The Season of Flowers and Torah
Dedicated to Lila Sivan, the apple of my eye.

“With each and every Divine sound
the entire world filled with the fragrance of spices
carried on the winds of the world.”
The longest day of summer arrives in the moon of Sivan, the  moon of flowers.  Sivan hosts Shavuot, the culmination festival of the seven week counting period which began on Passover. To mark the Festival of Weeks, Jewish folk fill our homes and synagogues with the flowery abundance of early summer bloom and breath in the season’s glorious fragrance to sweet our days.

In the midst of fragrance, Jewish folk spend Shavuot night studying Torah in all its diverse expressions: text, dance, ritual, storytelling, food customs and ethical conversation. What is the essence of torah’s teaching? How do we live out our most treasured values in our own time?
​
Authentic torah thrives when we root its teachings in core values of active love, the sacredness of human dignity across all borders, the preservation of equity, reparative living, pursuit of liberation, cultivation of thriving communities and a culture of peace.
In our time, 5782/2022 Jewish folk living on Turtle Island are witness to the ongoing impacts of 500 years of colonial settlerism, the transAtlantic slave trade, environmental degradation, war and militarism. How do we remain faithful to our ancient values in this moment?  By collectively engaging in reparations teshuvah and cultivating a culture of healing and repair.

Shavuot is called cHag HaBikkurim - the Festival of Ripened Fruits. During cHag HaBikkurim, our ancestors went on pilgrimage carrying baskets of  harvest to local shrines where they conducted public feasting and dancing, engaged in massive food ‘give aways’ to fulfill their shared communal practice and belief: the land’s abundant harvest belongs to everyone across all borders and boundaries. Our ancestors recited the ancient story of liberation and tied it to the creation of a society based on mutual aid and reciprocal relationships, and whose fruits are collective well-being.
Such a beautiful vision.

Indigenous Land Back Reparations

The Festival ‘Ripening Fruit’ is a perfect time to deepen our relationship to indigenous plants as part of the work of teshuvah reparations for the harms of colonial settlerism.  cHag HaBikkurim gives us the opportunity to deepen our relationship to earth stewardship (called shomeret adamah in Hebrew).

Our ancestors instituted ceremonial observances that encourage us to be in a reciprocal relationships with plants. Jewish tradition honors the land through cycles of rest and protocols that obligate us to give back to the land and water by protecting life by observing the practices of earth stewardship. Stewardship, not ownership and exploitation, is torah’s understanding of right relationship with all that lives upon the earth.

Alas, in every state of the United States, colonial settlers, including Jewish folk, continue to live on stolen land with histories of genocide of indigenous people. Along with policies of massacre, indigenous peoples were forced into unpaid labor as a key component of colonial strategies to steal their land. In this year of Shmita, may we dedicate ourselves to carrying out reparations teshuvah by learning about and acting in solidarity with the rising movement of indigenous rematriation of Turtle Island.
On cHag HaBikkurim, I invite you to dedicate the holy day to Indigenous rematriation of native plants and farming. Begin the ritual of the holy day with indigenous land acknowledgments that include naming indigenous plants that grow on the territory where you are currently settled. Learn some indigenous plant torah of your place along with what indigenous peoples are doing in your territory to rematriate the land. Spread awareness about ways we can take reparative acts.

cHag Habikkurim Land Acknowledgment Prayer
I am/we are congregation _______ and am/are settled on unceded (Ohlone) __ land.
I give thanks for the blessings of indigenous plants of: (Tongvi/Ohlone lands - pinyon, nopal, wild cherry, acorn, mesquite beans, manzanita berries, coast buckwheat, and white sage.)
(Share some torah about one of the plants you learned about from consulting an indigenous source)
I dedicate this seed of __________ to the rematriation of Turtle Island. (Store the seed in a specially designated pot to be planted after the holy day).
“I will take from the lofty crown
from the topmost branches
a tender branch
within which lives a seed

I will take this seed
and plant it upon a sacred mountain
with blessings of the rematriation of Turtle Island.
May this seed grow and become a noble tree
And bear much fruit
So that humans and animals can live in its shade
And all the birds will nest in its branches.
This is the seed I will plant
For the sake of creation.”    
(A riff on Ezekiel 17)
A group of Jewish Land Back solidarity activists are collaborating on new halachot which guide our actions in the use of indigenous plants, culture and activism. We are Jews committed to repairing the history of colonial settlerism through reparations teshuvah including restitution through land back actions. I will be offering another Ger course in the fall. Stay tuned for more information about the community of Jews in solidarity with indigenous land back activists.

Stay tune for 5783, and Rabbi Lynn’s Rabbinic Jubilee for a year long study of the Torah of Reparations Teshuvah.  Let us build upon hope for a future of thriving communities.

BEAUTIFUL IMAGES OF THE GIVING Of TORAH FROM MIDRASH/ORAL TRADITION
At Mount Sinai
Shekinah’s voice
came forth in beauty
reverberating from the south, so the people ran to the south
undulating from the north, so the people ran to the north
spiraling from the east, so the people ran to the east
resounding from the west, so the people ran to the west.
The voice soared toward heavens and burst out of the earth.
The voice transformed itself into the languages of every living being
Every human, animal, plant and elemental ‘nation’ heard the voice.
Just as flint strikes a rock and causes sparks to fly in every direction
so each and every word that issued forth
at Sinai
sparked new illuminations.
At Mount Sinai, prophets of every generation to come
received what they needed for their prophesy.
All souls destined to be in relationship to torah
Danced at Sinai.
The sacred name, the breath of life,
engraved itself like red henna flowers
on fullness of their being.
What a feast that must have been.
May the spirit of life bless you and keep you,
illuminate your hearts with graciousness
And fill you spirit with peace.

I appreciate your support through my Patreon Page. Your subscription is supporting several aspects of my work over the summer in preparation for my Rabbinic Jubilee, including a new book and theater piece.

JUNE  CALENDAR:  Way of the Mishkan Class  Tuesday June 14

Public Courtyard: Tending the Flames of Justice
​Join Rabbi Lynn for an overview of the core values of Shomeret Shalom practice. How do we come together in the struggle for justice in building a post colonial world. What are core values that we can share across cultural, spiritual and religious heritage? What reparative acts are able to heal the wounds that divide us from each other?   

​TESHUVAH AND REPARATIONS  by Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, shomeret shalom

This piece is meant as a healing response to centuries of anti-blackness on Turtle Island. It does not address other injured communities, but that does not mean these principles and protocols cannot be applied to people suffering other forms of systemic violence including harms done to indigenous peoples, women, queer and trans people, Muslims, Jews and many others who are targeted by white supremacy and patriarchy. This is meant as a healing guide based on the protocols of teshuvah dedicated to reparations. Study this as a teshuvah text, a guide to action. 

The 40 day period from the new moon of Elul through Yom Kippur is wholly devoted to Teshuvah. Teshuvah is a process of healing repair for ethical injury, unjust action and moral harm. Our ancestors believed our communities could not celebrate a new year (or any other festival) without first offering reparations marked by public apology and transfers of wealth to injured parties. This is the way Jewish tradition strives to enact honoring the dignity of every human being across all bars and borders. 

To clarify the public and systemic nature of teshuvah, Jewish tradition links shofar blowing at the conclusion of Yom Kippur to the emancipation of the enslaved. As Rabbi Samuel Tamaras* wrote, “The shofar is surely the appropriate instrument for proclaiming the advent of the Jubilee Year on the Day of Atonement, for it is associated with the most exalted of biblical events: the giving of the torah (the protocols of the ‘beloved community’) and the day of emancipation of the enslaved.  The shofar is an instrument whose very sound plants within the human heart a passion for truth and healing justice. “The lofty goal of teshuvah is none other than dismantling the infrastructures of enslavement and empire. That is why authentic teshuvah must go beyond symbolic acts and abolish the legal and governing practices that produce and perpetuate ongoing harm. Harms are defined as avoidable impairments of fundamental human needs which, makes it impossible or difficult for people to meet their needs or achieve their full potential.

Anti-blackness is an ongoing harm that demands teshuvah.  Healing the harms of internalized, interpersonal and systemic forms of anti-blackness is clearly the spiritual challenge of this moment. We should not use the language of return to describe teshuvah in this instance, because equity never existed in the first place. We are building toward the world we want to see. The future is emergent and the open wounds are deep. 

Teshuvah allows us to lament and acknowledge the transAtlantic slave trade and its legacy of ongoing harm. These harms negatively impact black lives within all public & private institutions in American life including health care, housing, land ownership, education, voting rights, policing, systems of justice from court to prison, transportation access, reproductive rights, distribution of resources, employment, banking, freedom of movement, cultural & historical representation and psychological well-being. Is not teshuvah required? 

Teshuvah is structured to achieve healing and rehabilitation of both victims and perpetrators of systemic harm.  Teshuvah envisions all of us moving forward together through enactment of the following five stages of repair: 

• awakening compassion (ha-karat ha-chet) for harm, and embracing self-healing 
• acknowledgment of the web of accountability and one’s place in it (kharata); 
• publicly naming harms as articulated by those directly impacted by harm (vidui); 
• reparations for harm which includes rehabilitation, compensation, and satisfaction (peiraon) by those harmed; 
• guarantees of non-repeat of the harm that include an agreed upon system of accountability by victims of harm (azivat ha-chet). 

These steps are parallel to the reparation steps articulated  by descendants of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. In carrying out teshuvah dedicated to reparations, the following principles are critical to a successful outcome.

• Reparations Teshuvah cannot be accomplished without placing the leadership, experiential knowledge and analysis of black people at the center of the reparations teshuvah process. Otherwise, harms are repeated in new forms. 
• Reparations teshuvah requires understanding the root causes of ongoing historical harms and the way privilege operates in this system. People of color are daily harmed by white supremacy and patriarchy and its vast infrastructural components, thus obligating teshuvah from people who draw privilege from their racial status as ‘white’. 
• Social inequities today are a function of the long history of racism and legalized discrimination in the past. 

*Racism, white supremacy and patriarchy are endemic and normative and not exceptions to the norm.

* Harm is measured as avoidable impairment of fundamental human needs which, makes it impossible or difficult for people to meet their needs or achieve their full potential. The legacy of harm produced by the transAtlantic slave trade fits into this experiential framework.

*Reparations teshuvah is not a linear post-conflict framework. Rather it is local and national ongoing effort that builds upon the historical movement for reparations first initiated after the Civil War. Apology is not enough. It must be accompanied by restitution, rehabilitation and guarantees of non-repetition of harm. 

*Reparations teshuvah represents the altering of power relationships and reimagining how to organize society. Reparations teshuvah is intersectional, creative, multi-faceted, diverse, works across multiple identities and is interdisciplinary.

The following pledge was formulated by members of The Truth Telling Project out of Ferguson. Taking this pledge on Yom Kippur seems a fitting act for the Jewish community and can guide our educational and activist pursuit of reparations teshuvah for the harms of anti-blackness.   

REPARATIONS PLEDGE     

I pledge to approach reparations as a healing journey.

I pledge to acknowledge and work to heal the legacies of moral and material harm that originated with the transatlantic slave trade and continues to manifest harm in Black communities. 

I pledge to learn more about America’s history of racism and its foundation of chattel slavery.

I pledge to learn more about how structures and institutions built on slave labor continue to disenfranchise people in the African diaspora as well as devalue Black lives. 

I pledge to act in ways that limit institutional complicity in violence against Black People. This may mean divesting from investments that harm Black People. 

I pledge to be sensitive to the intersectionalities of the harms of racism.

I pledge to participate in reparations in my local community and encourage my networks to do the same, guided by the analysis and leadership of black led organizations and individuals. 

I pledge to take this message to my family, friends and community with love rather than through guilt or shaming. I pledge to undo racism within my own family & faith based community according to the principles articulated in this pledge.       

I affirm this pledge in my name: (recite your name)

Overcast winter skies deepen the chill of the stone floor, the  only remains of a Palestinian family home. I sip hot tea graced by a sprig of mint as family members talk about the massacre.  In 1994, Baruch Goldstein entered the Shrine of Abraham, passing through the security gate, armed with a gun, and slaughtered 29 Palestinian men in prayer. One of the men belonged to this family. Goldstein chose to commit his massacre on Purim in order to fulfill the biblical mitzvah, “Blot out the name of Amalek,” the mythic enemies of Jews, the kind of people who attack the innocent. Amalek’s descendant, Haman, tried to massacre Jews on the 14th of Adar long ago, by paying off royalty so he could satisfy his urge for revenge at being slighted. 
Only, the Purim story is a complete fabrication. The Scroll of Esther was written by Persian Jews as a kind of Saturday night live sketch to entertain their communities during the Persian carnival season. It is a farcical fairytale whose literary genre and message we can talk about. But, it is no longer an innocent story.  Stirred into a cocktail of  nationalism, religious fundamentalism, white supremacy and sexism, The Scroll of Esther can produce deadly outcomes, as can our entire tradition, if we fail to commit to a culture of repair.


As I listened to Palestinian families relive their trauma amidst a landscape of rubble created by Israeli Occupation Forces, the chill of teshuvah caught my bones.  Erasure of another people cannot be a mitzvah. A narrative employed for the sake of covering up crimes we ourselves are committing must be unmasked and recast so that truth replaces lying. Without truth, we can not heal the wound. We cannot kickstart a process of healing and repair. 


And the truth is, Purim exists now in 2021, in the shadow of Israeli apartheid. Israeli apartheid uses delegitimization of Palestinian history, culture, religion and people as a tool for the amplification of its militarism and national power. The narrative frame of Palestinians as ‘enemy’, the real world criminalization of Palestinian people in all aspects of their daily lives is the Amalek we must face in ourselves.  
Rather than getting so drunk we can’t tell the difference between Haman and Mordecai, Purim needs to become a time we actually can tell the difference between what constitutes violence, pandemic and catastrophe, and what constitutes nonviolence, healing repair and solidarity. What does that Purim story look like? What are the rites, histories and narratives of Purim and Jewish life we need to decolonize? How do we observe Purim so that our narrative and ritual performance lead to the de-criminalization of Palestinians in the attitudes, beliefs, and especially, the behaviors of Jewish people. 


That afternoon, like so many other times, when Palestinian people recount the details of their trauma with hope that hearing their stories will evoke empathy that leads to action, the account of suffering under Israeli rule is followed by a single question.  Knowing the history of Jewish holocaust catastrophe, many Palestinians ask Jewish people, ‘Why?”  
Why did your history lead to Baruch Goldstein’s plot to massacre Palestinians? Why did your history lead to apartheid and xenophobic nationalism? It is this ‘why’ which cannot be deflected into a Jewish victim narrative, or left to dangle in the wind. As our sages teach, in this moment, Amalek is us. We have to figure it out. We are obligated to respond as an act of teshuvah/repair. 


This Purim, many liberal synagogues will gloss over or omit the slaughtering of one’s enemies in Chapter 9. Rather, we might follow Shakespeare’s example of interrupting tragedy with a moment of comedy and flip the script: interrupt the comedy with a serious moment of accountability. Before reading the story, or in Chapter 9, light a candle for the victims of Israeli apartheid. During the Pandemic, Israel has used its structure of militarized apartheid to both deny Palestinians access to the vaccine and expand the use of surveillance systems to further monitor Palestinian life. These surveillance techniques are then introduced in the US since they are paid for by the US and are part of the US Israeli military industrial alliance. Telling this story and naming this harm needs to be part of Purim. 


May Purim be an occasion to unmask militarization of our lives. May Purim be a time to demand equity in the distribution of vaccines throughout the world, and not leave healing up to ‘chance’. May Purim be a time to lift up heroes who resist narratives and policies of sexism, racism, apartheid and white supremacy, especially those narratives and policies for which we, by design or ignorance, help maintain. May Purim be a time not to foment more hatred of Iran, but instead, honor Iranian Jews still living in Iran and connect with their stories.  May Purim be a time we flip the script on neglect and criminalization, and instead, act in ways that resource each other with healing, equity and love. It is the joy that comes with justice rising that leads to liberation.
​

Sending you love from Berkeley,  California.

What a moment in time. An Intifada against the genocidal structures of anti-blackness in America is taking place. It appears that the country could not tolerate another lynching by police of a black man. Finally. Calls for defunding police and meaningful reparations are being acted upon by structures of power due to pressure from the streets. We need actions and not statements. Clearly. As the sage Shammai teaches: Say little and do much.

When I journeyed to Standing Rock and witnessed the remarkable coming together of the tribes and allies to Lakota lands, I realized that Standing Rock, along with Ferguson, are places upon which this intifada is built.

Nahalat Shalom Congregation comes into this moment with a four decade history seeking justice, since 1980 when we first came together as an idea, and then a reality. The founding of Nahalat Shalom in 1980, was for me, related to my life long and explicit commitments to serving minoritized people in the Jewish community and to building a community with the capacity to stand up publicly with front line people struggling for dignity and justice. The choice of when and how to stand up is the result of long term relationship building with communities fighting on the front lines of American white supremacy to resist racism, anti-blackness, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, anti-semitism and able-bodied prejudice. A torah of nonviolence must always center the wisdom and experience of people most impacted by different systems of structural violence. This is the first principle of sacred action. And, Nahalat Shalom always centered teshuvah, the five part process of restorative justice and atonement, as a central principle of action by those who embrace the name Nahalat Shalom, Inheritance of Peace. The name we gave this project, Nahalat Shalom, was meant to sustain grassroots prophetic witness and spiritual resiliency as our spiritual resting place. That is why we were and are home to so many amazing ceremonial and spiritual achievements in arts, culture and prophetic justice. 

Do you remember when the Myuhoji Buddhists, who were walking across the country to give witness to the impact of the nuclear industry on native lands, came to stay with us on Shabbat, March 13, 2001? Our sanctuary held 200 people sitting on the floor as we opened the 500 year old Torah and Lauri Weeaki from Laguna Pueblo spread corn meal over the ancient Hebrew words and said, "Our sacred things have been speaking to each other since the beginning of time. Now it is time for us to speak to each other in the same spirit." One month later, we initiated the Muslim Jewish Peacewalk that eventually went to 18 cities throughout the US and Canada. Philadelphia and Tucson are still walking. This whole series of events came together because the night of Sept 11, we came together in the sanctuary and 100 of you, children to elders, expressed a commonly held desire to build a culture of peace while resisting war and racism. 

Now, we are being asked to consider once again how anti-blackness impacts our community. We are being asked as white people and non-black people of color to think about how white supremacy impacts our awareness and choices, and to hold ourselves accountability for the long history of anti-blackness in our hearts, in our institutions and in our nation.

Knowing our long activist history, I have faith Nahalat Shalom will indeed find ways of acting as a community. We will not just take action as individuals, but figure out how we can be a resting place for healing and reparations. I encourage you to consider a framework of reparations/teshuvah in thinking about a sustained response to anti-blackness in America as Nahalat Shalom. We have a rich ceremonial and spiritual life to sustain our capacity for action. 

I give thanks to our circle of ancestors who gifted us Torah as healing medicine. May we drink from its wells to find our resiliency. May we breath and nourish our spirits as we continue on the pilgrimage to equity and justice for every human being across all borders. May we continue to center the lives and wisdom of those most directly impacted by anti-blackness, and especially black trans people and immigrants who remain the targets of state violence. And of course, we continue to walk in solidarity with the people who hold the very heart of Turtle Island, the indigenous peoples of New Mexico. By choosing solidarity, we choose healing for our own hearts, and lay the ground work for the well-being of seven generations. ​