A little more than 15 years ago, my fiance asked if I was going to cry at our wedding. I explained that all she had to do was put a television behind her playing the final scenes of the movie “Rudy” starring Sean Astin, and I’d be a goner. Needless to say, that didn’t happen, and while I’m not a “cryer” at many things, I have become one to choke up while watching sappy movies, tv shows, or reading about inspirational stories of hope and perseverance. But what really gets me to the point of tears are the moments when I read bedtime stories to my children. And no story gets me EVERY time like Robert Munsch’s I’ll Love You Forever.

“I’ll love you forever,

I’ll like you for always,

as long as I’m living,

my baby you’ll be.”

A mother starts singing this song to her son when he’s a baby, and then the story follows him through all the stages of his life. At every step of the way, his mother is there, singing him to sleep with their special song — even after he’s married, moved out, and has kids of his own. In a full circle moment, the son holds his mother in his arms:

“I’ll love you forever,

I’ll like you for always,

as long as I’m living,

my baby you’ll be.”

But before “Love You Forever” was a nursery staple, it was a simple, four-line song too painful to sing out loud. Robert Munsch would sing silently to himself after his wife gave birth to a stillborn baby. It was the second stillbirth the couple had to mourn.

For a long time, he couldn’t even share it with his wife. 

“[The song] was my way of crying,” Munsch told The Huffington Post. Munsch often performed his material in front of crowds before writing anything down. One day, the song was in the back of his mind while he was performing at a theater. He made up a story to accompany the song on the spot, and just like that, “Love You Forever” poured out on stage. 

The song, and the story, were a source of comfort amidst loss. The book became a best seller for people of all ages, in all stages of life; a tribute to the unending love of parents to their children. 

This is the promise we make to our children- proclaiming that until our last breath, we will be there for them- physically and emotionally; with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our might; unadulterated, unconditional love.  

With all your heart with all your soul with all your might. 3 times a day we remind ourselves that we should love with every fiber of our being, and what, or rather who should we love?…God. The hope is that God, our parent, will be there for us, God’s children, a relationship steady through the storms and adversities that would derail other relationships 

Medieval commentator Rashi explains “V’ahavta” AND YOU SHALL LOVE [THE LORD] — Fulfill His commands out of love, for one who acts out of love is not like one who acts out of fear. He who serves his master out of fear, if God troubles him overmuch, leaves him and goes away (Sifrei Devarim 32:1).

When you sign on to love without condition, we love even when things are tough. DOes that love always manifest as unwavering, confident, and overflowing? No. Unconditional love doesn’t mean it’s easy, or that it’s beautiful 24/7.

Professor and Researcher Brene Brown explains in a podcast on love and vulnerability: 

So I have to start by debunking one of the worst myth in the world, and that is the myth that strong, lasting relationships are always 50-50. I call BS. That is not the case. Strong, lasting relationships are rarely 50-50, because life does not work that way. Strong, lasting relationships happen when your partner or friend or whoever you’re in relationship with, can pony up that 80% when you are down to 20, and that your partner also knows that when things fall apart for her, and she only has 10% to give, you can show up with your 90, even if it’s for a limited amount of time

Brown and her husband check in by telling each other their levels in terms of “energy, investment, kindness, patience.”

And what about the times when neither partner is doing well, and no one has anything to give? When Brown and her husband are both running on empty, she said they “sit down at the table anytime we have less than 100 combined and figure out a plan of kindness toward each other.” -Even that moment, -in other words, the “how do you not kill the other person?” moment, you find a relationship built on trust. 

The pact we make with our loved ones is at its core a mindset; a mindset that we are doing as much as we can, lovingly; that even the most difficult moments are informed by the love that guides them. 

Our V’ahavta prayer teaches a love of the divine, and in turn, a love of all who are created in God’s image. All of us. Why should unconditional love be a gift we give to an exclusive group. Is it a capacity issue- that we don’t have a full enough heart to embrace all the world’s tzuris? No, in fact Brown’s model reassures us that we DO have the capacity to love. 

We are here on Shabbat Nachamu, a shabbat of comfort, a shabbat that follows our darkest hour as a people. The aftermath of the 9th of av meant we had to find other reminders of our relationship with the divine- through teaching our children, everywhere and at every moment, giving us reminders that God is still with us in the depths of despair. It is sometimes in the darkness that we see how love manifests itself, even towards a stranger.

When we gather to bury a loved one, our clergy often speak of the most selfless act one can perform hesed shel emet, an act of true lovingkindness. Burying a member of a community is an act that we do without an expectation of reward or even a simple thank you, but we do so out of obligation, and really, out of love. When there are mourners in our midst, who in Brown’s criteria are hovering over 0%, we have the capacity, collectively, to be that other 100. We do so well in honoring the dead, comforting the mourner; it’s time to think of ways we can honor the living, and comfort the struggling. 

In practical terms, it means running the full range of a human decency scale- holding off on judgment when you think you’ve been wronged but don’t know the whole story; raising someone up through the act of hakarat hatov– acknowledging the good- be they a stranger, coworker, or loved one. Each act is an affirmation that we all are co creators of a future we can all be proud of. Empathy and compassion are the ingredients to move us past mere civility and into a spiritual space, a Jerusalem on high. The mourning of our temples is a “we’ve all been there” reminder to not be quick to anger, but quick to offer an open hand and an open heart.

The stresses of life are rampant…they bog each of us down and the weight, the anxiety is often overwhelming. But each of us has the capacity to be a little more decent, a little more understanding , and a little more loving. With all our collective souls and all our collective might, we’ll build a new Jerusalem of unconditional love and support, a community on high and down here on Earth.   

This week, Ben Frazier passed away following a 9 month battle with cancer. Ben was an award-winning civil and human rights leader — a long-time broadcast journalist who became the first Black anchor of a major news show in Jacksonville. He received the NAACP’s Rutledge H. Pearson Civil Rights Award for his advocacy and outstanding contributions to civil rights over many decades. He founded the Northside Coalition of Jacksonville to “empower, educate and organize our communities in an effort to establish greater self-sufficiency.” He had a VOICE and used it.

Growing up, I always felt that my rabbi had “a voice”- as the expression used to go, someone you could listen to read from a phone book, when those were actually a thing. He happened to give a great sermon, too. That dynamic duo shared by my rabbi and Ben — a worthwhile message and a voice to carry it — is hard to come by. What a voice!

I knew Ben peripherally, but I wish I knew him better. Dealing with health issues, he still showed up these past few years to fight for a number of issues of equity and equality. In 2016, Ben joined Rabbi Tilman and other faith leaders for a memorial service for those lost at Pulse Nightclub, echoing our hope that our city’s Human Rights Ordinance would expand to cover ALL of its citizens. This past November, a month into his cancer diagnosis, he brought Northside Coalitions members to James Weldon Johnson Park when our OneJax partners held a vigil of Unity & Hope following the desecration of our downtown spaces by antisemitic messages. It was important to him to show support for the Jewish community.  

In a few days is the 17th of Tammuz, a day that commemorates the siege that led to the destruction of the holy temple in Juersalem. We are about to spend nearly a whole month speaking about the cause of that destruction, sinat chinam, useless hatred… and we see the embodiment of useless hatred right before us.

3 years ago, after the lynching of George Floyd, I quietly worked with partners in a number of local Jewish and non-Jewish organizations to create a series of learning sessions. Rabbi Lubliner and I participated in a dialogue series under the umbrella of Where Race Meets Religion. The Rabbi and Dr. Richard Wynn, UNF’s Chief Diversity Officer, held a forum on Intersectionality and Identity, while my session covered Allyship with Dr. Kimberly Allen, the dynamic founder of 904orward. 

Ben was also supposed to be a participant. His kickoff learning session was tentatively called, “Real Talk: Encounters with Race and Racism,” but that program was canceled before major publicity was sent out.       

Why? A quick Google search of the event’s co-sponsor, a national Jewish organization Bend the Arc, revealed a political campaign with overt anti-Trump sentiment, with slogans promising to “free America from [him].” At the time I wrote to our community partners: “I don’t always agree with speakers or organizations that are brought to the greater Jacksonville Jewish community, but there is a difference between not endorsing and silencing. I hope we can find ways to lift up voices and conversations in a constructive way.” But the image of the co-sponsoring organization was already tainted too much. Today, you won’t find the same rhetoric on their homepage — I can only provide conjecture as to why that is. But in name calling, in that being the focus of their message, they foolishly stopped a conversation before it could even begin, conversations that needed to happen about the fight against white supremacy, antisemitism, and racism in this country. 

We said we’d have him back for a later event. Our community needed to hear his VOICE. But that ended up never happening. To be frank, Ben’s political leanings might have seemed foreign to many in our midst, and yes, part of his story is that he spoke truth, often to closed ears. But in speaking truth, in his own voice, he reached a far-ranging audience. And I wish that the Jewish community could have been more a part of his story. In a planning call for the program, Ben poignantly stated “Where our missions intersect, is where our collaboration begins.” He understood that we can’t all agree on everything, but there has to be a place where we can come together, to have a conversation.

This is the climate synagogues and synagogue professionals must operate under. Dr. Shuly Rubin Schwartz, Chancellor of JTS and our Shorstein lecturer this upcoming winter, wrote this past week, “We face an acute shortage—of rabbis, but also of educators, cantors, organizational leaders, camp staff, chaplains, youth leaders, and even lay leaders.” The shortage isn’t solely a pipeline problem, and isn’t solely one for the Jewish faith. It’s exacerbated by a mass exodus of clergy of all faiths from the professional ranks. 

The Christian research organization Barna reported that in March 2022, “the percentage of pastors who have considered quitting full-time ministry within the past year sits at 42 percent” 

In an article titled” Why Pastors Are Burning Out” Anglican priest 

Tish Harrison Warren writes  

“That the top reported reasons for clergy burnout were the same ones that people in the population at large face: stress, loneliness and political division. But these stressors affect pastors in a unique way. Pastors bear not only their own pain but also the weight of an entire community’s grief, divisions and anxieties. They are charged with the task of continuing to love and care for even those within their church who disagree with them vehemently and vocally. These past years required them to make decisions they were not prepared for that affected the health and spiritual formation of their community, and any decisions they made would likely mean that someone in their church would feel hurt or marginalized.”

The tightrope dance of speaking up on issues without alienating congregants is a top reason for clergy burnout, but avoiding the “hot topics” altogether doesn’t alleviate the stress, either. 

In our torah portion, the main character, Balaam, sought to curse the Israelites, only to have God intervene as puppeteer in order to bless Israel, despite Balaam’s objections. Faith leaders, on the other hand, have the capacity, and the desire, to be facilitators of difficult discussions; to have freedom of the pulpit because they have the trust of a congregation to speak from a religious perspective that is authentic, thought-out and thought provoking. Theirs are the mouths open not in curse but in conversation.

This isn’t the first sermon on civil discourse, but I do think it helps to remind us all that there is a space in this ohel (tent), in this mishkan (portable sanctuary)- on Saturday morning, in adult education classes, in print, to have meaningful conversations about reproductive health, Israel, and gun control. 

Balaam famously blesses the people of Israel:

 “Mah tovu ohelecha yYaakov, mishkinotekha Yisrael.” 

How good are your tents Jacob, your dwelling places Israel? 

The rabbis asked why the doubling of the language? Why not say “How good your tents Jacob” OR “how good your dwelling places Israel?”

The Gemara asks in Bava Batra 60a: 

From where are these matters, i.e., that one may not open an en-trance opposite another entrance, or a window opposite another window, derived? Rabbi Yoḥanan says that the verse states: “And Balaam lifted up his eyes, and he saw Israel dwelling tribe by tribe; and the spirit of God came upon him” (Numbers 24:2). The Gemara explains: What was it that Balaam saw that so inspired him? He saw that the entrances of their tents were not aligned with each other, ensuring that each family enjoyed a measure of privacy. 

Our dwelling place, our synagogue, is also a tent- open to difficult conversations, open to all; but our rabbis remind us that there is room for each of us to have our own space; we can all dwell together even in our measure of privacy.

So what does meaningful dialogue look like? Can we find a way to hear people’s voices? And is there a point and place when and where we can rally around each other beyond our mutual disdain for Nazis and antisemitism? 

Philosopher Martin Buber, writing in Tales of the Hasidim: Early Masters, says:

“There is genuine dialogue – no matter whether spoken or silent – where each of the participants really has in mind the other or others in their present and particular being and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation between himself and them.

There is technical dialogue, which is prompted solely by the need of objective understanding.

And there is monologue disguised as dialogue, in which two or men, meeting in space, speak each with himself in strangely tortuous and circuitous ways and yet imagine they have escaped the torment of being thrown back on their own resources”

Let us aim for genuine dialogue. For while our synagogue is a misgav, a haven, a safety net from the noise and chaos of the outside world, it is also a mishkan, a place to dwell- to sit with difficult topics and sit in conversation with one another; to challenge ourselves; to grow. 

To paraphrase Ben Frazier’s words, “Where our mishkans, our missions  intersect, this is where our collaboration begins.” May we collaborate on a mishkan, a portable sanctuary we take wherever we go, a sanctuary built on trust, respect, curiosity and love. May we have faith in our leaders to guide us, and in our own potential to better ourselves and this world. Mah tovu – how good is the tent we can build, all of us, together?