We just landed in Connecticut. We are on the way to a Brit.
Our children had a baby boy a week ago, and we are blessed to attend the occasion.
I was struck by the confluence of events.
This Shabbat we will read of the very first Brit that took place when Gd commanded Abraham to circumcise himself
Now our grandchild will follow in those same footsteps as his great grandfather Abraham, participating in a rite of passage that is 4,000 years old.
Our patriarch Abraham had to undergo 10 challenges or tests.
These tests were designed to set Abraham up for success.
In Hebrew a test is called a nisayon.
It’s built upon the word nes.
A nes is a miracle.
A nes is also a flag.
It means that there is something to be noted in that spot, something quite miraculous.
You plant a flag to recognize the ownership of a place.
A nisayon, a challenge, highlights the greatness implanted in a person. It recognizes there is something deep and special that has now come to light.
The nisayon, the test, shines a light on an inner facet of the individual that has heretofore been buried, unexplored.
It gives a whole new context to the idea of a challenge.
We are creatures of comfort.
If you ask someone if they would like to go out of their comfort zone with any type of challenge the response is often
“I’m good”!
But what of all those inner strengths that lie beneath the surface, waiting to be mined and brought to light. Those strengths can actually change a person and in turn change the world.
I often think of the amazing institution called Shalva, located in Jerusalem.
Shalva is a treasure. It is a national gem which supports every family in Israel, be they Jewish, Christian or Muslim, who have a child with special needs.
It was borne of tragedy. A healthy toddler was given a tainted vaccination which left the child deaf, mute and blind. Rather than giving in to despair, his parents began to provide respite care to other families in a similar position. They did this in their own home.
Their desire to help families who were struggling with special needs, as they were, inspired them to create Shalva. This incredible organization is a beacon of light and hope to countless families in Israel.
It was a stop on the Lech Lecha journey of this family.
Lech Lecha means go for yourself.

When one of my children was about 4 years old I made a drastic decision. I agreed to participate in a round robin playgroup for her and four of her adorable friends.
Once a week it was my turn to educate, entertain and watch this little group.
I gained a new found appreciation for preschool teachers!
One of the hardest parts of the job was creating an age appropriate arts and crafts project for my day of the week.
I started out strong.
There were paper Shofars and honey dishes. Then we made Sukkah decorations and Simchat Torah flags.
But when the holidays were over I was stuck.
The month after the holidays is called the month of Cheshvan and it has not one holiday in it!!
What would be the inspiration for my project?
I called my dear friend, the inimitable Morah Dena, educator extraordinaire, in a panic.
She had a solution for me.
Since Cheshvan is holiday less, we can focus on the fact that it’s the month that begins the rainy season. It’s got the portion of Noah that talks about the flood and the rains coming down. So she suggested we make a Cheshvan Sunshine umbrella.
(Instructions available for those who are interested)
The Kotzker Rebbe teaches us that every month has its specific energy, fueled by the holiday it contains and the mitzvot which accompany it.
But if this month has no holiday, what energy can we tap into?
Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi, acclaimed Torah teacher in Israel, teaches that the month of Cheshvan has the energy of “knowing what to do, when we don’t know what to do”
We are all facing challenges and conundrums in our daily lives.
And often we may not know what to do.
How do we move forward when we don’t know what to do?
One of the solutions is to tune into our souls. Our body is very needy and very loud. It makes many demands and we need to placate it. But the body is here to house the Neshama. And when we can quiet the body and listen to the voice of our Neshama it will guide us to the proper response.
Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning, taught this concept in a powerful teaching.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to CHOOSE our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
The challenges that come our way create the opportunity for our personal growth.
This week’s Torah portion is called Noah, and it chronicles the story of the destruction of a decaying world and the ark that Noah built to save his family and the creatures of the planet.

In these times which have held so much darkness, I am humbled and very deeply grateful to share a spot of light.
Our youngest son got engaged recently.
I wanted to share this news with you my dear friends and pray there will be many many more joyous occasions and uplifting news we can share.
We certainly need it.
I shared with my daughter that in light of all the events that are transpiring around us, in Israel and here in America, that I resolve to be very easy going about the upcoming nuptials and go with the flow regarding what the future in laws would like.
(Praying this does not go the way of best intentions and resolutions.)
But there is one thing that I would really love.
(See it didn’t last long, like barely a minute!)
I told my daughter that I would really, really love a family picture.
All of us in one frame.
Just for a moment.
My daughter kindly validated my wish, and then shared a beautiful thought which I would like to share with you.
Rabbi Mattisyahu Solomon, Torah leader of this generation addressed the issue of family pictures.
He said that gathering the entire family for the prescribed photograph can actually be quite painful.
If the family has many children and grandchildren, it can actually be quite traumatic for the kids as we beg, bribe and threaten them to behave and smile for the flash.
Up until that very moment that is frozen in time there may be fighting, crying, and unfortunate behavior.
And the moment after all those cute smiling faces are captured, the bickering resumes apace. Who are we fooling with this family picture?
It may look like we are the perfect family, but we know the truth.
It’s just a snapshot in time.
A brief moment captured for eternity, chronicling something not so real.
Yet we hang the picture up.
We eagerly display it on our etagere and in our breakfront.
Why?
Because this is the family we truly are indeed.
This is the family we want to be.

Last year was a terrible year.
It was the worst year we’ve had in a long time.
It’s unbelievably Day 356.
But it doesn’t mean we should give up.
We should think positively.
We have to anticipate a great year ahead.
How do we do this?
Hadas Lowenstern is the widow of Elisha who was killed on Chanukah. She has been spending these months living life and sharing her philosophy with all of us.
Hadas does not sugarcoat her challenge.
She says she wears the moniker of “widow” and therefore she has somewhat become public property.
She has experienced 3 questions that people feel no compunction asking her in a regular basis.
1. How are you?
2. ⁠How are the kids?
3. ⁠When do you plan to remarry?
Hadas remarks with her wry sense of humor that the questions abound, but tact, not so much.
Despite the tactless nature of some of these probing questions from strangers, Hadas decides to focus on the positive.
She feels all of this comes from a place of love.
People have a desire to fix things and they ultimately want to help her repair and fill the void and erase the pain.
But Hadas says that she has to live in that place of breakage and build from there.
She sees her situation as good.
Her attitude is positive and she feels love from Gd and loves her life.
She focuses on her strengths and often says she was dealt a hand of cards that is full of gifts.
Hadas says she loves her life.
And she reports that she has always been like this.
Her focus is positive.
Hadas loves her life.
Do we love ours?
Rosh Hashana is soon upon us.
Rabbi Shragi Neuberger spoke tonight in Atlanta.
He braved the awful weather to share words of encouragement and preparation for the year ahead.
This past year has been an awful year.
It may be the worst year the Jewish people have experienced since WWII.
Our natural reaction might be to despair.
But we need to overcome that knee jerk reaction and be positive.
(And we have real life role models like Hadas who we can emulate!)
Rabbi Neuberger heard of a hostage who had been released and shared some of her story.
Her life before captivity was a very typical one. She had very little experience with Judaism or spirituality.
For the first two weeks after she was abducted she was held in solitary confinement, facing a wall. With so many hours to herself, and with no distractions, she began to access the idea that she was a spiritual being.
That dreadful time allowed her to get in touch with something that had not been accessible to her previously.
After she finished her talk to the community she had traveled to, the Rabbi blew the shofar for her.
She had never heard it before.
She heard the shofar for the first time and it brought her to tears.
Her soul had been accessed.

Last night JWCAtlanta hosted an amazing Challah bake.
300 women came together to make Challah in anticipation of the upcoming Holiday season.
One of the themes we discussed was the power of prayer that is the purview of the Jewish woman.
We related the story of the Chofetz Chaim, venerable sage of the early 20th century,who was deeply concerned about the tragedies and tribulations that were occurring. He decided to bring out a powerful weapon at his disposal to combat the difficult circumstances.
He asked the women of his community to gather at the synagogue to pray.
He recognized that the highest level of prayer needed to be unleashed.
The women gathered and opened the holy ark and the congregation of women lifted their voices in personal prayer and supplication.
They used their own words in an unscripted appeal for mercy.
The holy Chofetz Chaim understood the secret of the power of women and the power of their prayers.
It’s our focus and our responsibility.
The above story took place during WWI.
The next is from WWII.
R Yosef Friedensohn was a Holocaust survivor, journalist and historian.
He shared a story that occurred to him during his incarceration in Auschwitz. At one point he was assigned the dreadful job of emptying latrines around the camp and bringing the refuse to the dump. This awful job did allow him to move around the camp more freely than most.
On one freezing day, he and his friend were pushing the cart near the fence of the women’s barracks. They noticed a young girl waving frantically at them trying to catch their eye. This in and of itself was a dangerous situation because they were not allowed to speak to the female prisoners. Nonetheless they tried to understand what she was screaming to them.
The wind was howling and they thought they made out her request. It seemed she was asking for a sweater.
This was a ludicrous request and one totally beyond their capabilities to fulfill. Yet a short time later the friend, had the opportunity to enter a warehouse, found a sweater and conspired how to get it to the girl.
Eventually, in their walking around the camp doing their disgusting job, they were able to deliver the contraband sweater and throw it over the fence.
The girl was perplexed.
She asked them why on earth they had brought her a sweater.
They yelled back, you asked for a sweater, to keep you warm in this freezing weather.
She replied that she didn’t want a sweater, she had desperately wanted a “siddur”, a prayer book.
“Please, I need a siddur! It’s almost Rosh Hashana and I need to a prayer book so I can pray”
The young men were so inspired. They had been focused on their physical survival and lack of warmth,
“it never crossed their minds that anyone would need a siddur to warm their soul”.

We are in the month of Elul.
It׳s the precursor to the High Holiday season.
We need to be prepared.
The Jewish year is comprised of the holidays which mark the seasons.
Each year as we traverse the year we may have the tendency to say to ourselves, it’s Rosh Hashana again?
Wasn’t it just Rosh Hashana?
How did we get here again?
We may feel we are like the hamster on the wheel, mindlessly running as we pass the same markers over and over again.
The Chassidic Rebbe, the Kotzker Rebbe, teaches us that when we pass each station again we should not feel that we are just going round and round. Rather we should view it as an upward spiral. Yes we are reaching the same station again, but this time I’m just a bit higher on the journey than I was last time I arrived at this station.
The Rebbe says there is a special energy available to us at each station, and we can use that positive energy to provide a boost.
For example, when we arrive at Passover, freedom is in the air.
We can use that energy to help free ourselves from the shackles that bind us. It may be freedom from a physical incarceration, or it may be a time to free ourselves from things that hold us back in our hearts or minds.
So what is happening on Rosh Hashana?
I asked a few people their opinions.
They answered that it’s a time to wipe the slate clean, it’s a time of reJEWvenation.
All great answers.
But how do we do that work?
Rabbi Moshe Shapiro teaches us that on Rosh Hashana
“Gd sets the reset button in creation.”
So when we arrive at the station called Roah Hashana we go back to the first Rosh Hashana when it all began, to the time when Gd asks the question of the angels
“Shall we make man?”
On Rosh Hashana Gd is asking should we make this woman/man again?
As the beautiful prayer Unesaneh Tokef details, each and every individual is the subject of Gd’s focus.
Just as Gd created the first man on Rosh Hashana, so too it will be decided if we will be created, or be given the chance to remain creative, for the year to come.
As Rabbi Shapiro says “this is both terrifying and elevating without parallel”.
Gd cares and focuses on me.
We are given the days of Rosh Hashana to plead our case.
“We are given 48 hours to justify our right to life”.
Anyone who stands before a judge knows that in order to be successful in court, you need to prepare.
We are given these precious days to work on wiping the slate clean, to reJEWvenate, so we have a case to make before Avinu Malkeinu, our Father our King.

It’s Day 335.
So much has happened in the last week.
On Day 328 we could not imagine what the next days would bring.
We are shattered by the loss of six more worlds.
Each and every one of the six hostages who were murdered last week was such a precious soul.
And as the days pass we learn more about their bravery, their compassion and their humanity.
A hero who returned to the killing fields to rescue more souls. Ori Danino had escaped only to turn his car back to save strangers. He was so filled with kindness. His mother says this was his character, he was always the first to help in any situation. She is sure that if he had a chance to do this, he would choose to behave the same way and do it again, having the chance to help someone is what defined Ori.
A heroine, Carmel Gat, used her skills in yoga and meditation to calm the children while in captivity. Carmel was an occupational therapist who dedicated her life to helping others.
We will never know the extent of their greatness.
The question we are left with is how to move forward.
One can smile through the tears as we hear of babies being born who are being named for these extraordinary people.
A baby girl called Eden Carmel
A baby boy called Tzvi Hersh.
The Jewish response to tragedy is to build on the legacies we have inherited, to learn from those we have lost and teach our children about who they were and what they represented in this world.
We had the privilege of seeing the funeral of Hersh.
Is there anyone amongst us who was not moved to our core by the faith, strength and deep faith that was expressed by this family and so articulated by Rachel.
“Rachel weeps for her children”
Jeremiah 31:15
Rachel our matriarch, was buried in the side of the road as Jacob was returning home. She is not buried in the Cave of Machpela with the rest of the patriarchs and matriarchs in Hebron.
She is laid to rest in Bethlehem.
Jacob later explains to Josef, his son together with Rachel, that it was Divinely ordained that she be buried there.
As later in history when the Jewish people will be exiled from their Homeland, Rachel, will console them on their journey, she will come out of her grave, so to speak, and weep and and plead for mercy for her children.
And Gd will answer her and say “there is hope for your future…the children will return to their borders”.

The legend of the plates:
The gift that keeps on giving.
This is a true story that began a few years ago.
Two of our kids were newly married and living in the same city.
A dear friend of the family was living in that city as well and had sold her condo and was preparing to move.
She invited my daughter and daughter in law to come and see if they wanted any of the items she was not planning to take to her new home.
The girls really didn’t want any of the things but they didn’t want to hurt her feelings so they each took one item.
Our daughter in law took a picture frame and our daughter took one of those classic Israeli plates that you see in every kitschy gift shop in Jerusalem.
My daughter really didn’t want that plate.
But she was loathe to throw it away, because it was a gift.
So she baked cinnamon buns, arranged them daintily on the plate and sent them to her sister in law as a treat.
Her sister in law is no fool.
She knew the motive was “passing the plate”.
And so began a years long career of sending that plate back and forth in the sneakiest of manners.
It was the gift that never stopped giving.
When one of the couples moved the leave taking was emotional and dramatic.
It was all a distraction.
When the couple in transit arrived at their new home they were shocked to find amongst their belongings, you guessed it, the dish. It had been secreted amongst their belongings only to be found months later when they completed unpacking.
The saga continued.
The next maneuver happened when the newly arrived couple hosted their siblings for a weekend. At the end of the visit, the homeowners went down to the basement and found they had been left a gift. Not one, but two dishes hanging on the wall of the playroom.
This was war and the sorties continued.
When the next interaction between the two couples occurred, the retaliatory event manifested itself by dishes being left behind and discovered after the guilty parties had left.
You read correctly. The dish multiplied as a few miniatures were added to the equation.
The dishes were multiplying and the game of gifts continued apace.
As I said it was the gift that kept on giving and the hilarity it created and the ingenuity it engendered was a delight.
This continued for a number of years. Right now the dish(es) have gone missing, and we are waiting for their reappearance when we least expect them!

I don’t know about you, but the image of Rachel Goldberg Polin begging for the release of her son, will be seared forever in my mind.
She looked so tiny on that vast stage, tiny but resolute.
I was amazed, as I always am when I hear her speak.
She is emotional, articulate and heart stirring in her words.
How did this woman whose life was defined by family, find the courage to take to the world stage to argue on behalf of her child?
It’s love.
The eternal love a parent feels for their child.
No matter what.
In this week’s portion which is entitled Eikev. It is a portion which contains some threats against the Jewish people if they do not behave properly. But it is also a parsha which mentions often the word Ahava, or love.
Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi points out that the portion opens with a verse exhorting the Jewish people to follow in Gds ways, then Gd will love you and bless you.
It is interesting that the verse delivers the message to the Jewish people to follow Gds commands in the plural form, but the second part of the verse which describes the reward, the word for love is written in the singular.
Our Sages teach us that love is personal. It’s a unique relationship. Therefore the love that will be felt will be personal.
This is evident in the portion as Moses lists some of the miracles that happened in the desert which prove Gd’s love for each individual.
For example, during the wanderings in the desert the clothing the Jewish nation wore did not wear out.
That is such a small detail.
It harks to the love a parent has for a child to care for their every need and make sure that not only are they dressed, but the clothing is immaculate and fresh.
No child was left behind.
No one was forgotten.
Rabbanit Yemima shares that one of her childhood fears was that her mother left her behind on a bus.
It’s not an uncommon feeling.
My mother was delayed once and came just a few moments late to pick me up at the bus. I was in first grade and I can remember the incident so clearly, the panic of abandonment so firmly embedded in my mind.
(And the whole drama lasted no more than five minutes!)
We may have a fear of being forgotten not only by our loved ones, or maybe existentially, we may feel overlooked by Gd Gdself.
But the Parsha reassures us that Gd is faithful in love to us, as long as we don’t forget about Gd.

I want to tell you about one of the happiest days of my life.
The story began 14 years prior when I met a middle school girl who wanted to be tutored in Judaic subjects. We hit it off right away and so I studied with her for her Bat Mitzva and we continued studying together throughout her high school career.
As you can imagine she was like a little sister to me.
She went to study in Israel and returned to the States ready to take on the world. She got her degrees and became a therapist.
She was an intelligent, beautiful, sensitive and accomplished young woman.
And she wanted to get married and build a Jewish home.
That part somehow didn’t go so smoothly.
She dated many, many, many people. (I know, I vetted each and every one!)
While all this was transpiring life continued.
My husband was and continues to be involved in Jewish outreach and education.
For 25 years he conducted a Beginners Service at our synagogue where people who were interested in learning more about prayer could join an interactive service. A young woman started coming. She was a shoe buyer for a major department store. We hit it off immediately, having a love of shoes in common. (Her moniker was shoequeen!)
She often came to our house for Shabbat meals.
After becoming good friends, this young lady mentioned that she had a brother who was visiting, and she asked if he could join us for a meal.
Her brother came to us a few weeks later and the meal was not half over and I realized that the elusive husband of my student had been delivered to my door.
I played matchmaker and set them up.
The day they got engaged was one of the happiest of my life.
It was truly happy day.