Sacred Scrolls, and Sabbatical

In our Jewish tradition, we have a mechanism -- a "spiritual technology," if you will -- for remembering the events of our people's past. All of us are familiar with the most prominent example, as we just celebrated Passover, where we recounted the Exodus from Egypt at seder tables everywhere. The Exodus story is also encoded in our weekly practice (e.g. the words "zeicher liytziyat mitzrayim" in Friday night kiddush) and in our daily liturgy (with shirat hayam, mi chamocha, and more). Other important historical memories, too, find their way into our liturgy throughout the year. If you are familiar with the Ten Martyrs of Roman times, it may well be because you've heard the liturgical poem Eleh Ezkerah (the heart of the Martyrology section of prayer) recited on Yom Kippur. The destruction of the Second Temple lies at the heart not only of our Tisha B'Av observance, but also in a set of fast days sprinkled throughout the year. We recall how the biblical villain Amalek attacked our Israelite ancestors through a special Torah reading on the Shabbat before Purim, when we also connect the events of ancient Persia through our reading of Megillat Esther. And, as Rabbi David Golinkin of the Schechter Institutes in Jerusalem points out, although there are countless historical, scholarly books about the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, because that event hasn't become embedded liturgically in our ritual, it is relatively less known.

This question of Jewish national memory and how we mark time liturgically has been at the forefront of my mind this week. As I write, we find ourselves on the Jewish calendar located 15 days (two weeks and one day) into the counting of the Omer, book-ended by two contemporary holidays: Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) this past Tuesday, and Yom HaZikaron (Israel's Memorial Day for fallen soldiers) and Yom HaAtzmaut (Israeli Independence Day) this coming Monday night/Tuesday and Tuesday night/Wednesday respectively. These holidays feel like an especially big deal this year because the numbers are round: it's been exactly 80 years since the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and 75 years since the founding of the State of Israel.

On Tuesday of this week, I happened to wake up to an email from the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem, and I quickly hopped on an early-morning Zoom call. (I regret that I hadn't paid enough attention to this event in advance to share it with the Kavana community; I will endeavor to do so in coming years!) This online event was an international reading of a relatively new text: Megillat HaShoah (the Scroll of the Holocaust). As Professor Golinkin explained in an interview (click here to listen), this new scroll was initially the suggestion of a Holocaust survivor named Alex Eisen in 1999 (someone who lived through seven labor camps during the war). Eisen knew that he and his generation would not live forever to tell the story of his experiences, and he wanted to record the Holocaust not just through history books, but also in living, liturgical Jewish memory.

In response to this suggestion, the Schechter Institute commissioned now-retired Professor Avigdor Shinan -- an expert in Jewish literature, midrash and aggadah -- to compose a new liturgical text for Yom HaShoah. Shinan settled on a six-chapter scroll, in memory of the 6 million Jewish victims, with each chapter focusing on a different major aspects of the Holocaust: 1) historical antisemitism & Nazi's plan to destroy Jewish people, 2) the Warsaw Ghetto, 3) the Nazi labor camp, 4) the destruction of Jews in Auschwitz, 5) an elegy (in the style of Tisha B'Av) eulogizing the 6 million, and 6) the survivors and rebirth of the State of Israel. On Tuesday's zoom call -- the International Reading of Megillat HaShoah -- I heard Shinan's text read by readers from all over the world in a multiplicity of languages (Hebrew, English, Spanish, Yiddish, and Ukrainian this year). I hope that this online reading, which came to be during/because of the Covid shut-down in spring 2020, will remain a tradition into the future. With its international audience, this virtual meeting felt like it symbolically united the entire Jewish people to recall the horrors that transpired in Europe some eight decades ago, in a sacred liturgical format. To read the powerful text of Megillat HaShoah yourself, in the English-Hebrew version (something I highly recommend), click here.

Next week, as I said above, we will also mark Israel's Memorial Day followed by its 75th birthday. For Yom HaZikaron, Kavana is once again co-sponsoring a Joint Memorial Service which brings together Israelis and Palestinians (see below for more details). 

For many communities, a straightforward celebration (falafel and Israeli folk dancing? a 75th birthday cake?) might feel appropriate for Yom HaAtzmaut, Israel's Independence Day. But, as I've shared in past weeks, Israel's future as a democracy hangs in the balance right now. Locally, members of the Israeli expat community here in the Puget Sound region have been gathering weekly to rally in favor of democracy, coordinating their messages and content to match the flavor of the large-scale protests that have been happening every Saturday night over the past several months in the streets of every major Israeli city. 

As members of this Israeli pro-democracy group (which calls itself "UnXeptable") have come together locally and discussed what would constitute a meaningful Yom HaAtzmaut observance for the Seattle area this year, they have settled on a celebration that features not only Israeli food and dancing (although yes, those!), but also a reading/study of Megillat HaAtzmaut, Israel's Declaration (literally "Scroll") of Independence, proclaimed by David Ben Gurion on May 14, 1948 (5 Iyar 5708) -- click here to read this text for yourself. Like the annual reading of the new Megillat HaShoah described above, I believe that an annual reading of Megillat HaAtzmaut could serve an almost liturgical function, recentering Jewish people everywhere on the ideals with which the State of Israel was founded. I hope that some Kavana folks will be able to attend this gathering (see below for details -- Congregation Kol Ami is hosting in Kirkland), and that moving forward, we will be able to institute a new tradition in our community of reading this sacred scroll each Yom HaAtzmaut.

Lastly, shifting topics a bit, I also want to share the news with the broader Kavana community that I will be taking a three-month sabbatical during the months of May, June and July. This is a plan that's been in the works for a number of years. Kavana will be turning 17 this summer, and this will be my first extended time off (with the exception of parental leave many years ago... but trust me, that wasn't really down time!). ;-) The Kavana board agreed to this sabbatical at my last contract renewal point, several years ago, and this year -- now that we have hired new staff members, including a second rabbi -- it finally felt realistic to schedule this time off. I am deeply grateful to the Kavana board and to our partner community for the support to do this, and to my fellow staff members for making this time off a reality.

The idea of a sabbatical has its origin in the Torah, of course, and right now, there is also a movement underway in the nonprofit sector to encourage sabbaticals in order to reduce burnout, retain talent, and spark new ideas. Back in the fall, I was even awarded a sabbatical grant from a new group called R&R, which wants to promote the value of sabbaticals in the Jewish world (and indeed, assuming all goes well, it is my intention to implement a new sabbatical policy for all of Kavana's full-time staff upon my return). I plan to spend these three months of down-time recharging my own batteries... rekindling relationships with old friends, spending time with family, taking some hikes, reading for fun, and traveling to a few places I've never been before. 

Returning to the framework of liturgy for a moment, I have purposefully scheduled my three sabbatical months for a quieter time of the Jewish year. I will depart soon after Yom HaAtzmaut, in the middle of the Omer period, and I plan to return to the office in early August, soon after Tisha B'Av but well in advance of the month of Elul and the Jewish New Year that follows. In my absence, the rest of the Kavana staff will be pitching in for coverage, especially Liz Thompson, who will serve as Interim Executive Director, and Rabbi Jay LeVine, who can field all rabbinic and pastoral questions. I look forward to returning refreshed in August, and to being able to share what I have gleaned from my sabbatical time with you all then.

Wishing you all a Shabbat Shalom, in this week that is so saturated in Jewish memory,

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum