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.
I don’t live with you in your communities. You tell me how things are going and what’s happening (and thank you for that), but I’m not there with you. What I do see though is this abstract place outside of physical reality—what my father of blessed memory used to call rabbi-land—and I have some concerns about our shared rabbi-land. I see fissures in our rabbinic community that worry me. We are very quick to accuse each other and to assume the worst. If I show my love and concern for Israel one way and you show it another way, so what? Why must we denigrate each other and divide into separate camps? And if this is how we treat each other, I worry about how this plays out in your communities, because how can we serve the breadth of the Jewish people if we can’t tolerate each other? We must rid ourselves of the leavening agent of intellectual hubris so that we can listen to each other better, to make room within ourselves to absorb and reflect on ideas that may make us uncomfortable, but may teach us something.
Our fears are real, and the things we fear are real, but we have the ability, and more than that, the power to decide what to do with our fears. Allowing fear primacy simplifies what is hard. Fear creates binary thinking in which there is only a right and a wrong. We live in a world that thrives on over-simplification, that flattens out nuance and complexity, whereas our Jewish tradition glories in the dialectical—in the Eilu and Eilu, the this AND the that. If we truly aim to be a rabbinate that serves the breadth of the Jewish people, we must be prepared to encounter ideas and perspectives that are disquieting and challenging, perhaps even in opposition to our primary values, but may ultimately lead to new insight.
Last year I tore my rotator cuff, which required physical therapy. It helped, but the healing was not perfect, there is one action in particular that still hurts a lot. I explained to my physical therapist that it was hard for me to put my arm around someone’s back, like this. Why is that important? How often do you really have to do that, he asked, puzzled. Oh, if only you knew, I thought to myself.
I don’t have to tell this group how we come together like that for moments of communal experience, to form a sense of community, to be one body. That sense of unity is important to us and to our communities. And yet, of course we don’t all think alike, we don’t all see the world in the same way. How can we value unity while not requiring uniformity when we’re not standing with our arms around each other, but in our everyday interactions? This is a critical question for us, not only in rabbi-land, but within your communities.
This is hard work, and perhaps even agonizing work, but as community leaders, we cannot allow fear to shape our leadership, decisions, and behaviors. Leavening and sweeteners belong in our challahs and our babkas, but we must keep them out of our offerings. We rabbis must guard against using fear as a leavening agent, and using honey to delight with over-simplified responses. We must remember too that fear is a tool manufactured to distract and control us by those who stand to gain from our disempowerment and disunity.
We can react to the sense of loss of control by trying to exert control, which leads to anger and shutting down voices that make us uncomfortable. Or we can become curious, ask questions, and be open to wondering, which leads to courage and hope. We know how to do this. We know how to value the multiplicity of voices and interpretations within our tradition. We must lean into this way of being in the world and not into binary interpretations. We must find ways to achieve unity without uniformity.
In the face of fear, how can we be brave? How can we rabbis bring forward the offering of leading our people from fear to courage? When there is so much uncertainty, and there is so much to fear, how do we lead with courage? Our tradition speaks of yirah, possibly translated as fear and awe. What a curious God-centered term that combines both of these powerful human emotions. This is not only a translation challenge, as the work on the new Commentary is teaching me, but a theological challenge. For what is that experience of holding an element of fear together with an element of awe as a response to the Divine? Perhaps the combination of fear and awe is found in the act of turning not inward in retreat or despair, but rather a turning outward to the spiritual practice of gratitude and communal ritual, the hopeful and courageous enactment of covenantal partnership.
Being brave in the face of fear then is to also remember, as our tradition teaches, that we are not the only people struggling. The world is in pain. We are not the only ones who have suffered. And there is strength to be gained in that remembering, in the turning outward to each other rather than seeing only our own pain and fear, when it leads us to work toward justice not only for ourselves, but also for others. Passover, the holiday that recounts our collective Jewish narrative of journeying from oppression to redemption, also reminds us that we are obligated to care about the pain of others. We are chastised by God for celebrating the death of the Egyptians because, as the midrash teaches, we are all God’s children.
At the very hour that the Egyptians were drowning,
the angels wanted to sing before the Holy Blessed One.
God said to them:
“My children are drowning in the sea—
yet you would sing in My presence!
(Mishkan HaSeder p. 84, based on BT Sanhedrin 39b)
The Haggadah reminds us repeatedly that our freedom is interconnected with the lives of others. We are instructed again and again that once we are a free people with power and resources that it is our responsibility to care for the powerless stranger in our midst, because we know that experience. It is our job as a free people to use our power responsibly and in the direction of justice.
The world may be broken, we may feel our own brokenness deeply, and yet, we must remember the classic words of the Reform Haggadah:
For the sake of redemption—ours and the world’s—
we pray together hallowed words
that connect us to Jews everywhere,
and to all who are in need:
the stranger and the lost,
the hungry and the unjustly imprisoned.
For our redemption is bound up with theirs,
and with the deliverance of all people.
Our job as Jews is not easy; our job as rabbis is not easy. We must care for those we serve even as we care for our own well-being. We are responsible to bring forward not only our own offerings, but to manage the well-being of the community as a whole. And, somehow in the midst of all of that, we are also supposed to care for those outside our communities, those we may not know and may not even want to know. It is an enormous task, but it is that very task that keeps us grounded, that can give us the hope that we need to turn fear into courage. It is a huge and daunting undertaking, but that is our sacred work. To not give in to fear. To not preach fear or lead with fear. To fight the forces of authoritarianism and dehumanization which recklessly use our fear to gain power. To fight for rights not only for ourselves, but also for our neighbors. To not advocate for revenge or for the deaths of innocents. To acknowledge fear in ourselves and others, but not be controlled by it. To defiantly turn the brittleness of our fear and anger into the fragile shoots of courage. Fear depletes us, whereas courage and hope replenish our aching souls.
I want to end with gratitude, a deep, tender, and bruised kind of gratitude that is an intentional turning away from fear. A gratitude that says thank you despite pain, despite loss, despite doubts, despite fear. It is a gratitude that creates the resilience and strength needed to move from fear to courage. Gratitude doesn’t mean everything is OK—far from it. But it means making a choice to hope, to look forward with strength, to say, despite all this mess around me and within me, I choose to be thankful. I know it is hard. I know it takes a lot. But we can find the strength to do this hard work. Let us act not out of pachad, but out of yirah, so that our offerings are those of hope and courage. Despite it all.
I end with an offering for you, written by W.S. Merwin, Poet Laureate of the United States from 2010–2011, called “Thanks.”
Thanks
By W.S. Merwin
Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions
back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you
with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
thank you faster and faster
without nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is
(From The Essential W.S. Merwin, edited by Michael Wiegers, pp. 205–206)
