerings. Referring to Psalm 18:26ff, Rabbi Nehemiah explains in Vayikra Rabbah:
When Moses approached God with special courtesy, God treated him with special courtesy; when he came to God with frankness, God answered him with frankness; when he approached God with lack of directness, God countered him with lack of directness; when he sought a clear statement regarding his affairs, God made clear his affairs for him. (Midrash Rabbah, Vayikra 11:5)
Without a Temple to offer sacrifices, the rabbis linked Moses’s relationship with God to the offerings of his lips and the intentions he brought with them. Then they linked Moses to themselves, and they taught that, with no Temple standing in Jerusalem, our verbal gifts would replace the sacrifices. The rabbis thus equated the power of their own prayers with the power of the best-intentioned sacrificial offerings. We, too, hope that our prayers and intentions will be worthy before God.
I write this in the shadow of our shared grief. Rabbi Andrea Weiss’s death is a loss to our community, and to the world. So many of us have lost a teacher, a mentor, a trusted colleague. May we continue to teach her Torah of deep scholarship, her love of our precious inheritance, and her commitment to the health of a vibrant, inclusive Jewish tradition.
I am sitting on our Tel Aviv mirpeset in the sun. It is another gorgeous day: blue skies with only whispers of clouds, climbing up to 70 degrees, birdsong complementing the voices of children at play.
The children are outside on the grass because there’s no school. No school, limited commerce, unpredictable intercity transportation. This tiny land-locked country has become an island of fear as we wait for the next siren that will send those of us lucky enough to have one into the shelter.
I am one of the lucky ones. For me, this isolation is reminiscent of Covid times, when we kept inside and apart from others because of a different kind of fear. For the majority of Israelis, these days have taken them back to last June, what is now “the first Iran war,” and to October 7, and the months that followed. For too many, their minds swing back to hours locked in safe-rooms, and the subsequent discovery that beloveds had been murdered or kidnapped and their homes destroyed. And then, months of no recovery, no government support, no new housing, no return of the hostages, alive and dead. All this is just below the surface for thousands who call Israel and Palestine home.
Thousands of residents of Israel walk through their days with unaddressed PTSD. And yet, and yet there is kindness and caring and deep wells of compassion.
And amazing resilience. I spent a day the week before last, just before the war began, in Bethlehem with two friends, an Israeli and a Palestinian friend, both of them activists in Combatants for Peace. We shared coffee and conversation, visiting the Healing Center that Nimala, our Palestinian friend, is building in Beit Jala, then being tourists for an hour at the Church of the Nativity, where we were guided by Mohammed, the husband of their colleague, Fatima. When I was in Palestine last year, Fatima shared her story, thanks to a translator, of her work as a peace activist in Gaza, and her amazing escape to the West Bank. Her story was shared at the annual Joint Memorial last year, read by someone else, as Fatima herself needs to shield her identity.
Thanks to the invitation of Rabbi Efrat Rotem, director of MARAM, I was able, on Wednesday, February 11 and Thursday, February 12, to join over thirty of our Israeli rabbinic colleagues for a two-day study retreat. We gathered at Kibbutz Dalia in the north of Israel. Study and meditation retreats have been essential to my professional and spiritual growth, so I was delighted to join my Israeli counterparts for an immersion in Jewish study, prayer, and sharing our work and our lives.
Our colleagues gathered from across the country, from their full-time and part-time positions working for the College, the Israeli Reform Movement, the World Union for Progressive Judaism, individual and regional congregations and k’hilot, training the next generation of Reform Jews in a range of educational settings, and work as chaplains and freelancers. Like the CCAR, our Israeli colleagues include men and women and non-binary souls of a wide range of ages in backgrounds.
Our scholar in residence was our colleague Rabbi Nancy Wiener, Director of the Blaustein Center for Pastoral Counseling, and professor of Human Relations at Hebrew Union College in New York. Nancy has been researching and writing about moral injury, helping her students and colleagues better understand and address the profound spiritual wounding that takes place when core beliefs are shattered and betrayed.
This topic was not theoretical for the Israeli colleagues who came together from all over Israel. Nancy taught in Hebrew, illustrating her teaching with a series of illustrative Hebrew slides. We learned about the invisibility of moral injury, and the challenge of honoring that we, as caregivers, are each carrying versions of the harm that we learn to identify in others. She reminded us of the essential role of listening and honoring the silence—or the floods of words—that may be shared with us. She taught us the linguistic and clinical differences and similarities between PTSD/post-traumatic stress disorder and moral injury, illustrating psychological and spiritual challenges with examples from our sacred texts.
As those of us who have had the privilege of studying with Nancy know well, she challenges her students, in this case, her colleagues, to immediately explore the learning she has shared by breaking into chavurot or small groups. Throughout our day of learning together, we explored a typology of survivor narratives to help us, as listeners, better accompany those who share their stories with us.
Our retreat was expertly and wisely led by our colleague Rabbi Efrat Rotem. Our time together was a rich balance of prayer, study, and play. I especially appreciated our evening of trivia. Efrat is a gifted comedic impresario and had crafted an evening of silliness rivaled only by some of our colleagues’ elaborate Purim presentations. We divided into teams of five to eight and competed with one another for mastery of an extraordinary range of trivia, from daily prayer to rabbinic citations to popular culture to geography. I was fortunate to sit next to Rabbi Michael Marmur; without his translations and encyclopedic mind, I would have missed much of the fun! I loved the easy comradeship—indeed, the full engagement—of our colleagues that, for me, mirrored the deep connections and mutual devotion between them.
Sharing t’filah with other rabbis is one of the greatest gifts of inclusion in our community of sacred service. When we lift our voices together, I am wrapped in sacred intention, reminding me of the clarity that brings me back, again and again, to our holy gatherings.
As I write this, there are no non-Israeli flights into and out of Israel. It is unlikely that our Israeli colleagues will be able to join our annual CCAR Conference in California. We continue to pray as one for a cessation of this wide-ranging and destructive war.
May all who gather for the CCAR know that we are indeed one, each of us working in our own small corner of the world, cultivating sacred seeds of hope in this time of war and spiritual challenge.
Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell (HUC-JIR ’86) has been blessed with a rich and varied rabbinic career. She currently serves as Spiritual Director at the New York Campus of Hebrew Union College. Blessed to be a savta of three, Elwell lives in Philadelphia and Tel Aviv with her partner, Nurit Levi Shein.
Rabbi Laura Geller and Rabbi Beth Lieberman present a fresh perspective on life’s later chapters, transforming them into opportunities for personal growth, meaning, and renewal.
