On Crisis (Mashber) - 5787

“All the fountains of the great deep burst apart,
And the floodgates of the sky broke open.”
-B’reishit 7:11

Twenty-four years ago, I read those words at my Bar Mitzvah. It didn’t occur to me as a thirteen-year-old that I might experience a flood like the Torah describes. A flood in which the world I thought I understood became unfamiliar. A world in which one devastating event followed another, and before we could find our footing, another wave arrived.

At thirteen, I understood Parashat Noah as a story about immorality leading to destruction. The world was wicked. The rain came. Righteous Noah built an ark for his family and the animals, and they survived.

Reading it today, I am drawn to something I barely considered then: what it means to begin the world anew. The mabul, the flood, was a crisis. God severed, broke off, fractured all that came before from all that was yet to come.

Inside the ark, Noah and his family were grieving one world while struggling to keep the next one alive. Whirling moments of grief and disillusionment followed by the adrenaline of urgent responsibility. I wonder how often a beginning feels like that while we are inside it, how often we can feel what we have lost before we can recognize what is being born.

The Hebrew word for crisis holds both of those possibilities: Mashber | משבר.

Its root, shin-bet-resh, means to break. You might be most familiar with the Shofar call Sh’varim – the broken trio of shofar blasts. A shever is a fracture and a fraction. Shvurei lev are the brokenhearted. Shvirat HaKelim are the shattered vessels that held divine light in the Lurianic creation myth.

But in the Tanakh, according to the Israeli linguist & historian Elon Gilad, who visited us this summer, mashber “refers to the critical moment of delivery — either the birth canal itself or the birthing stool — and the metaphor is of a kingdom that has reached the critical juncture but lacks the strength to come through it.

In the Book of Kings & Isaiah, Jerusalem faces the threat of Assyrian destruction and King Hezekiah sends a desperate message to the prophet Isaiah: 

“This is a day of distress, and rebuke, and blasphemy; for the children have come to the point of birth (עַד מַשְׁבֵּר) and there is no strength to deliver."

What an extraordinary image for a people in crisis. A new life is struggling to emerge, and they are afraid they do not have the strength to bring it into the world alone.

The Hebrew does not let us rush past that fear. Birth is uncertain and dangerous. It requires immense effort, the help of others, and strength we may not feel we possess.

But think about what it means that our word for crisis also names a place where life begins. It means that moments of uncertainty and danger, moments where it takes a lot of effort just to hold it together, moments where we lean on others for strength, moments where it’s hard to put one foot in front of the other, are also moments of possibility – of growth - of renewal - of birth.

There are two moments of mashber in our history that I think give perspective to our current moment - one of physical destruction and displacement, and one of communal collapse and displacement. The past few years may have felt like a combination of both; the physical attacks and rise in antisemitism, and also the feeling of displacement in our communities. 

In the year 70 CE, Jerusalem had withstood the Roman emperor’s son Titus for four months; but on the 8th of Av, Titus gave his 60,000 troops their orders – storm the city’s crown jewel at dawn.

The Romans constructed massive ramps against the Temple walls, but their initial assaults were repelled with ferocious resistance. Titus was running low on patience and made a fateful decision to set the Temple gates ablaze. The ornate silver-plated doors melted and the fire spread rapidly to the Temple’s wooden inner sanctums. Though Titus commanded the flames be extinguished, it was too late; the inferno exploded. By morning, Jerusalem and its precious temple were a smoldering ruin. 

The Romans conducted a brutal purge reducing the once-grand edifices of Jerusalem to ash and rubble. Titus believed that by destroying Jerusalem, he was extinguishing the very essence of the people Israel—declaring, according to Josephus, "Your city, your people, and you yourselves are doomed to perish" (Josephus, Wars, 6.6.2). 

How wrong he was – though, I do wonder, how many Jews alive at the time would’ve accepted his decree. We can only imagine their heartbreak. To grieve not just people and places, but their entire world and the gravitational temple around which everything orbited.

No one standing in those ruins could have known what Jewish life would become. Alongside the Temple, Jews had already been gathering to pray, study, and interpret Torah. Those practices would become the foundations of a Judaism that could take root wherever Jews lived.

The transformation took generations. Without the Temple, our ancestors had to find new ways to serve God and sustain a community. Rabbis taught that prayer, learning, and acts of lovingkindness could bring holiness into daily life. The home and the synagogue became places where Jewish life could flourish. An existential mashber had forced open the possibility of a new Jewish world.

Jewish tradition has taught us to mourn the Temple’s destruction. We have been less comfortable asking what its loss made possible, including our gathering here tonight. My favorite rabbinic radical, David Einhorn, had the courage to ask that question. He wrote, “Reform [Judaism] recognizes in the flaming Temple mount not a curtailment but rather a continuation of the Divine work of salvation…From the ashes of that one Temple thousands of places of worship came forth; from the grave of animal sacrifice…rose the magnificent phenomenon of the congregation of priests scattered over the entire world, who offered themselves as sacrifices in the holy service of God.”

What Einhorn recognizes in earnest is that the Judaism we know and love in the modern era would not exist without this particular mashber. We do not have to welcome the destruction to recognize the life that emerged from it.

Centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple, Einhorn was on the front lines when Jews faced another kind of crisis.

This time, the world was changing in ways that offered extraordinary promise. The Enlightenment and the slow advance of Jewish emancipation opened doors that had long been closed. Emancipation meant granting Jews citizenship and civil rights, gradually lifting restrictions on where they could live, study, and work. Jews began to imagine lives their grandparents could scarcely have considered.

But those possibilities also undermined the structures that had organized Jewish life for generations. The community no longer exercised the same authority. The synagogue was competing with a widening world of ideas and opportunities. For some Jews, the distance between the lives they were living and the Judaism they inherited grew harder to bridge.

Some drifted away. Some converted or became fully secular. Some went through the motions though their heart was no longer in it. Some wanted desperately to remain Jewish, but could not find a religious home that spoke to who they were becoming. The speed of change was terrifying  – would any Jews be left in a generation or two? 

Einhorn and the early Reformers understood that this was a crisis. Many lived this crisis themselves, raised in traditional Judaism but ultimately became part of the “revolutionary process of breaking the ghetto’s spiritual and physical walls.” They also knew that the only constant is change – they saw an opportunity to create something desperately needed. They believed Judaism contained the resources to respond to a changing world, and they were willing to change Jewish practice to make that encounter possible.

Sermons in the vernacular; education that incorporated modern knowledge; changes to prayer that allowed people to say what they believed and understand what they were saying; a renewed emphasis on the ethical demands of the prophets.

These changes were contentious. They challenged established authority and deeply held convictions. But for Jews who were losing their connection to religious life, they opened new possibilities for belonging. 

What earlier generations feared might be the end of Judaism became the beginning of the Judaism we practice tonight.

Of course, it is easier to recognize a beginning when you already know what followed.

We know 2000 years later that rabbinic Judaism ultimately flourished; and we know 200 years later that Reform Judaism became the biggest movement in America and has created religious homes for generations of Jews.

But the people inside those moments had no such assurance. They were grieving people, places, and ways of life they loved. They missed the familiar. They felt sadness, anger, and the disorientation of waking up in a world they no longer understood. Though some wanted desperately to restore what had been lost, the future rarely faces the past. 

They argued. They hesitated. They tried things that failed. And they had to begin while they were still grieving, before they felt ready, before they could know whether what they created would endure.

That is where we find ourselves now.

For three years, I have been hearing from you about what keeps you awake. The concerns differ and come from across American political and religious spectrums; but again and again I hear you trying to find your footing in a world that no longer feels familiar. 

I think it’s safe to suggest that we are experiencing not just one mashber – one crisis – but many; and it can be difficult to imagine what will emerge from them.

We feel the angst of American democracy eroding. About the concentration of power, attacks on dissent and truth, the weakening of institutions meant to protect everyone’s rights. 

We feel a similar angst about democracy in Israel, too. About efforts to weaken judicial independence and the rule of law. About whether the promise of a Jewish and democratic state can withstand the pressure being placed upon it by religious and nationalist extremists.

We feel the existential dread of resurgent antisemitism. The rise in recent years has changed how many of us experience Jewish life and forced new anxieties about our safety, our children’s safety, and our place in the country we call home.

We feel the heartbreak of October 7 and its aftermath – still being felt acutely by Israelis. And we feel the enormity of Palestinian suffering in Gaza. We worry about what these years are doing to our people, to our relationships, to our capacity to recognize another person’s pain.

And we feel the grief of displacement within our own communities. Will asking a question cost us a friendship? Will expressing concern be heard as disloyalty? Will someone we love decide there is no longer room for them here?

These fears do not cancel one another out. We can be afraid for our people and disturbed by the actions of our people. We can love America and Israel and fear for their moral and democratic futures. We can need compassion ourselves and remain responsible for extending it. But holding all of these concerns can leave us feeling like we have reached the mashber, and might not have the strength to get to the other side.

I cannot tell you what Jewish life will look like on the other side of this moment. But I can tell you that we are helping shape it.

Our children are learning what Judaism means by watching us. They notice how we respond to fear. How we discuss suffering. Whether our values remain meaningful when living by them becomes difficult.

The possibilities of mashber do not relieve us of responsibility. They make our choices consequential. Something is being born, and our behavior helps determine its character.

Which brings us back inside the ark.

The Talmud imagines those months of the Great Flood through the eyes of Noah’s son Shem. He is asked about life aboard the ark, and Shem describes the relentless work of caring for the animals.

The creatures that ate during the day had to be fed during the day. The creatures that ate at night had to be fed at night. The family worked around the clock, and Shem tells us that his family suffered greatly.

And, we can probably understand that. The world doesn’t stop because we are suffering; and yet, we have responsibilities to our partners, our children, our parents, our jobs. And when we don’t have time to even care for ourselves, it’s easy to make excuses under difficult conditions. We’re grieving. We’re frightened. We’re exhausted. We have no idea what tomorrow will bring. There are times when we need someone else to take a turn feeding the animals. Needing help is no moral failure.

But our fear and uncertainty can often lead to permission: Permission to to procrastinate our responsibilities.  Permission to turn away from suffering. Permission for cynicism. Permission to excuse behavior we would otherwise condemn. Permission to stop asking difficult questions about ourselves because we are so consumed and exhausted by what has been done to us.

We begin to tell ourselves: under these circumstances, what do you expect? But Judaism doesn’t let us off the hook because times are hard. Judaism expects something of us even under these circumstances.

Being wronged does not make everything we do right. Our pain does not erase the pain we cause. The cruelty of others cannot become the standard by which we measure our own behavior.

On Yom Kippur, we confess our sins collectively – al cheit shechatanu – WE missed the mark. We have all been sinned against, but that’s not the focus of today. We examine our actions even when we have good reason to demand that others examine their own.

Our tradition gives us no exemption for a frightening year – a challenging year – a year of uncertainty – a year of displacement.

The rabbis make that clear with their story inside the ark. Noah and his family are suffering, and nevertheless, other lives still depend on them. They have a religious obligation – a moral obligation – to those around them. And so do we. No mashber will ever change that.

In Yotzer Or, we pray: uv’tuvo m’chadeish b’chol yom tamid ma’aseh v’reishit.
                                          In Your goodness You renew creation daily.

Every day we remind ourselves in prayer that our world is still becoming. Our history teaches us that Jewish life is still becoming, too. We have inherited the creativity of generations who faced their own mashber and who became partners with God to renew their worlds. Now we have the opportunity – and the responsibility – to do the same.

We have the responsibility to build communities where difficult questions lead to learning instead of judgment. We have the responsibility to defend our dignity & safety AND insist on the dignity & safety of others. We have the responsibility to oppose cruelty even when doing so makes us uncomfortable. We have the responsibility to give the next generation a Judaism whose moral seriousness makes it worthy of their love.

We cannot yet see everything that might be born from this moment of crisis. And some of us may hear the optimism and hope of renewal and rebirth and think: I want to believe you, rabbi, but I am tired and my heart is broken. I don’t know how much more I have to give.

In a moment, Shahar will sing a song by Hanan Ben Ari called the brokenhearted – Shvurei Lev. Shvurei Lev, coming from the same root as mashber, has taken new meaning in Israel in the wake of October 7. 

“Who will heal my heart when I fall apart?” he sings. “For whom am I longing like a sea that has no shore?”

We hear the desperation of Shem in those words. Water in every direction. No land in sight. Endless responsibilities. Perhaps a desire to give up – or for divine salvation. I hear our ancestors 2000 years ago and 200 years ago wondering if they had the strength to give birth to a new Jewish life. And I hear us, trying to imagine a future from inside our own uncertainty.

The song ends: just tell me who will embrace me and ensure that I will not give up in the end?

The answer is me. I will embrace you and help you not give up. And the answer is you. You will embrace one another and help one another not give up. You will embrace me and help me not give up. We are the community that holds each other up amidst crisis. We are the community that has hard conversations without severing ties. We are the community that holds fast to our values in moments of crisis. We are the community that follows through on those values with action. We are the community that refuses to give up, and finds a way, despite hardship to dream, to create, and to begin anew.

We do not have to wait until we are whole. We do not have to see the shore. We can begin here, in our Ark, caring for one another, and refusing to forget who we are as individuals and who we are as a community. That is our spiritual homework.

May we find the courage to imagine what could be born from this trying moment.

May we have the strength to help it arrive…together.

Gmar Chatimah Tovah!