Author: Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell

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Rabbinic Reflections

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell on Cultivating Hope in a Time of War and Spiritual Challenge

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.

I, and they, are grabbing a few minutes of sanity as we wait for the next siren.

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.

Categories
Books CCAR Press Women in the Rabbinate

Among the Pioneers: Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell on ‘The First Fifty Years’ of Women in the Rabbinate

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell is the coeditor of The First Fifty Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honoring Women Rabbis, available from CCAR Press. In this post, she reflects on the editing process, her personal path to the rabbinate, and the many meaningful contributions of women rabbis.

Tell us about the process of coediting this book.

I was honored and delighted when Rabbi Hara Person, CCAR Chief Executive, approached me about partnering with her on The First Fifty Years, and was pleased to have the opportunity to work with the talented Jessica Greenbaum as well. I have been blessed to spend my rabbinate exploring—and living—the feminist transformation of Judaism, and collaborating with others on several other books that open new doors to Jewish text and practice.

Collecting and reading the powerful submissions of colleagues who serve in a range of leadership roles was a delight. I learned from each essay, and was moved and lifted up by my colleagues’ thoughtfulness, their insights, their resilience, and their courage. And because we asked for brief essays, the process of editing was a pleasure. As all writers know, it is a greater challenge to write a succinct piece than a longer one, and as editors we benefited from our contributors’ efforts to submit short, well-crafted pieces.

How did you decide to become a rabbi?

I graduated from college in 1970, and to continue my Jewish learning, I moved to Boston to pursue an MA in Contemporary Jewish Studies at Brandeis. A world of intense Jewish life opened for me there; I joined the Zamir Chorale, became a regular davener at Havurat Shalom, joined the editorial staff of Response magazine, and immersed myself in a vibrant, if male-centered, Jewish counterculture. But this was before any of us knew that women could be rabbis! Several years later (1976 or 1977), as the program director at Indiana University Hillel in Bloomington, I met Rabbi Sandy Sasso, the first woman to graduate from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. As she spoke to our students, I thought, I can do this! I designed a course on Jewish women’s history for the university, and traveled to the HUC-JIR library in Cincinnati to search for resources to teach the course. Was my moment of revelation standing at the card catalog, thumbing through the small wooden box of cards under the heading “Women”? I don’t remember how the light shone through the library windows that day, but I think I knew then—I belong here.

I completed my doctorate, was accepted at HUC-JIR, and moved to Cincinnati in the fall of 1981 to study intensive Hebrew at the College. My second daughter was born in December, and in September 1982, I joined my classmates as a second year student.

What contributions have women made to the rabbinate?

I think that we have taken the feminist dictum of the late 1960s, “the personal is political,” and expanded it. The College, and the American Jewish world, was not ready for us. Our school had few women’s bathrooms! Many of us felt invisible—or worse, targeted by male professors and mentors who could not see beyond the oppressive patriarchy and overt and covert sexism and homophobia of our texts, and thousands of years of interpretation and practice.

Five decades after Rabbi Sally Priesand smashed the glass ceiling of male rabbinic hegemony, we have challenged and changed both the face and the body of Judaism. We bring our full selves to our work, to our families, to our communities, to our world. We claim kol ishah as a chorus of diverse voices that include many who had not felt heard or seen by the Jewish community. We women rabbis are powerful preachers, scintillating scholars, compassionate comforters, and creators of transformative rituals and liturgies. We build and sustain community with vision and humor. We challenge and comfort, we cajole and console. We are rich and varied.

It is a privilege to be among the pioneers. May we continue to learn from and delight in those who are now shaping the future!

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, PhD, serves as Spiritual Director at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion. She is the editor of The Open Door: A Passover Haggadah (CCAR Press, 2002) and coeditor of The First Fifty Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honoring Women Rabbis (CCAR Press, 2023).

Categories
Israel Rabbinic Reflections Social Justice

Implement the Kotel Agreement: An Open Letter to Ambassador Michael Herzog

Dear Ambassador Hertzog,

I am an American Reform rabbi. I am writing to you from Tel Aviv, where I am privileged to be spending a month with my Israeli family.

This morning, I joined friends and colleagues to celebrate Rosh Chodesh at the Kotel, as I have many, many times before.

I am honored to join my courageous and resilient Israeli sisters to welcome the new month, even though we who join Women of the Wall (נשות הכותל) are often screamed at, spat upon, and prevented from praying together. Today was no different: we were corralled into a separate space as if we, not our hecklers, needed to be contained. The true desecration today was the screaming, the shrill whistles, and the guards’ bullhorns that attempted to silence our prayer. Instead of providing protection to us, the Kotel authorities ignored and seemed to support those who harassed us.

You know that the current situation at the Kotel causes grave harm and deep embarrassment for all of us who love Israel. Israel is my home, but being heckled by ultra-Orthodox men and women, and boys and girls, when I lift my voice in praise to the Source of all makes me feel unwelcome and alienated in one of Israel’s most sacred places. 

You also know that Israel is home to many Jews who do not identify as Orthodox, and that North American Jews from all liberal streams feel a profound sense of peoplehood when we visit Israel and attend one of the many Israeli Reform, Reconstructionist, or Conservative synagogues. And when we visit the Kotel, we want to pray in peace, in a space that welcomes us. 

No one heckles the men who gather to pray. No one prevents men from bringing a Sefer Torah to sanctify their gathering. No one prevents men from being called to the Torah for the first time, or to celebrate a simchah, or to remember a loved one. No one accuses other prayer groups of “disturbing the peace.”

Yet I return to Israel, and to the Kotel, whenever I can, in the hopes that the Kotel Agreement, approved on January 31, 2016 by the Israeli government will finally be implemented. This detailed, 45-page document, negotiated over three and a half years, provides full and unimpeded access to the Western Wall for Jews of all streams. It is my hope that once implemented, the harassment, intimidation, and שנאת חינם will cease. 

Today we welcomed a new month: Adar. Tradition teaches: משנכנס אדר מרבים בשמחה.

However, my joy today was diminished, and my heart heavy with disappointment and anger that Prime Minister Bennett, on the sixth anniversary of the signing of the Kotel Agreement, is capitulating to extremists and denying that the Kotel Agreement is a fair and long overdue compromise. As you know, there is broad support in his coalition to finally move forward on this long delayed and eminently fair solution. 

Now is the time to rise beyond narrow political considerations. I implore you, as a representative of the Israeli government, to conclude the task begun with “Ezrat Israel” in 2013. Nine years later, it is time for the Israeli government to implement the Kotel Agreement.

Let us welcome Adar with joy, not shame.

Thank you.

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, PhD

Learn more about the Kotel Agreement here.

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, PhD serves as a Spiritual Director at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion. She is the editor of Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of Our Lives (Cascade Books) and The Open Door: A Passover Haggadah (CCAR Press), and has served as a congregational rabbi, worked with congregations and lay leaders through the URJ, and has taught at the University of Cincinnati, University of California, Los Angeles, and LaSalle University.

Categories
Death Healing Israel

Letter from Jerusalem: Love must win 

Thursday, July 30 was planned as a day of celebration of tolerance and acceptance, a day to embrace difference, a day to lift up diversity and cooperation in Israel’s capital as the municipality hosted Jerusalem’s gay pride parade. I arrived in Jerusalem and was delighted to see rainbow flags lining some of the main streets. Near the American Embassy a huge banner declared, in English letters, “LOVE WINS!” The message was repeated in languages from the region and from across the world.

When evening fell and the heat of the day dissipated, we learned of the twin acts of terror that crushed the hopes with which the day began. Eighteen month old Ali Dawabsheh was burned to death in his Duma home by ultra religious Jewish terrorists. One hour away, Shira Banki, walking with friends and classmates in Jerusalem’s gay pride parade, was stabbed by a man who had been released weeks earlier after serving ten years in prison for a similar attack on the 2005 Jerusalem parade. Shira died three days later. Ali’s father, Sa’ad died ten days later. Ali’s mother and 4 year old brother are being treated for major burns, and five other marchers are recovering from stab wounds.

The handwritten sign on the Banki’s door announced shiva from 10 a.m. until 10 p.m. On Thursday, August 6th, we were the first to enter the shiva house. At first, we did not realize that we had been welcomed by Mika, Shira’s mother, because she seemed so young herself. “We are private people,” she said. “We asked that there be no press at the funeral, and none at the shiva, and they have been very respectful.” We leaned in to hear her as others joined us in the garden, a gracious outdoor space shared by the residents of the apartment building. “We recently celebrated our son’s Bar Mitzvah here. As we sat here, we realized it is a lovely space for a wedding. Perhaps, one day, Shira’s wedding. Here we are, with guests and tables filled with food, but this is not a wedding…”

We came with a gift, a book of 1720 signatures and notes of condolence from across the world, collected by the Israel Religious Action Center. Anat Hoffman, the Center’s director, had written Shira’s name on a stone that Shira’s mom held in her hand as she spoke. “The shiva is allowing me an additional week of not comprehending what has happened. Shira is the eldest of our four children. Our house is always open, always filled with our children and their friends. We raised our children to be open, to find their own voice, to walk their own path.”

We sat with Mika, we, four women who have also raised children, three of us now grandmothers. We came as representatives of thousands of others like ourselves who are stunned by the violence that, in one day, shattered the life of many families.

I have visited many shiva houses In the last fifty plus years. I have sat with many who have lost beloveds, both those who have suffered a sudden loss, and those who have sat for days and months at the bedsides of dear ones and watched helplessly as their lives slipped away.

As we sat in the Banki’s garden, we felt Shira’s absence and her presence. The photos of Shira introduced us to a smiling, engaged young woman, who would have celebrated her sixteenth birthday in three months.

This will be the third Shabbat since these twin attacks. When Shabbat ends, Jews across the world will welcome the month of Elul. Our tradition teaches the power of this last month of the year in which we prepare for Rosh HaShanah. Aleph, Lamed, Vav, Lamed, the four letters of the Hebrew name of the month, echo the words of the Song of Solomon, the Song of Songs: Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li: I am My Beloved and my Beloved is mine.

How can we love in the shadow of hate? Each new year we are challenged to Choose Life. Our tradition invites us to acknowledge our own fears of death when we sit with the bereaved. This is how we choose life.

Our Judaism urges us, even in the presence of senseless hatred, to affirm love. Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li.We inscribe these words of love on wedding rings and sing them as we celebrate love and commitment. These words direct this month of reviewing our days, reconsidering our choices, reaffirming our commitments.

We choose life when we weave these words into the oft-quoted words attributed to the ancient sage, Hillel: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

When love wins, we see that If I am not for myself, I cannot be present for another. When love wins, we understand that when we are only for ourselves, we cannot see even the beloved who is before me. When love wins, we grasp that the time is now. Now is the time to choose life, and love.

Our humanity is absolutely bound up with the humanity of others. There is no room for hate in our fragile, interdependent world. We can transform fear of the other into curiosity, and build respect in the place of ignorance.  There is only one people, one fate, one earth, one destiny. The perpetuation of a fiction of essential otherness is a recipe for annhilation.

Just as Eve and Adam left Eden, we took our leave of the Banki family in their garden. When shiva ended, they, too, left their garden. We must honor the memory of Shira Banki and the memories of Ali and Sa’ad Dawabsheh by choosing life, and love. Love must win.

—

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell is scholar in residence at Washington Hebrew Congregation. She is also the editor of The Open Door, the CCAR Haggadah (2002).

This blog was originally posted in Washington Jewish Week.

Categories
High Holy Days Israel

Rosh Hodesh Elul at the Western Wall

This was not the first time I spent the night with her. I’ve lost track of the hotels in which we’ve slept. She in her bed and I in mine, I keenly aware of her powerful presence throughout the night.

Yet this was a first for me, and for her. She had been carried into the open plaza hours earlier by another who loves her as I do. Now it was my turn to sit with her, to guard her through the final hours before dawn.

Although we had never met, I located my two sisters in the quiet darkness. They told me how the month before, one of them had accompanied our beloved, but they were forced to leave the plaza at dawn. When our beloved’s followers arrived at the appointed hour to celebrate with her, she sat in a police station, held tightly by a woman who wanted only to protect the beloved. The faithful gathered without her, mourning her absence, determined to find another way to insure her presence next month.

This night and this day would be different. Together, we who love her would return her to the circle of disciples who would arrive in three hours.

We sat close to one another, three women surrounding a scroll that has been carried by our people for thousands of years, over deserts and mountains, across seas, a scroll whose words are inscribed on our hearts. The day before we had begun the portion that includes: “צדק צדק תרדוף you shall, you must pursue justice.” (Deuteronomy 16:20).

Every month, my sisters gather at the Western Wall to welcome the new moon. And every month there are new challenges and obstacles to the pursuit of just, equal access to this ancient sacred space.

Elul is the month of preparation for Rosh HaShanah, a month when Jews immerse ourselves in self reflection, when we consider our deeds of the past year. Every morning during the month of Elul, we sound the shofar to wake ourselves up, to look back with clarity so that we can look forward with compassion and determination. We spent a night of watching so that our sisters could welcome the month of Elul with the Torah as our guide; we accompanied her through the night so would she accompany us through this month of searching and beyond.

Soon after I arrived at the plaza, a policeman stood before us and demanded that we unwrap our precious cargo, that we reveal our beloved. When he saw the Torah, he demanded that we, and that she must leave the plaza. My companions were prepared for this challenge. They called — and woke — the Chief of Police, who told the officer to leave us alone.

It is a rare privilege to experience the arrival of a new day. We sat together, flooded with wonder as the night dissolved into light, shielding our precious legacy. The ancient rabbis, driven by a desire to praise the Holy One at every hour of day and night, were keen observers of the changes of light, and air, and atmosphere as the earth circles the sun. Trembling, we waited for the dawn, and for our sisters.

The women began arriving, donning tallitot and tefillin, exchanging glances of appreciation and concern. Some had been stopped as they entered the plaza because they carried shofarot. Yet each who arrived brought with her the conviction that it is her right, and her responsibility, to raise her voice in prayer, in song, to welcome this month.

My night of watching had come to an end; it was time to return the beloved to her followers. “For from Zion will come the Torah, and God’s word from Jerusalem.” With pride and joy, one of my sisters carried the Torah through our group, and each woman reached out to touch her.

When we unrolled the scroll, our hearts opened. On this first day of this new month, we remembered sixteen year old Shira Banki, who was murdered as she walked in the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade two weeks before. As we lifted the Torah, we called upon her as our tree of life, renewing our commitment to remain firmly planted in our pursuit of justice, in paths of peace.

Every day during the month of Elul, we conclude the morning service by sounding the shofar. Thanks to the determination of several women, and the intervention of the Chief of Police, every woman present was invited to take a turn blowing the ram’s horn. For some, it was a first opportunity to bring this ancient instrument to life. One of us held the Torah close to her heart as she lifted a shofar to her lips  She joined the circle of women who welcomed Elul with cacophonous, piercing, haunting blasts that reverberated across the plaza.

May the shofar’s call wake up each of us, renewing our determination to work for justice and peace in this month of Elul and in the new year, 5776.

—

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell is scholar in residence at Washington Hebrew Congregation. She is also the editor of The Open Door, the CCAR Haggadah (2002).

This blog was originally posted on The Times of Israel.

Categories
General CCAR High Holy Days Machzor Rabbis Reform Judaism

Reading Nitzavim on Yom Kippur

“You stand this day, all of you, before your God, the Holy One of Blessing: you tribal heads, you elders, and you officials, all the men of Israel, you children, you women, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to water drawer … ” (Deuteronomy 29)

The opening of Nitzavim grabs us by our lapels and looks each of us directly in the eye. All of you, each of you, whether you stand at the top or at the bottom of the food chain, whether you command the attention and admiration of many or whether your labor goes almost unnoticed, you stand this day, poised to enter into a relationship with God, a relationship that demands your full attention.

The opening has the urgency of an invitation that’s almost impossible to refuse. Every man, child, woman, outsider and insider is included in this round up. The portion continues as God addresses the people: “I make this covenant … not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day … and with those who are not with us here this day.”

Not only is everyone present included, but those who will come after, children and grandchildren, descendants and heirs are also included. This is a covenant of mythic proportions, a relationship between God and God’s people that transcends time.

Thirty years ago, Rabbi Chaim Stern, z”l, and the Liturgy Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis decided that this challenge to the community should not be read solely on Shabbat Nitzavim. These editors of The Gates of Repentance, the High Holiday prayerbook used in Reform congregations, introduced this portion as the Torah reading for Yom Kippur morning.  As the new CCAR machzor, Mishkan HaNefesh, is being developed, the editors are maintaining Nitzavim as an option for the Yom Kippur torah reading.

This innovation insured that many Jews would hear: “You stand this day, all of you … ” and as an invitation to the link between this eternal covenant between God and the Jewish people and the message of teshuvah/return that is at the center of Yom Kippur. The Gates of Repentance concludes the Torah reading with these words from our portion: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you, this day; I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life — if you and your offspring would live.”

Entering into covenant is a choice that opens the way to other choices. We are making our way through the month of Elul, the month that leads into the High Holidays and offers rich spiritual opportunities to begin to review, return and repair. Teshuvah is our process of considering how we’ve stumbled and then making amends, asking others to forgive us, and forgiving ourselves.

Every day during Elul, we blow the shofar. Like the opening words of Nitzavim, the shofar grabs us and shakes us awake to the possibilities of living our lives with greater attention, greater intention, and greater joy. The shofar calls us to choose life and blessing, through small acts of kindness, and through discovering the power of patience for ourselves and others.

This portion reminds us that we are in this together, whatever our roles in life. It reminds us that we are connected not only to those with whom we share time and place, but that our circles of responsibility are beyond our own sight.

Nitzavim reminds us that our choices today have consequences for our descendants, and indeed, for many we will never meet. In this New Year, may each of us choose life, blessing and joy.

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, Ph.D., serves as rabbi for the East District of the Union for Reform Judaism.