Rev. Chani's Blog

“Tell me more about your journey with Tefillin? I want to understand it.” Yael Kanarek asks me in a conversation a few weeks ago as she prepares the Toratah (her Torah) Tefillin for Jericho Vincent.

People are looking at their lives and asking themselves, does this work for me?

Does what I have always done feed me? Nourish me? Allow me to be who I want to be in the world?

As I sit down to write this reflection, I am struck by the dichotomies that have become an everyday occurrence in this past year. What does it mean to put on a mask on Purim when we have spent the entire year masked? What does it mean to be showing more of ourselves when most of us have seen into each other’s homes virtually? We’ve been into the homes of our bosses, our colleagues, our therapists, and even our clergy, where we probably would never have been invited physically.

It’s been quite a year…. some of us have lost jobs or our livelihoods, some of us have been sick, far too many of us have we have lost loved ones and had to grapple with how to mourn without community, and we have struggled with how to be there from afar for those who mourn.

Throughout the U.S. and in some parts of the world, the month of June is celebrated as Pride month. This is because 51 years ago the LGBTQ+ community grew tired of being harassed, threatened, and marginalized simply for trying to live their lives in a way that society felt threatened by. As is often the case in uprisings, accounts vary, but most go something like this…On June 28th, 1969 the police raided the Stonewall Inn in NYC.

Beginning on the second night of Passover, Jews begin the counting of the Omer. We count every evening for 49 days; a full seven weeks, and on the 50th evening we celebrate the holiday of Shavuot.  Shavuot is the holiday in which we commemorate receiving the Torah – the ten commandments on Mount Sinai. We celebrate our acceptance of the contract when we collectively said, “Yes!”