by Larry Rosenwald

(Note:  I presented a version of this text at John Carroll University in Cleveland on February 27th, 2024, at the kind invitation of Philip Metres, who runs the Peace Justice & Human Rights Program there.  The experience of giving the talk, and the interesting comments and questions that followed it, led me to want to change some things, and I was still making changes when the awful news from February 29th came in, of over a hundred Gazans killed while waiting for a delivery of food and other aid; I make reference to that news late in the talk.)
 
I’m offering these observations in safety, sheltered and far away from the horrible things done by Hamas and the horrible things being done by Israel.  And I can’t imagine that any Israeli or Palestinian is impatiently waiting to hear a pacifist’s perspective on what’s going on, the needs of the hour are so intense.  If I offer that perspective nonetheless, it’s not only because Phil invited me – not the least challenging invitation I’ve ever received, so among the invitations I’m most grateful for – but also because in the world we live in, conducting the war on war feels crucial, and because pacifists who want a world without war need to imagine how they would run it.  (George Orwell wrote that pacifists who could not imagine being in power were not serious.)
           
And also because it is so awful to read of what the Israeli army is doing in Gaza, what Israeli settlers are doing in the West Bank, of what Israeli journalists and ministers of state are saying to dehumanize Gazans in particular and Palestinians in general, to read and hear and to feel isolated, powerless, silent, and because any occasion for speaking out to or speaking with friends or colleagues or just fellow passengers to the grave is so precious, so much a deliverance from the deadening passivity we risk being condemned to.  Thank you, thank you.
 
            Prefatory
            1) “Seek peace and pursue it, ”bakesh shalom v’rodfehu.  I take my title from that verse in psalm 34 because I want to make clear that the pursuit of peace, which I take to be the task of the pacifist – and not just maintaining a preference of peace over war -  is as much a part of Jewish tradition as is the annihilation of Amalek, which has been more in the news.  That is made clear by this verse in particular, because it does something unusual, namely, provide two verbs for one object:  don’t just seek peace, pursue it – zukh sholem un yog zikh nokh im, in Yehoyesh’s Yiddish translation of the verse.  Commentators love doublings, and there’s a passage in the minor Talmudic tractate called perek hashalom, the chapter of peace, that comments on that trait in this verse:

Hezekiah said: Great is peace, for in connection with all other precepts in the Torah it is written, If thou see, etc., If thou meet, If there chance, If thou buildest, [implying,] if a precept comes to your hand, you are bound to perform it; *But if not, you are not bound to perform it. But what is written in connection with peace? Seek peace, and pursue it, [meaning,] seek it in your place and follow it to another place *if your presence can help to bring about peace there.

Do not, that is, make your pursuit of peace conditional, contingent;  pursue it always and everywhere.
 
Another passage from that same tractate:
R. Jose the Galilean said: Great is peace, since even in a time of war one should begin [by attempting to arrange] peace, as it is stated, When thou drawest nigh unto a city to fight against it, then proclaim peace unto it. *Deut. 20, 10.

I’ll repeat that, or paraphrase it.  When you approach a city to make war upon it, whether Sderot or Rafah, even then, especially then, propose peace to it.  Start with that.
 
These aren’t the only pertinent passages in Jewish tradition – there’s a book on the subject, Evelyn Willcock’s Pacifism and the Jews -  but they’re enough to establish the point at issue.
 
            2) Lots of goodhearted people wish there were peace in the Middle East, wish that Hamas had not committed mass murder and would release its hostages, wish that the Israel Defense Forces were not killing and wounding and immiserating so many civilians in Gaza, so many children in particular, that the government of Israel would release all Palestinian political prisoners.  But such wishes are not pacifism.  Pacifism rejects the making of war across the board.  Pacifists do not say, “I’m a pacifist but I support this war”;  people who say that are not pacifists.  Pacifists accept as a constraint on their wishes and schemes that those wishes and schemes will not include the making of war.  Pacifists regard war the way Gandalf regards the One Ring:  whatever you think you can do with it, however fair your visions of what you could accomplish, do not use it, you cannot control it, it will master and betray you.  (Tolkien said of World War II, “they are winning the war with the Ring.”)
 
Pacifism requires a willingness to pay the price of that constraint.  Whatever we wish for as pacifists, we have to figure out how to get without making war.  Maybe we have to accept that some of the things that we wish for we can’t get at all, since it’s only through war that we could get them.  (In the latter part of this talk I’ll be doing my best to imagine how we could get at least some of the things we wish for without war, but I’ll try to be honest about the limitations.)
 
3) As is probably clear, pacifists reject the idea of just war – which was, as pacifists know but others may not, developed in the West by St. Augustine as a means to make it possible for Christians, who were then pacifists, to support the wars of the state.  Pacifists also reject the idea of humane war;  on this see Samuel Moyn’s recent lacerating book Humane.
 
4) As is probably also clear, but is indispensable to say, pacifists reject the movement slogan, “no justice, no peace.” I’ve been at demonstrations where that slogan was chanted, and no doubt I’ve chanted it myself.  But I reject it.  Peace without justice – what scholars in peace studies, following Johan Galtung and Martin Luther King, call negative peace – is worse than peace with justice.  But it is still peace.  In a state of negative peace, if you are a kid you can get up in the morning, have breakfast, go to school, play with your friends. If you are a grownup you can go to work, buy flour for making bread, buy medicine for an illness, find a spare moment to sit with friends in a bar or a tearoom.  And at night you can sleep, there will be no terrifying sounds in the night of bombs or shells or collapsing buildings – ve’lo yeshama od chamas b’artsam, “the sound of violence will no longer be heard in your land.”  That is not nothing.
 
I quote from a theater piece called The Gaza Monologues, narrated by 33 young people in Gaza in 2010:

I dream of having ONE day of safety, I’m sure the world is too busy to remember our situation; six years have passed since we wrote our monologues and we are still under siege … When can we live in peace like the rest of the World?  (https://www.gazamonologues.com)
That is a very modest demand: safety, peace.  Not justice.  But what it demands is a world away from what the speaker has.
 
            5) Pacifisms are of many kinds.  My own opposes war but not all violence, as I learned when I realized, listening to my students, that I could not condemn someone being raped for knifing their rapist.  I am “serious” in Orwell’s sense, i.e., I want to imagine how to win, and also in King’s, i.e., I do not regard my position as sinless. (King’s account is in an essay called “Pilgrimage to Nonviolence.”)  I allow a distinction between war and policing, as will become clear later, and a distinction between soldier and civilian.  But I hold fast to the idea, principle, axiom, blessing, that we are all created b’tselem elohim, in the image of God, our enemies no less than we, soldiers no less than civilians, and I oppose war because it requires us to deny that principle, it in fact exalts that denial.
 
            The War in Gaza
            1) I’ll begin with something that’s predictable but necessary.  A pacifist has to condemn both the Hamas attacks on October 7th and Israel’s war in Gaza, and both condemnations arise from the principle just stated.  No claim that this is what decolonization looks like (in defense of the Hamas attacks), that this is what just war looks like (in defense of Israel’s war) matters more than that principle.  For decolonizers and disciples (and in my view misreaders) of Frantz Fanon on the left, for recolonizers and ethnic cleansers and zealots of all kinds on the right, for all for whom the idealized end justifies the horrific means, these paired condemnations are bland and boring, too even-handed. I myself sometimes distrust even-handedness, it feels weak.  But I hold to it here.
 
            2) The American pacifist Kathy Kelly said that pacifists need to be concrete.  When I read about the war in Gaza, I’m moved by what is concrete and repelled by what is abstract, this even before I discern the argument. Ted Deutch is the CEO of the American Jewish Committee, and said: “A premature cease-fire, without ensuring the elimination of Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, will only prolong that organization’s reign of terror over the people of Gaza, perpetuate its threat to the Israeli citizenry and doom any prospect of a political end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” I don’t agree with his claims;  but even before I get to them I know that the abstractness of his language is veiling what is being done.  Compare this statement by the Haaretz reporter Gideon Levy:  “11,500 children have been killed in Gaza.”  If Ted Deutsch were to say, “I believe that the slaughter of 11,500 children is justified,” I would oppose him – how on earth can that slaughter be justified? - but he would at least be defending what is actually happening.  (That number is out of date;  the current estimate is 13,000.  That number will rise.)  
            3) There are deep desires at work right now, among the militants of Hamas and among the militants of Israel, and deep hopes.  Each group dreams of eliminating the other, and of living in the other’s absence, in a utopia, whether that utopia is Israel sovereign and unchallenged from the river to the sea, or Israel wiped from the face of the earth.  Both Hamas militants and Israeli zealots are utopians, what the historian Jay Winter calls “major utopians.”  Winter distrusts major utopians, among whom are, for him, Stalin and Mao, possessed by what the political theorist Mathias Thaler calls “despotic reveries of social engineering.” So do I.
 
Pacifism, on the other hand, is a minor utopia, with smaller claims, as Winter implies and as Thaler says outright.
 
I remember a talk many years ago by the Israeli scholar Moshe Halbertal, at a moment in the history of Israel-Palestine that then seemed fraught with danger but which now seems idyllic, as pretty much anything would at the present moment, with so many children being killed daily.  At that talk, Halbertal said that for people to make peace, they have to give up their dreams – i.e., the utopias I just mentioned – but that they can then be free of their nightmares.
 
As of the moment, both groups are unwilling to give up their dreams;  they think they can bring them into being.  Peace is for them second-best at best. 
 
       4) (This is the longest section of the talk.)  What does a pacifist – what do I, that is – say should happen now? It’s in some way an unfair question, since it asks pacifists to weigh in at a moment that they would, had they had the power, have done everything possible to avert. Or as the Jewish American journalist Peter Beinart puts it, “it feels a little bit like someone has driven a car into a ditch and then is asking you how to get out of it.”  But it can’t be right simply to refuse to answer, and in any case, presumably you’d want to help the driver get the car out of the ditch regardless of how they got there.  So I’ll answer the question, within the constraints of pacifism – no war – and within the limits of what’s possible.  (Within the limits, but not at some timid, safe distance from the limits, right up against them.)
 
I’ll hold to Beinart’s simile for a while.  The first thing is to get the car out of the ditch. In the present context, that means getting to some sort of ceasefire, however long, however named, and to the release of some hostages.  Towards that end, every strategy and tactic is of value. Successful campaigns against wars, like successful campaigns generally, are various.  Radicals criticize moderates and vice-versa, but in the end both contribute. The campaign against Israel’s war is already as various as any.  Among its modes of action:  letters to American congresspeople, online petitions for ceasefire, municipal resolutions for ceasefire (three of them so far in my home state:  Somerville, Cambridge, Medford, with resolutions moving forward in Amherst, Easthampton, Greenfield, and Northampton), blocking roads, blocking access to the Statue of Liberty (a former student of mine was there), self-immolation (on December 1st, in front of the Israeli consulate in Atlanta and now again on February 25th, in front of the Israeli consulate in Washington, D. C.), support of artists and writers being banned for supporting a ceasefire, refusal to pay taxes that fund American support of the Israeli military, displaying Palestinian flags, voting uncommitted, supporting journalists aiming to provide information to Israeli Jews about what is happening in Gaza.  The South African charge of genocide brought against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
 
(I am aware that most of these measures are focused chiefly on influencing Israel, not at all or nowhere near as much on influencing Hamas, and that that cannot be right;  a ceasefire requires two parties, Hamas was party to the first ceasefire and will be party to any ceasefire to come, it has agency.  Whatever means there are of influencing it towards a ceasefire and the release of its hostages seem to me of value.  But I do not know what they might be, not myself having any connection here that I might draw on to exercise influence, no legislator to vote for or campaign against, no addressee to whom to direct a letter.  That is my limitation.  Surely others could do more.)
 
Also of value are the ongoing negotiations themselves and the people taking part in them, the process and not only the result.  Those people are citizens of minor utopias;  they are diplomats by vocation or by function, who leave everyone unsatisfied but also undead. (Pacifists focused on non-direct action often disparage diplomats and governments, but they too have work to do.  Pacifists have much in common with diplomats, actually, though neither group consistently recognizes this.)
 
When I read stories about negotiations between Israel and Hamas - not direct negotiations, to be sure, indirect at several removes, with the US and Qatar and Egypt and Israel and Hamas all involved, somehow communicating - I note that both Israel and Hamas are being described as rational entities.  The sentences of the accounts somewhat resemble sentences describing unions and management during a strike.  “The two sides are far apart,” “negotiations continue,” “Hamas stated its demands,” “Israel stated its demands,” “there is agreement on some matters but other matters remain unresolved” etc.  Such sentences allow for a ceasefire;  they may not lead to one, but they could.  Sentences about Israelis as Nazis, or about Hamas as worse than the Nazis, whatever their truth value, cannot.  Who negotiates with Nazis? 
 
Nor are such sentences only sentences;  in such negotiations, the two parties are behaving like rational entities, having meetings, using words (“use your words,” we say to children), delaying, compromising or not compromising.  And should there be a ceasefire, as there was a while back,  and may there be one again, there will be, during that ceasefire, some releasing of hostages, some release of prisoners, some holding to agreements and no doubt some failing to hold to agreements, and all of that behavior will be the behavior of non-monstrous entities, who can go on negotiating ceasefires until one of the ceasefires lasts.
 
A friend of mine said to me, “Okay, ceasefire, but what next?”  A fair question.  In one sense an easy question:  end the Occupation, that being in my judgment the underlying cause of conflict.  (I went to a Women in Black demonstration in Jerusalem, in 1992.  All the women held identical small signs saying dai l’kibush, stop the Occupation.  It was true then, it is true now.)
 
In another sense, a tragically hard question.  No Israeli government in the foreseeable future will do anything of the kind.  No Israeli government will do even the smaller, more intermediate things Peter Beinart thoughtfully sets out in the piece I borrowed the car-in-a-ditch simile from (Beinart admits as much):  treat the murderous agents like criminals (“make law, not war,” as James Carroll wrote shortly after the attacks of September 11th, and no one did that either), release non-Hamas Palestinian prisoners, help put on Palestinian elections, accept the 1967 borderlines as the basis for a political settlement, re-admit Hamas to Palestinian political life if it observes a ceasefire and agrees to abide by decisions made by Palestinians in referendums. Whatever steps can be taken now are smaller still, more gradual and indirect and slow.
 
But getting to a ceasefire is not just okay.  I am writing this sentence  one day after the day on which, so far as I can tell, the Israeli army fired on a group of hungry Gazans trying to get their hands on food from some trucks.  To be fair, the army spokesman called the group “a mob,” said the Gazans died in stampedes, said “this has nothing to do with Israel.” A Gazan witness said, “we went to get flour. The Israeli army shot at us.”  An Al Jazeera reporter named Ismail al-Ghoul said that “after opening fire, Israeli tanks advanced and ran over many of the dead and injured bodies.”  (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/29/dozens-killed-injured-by-israeli-fire-in-gaza-while-collecting-food-aid?s=08) 
 
I admit the uncertainty.  But I don’t in some way care.  I’m with the Israeli journalist Dalia Scheindlin, who wrote, “As of this writing, at least 112 Palestinians are dead, over 700 wounded. Social media can battle out which side killed how many, but I know the truth: the war killed all of them.  It has to stop.”
 
It has to stop, and ceasefire, being at least a partial stoppage, would be not just okay but a miracle.

Two final points and I’ll be done.
 
First:  I’m old enough, and you are not, to have been in the former East Germany and the former Czechoslovakia, when the latter was a repressive Communist state and the latter a state under repressive Russian control.  Those facts seemed immutable in 1970, when I was in East Germany, and in 1972, when I was in Czechoslovakia.  But the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, and in that same year Václav Havel became the Czechoslovakian President. (My great aunt Hana Heitlingerova was his Hebrew translator, by the way).  What we think is immutable might not be.
And second, some lines by Tracy Smith, from a poem called “Everybody’s Autobiography,” which I came across a week ago, and I’ll let them be my last word:

  In a dream, my children   
  Glisten inside raindrops, or teardrops.  
  Like strangers, like seeds of children.   
  I will only be allowed to claim them  
  If I consent to love everyone’s children. 

By R Feynman

by Aliza Arzt

I’m not really a davenner.  That may sound strange to those who see me at the Havurah every Shabbat and holiday, but it’s true. When you see someone at a service with a neutral or pleasant expression on their face, there’s really no way to know what they’re thinking and feeling inside.  Why do I call myself a reluctant davenner?  I find that I have a very short attention span for attending to prayer (the Hebrew term for this attention is “kavanah” which means literally “direction” but also “intention”).  My father, who was a pulpit Rabbi for 40 years, and who sat up in front of everyone every Shabbat, also told me he had a similarly short attention span for prayer.  In addition to the fact that, to put it crassly, he was paid to sit up there each week, I deduce from other things he told me that he did feel comforted and comfortable with the weekly ebb and flow of the service, though I have no idea what he was thinking about during that 3 hour span.
 
For the past two years, I have been davenning every weekday morning with a synagogue in Pennsylvania through Zoom.  My husband had been davenning with them every day since the pandemic lockdown began and would periodically roust me out of bed when they needed a minyan or a leyner.  When my father died in 2022, the service was right there in the living room, so how could I not go?  At the time of my mother’s death, more than 20 years ago, I had small children at home and it wasn’t feasible to attend a service every day so I settled for attending every Havurah service that would include a kaddish.  The 11 months I spent saying Kaddish for my father 7 days a week on Zoom was the first time I had davenned daily since I was in my 20’s.
 
Although I didn’t begrudge my father a “proper” kaddish at all, I counted down the months:  7 more months to say kaddish, 6 months, 5 months . . . I thought at first that when my kaddish ended I’d revert to the occasional minyan-making role.  Then I thought I’d come a few times a week.  My kaddish ended 14 months ago and I continue to attend morning minyan every day.  Why?  In all honesty I can’t say that it’s because I’ve found new meaning and pleasure in davenning.  I still have a short attention span and I still spend a certain amount of the time wishing I were somewhere else.  Full disclosure:  there are several periods of extended silent reading during the service that I spend playing “Words with Friends” on my phone (out of camera range).  Here are my reasons for attending (not in order of importance):  going to 8:00 am davenning means that I’m dressed and ready for the day by 8:45, whereas otherwise I’d be lounging around in bed until you don’t want to know when.  I’m supporting a community of very nice people by making a minyan, allowing others to say kaddish and by leyning for them most of the time.  I’m doing something that our tradition encourages, something that takes little effort and must be doing me some good.  How can I turn down going to a service that’s right in my living room?  I’ve been able to gradually infiltrate the service I attend with some of the liturgical changes that we’ve made at the Havurah. 
 
Surprisingly, I’ve found the most compelling part of the service to be the silent weekday Amidah.  The weekday Amidah is called “Shemoneh Esreh”, which means “18” and consists of 19 blessings (we just don’t know when to stop, do we?).  What I like about the Amidah is that the blessings are asking for things that are very important to me, and very lacking in today’s world: good health, a safe natural environment, return to an ethical government, an end to evil actions.  I’ve found it to be a good antidote to what I read in the newspaper every day.  While there are some things I can do in a very limited way to make the world better, I’m somehow comforted and energized by the activity of asking through prayer for the world situation to become more just and equitable, not in some abstract way, but through specific actions: “Continue to grant us through Your lovingkindness, wisdom, knowledge and understanding . . . bring us closer, our Source, to worshiping you. Return us to You with full repentance . . . Heal us, God, and we will be healed …  provide complete healing to all our afflictions . . . sound the great Shofar to liberate us . . . return to us our judges of yore and our ancient advisors. Remove from us anguish and despair. Dwell with us, God, alone in lovingkindness and mercy.  Make us righteous through just law.”
 
What I’ve realized is that even if I have a pretty low tolerance for extended focus on prayer, the value of helping a community meet its obligations, and saying words every day that express hope for a better world, far outweighs whatever lack of enthusiasm I may have with the process.  There are some obvious lessons one can draw from this in regards to supporting the Havurat Shalom community, that I will leave you to come up with for yourselves.

by Aaron Brandes

In the beginning God separated light from darkness and stored away the darkness.
A diffuse light spread through the universe. God saw that the universe though, no longer chaotic, was too undifferentiated. God concentrated the light in the sun, the stars and the moon, and restored enough darkness to make the heavenly bodies stand out. The rest of the darkness was kept in reserve for later use.

Pharoah was a god to the Egyptians, who refused to let the Israelites go. Some of the plagues God sent were attacks on Egyptian gods. For the first plague, God turned the water of the Nile into blood.  This was an assault on the god Hapi, an incarnation of the Nile’s life force, and Osiris the god of the underworld, a god of regeneration and rebirth also associated with the Nile. After seven more plagues that demonstrated God’s control over nature it was time for the ninth plague - darkness. This thick daytime darkness annihilated the sun, a god to the Egyptians, the god Aten proclaimed by the pharaoh Akhenaten to be the only God.

Hashem said to Moses: “stretch out your hand toward the heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt” (Exod. 10:21).  R. Nehemiah (midrash Tanchuma, Bo 2) argued that it ascended from the darkness of Gehonim, the netherworld, as it is stated: “A land of thick darkness, as darkness itself, a land of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness” (Job 10:22). This midrash holds that Hashem drew from remaining darkness that had been locked up at the beginning of creation.

This was a pure concentrated darkness. At first Egyptians perceived what might have been an ordinary darkness, but when they lit a candle they could see nothing (Nachmanides). Even outdoors they couldn’t see anything.  Then movement became difficult. Those who were standing could not sit down and those who were sitting could not stand up (Midrash Rabbah). Total darkness was new and frightening. At night there was usually enough light from the stars and the moon to perceive the outline of nearby objects. They called to one another in their plight, but the darkness thickened, and no sounds reached their ears. They wondered if this was dream -  their legs couldn’t walk, there was no way home. But real nightmares end when most unbearable, and this experience seemed endless.

Only thoughts flowed. Perhaps this was a punishment, like the preceding plagues. If only Pharoah had let the Hebrews go. Some people bargained with their gods, then in desperation called on the unknown Hebrew God. Taskmasters vowed to drop their whips if they were granted the freedom to walk in light again. Egyptians who stood by when Hebrew boys were thrown into rivers, prayed for an end to their parents’ pain. This was a collective decision to change, we call it tshuvah. They dedicated themselves to act differently, accept Hebrews as fellow human beings who should not be enslaved.

What happened next requires a brief digression on quantum mechanics. The standard interpretation of quantum mechanics holds that just before the box holding Schrodinger's cat is opened there exists a superposition of an alive cat and a dead cat, and that opening the box forces it to be dead or alive. But the “many worlds” interpretation holds that when the box is opened the universe splits in two. In one universe the cat is dead, in another universe the cat is alive. In this midrash the everyday Egyptian people all do tshuvah, but then there is a split with Pharaoh fully repentant in one universe, while in the other universe as God slowly puts the darkness back into its box Pharaoh’s resolve to change weakens and he does not repent. In this latter universe God removes all the darkness but hardens Pharaoh’s heart. Because the people repented, the tenth plague brings only the death of Pharoah’s son. In the first universe the repentance of Pharoah and the Egyptian people make darkness the final plague. The Israelites leave unpursued carrying goods freely bestowed as reparations for their enslavement.

Sadly, in our universe outside the midrash “in the middle of the night יהוה struck down all the [male] first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sat on the throne to the first-born of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the first-born of the cattle.” (Exodos 12:29).  In this universe Pharaoh pursued the Israelites, his army drowned and Israel was ultimately exiled. Perhaps someday, through the power of tshuvah and tikkun olam, we draw we can draw closer to that universe in which the thick darkness had true healing power.

by Larry Rosenwald

This is a story about a scroll, a scroll containing Yehoyesh’s Yiddish translation of the book of Esther, calligraphed by his daughter Evelyn, purchased by me, and in the end, once we’ve worked out insurance and storage questions, to be given by me to the Hav.
 
Here’s what happened.  For some years now, on Purim at the Hav, I’ve been performing Yehoyesh’s translation of chapter 7 of the book of Esther, in a highly theatrical, exuberantly over-acted way, influenced by, though I think also independent of, Hav alum Dovid Roskies’s stunning recitation, in multiple voices and accents, of the whole megile, which can be found here.  Which is why fellow Hav member Todd Kaplan told me he’d come across the Esther scroll on Craig’s List, and maybe I should take a look.  And I did, and though I’m inclined these days to downsize rather than accumulate, I wrote the seller and said I’d like to buy the scroll.
 
Various events intervened between that moment and the moment of acquisition, but finally, on January 3rd, I met the seller outside a Roslindale coffee shop.  He had brought the scroll in a featureless brown paper bag, and had asked to be paid in cash, which made everything feel eerie, as if I were committing a crime.  I took the scroll out, had a look, saw that it was all there (and beautiful), paid the price.
 
It might have ended there, but it was an anomalously warm day, and the seller and I got to talking.  How had he come by the scroll, I asked?  He said it had been his father’s, and that he knew no more than that.  His father and mother had spoken Yiddish to each other and to their parents, but not – this is a common Jewish American story – to their children. So he had not grown up with Yiddish, though his high school German had sometimes helped him speak with his grandparents.  He said he wanted the scroll to go to a good recipient – “what there is shall go to them who are good for it,” as they say in Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle -  and I told him I thought I was indeed a good recipient, and that his finding me, or Todd’s finding him and making the shidukh, or both, were bashert, destined, fated.  Then he gave me two Yiddish theater bills as a gift, and headed off, and I headed into the coffee shop.  A very nice man.
 
That might have been the end, but there’s this great Facebook page for Yiddishists, called yidforsh, and I asked there whether people knew things about the scroll.  And of course they did! – pointing me to, among other places a terrific article in In geveb by Shifra Epstein, in which we read the following:
 
The Yehoash megile is completely unique in the history of megillot published in the United States; it is the only known megile scroll printed in Yiddish. The Yiddish megile follows the traditional design of a Hebrew illuminated scroll. Each of the book’s ten chapters begins with an enlarged letter set within an embellished rectangular frame. Each page is composed of two columns, with forty-two lines per column, according to the traditional scribal layout required for the writing of a Torah scroll. The scroll was also reproduced in printed book form in 1936.

I bought a copy of the megile scroll printed above in early 1978 from Zosa Szajkowski, YIVO’s archivist at the time,11 while conducting research for an exhibition at the YIVO archives: Purim: The Face and the Mask. In 1979 the exhibit, including the Yehoash megile, went up. Images of the scroll were also reproduced in the exhibition catalogue. After the exhibit was dismantled, I donated the megile to the Yeshiva University Museum, where it is currently part of the museum collection. The megile can also be found in the collection of the Jewish Theological Library and at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem.
 
And there’s a fine article by Shulamith Berger on the Yeshiva University website, from which we learn that:
 
"Although the Yiddish megilah is printed on paper, and thus not kosher for ritual use on Purim, the library’s copy has creases in it, as if it had been folded in the traditional manner.  Before the megilah is read in the synagogue on Purim, the scroll is folded to resemble a letter,  in recognition of the  igeret, the letter,  which Esther and Mordecai sent to the Jews about commemorating Purim.   Perhaps this Yiddish megilah served as a “people’s megilah,” a way for someone to participate in the experience of using a scroll while enjoying the mellifluous modern Yiddish translation rendered in spare, handsome lettering, evocative of the spirit of centuries of Jewish history and languages."
 
We are in good company, with the Yeshiva museum, the Jewish Theological Library, the National Library of Israel.  And there are stories about the scroll not yet told, having to do with the daughter who did the calligraphy, the gendered character of the scroll, the experiences women have had, and are now having, of that holiday and of this translation.  Not stories I can tell at the moment, but stories worth unearthing.
 
But I didn’t buy the scroll as something to classify and study and preserve, though those are fine things to do.  I bought it because I hoped that at some point, in what I trust will be the long history of Havurat Shalom, someone will come along who would like to carry on this tradition, which was David Roskies before it was mine, and which will, I hope be someone else’s when it’s mine no longer.

by Aliza Arzt

At Havurat Shalom, we often refer to ourselves as “The Havurah” (like when New Yorkers call their little 5-borough town “The City”).  After all, what other Havurah is around?  This way of thinking went out the window with the recent National Havurah Committee (NHC) New England Retreat which took place at Camp Ramah (Palmer, MA) December 15-17, 2023.  In truth, not everyone who attends this retreat belongs to a Havurah.  However, most of the people there considered themselves ideologically connected to the lay-led, alternative, study and prayer based Havurah movement.
 
The NHC New England Retreat has been taking place since 1986 or 1987 and I’ve attended nearly all of them.  We went to our first New England Retreat with our then 6 month old daughter and a huge carload of baby supplies.  In subsequent years we’ve traveled to the retreat with a growing family, with young teens who assisted with child care and ultimately by ourselves.  This year was especially meaningful since it was the first New England Retreat since 2019, due to the pandemic.  Many of the attendees were old-timers who have been coming for some 30 years, but we were pleased to include a number of younger people who not only attended, but also taught some of the classes. 
 
To my mind, what makes the retreat so wonderful is the relaxed atmosphere of the organizers and the participants as we study, pray and eat our way from Shabbat through Sunday at noon.  No activity is mandatory.  The environment is rustic (as are some of the beds!) and the kitchen staff does an amazing job of providing food which is tasty and includes vegetarian and gluten-free options.  There is an unusual number of study slots for a weekend retreat.  Two sessions on Friday night, two on Shabbat afternoon, one Saturday evening and one on Sunday morning add up to 6 engaging classes with a choice of 3-4 classes to attend per session.  A sampler of this year’s classes includes: “Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers): The Big Picture”, “Mother, Queen, Wife, Judge: The Severn Prophetesses of the Torah”, “What happens when you Die?”, “Yiddish Pulp Fiction (“Sound”): Guilty Pleasures from the Archives”, “Bible Stories you didn’t learn in Sunday School”, “Kissing in the Synagogue”.
 
Saturday night featured a “Shuk” (“marketplace”) where artists and authors could display their wares, and a talent show which was expertly curated by Havurat Shalom member Josh Shalem Schreiber, who led music events as well.
 
Since the majority of the 50 or so attendees had been coming to the annual retreat for many years and knew each other well, there was a concern that it might be difficult for a newcomer to break in. Not so!  One friend of mine who has never been to a NHC Havurah retreat told me she’d had a fantastic time.  Attendees are open to meeting new people and engaging in conversation about everything from their personal stories, to the class they attended and their hopes for the future.
 
My only regret about the weekend is that so few Havurat Shalom members choose to attend. I’m hoping that this article encourages more people to consider attending the NHC Havurah retreat in December 2024.

By R Feynman

Last month, I led the first of what it seems will become a series of “social hour” type events for members of the greater Hav community. 

A key part of the Hav is the community and the strong connections built within it. Since COVID, I’ve felt a struggle to build strong connections with anybody, especially as a disabled person with a respiratory illness. I was lucky enough to find the Hav well before the pandemic, but I only became a full member in the last year. I realized that while I know a good number of the people who go to davening on Saturday mornings, there’s lots of Hav folks who I just haven’t overlapped much with. We’re also moving into winter, when Hav services are split between in-person and Zoom participation, and it feels harder to maintain organic connections when half of the participants are behind a screen and the other half aren’t. 

We were discussing this issue in a meeting of the Membership committee, and I realized that I wanted to help solve it. The solution had to be on Zoom, so all the Zoom-only people could make it. It couldn’t be Shabbos related, so that shomer Shabbos people could attend. I didn’t want to make it something tightly focused on a specific topic, because then we’d learn more about the topic than one another. I also wanted to create the opportunity for small groups to break off, the way that schmoozing happens naturally after services, rather than maintaining one large conversation. I wound up creating an agenda that balanced all of these needs, seemed fun, and was adaptable whether we got 3 people or 30. 

The meeting started well! We had about 25 attendees; some who had been going to the Hav for several decades, someone whose first Hav event had been services the day before, and everything in between. We went around and did quick introductions, but then as is always the way, we had some tech issues! My plan for breakout groups was foiled by not having enabled them beforehand. Thankfully, while I was flustered, somebody (Bev?) recommended we all just do one of the activities together, and do the breakouts another time. 

The activity we did was “show us an object that represents something you’re proud of, or has a good story behind it.” I didn’t have a strong vision for what that might mean, and I’m glad I left it open. We saw family photos, kids’ art, ketubot, family heirlooms, important books, fiber crafts (including a huge quilt!), and a crested gecko. I feel like I learned a lot about everyone who shared - both the people I’ve spoken with a lot, and the people I’d never met. I certainly came away feeling like I’d have something to chat about with everyone who attended, and I hope everyone else did as well. 

SInce the last one was a success, we’re doing it again. Join us on Saturday, 12/9 at 6 pm for another super cool and fun community building hour! Expect it to last about an hour. It’ll be on a differen Zoom link than usual - please email [email protected] to get the Zoom link.

This time we will have a (loose) Hanukkah theme. We’ll start with lighting Hanukkah candles and doing introductions, and then move into a series of breakout groups to facilitate smaller conversations, which will probably follow the intended format for the last meeting.

If you attended the last one and have feedback, or if anyone has ideas about the future of these community-building sessions, please let me know at [email protected]

by Ruth Abrams

by Larry Rosenwald

I was, as often, abundantly involved in our services (leading, leyning), and as often found them deeply moving and beautiful.  I’m glad I was there for the ones I was there for, and sorry that other commitments, and my twenty miles’ distance from Somerville, made it impossible for me to be there for the others. 
           
But in a way that’s new for me, and that I’m trying to figure out, the experiences I was having at the services weren’t really about doing teshuvah, though that’s of course what we were all talking about, and what the chagim are about; nor were they – this might be going too far, but only a bit too far – really about my own moral conduct, which I have other and ongoing ways of thinking about and trying to change and purify.  (In particular I’d say that the traditional models for asking forgiveness and being granted forgiveness are remote from my own lived and shared experience.) 
           
What the experiences had to do with was rather the joys of community, in several forms.  First and foremost, there was the joy of singing in community, the uplift and almost out-of-body intensity that singing in community offers (that’s in fact what it feels like, my voice emerging from my body but freed from it, up there in the hills and the common air), the way that in such singing, deeply centered as I am in the details of texts, the texts almost cease to matter, and the tunes float free.  There’s the joy of seeing people I cherish but see only seldom, once or twice a year, maybe only during the chagim, which isn’t often enough but also is, and I’m reminded that what you say in Yiddish to people you haven’t seen for a while is sholem aleykhem, “peace be upon you,” and the answer is aleykhem sholem, “upon you be peace,” and that feels right.  There’s the, inextricable from the sorrow, of feeling close to people during yizkor, as they name the dead they are remembering, and we feel the presence of all of them. There’s the joy of the radiant light illuminating us in the tents, at Kol Nidre and Ne’ilah, the light making it possible to see the machzor but having its own independent vibrancy, this especially when one’s outside the tents, on one’s way in, seeing those already in the light glowing there.  There is the way in which all these feelings and experiences contribute to a sense that we belong together.
           
(There are of course more solitary experiences:  the feeling of prostrating myself on cold stone, the feeling of so many beautiful Hebrew words in my mouth.  There are of course less joyful experiences:  the cold, the rain, the unease about mistakes in Hebrew pronunciation, the occasional and inevitable moments of loss of kavanah.  We’re all human beings, after all.)
           
I said at the beginning that these intense, buoying experiences didn’t have to do with teshuvah, and that’s in most ways true.  In another way, though, it’s false.  Doing teshuvah requires some buoyancy in the one doing it, some trust, some hope.  These experiences of community nurture and stimulate those capacities.  At the end of the davening, when the shofar is blown, I’ve had those capacities stimulated.  What I do with them is up to me, of course, and whatever I do I’ll have to do within the moral frameworks that pertain to me and not that of the vidui.  But I’ll be better able to do whatever I do because of what I experienced during the davening. 

Nakhmen of Bratislav wrote, in a passage I quoted during Musaf on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, “you who give joy to the broken spirit, /help me to rejoice –/ for alone I am very low.”  He was appealing to the riboyne shel oylem, the teacher of the universe, but his words make sense in the context of my experiences.  Alone I am very low, in community I can rise.