In the popular Talmudic passage from Talmud Bavli, Eruvin 13b, it says, “These and these are the words of the living God.”
It is used to explain how two statements that appear to contradict each other can be true at once — and are true at once. This same passage provides support to say that truth is in human hands. Torah and truth do not live in the heavens but amongst us, within us, here.
The words of our mouths, the stories of our lives, the facts we stumble upon and are up against are the words of the living God. However contradictory, however strange, however unpopular, however dissonant, if the words spring from our personal truths, “These and these are the words of the living God.”
When I was in Israel in 2010, I went to gatherings where efforts were made to forge waves of peace between individuals of different backgrounds. I heard a Palestinian person say in a sharing circle, “We live in a prison behind blockades. Why can’t they let us be free?”
Of course, as a Jew, I know that as a people we are so small. I just wanted to scream, “Everyone, just let us be! Let us exist! Let us alone!”
“Kol HaNeshama tehallel Yah!” (Psalm 150) Every soul is praising Yah! I have long said that all storytelling, experience and sharing are forms of praising God because when you speak from the truth of yourself, however subjective it is — perhaps even the more subjective it is — something of it connects with the creator who gave it.
Somehow, all is the language of truth — all the way down to confusion, right down to the core of opinion. That’s the deepest we get — opinion, until we reach the vastness that holds all the noise.
At Kol HaLev, the Reconstructionist synagogue where I am the rabbi, we have been holding each other during these times and processing together slowly. In divisive times, heated times, scary times, we have tiptoed together gently on uneven terrain. Sometimes voices get louder, swell and then soften into sadness …
And as people scream on the streets,
“Defund Israel”
“Not in my name” or
“Kill them all,”
All I can say is no pithy phrase, message or answer can contain my tears.
Over 1,000 slaughtered on Oct. 7, 2023.
Over 25,000 killed since then.
Machine guns and rockets are the tools.
Stones and rape are, too.
Trump was elected in a landslide.
And my only words
are not words, are silence.
And each name —
Kfir Bibas
Musk Mahmoud Ibrahim Hegazy
Misk Mohammed Khalil Gouda
Mila Cohen
Were the names of the living God. They are no longer.
“Human beings are fragile”
“We are resilient, and so strong.”
“Jewish continuity is failing.”
“L’dor vador.”
“We must fight.”
“We want peace.”
“These and these …”
Let us move together — slowly.
I am reminded of an improvisational theater game in this moment called “Follow the Follower.” The game, played with a pair, begins by naming one person as the leader and one person as the follower. The leader then leads the other in movement. The follower follows. Then they switch, and eventually an outsider would not be able to tell who is leading and who is following. In the more advanced levels of the game, the instructions become “Follow the Follower.” The roles slip away and no one is leading at all, but they are moving together.
We will follow each other through this wilderness of life, during these times, hearing each other.
Holding multiplicity is the only thing I know how to do at this time. Holding contradictions, disappointment and narrative, all I can do is witness the praise and testimony of the world through stories and perspective. And I can gently do my part by speaking my own particular truth.
No one’s words are God’s unless everyone’s are.
So the world will not be healed by giving advice, not by giving the answer, not by providing a simple narrative.
When will we come to see divisions as differences? When will we see interpretation as various spheres of awareness? When will we recognize holiness and profanity, self and other, leader and follower, and shadow and light as sides to a coin, as faces of the One God?
These, and all, are the words of the living God.
Rabbi Emily Stern is spiritual leader of Kol HaLev Synagogue, a Reconstructionist community in Lutherville. She was ordained by the ALEPH Ordination Program as a rabbi and mashpia (Jewish spiritual director).
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