Graditude!!!???

My Cup Runneth Over in my Shattered Glass of Thansgiving

Baruch Hashem. (That is Hebrew for Thank G-d)

I am alive. I am Healthy. I have a beautiful family that I adore, including two grandsons. I have friends that get me, support me, and are always there for me. They in turn know that I would drop everything and anything to be there for them. I love and cherish the North Shore community that I have called home for over three decades. I love being a Rabbi, and I love the people that I Rabbi to. I love this time of year, with the smell of blazing fireplaces wafting through the brittle and crisp New England streets, amid the whirling of leaves overhead and underfoot. But like the timeless tradition at the end of a Jewish wedding, there’s a glass that shatters the reverie of gratefulness, puncturing the pseudo calm that I, and I suspect most American Jews feel today on this Thanksgiving of 2023. The broken glass doesn’t even require us to summon our ancient Souls, bearing the collective weight of its two thousand year old memories, holding onto remembrances that encompass the destruction of our holy Temples, the burning, killing, and destruction of our homeland — spanning over twenty centuries, that included — expulsions from Spain, Inquistions in Portugal, pogroms in Venice, Kishinev, and York, and the cold blooded Murder of Six Million Jews during the Holocaust.

We have all we need right here and now to break plates, glasses, and a whole lot more. The “normal” of the Jew hatred felt by our grandparents, great grandparents etc, that we thought was in our rear view mirror forever, is back, and has become our “new normal.” We now have a first hand taste of what it truly feels like when. Antisemitism stops feeling like an anomaly. Frankly, if I were to channel Sholom Aleichems Tevya, It would be, like “this is A badge of honour I could have managed to live without.”

But it is a challenge that I will most certainly not shrink away from. So let’s try this again. A more honest and sober gratitude footnote if you may. I’m still feeling lucky to be an American living in a country that stands for freedom of speech, and of course freedom of religion. The broken glass is the shattered illusion of safety even here in this country. My country. Our country. Where it has become as clear as day, that it is frequently unsafe to be a Jew.

Though I feel lucky that the Seaside North Shore community I Iive in has zero Tolerance for antisemitism, and the many non Jewish friends I have condemn it loudly and regularly, it is a scant comfort when looking at the big picture. I am heart broken that in Israel, we have been dragged back to barbaric times by modern day barbarians. I am heartbroken that we might have lost entire generations of many of the best and brightest young minds of our time to the toxic Academic dystopia, fueled by utterly illogical propaganda that has spread virus-like, through College Campuses across the country — where now, Jewish students have begun to be persecuted, while the universities stoke the flames, and look the other way, endagering Jewish students lives in the process.

I’m grateful that at least the masks of progressive doctrines have been removed to reveal the vicious and utterly regressive hatred that has erupted with such volcanic force on the campuses of our most elite universities. That too will eventually backfire when the inevitable occurs and the inmates seize control of these Asylums. At which time we will be faced with a colossal breakdown and unraveling of entire systems and institutions of higher learning.

Till then — I highly recommend looking into Yeshiva University, Brandeis, or any other school that has stood it’s ground and upheld its principles. The Ivy League has (by and large) become poison ivy. That’s the sad truth.

The best news by far is that as a community we are growing closer to one another. As a religious faith, we are suddenly bursting with a desire for connection and meaning to fill the new crater like voids that have appeared in our lives in a period of just seven weeks.

Also — TODAY, I am grateful for the safe return of every returned hostage, despite the high cost and the looming questions about “where do we go from here?”

Ok, so If you are reading this and feel down, don’t be. Knowing the truth about something dangerous is already half the cure. We HAVE indeed been here before, and we WILL get through this. Together. I Promise. If this is not doing it for you, shoot me a quick text and we can get together for a drive by Mitzvah like laying Tefilin, followed by a Hearty Lchaim or two on an unbroken glass. Perhaps, that itself commneces the repair of the fragmentation in our midst.

Keep your heads up higher than ever.

Much Love,

Rabbi Yossi