From Rabbi Shira

“Every great love affair begins with a scream.” [Diane Ackerman, NY Times, March 24, 2012] [TEKIAYH BLAST] Every great love affair begins with a scream: with birth, each of us is catapulted into the world, into the adventure of loving – and tonight, we begin a new year, hoping to feel the passion of new beginnings and second chances – though we carry with us our failures of love, armed with defenses and disappointments, and so deeply wanting to believe that we can love more, love better, that we can really change.

Hayom harat olam! This is the day of the world’s birth! [Tekiyah! Shevarim teruah] Rosh Hashanah is accompanied by the raw unadorned cry of the shofar. “Every great love affair begins with a scream. At birth, the brain starts blazing new neural pathways based on its odyssey in an alien world.” [Diane Ackerman] Scientists of the mind – neurologists, biologists, psychologists and educators – all once believed that our neural networks were set in place by the end of adolescence. First there was the DNA we were born with – the gifts and handicaps of heredity, and then the nurturing and experiences of our early years – and we were pretty much stuck with the final blueprint. The intricate dance of nature and nurture determined our personalities, our abilities and talents, pretty much setting a course for the future – and all of this was now fixed in the neural networks of our brains. This was certainly the scientific dogma when I was pursuing graduate studies in language and the brain, in the years before I decided to become a rabbi. The brain’s plasticity – its capacity to recover from serious trauma to the brain – was over, we thought, by the end of childhood or adolescence.

“A relatively new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws its vigor from one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life. In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you.” [Diane Ackerman].

On the morning of December 10th, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor experienced a massive stroke when a blood vessel exploded in the left side of her brain. Two facts about Jill were particularly noteworthy: she was 37 years old, and she was a neuroanatomist, working at Harvard Medical School performing research and teaching young professionals about the brain. “Every brain has a story and this is mine,” she writes in the book she later authored, called My Stroke of Insight.
She woke up that morning with a massive, throbbing pain behind her left eye, followed by unusual sluggishness. “What is going on with my body? What is wrong with my brain?” she wondered. Her body slow and heavy, suddenly she was practically thrown off balance as her right arm dropped completely paralyzed against her side. “Oh my gosh, I’m having a stroke! I’m having a stroke. And in the next instant, the thought flashed through her mind, Wow, this is so cool!…How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain function and mental deterioration from the inside out?” [p44]

As is evident from looking at any image of a human brain, our brains are made up of two halves, connected by bands of fibers called the corpus callosum. The two hemispheres process the world differently – almost as though each had a different personality. The right hemisphere takes in all the sensory and emotional information of this moment: what this moment feels like, what it looks like, tastes, smells and sounds like – in a brilliant collage of NOW. The left hemisphere functions more like a serial processor, in a linear fashion. It takes information, puts it into categories, connects it to all the information you already have, associates it with all the memories you have of the past and projects all your possibilities into the future.

A hemorrhage of the left hemisphere means, for most of us, a loss of language function, the capacity to remember anything about ourselves and to process any information. As I began to read Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s account of her stroke, two things startled me: first – she was writing about it! At some point, she obviously recovered her memory and her capacity to understand and use language. The second, equally startling, was the experience of euphoria she describes as her left hemisphere begins to shut down. “In the absence of my left hemisphere’s analytical judgment, I was completely entranced by the feelings of tranquility, safety, blessedness, euphoria and omniscience. I was euphoric, euphoric. {I was a] beam of energy connected to every beam of energy everywhere in the universe. “I’m no authority, but I think the Buddhists would say I entered the mode of existence they call Nirvana.” [p49]

“By the end of that morning, “she writes, “i could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of my life. Just before noon, on December 10th, 1996, …sanctioned deep within a sacred cocoon with a silent mind and a tranquil heart, I felt the enormousness of my energy lift. I clearly understood that I was no longer the choreographer of my life” [63] “Curled up into a little fetal ball, I felt my spirit surrender to my death, and it certainly never dawned on me that I would ever be capable of sharing my story with anyone.” [p2]

It took Jill Bolte Taylor eight years, and infinitely patient, skilled and loving care, to recover from this devastating stroke. You may have heard other such stories – for as remarkable as this one is, it is not the only one. It turns out that our brains are more “plastic” – capable of growth and change, even as adults – than we knew. And as re-assuring as that information is, it was not the reason Jill wrote this book. She wrote about the power to choose. It is almost inconceivable to imagine that it was within the experience of a catastrophic stroke that she learned that she had access to a different way of seeing the world. As she began to recover, she realized that the condition that was forced upon her in the stroke – functioning only from her right hemisphere – was something she could consciously choose to tap into in a state of wellness. She could choose to run the deep, joyful, inner peace circuitry of her right mind. This is a startling awareness: We can actually choose how we want to be in the world; we can choose to be happy, we can choose anger and fear and anxiety and jealousy, we can choose misery, we can choose peace.

Jill learned this through her stroke – her stroke of insight was that she could choose to run the deep inner peace circuitry of her right brain at any time – that she could access the joy that was underneath everything at any time. Viktor Frankl learned it in Auschwitz. A famous Jewish Viennese psychiatrist, he was offered a visa out of Vienna after the Anschluss in 1938, but he turned it down because he did not want to abandon his aging parents. In the end, his parents were murdered, as was his only brother and his young pregnant wife. Viktor Frankl survived four concentration camps, and returned after the war to Vienna, where he continued to develop his understanding of human nature and the potential of human beings. It is not possible for us to imagine the brutality, the torture of mind and body, and the suffering of prisoners and victims of the concentration camps. In a triumph of the human spirit, Viktor Frankl taught that ultimate human freedom is in our power to choose – not to choose our fate, no, but to choose our response to whatever our fate is. We do not always choose what happens to us – but we can always choose our response.

Dr. Steven Covey, who died this year, may his memory be a blessing, described it like this. There are two kinds of people, he taught, the proactive person and the reactive person. A reactive person is someone who reacts to external circumstances. Do you and I feel better when the weather is good? We are being reactive to the weather. Do you and I feel better when we are treated respectfully by others? Of course we do. Do we get defensive and angry when we’re not treated the way we expect? Yeah! This person makes me mad. This job is driving me crazy. When we respond that way, and we all do, we are being reactive. When we are reactive, we are driven by the external, by the environment, by conditions.

When we are proactive, we carry our weather within.

In one of the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” workshops that Steven Covey described, a woman came to him excitedly during the break. “What you’re talking about,” she said, “’I’ve had a hard time with it. You see, I’m a full-time nurse for the most miserable, ungrateful man that you can imagine. He has no appreciation; he hardly acknowledges me at all; he’s down on me all the time. He’s worn me out and made my life miserable. For you to have the gall to stand up there and say that I chose to be miserable – do you think I could buy into that? That I chose it? I couldn’t swallow that bitter pill – too big – too bitter. And then I came to a very important insight. If it was true that I chose to be miserable, in other words, that I chose my response to a miserable circumstance, it was also true that I could choose otherwise. I felt liberated. I felt let out of prison. No longer can that miserable character control my life.”

What happens if “that miserable character” is cancer? Or heart disease, or losing a job, divorce, getting older, painful memories or depression? It isn’t only what happens to us; it is also our response to what happens to us that makes us who we are. In the face of terrorism, making a choice for peace. With a history of substance abuse, making a choice to see oneself worthy of change. Moments big or small. Between what happens to us and our response lies our greatest power – it’s the freedom to choose. All other human capacities are energized by that power.

A thousand years ago, the brilliant Jewish physician and scholar, Rabbi Moses Maimonides, was on to something when he taught: “We have been given free will. Do not imagine that character is determined at birth. Any person can become as righteous as Moses or as wicked as Jeroboam. We ourselves decide whether to make ourselves learned or ignorant, compassionate or cruel, generous or miserly. No one forces us, no one decides for us, no one drags us long one path or the other; we ourselves, by our own volition, choose our own way.’ [Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuva, chapter 5]

I learned something else amazing in reading Jill Bolte Taylor’s book. Deep inside our brains are the cortical cells that make up the limbic system. The limbic system functions by placing an emotion on information that streams in through our senses. These emotional responses are essentially hardwired into our brains in our early childhood. (If you think that all the loving attention you give to your children or grandchildren, your nieces and nephews, in their first years doesn’t matter, since they may not remember it, think again!) That means “that although our limbic system functions throughout our lifetime, it does not mature. As a result, when our emotional “buttons” are pushed we retain the ability to react to incoming stimulation as though we were a two year old, even when we are adults.” [My Stroke of Insight, p 18] Our emotional responses become essentially hard- wired into our limbic system.

Our emotional responses trigger a release of chemicals that take 90 seconds to course through our bodies. 90 seconds is a long time. If our buttons have been pushed, 2 seconds is a long time! 90 seconds. Our emotional

responses trigger a release of chemicals that take 90 seconds to course through our bodies. If we can learn to recognize those primary responses – and let them course through our bodies – we can then choose whether we want to stay with those feelings, or choose something else. This is the clincher: if we choose a different emotional response, time and time again, we will create new neural networks. The genius of our neurons is in their plasticity – in their ability to learn and to change. This is “one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life. In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose… literally transforms you.” [Diane Ackerman]

“Deep inner peace is just a thought or feeling away. To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful. It means that you are capable of tapping into a [peaceful and joyful] state of mind amid the normal chaos of a hectic life. This circuitry is constantly running and always available for us to hook into.” [p. 159]

You might try these steps: (I am trying them, too.)

First and foremost, wait 90 seconds. (If you’re with someone, you might say: “I need a minute!”)
Recognize when you are hooked into negative thoughts. Breathe. Slowly, a few times.

Be a non-judgmental witness as you listen to yourself. Even negative thoughts can be valuable lessons if we can see them with compassion.
Tell your brain, “Please stop bringing this stuff up.” – or “Not now, buddy.”

If that doesn’t work, turn your awareness to something else: Think about something that brings you terrific joy, or something fascinating to ponder, or something you would like to do.
After 90 seconds have come and gone, you can consciously choose what emotional loops you want to hook into.

Take responsibility for the energy you bring into that moment or that space.
“[You might wonder], If it’s choice, then why would anyone choose anything other than happiness? [We] can only speculate, but my guess is that many of us simply do not realize that we have a choice and therefore don’t exercise our ability to choose.”

“Another reason many of us may not choose happiness is because when we feel intense negative emotions like anger, jealousy, or frustration, we are actively running complex circuitry in our brain that feels so familiar that we feel strong and powerful. I have known people who consciously choose to exercise their anger circuitry on a regular basis simply because it helps them remember what it feels like to be themselves.” [Pp. 171-172]

This is true for all of us; this is how our brains work. We have each developed an identity – a sense of who we are – and, often unconsciously, our angers, our fears, our anxieties, our injuries frame our interactions and the way we see the world. This is true for each individual; I wonder if this might be true for whole communities as well. How have the injuries and pains that we have endured and survived as a Jewish people affected us? How much of our Jewish identity might be wrapped up in our suffering, in the memory of our pain – a question to which I will return on Yom Kippur.

Our body and mind are interconnected. The emotional states of our lives translate into illness and health. We do have gut feelings. People do die of broken hearts. Feelings and emotions are communicated to the body via peptide molecules. Anticipating something negative can make us sick. A surge of joy into our system can be measured in a blood sample. What we used to call ‘the placebo effect’ is the real physiological effect of hope and faith on the body. What we think, what we believe, how we feel, the totality of our lives cannot be separated from our physical health. It is one. We are one.

Our mind explains to us what the world means – it selects what we will see – and even helps determine what will happen to us. If I have learned to expect that the world is not a loving place, I will not see or recognize the efforts of people around me to love me; I will reject their efforts – and I will further confirm my deepest held belief that love cannot be trusted. I remember a fabulous Peanuts cartoon (it took me decades to understand why I had clipped and saved this cartoon strip): Lucy is sitting with her back to Snoopy, the dog, hands- crossed across her chest. She says: Nobody loves me. Snoopy is leaning toward her, lips pursed, to kiss her. Second frame: She repeats: Nobody loves me. He leans forward, even further. The third frame: She says: Nobody loves me. Still behind her, Snoopy, leaning too far forward, falls on his nose and says, “You’re right, Baby.”

By the way we understand ourselves and our world, we unconsciously help shape what happens to us. Yes, terrible things happen. Out there, and even in here, there is conflict and violence, there is betrayal and rage. But we are not helpless; we are not powerless. We have the power to choose our responses. One day, we will understand not only that we must be the change that we want to see in the world – but that we really can be the change we want to be in the world. Our tradition teaches us that we are each created b’tzelem elohim, with a spark of the Divine. We each have the God-given potential to choose how we see ourselves. We are free to choose our own response. In the face of illness, pain and suffering, I am still able to choose life and connection. When I am “wired” to respond with anger, I am still able to choose – perspective, understanding and empathy. When I don’t see love, when I only see disappointment and abandonment, I am still able to choose. I can choose to trust; I can choose to love. One day, we will understand that God has given us the power to end violence, and to choose peace. One day.

Sometimes I lay under the moon And I thank God I’m breathin’ Then I pray don’t take me soon ‘Cause I am here for a reason

Sometimes in my tears I drown But I never let it get me down

So when negativity surrounds
I know someday it’ll all turn around because

All my life I been waitin’ for
I been prayin’ for, for the people to say That we don’t want to fight no more They’ll be no more wars

And our children will play, one day

It’s not about win or lose ’cause we all lose
When they feed on the souls of the innocent blood Drenched pavement keep on movin’
Though the waters stay ragin’

And in this life you may lose your way It might drive you crazy
But don’t let it phase you, no way

Sometimes in my tears I drown
But I never let it get me down
So when negativity surrounds
I know someday it’ll all turn around because

All my life I been waitin’ for
I been prayin’ for, for the people to say
That we don’t want to fight no more
They’ll be no more wars
And our children will play, one day Matisyahu Hashkivenu adonai eloheinu l’shalom V’ha’amideinu malkeinu l’chayim.

In 1984, David and I moved to New York with our four little children and David’s grandmother, Mutti – our children’s great-grandmother, already in her late 80’s and wheelchair bound. It was probably because of Mutti that we ended up living in a castle in Riverdale. Our landlady, Hungarian Episcopalian Wally, had been raised by her grandmother – and any family, she figured, that would move out with their great- grandmother was a family she wanted to know. The castle (you can see it overlooking the Henry Hudson Parkway) was falling apart on the inside, but it didn’t matter. We had stone turrets and secret staircases, green floors, and gargoyles, and snakes carved into banisters.

But the real magic was Wally. She was our guardian angel the thirteen years we were blessed to share with her. The day she died, I had just come home from Kol Ami. I pulled into the driveway and saw her caregiver sitting on the front steps, her face cupped in her hands. She picked up her head and her tear-stained face said everything. Wally’s daughter had come to be with her in her last days. This daughter’s life was a mess – but no matter, Wally was crazy about her. I bounded up the stairs. Wally had just died; she was lying in the bed and her daughter, whom she loved so much, was leaning against the bedpost. I stood in awe and reverence and silence. And as I stood, I saw the spirit of Wally rise from her body and rush down into her daughter.
Clear as day.

This is one of the most intimate things I have ever witnessed in my life, and I have never spoken about it publicly. But I am now. I hope you will hear the urgency and love in my voice. I need to talk with you about the soul – and about the Jewish soul.

I believe we are all born with spiritual knowledge. These are the things we deeply and quietly know; they’re not subject to debate. This is knowledge that can’t be controlled or coerced; it can only be shared. One of the few things I have always deeply known, from the time that I remember anything, is that the soul is real. But I wondered – if the soul is real, is there such a thing as a Jewish soul? That question re-surfaced for me in my early years here at Kol Ami – and it was on my mind the day of a heart- breaking phone call. A man called our synagogue office. He was in his 90’s, wheel chair bound in a nursing home in Los Angeles. His son, in his 70’s, was dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease and was in White Plains Hospital. The father looked in the phone book, found a temple in the White Plains area and called. Would I visit his son for him?

I went. He was not able to speak, connected to tubes of all kinds, but there was an air of sweetness about him. I introduced myself. He picked up a pen, which he used as a pointer, and pointed out individual letters on a crudely written alphabet chart. He spelled out to me: “There is a Jewish soul.”

Moving to New York with our kids had meant leaving a huge extended family behind in California. And so, there were frequent trips, back and forth. It was one of those cross-country trips and we were late getting started that morning. The white water rafting trip we had reserved was an hour and a hour off the main highway, so David thought he’d better call from the junction to make sure they wouldn’t leave without us.

“Sorry – you’re too late,” said the voice on the phone. David got back into the car, and my always upbeat husband said, so uncharacteristically, “I don’t know how I’m ever going to get over my disappointment.”

The mood in the car – not good!
We continued until Missoula, Montana, where we pulled into a gas station to fill up with gas – and our car died. Just died in the gas station. Liore, our youngest, ran in first – for the bathroom key. David followed. The attendant looked different from other Montana folk – who mostly looked like Robert Redford. He had got dark hair, a trimmed beard, blue eyes and fair skin. (Classic Sephardic coloring, David thinks to himself.) He says to David:
“Was that your daughter? Is she Semitic?”
“Yes. We’re Jewish.”
“Where are you from?” he asks.
“We live in New York,” David says. “My family’s from Germany.”
“You don’t look like you’re from Germany,” he says to David.
So David adds, knowing his family’s history, “Five hundred years ago my family lived in Spain.”
“My family is also from Spain,” he says, “Catholic. They left 450 years ago, but I’m not sure why they left.”
David says: “There were many Jewish families who converted to Catholicism – New Christians they were called – but left Spain. Many came to Mexico, then a Spanish territory, and from there to New Mexico.”

“My family moved to New Mexico,” he said – and paused. “How would I know if my family was one of those Jewish families?”
Many of them still practice some Jewish customs,” David said. “Some of them light candles on Friday night.”

The man said, “Every Friday my grandfather would buy two candles, and he would light his two candles every Friday. My parents didn’t want me to know.”

He didn’t want us to leave. And David understood why we had to miss our rafting trip. There is a Jewish soul.

“You stand this day, all of you, before the Eternal your God, your leaders, the men, the children, the women, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to waterdrawer, to enter the covenant of the Eternal your God. 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 here today.” I make this covenant with those who are not here today? Today’s magnificent Torah portion hints to the ancient mystery that all of us who are today part of the Jewish story – all of our souls – were once gathered together in a sacred covenant. All of us: whether or not we are Jewish – all of us who have chosen to participate in the unfolding Jewish story.

A Jewish soul.

In 1990, a group of us traveled to Prague, Budapest and Israel. In Budapest, we met with a small group of young Jewish parents who were forming a new, progressive Jewish congregation. We sat together in someone’s living room as the young men and women spoke about their own Jewish stories. Two of these new leaders had not known they were Jewish until late in their teens. Both of them were the children of survivors of the Holocaust. “So how did you find out you were Jewish?” we wanted to know. For one of them, it was tears. He began to pay attention, over the years, as his father watched the news on television – and he noticed that there were times that his father would quietly cry. And the young teenager began to connect the dots. For the other kid, it was different. He came home one day after school, threw his backpack to the ground and told his parents how he had joined with a bunch of other guys in beating up a Jewish kid. My heart stopped. I could understand the parents of the young men who were now speaking to us. They had done their best to protect their own children. For them, being Jewish had meant trauma and destruction. They themselves were the sole survivors of their large and extended families; they wanted to protect their children – and so they had quietly decided that the best way to protect them was to end the Jewish story. Better that their children not know. Then everything blew apart: their son became the oppressor. In that moment, they had a choice: tell their son he was Jewish – and he would become a potential victim. Deny him the knowledge, and he would become the oppressor. And they decided – even with the weight of their suffering on them – better not to become an oppressor. For them, owning their Jewish identity would help protect them against becoming the oppressor.

For so many of us, being Jewish is bound up in being vulnerable. In the most profound and wonderful ways, we have been nurtured on the Biblical teaching, “Do not oppress the stranger, for you know the heart of the stranger, having been slaves in the land of Egypt.” We remember our suffering – so that we feel with those who suffer. We remember our suffering – so that we will nurture the courage to speak out against injustice. There is a Jewish soul. The Jewish soul remembers pain.

But I am worried about our Jewish soul.

There is a dark side to remembering pain. Rachel Burstein has taught American and world history at CUNY’s Brooklyn College. In an article published last September in the Forward, she described her first day class activities. Alongside asking her students to list their names, email addresses, their majors and reasons for taking the course, she asked them to include several areas of history that were particularly interesting to them. She found a nearly infallible correspondence: the more steeped the students were in Jewish life, the more likely they were to be interested in two subjects: the Holocaust and the Spanish Inquisition. “Maybe this should not have been so surprising,” she writes. “It was common for my students’ historical interests to break down along ethnic, religious or cultural lines. African-American students wanted to learn about African liberation movements, slave resistance and the civil rights movement. Immigrants studying for citizenship exams wanted to learn more about the American Revolutionary War and the Constitution. And Muslim students took particular interest in the policies of the Ottoman Empire.

“But whereas other groups emphasized points of cultural pride in their historical selections, those educated in Jewish schools were concerned primarily with persecution… Absent was any sense that Jews could shape their own destiny, that they were active participants in history. If such was the case of the past, I worried for my students of the present.” [Rachel Burstein, “A Distorted View of History”, The Forward, September 23, 2011] I’m worried, too. I am worried about our Jewish soul.

Perhaps we have become our suffering. We have identified the Jewish soul with pain. But we have suffered, you tell me! Yes – we have. We have experienced great pain; but to continue to suffer is a choice. You know the story of the old man on a train car from Minsk to Pinsk. Minutes after the train rolls out of the station, he sighs and says, “Oy, am I thirsty.” This he repeats again and again, until one of his fellow travelers can take it no longer, gets up, walks to the next car and comes back with a cup of water. The old man drinks – and there is blessed quiet. A few minutes later, he sighs and says, “Oy, was I thirsty.”

Neuroscience has joined with the therapeutic professions to teach us that we participate in creating our reality. Our experiences and the way we think about them – our insight and reflection – change the neural connections that make up our brains.

“This revelation is based on one of the most exciting scientific discoveries of the last twenty years: How we focus our attention shapes the structure of the brain.” [Daniel Siegel,

MD, Mindsight, pp xiv-xv] “In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us.” [Diane Ackerman, NY Times, March 24, 2012]

Dr. Daniel Siegel, author of Mindsight, The New Science of Personal Transformation, offers this useful model: “If you put your thumb in the middle of your palm [demonstrate] and then curl your fingers over the top, you’ll have a pretty handy model of the brain.” [p14] The limbic area lies deep within the brain, approximately where your thumb is. Encoded here are the primal emotional responses that help define us and shape our sense of how the world works.

As a Jewish people, we too have formed our ideas of the world and our place in it. Deep down – and it is deep down – many of us believe that the whole world wants the Jews dead. Our brains are constantly on high stress alert, vigilant against potential attack. Let me ask you, how would you rate present-day attitudes of Americans toward Jews? Is anti-Semitism in the United States on the rise, decline, or at the same problematic level it’s always been? Both the ADL and Gallup have released studies that anti-Semitism in the United States is at an all-time low – way below negative attitudes Muslims and Mormons, even below negative attitudes toward Christians. But we don’t believe it. We think the studies must be faulty – or they didn’t interview the right people. We see what we already believe. And what we believe is they’re all out to get us.

There is danger in the world. It’s good that Israel has a powerful and smart army. It’s good that the Anti-Defamation League keeps its eye on acts of bigotry and hatred. But if we have friends out there, we might not see them. We approach the world with profound mistrust. It affects our political views, our foreign policy and crushes our hopes for a just and lasting peace in the Middle East. Our deep-down primal narrative tells us that “the other” can’t be trusted. Scratch a goy and you find an anti-Semite. I worry for the Jewish soul.

The Jewish soul.

Our memories, emotional responses and primal narratives become encoded deep within us, forming our sense of who we are. When we are not aware of the ways we frame the world, these primal responses can wreak havoc in our lives. A most painful example: who is most at risk for abusing their children? Right. People who were themselves abused as children. How is that possible, I wonder? How is it possible that people who suffered so would inflict that on others?

Our Jewish souls are also at risk. We have also suffered greatly. And we, too, are at risk. No, no. Not just at risk of persecution. We do not see the Hebrew graffiti all over the Old City of Jerusalem – and the Old City of Hebron – or on mosques in the Galilee targeted for arson: mavet la’aravim – reads the graffiti . Death to the Arabs. Do we not see it? We read only a few weeks ago about the near-lynching of Palestinian teenagers in Zion Square – in downtown Jerusalem, at the foot of the pedestrian mall of Ben Yehudah. The perpetrators were kids – Jewish teens, girls and boys ranging in age from 13-17, in front of a crowd of onlookers, bystanders. I’d rather not see it. I’d rather not talk about. But I fear for the Jewish soul. It is better for us in these days of honest introspection to hold our souls gently – to have compassion upon the violence we have endured – and the violence we in turn inflict on others – and repair ourselves. These are our primal narratives, wired into our Jewish mind and soul – but among the most exciting discoveries of modern neuroscience is that our brains never stop growing in response to experience. Who we can become is not determined by who we have been. How we choose to understand the world – what we think and what we believe and what we choose to remember – literally transform us. As individuals, and as a Jewish community.

What are the stories we tell our children? How do we understand our suffering?

Sadie and Max had lived a long life together. Sadie sat next to the hospital bed in which Max was resting, holding his hand, numbers and lights quietly flashing on the machines next to him. Max looked at Sadie as he said, “Sadie, you’ve been with me my whole life. When the Cossacks attacked our little village, in that terrible pogrom, you were there by my side, holding my hand. And we ran from that burning village, with nothing but the clothes on our backs, you were there with me, your hand in mine. When we hid in the barn – you remember that – and when we somehow got passage in the steerage of the ship – we nearly starved to death – you were there with me, by my side.

And then we came to the Lower East Side, and worked our fingers to the bone in those sweatshops, you were there by my side. And when my first business failed, you were there by my side. And when I had my heart attack, you were there with me. And now that I am dying, you are here, by my side.” Max thought for a moment as he looked again at Sadie. “Sadie,” he said. “You know what? You’re a goddamn jinx!”

Eric Kandel, nobel laureate and part of the extended Kol Ami family reminds us that “we are what we remember.” “In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us.” [Diane Ackerman, NY Times, March 24, 2012]

We can choose what to remember. We can choose how we tell the stories of our people. A decade after Israel’s independence in 1948, a group of Dutch and German Christians came to Israel in the hopes that working the land would provide a way for them do penance for the evils perpetrated by their countries. The state reluctantly gave them a parcel of land in the northern part of Israel, across the road from Kibbutz Lochamei HaGettaot, the kibbutz established by survivors and fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto. You can imagine how the kibbutz residents felt about their new neighbors across the road. There were six of them initially – these German and Dutch Christians. They lived in the shell of an old bus, barely eking out an existence on the land. By year’s end, they had run out of water. They would have to give up, give in or die trying. The kibbutz reconsidered: against their instincts, against their primal narrative, countering their understandable angers and fear, they chose to trust. They built a pipeline connecting the small group to them, the Warsaw Ghetto Fighters kibbutz and brought them life and water. Nes Amim, as they came to be called, created a flourishing flower industry, exporting flowers to Holland and the rest of Europe during the winter. All the income they earn goes directly to Israel. It is staffed mostly with young Germans, who can fulfill their mandatory military draft requirement for Germany by instead volunteering in Israel.

In ancient days, people used to walk in processions to both funerals and weddings. The rabbis of old asked: if a wedding and funeral procession meet at an intersection, who gives way to whom? Their answer: the funeral stops – and gives way to the wedding. Joy trumps. We must recover our soul. There is so much work for us to do – work we can only do together – to transform our pain into empathy, our fear into courage and our mourning into joy. And that is what we are doing here.

We are a community of courage and joy. Choose courage and joy with us.

Come here on Sunday, November 18th – the Sunday before Thanksgiving. Two phenomenal singers – Christian Palestinian Israeli and Jewish Israeli – Mira Awad and Shira Gabrielov – perform here at Kol Ami in a concert to benefit Seeds of Peace – inspiring a new generation of Egyptian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli kids and young leaders to seek reconciliation and lasting peace.

Travel next summer to Israel with Tom – and connect to an Israel of courage and hope and spirit and fun.
Or come with me a year from now to Krakow and Berlin – to learn of a different courage – of reconciliation and hope.

We are nurturing the Jewish soul – with music, and poetry, learning and spirit, Shabbat joy and social justice.

The soul is real. It breathes Divine life into us – and through it our spirit is passed on those we love. There is a Jewish soul. And in an unfolding mystery that is both science and spirit, the soul remembers a story from generation to generation. It remembers that we were vulnerable and afraid – so that we will fill our world with healing and blessing, courage and joy.

Elohai Elohai, neshama shenata bi t’hora hi

My God, the soul that you have given me is real.