You demand our rejoicing even as the days grow shorter and the air around us grows cold. You command us to build our fragile homes on this hard ground even as the winds of change pick up around us and yes once more we will obey.
We will dutifully scour the heavens through the green of freshly cut boughs. We will look into the far reaching corners of your creation. We will seek out the hidden place where gladness and jubilation abide in eternity.
Once more we will sing our desperate songs of praise, sending the words of our psalms through broken ceilings that look to us like nothing more than the tattered and torn wings of the Shechinah.
We will plant our seeds deep in the dormant ground, and patiently await the rain you promise to shower down upon us and we will hold you to your word:
that one day very soon those who sow in tears we will reap their harvest in abundant joy.
They told us idolatry brought down the Temple the first time and unmitigated hatred the second time around – what will they say now that Jerusalem has fallen once more?
They will say it’s finally time to draw back the curtain in the holy of holies, uncover your false gods and admit once and for all that this place you call a “city of peace” has never known a moment’s peace, this city conquered and reconquered this city of promises unkept and dreams unfulfilled this city of “return” from which there is no return.
They will say your sea of flags will not hide your crimes, so draw back the curtain and face your illusions: you cannot save “democracy” that never was, you cannot claim a place that can never be owned, your liberation is no liberation if it does not include the liberation of all.
They will say it’s time to stop your mourning for something that never was and never can be – so cease your keening, your unending lamentations and clear away the fallen stones.
It’s time to let go of this godforsaken city, this land of idolatrous stone worship, this crime scene of unceasing bloodshed, it’s time to uncover the place where God truly dwells:
the place where liberation is extended far beyond these walls, beyond the river and the sea, a Jerusalem of the heavens for all who dwell on earth.
Your presence greets me like the wind arriving from a far-off storm stirring and shimmering over the dark surface of the deep. I open gratefully to my spirit’s return and rise up again to a world recreated.
Soul of all that lives, eternal breath of the universe, you are blessed, restoring me to life this and every new morning.
As in years before, we’ll soon proclaim, “Next year in Jerusalem!” But do we actually mean this? Do we really, truly believe that we will live to reach the Promised Land? Do we honestly expect to see the world we’ve been struggling for and dreaming of for so long? And if not, might these words be something more than merely the obligatory aspiration we recite at the end of every seder?
It’s worth considering that we may have already entered the Promised Land in ways we never stopped to realize: when we show up for our fellow strugglers, when we celebrate our victories along the way, when our efforts are infused with our highest values of justice and equity and sacrifice. And it is in these moments that we find ourselves dwelling in the world we’ve been fighting for all along. We’re experiencing the world we want to see because we’ve been creating it for one another.
Struggle is hard work, but if we view it exclusively as a means to an end, it will be only that. However, if we view struggle as an inherently sacred act, we may yet see the face of God in our comrades and those who have gone before us. We may come to understand that the world-to-come is not just a far-off dream. We may yet find we are living in the Promised Land in ways we have never truly understood before.
As we conclude our seder now, let us vow that these fleeting moments are a but glimpse of the possible beyond what we might ever have dared to imagine. Let us state unabashedly that next year will be the year we make Jerusalem – the city of wholeness and peace – not merely a hope, but a reality for all. From our narrow place to the wide-open spaces, let these words be our promise to one another:
For our community, for our teachers and students: those who receive and learn and hand down the teachings of all who have gone before us;
For those who explain, those who discern, those who make connections, those who draw out the truths patiently waiting to be revealed;
For those who challenge words that cause harm, those who reinterpret, reframe and redeem meanings that might otherwise lead us astray;
For those who learn through study and those who learn from experience, those who learn from all peoples, cultures and traditions, those who live out the wisdom they have gained, who know that every conversation, every move, every breath is a precious opportunity to learn Torah anew;
Palestinian mourners carry the body of 11-year-old Hussain Hamad, killed by an Israeli military airstrike, during his funeral in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, Tuesday, May 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
Gaza weeps alone. Bombs falling without end her cheeks wet with tears. A widow abandoned imprisoned on all sides with none willing to save her.
We who once knew oppression have become the oppressors. Those who have been pursued are now the pursuers. We have uprooted families from their homes, we have driven them deep into this desolate place, this narrow strip of exile.
All along the roads there is mourning. The teeming marketplaces have been bombed into emptiness. The only sounds we hear are cries of pain sirens blaring drones buzzing bitterness echoing into the black vacuum of homes destroyed and dreams denied.
We have become Gaza’s master leveling neighborhoods with the mere touch of a button for her transgression of resistance. Her children are born into captivity they know us only as occupiers enemies to be feared and hated.
We have lost all that once was precious to us. This fatal attachment to our own might has become our downfall. This idolatrous veneration of the land has sent us wandering into a wilderness of our own making.
We have robbed Gaza of her deepest dignity plunged her into sorrow and darkness. Her people crowd into refugee camps held captive by fences and buffer zones gunboats, mortar rounds and Apache missles.
We sing of Jerusalem, to “a free people in their own land” but our song has become a mockery. How can we sing a song of freedom imprisoned inside behind walls we have built with our own fear and dread?
Here we sit clinging to our illusions of comfort and security while we unleash hell on earth on the other side of the border. We sit on hillsides and cheer as our explosions light up the sky while far below, whole neighborhoods are reduced to rubble.
For these things I weep: for the toxic fear we have unleashed from the dark place of our hearts for the endless grief we are inflicting on the people of Gaza.
It was my honor today to write and deliver this prayer at a Memorial Service/Action sponsored by the recently (re)created Chicago Union for the Homeless. The Winter Solstice (today) has been designated Homeless Person’s Memorial Day to remember those who have died homeless in the past year.
Following the service at Chicago’s Thompson Center, protesters carried a symbolic casket in a silent march in honor of the deceased. At City Hall, representatives from the Homeless Union presented a petition demanding immediate housing and adequate mental and physical health care for all homeless persons in the Chicago and Cook County.
This new liturgy is based on the traditional Jewish memorial prayer, El Male Rachamim:.
El male rachamim shochen bam’romim ha’metzei menucha nechonah tachat kanfei ha’shechinah.
God filled with compassion, whose loving presence ever surrounds us bring perfect rest to all who have died unhoused those who have died on the streets, in tent cities public parks and under viaducts.
Protect these precious souls with the shelter they were denied in their lifetimes gather them under the softness of your wings show them love, bring them home.
Remind us that no one is forgotten in your sight that all are welcome at your table that each and every one of their lives is a story of sacred worth and meaning that can never be lost.
May the memories of their lives shine forth like the brilliance of the skies above as we rededicate ourselves to their memories now.
Turn our grief and anger into resolve fill us with strength and will and purpose that we may once and for all end this endless night.
Never let us forget our sacred responsibility to ensure that all are housed and clothed and fed; let us never stop fighting for the basic essential dignity of every living, breathing soul.
Source of all compassion, inspire us to extend your shelter across this land and throughout the world that all may know the blessings of safety and security now and forever.
Praise the world to come, the world that might be. Dream of it, fight for it for it with every breath.
Pay no heed to the promises of tyrants who care for nothing but their own power who view humanity as expendable, who stand guard over systems designed to plunder and oppress.
All honor to those who summon the strength to fight until the battle is won, who will not rest until every soul is counted.
Blessed are those who find hope in the struggle, who remain faithful to the dream of a world that is yet at hand:
the kingdom where justice reigns for all generations, where compassion flows without cease.
To the One who urges us on toward struggle and transformation: never stop reminding us just what is at stake and what is expected of us in the days and months ahead.
May our vote remind us of our power to stand down those who govern with fear and dread; may it fill us with the vision and purpose to build a power yet greater: a power rooted in solidarity, liberation and love.
May our vote give us the courage to know that a just society is not beyond our grasp; that we have the power to dismantle systems of inequity and greed; that we create a world in which our wealth and resources are dedicated toward the well-being of all.
May our vote make way for a world free of racism and militarization, a world where no one profits off the misery of others, a world where the bills owed those who have been colonized, enslaved and dispossessed are finally paid in full.
May our vote remind us that the struggle is never over; and that when election day is done no matter what the outcome, we must never give up the fight for the world we know is possible, right here, right now, in our own day.
May we never doubt our ability to make a difference, that we may transform your world toward a future of equity, of restoration, of justice, for us, and for all who dwell on earth.
Yedid Nefesh 