Parashat Beshalah | Rabbi Becca Weintraub | January 31, 2026

I think many of you have heard me share

in a variety of contexts, maybe even

from the Beimma, that when I first

realized that I might be called to serve

as a rabbi, I knew one thing and I was

very certain of it. And it's that I

didn't want to do pulpit work.

And as the Yiddish phrase goes, we plan

and God laughs.

And what first opened my heart to pulpit

work was realizing that it's one of the

few places where you get to be with

people of all ages from birth to a 100

plus from life to death and everything

in between.

That realization made me begin very

tentatively to explore the possibility

of pulpit work.

Shouls and synagogues and I think houses

of worship in general are among the last

truly intergenerational communities most

of us belong to.

And still

I was convinced I wouldn't find a

community that felt like the right

spiritual fit.

And then you came along

Rolley and Felicia and the board at the

time

and each one of you. This holy spiritual

home made me realize that despite all of

my uncertainties, I needed to take a

leap of faith and try serving God

together with you. Those of you who are

here in person, those of you joining us

on Zoom, the little ones who are in the

community house behind us, the teens,

the Kadeimma students who come on

Tuesday evenings for Hebrew school, each

and every one of us together.

And part of what we do here is that we

ground ourselves.

We ground ourselves and we ground our

next generation in community and in

tradition so that we can serve beyond

these walls and that we can navigate a

world that is harsh, that is painful,

that is heartbreaking, and that is

chaotic.

A world that makes no sense.

And this past week was no different. It

began with the shock and the anger and

the devastation

as we learned of the murder of Alex

Prey, another innocent person just like

Renee Good who was shot point blank by

ICE agents, a part of our own

government.

a government that then sought to

villainize this victim, Alex, attempting

to turn a person who stood for justice

into terrorist to the point that his

grieving family felt compelled to issue

statements about his kindness and his

love and that all he brought into the

world. and he was willing to put his

life on the line so that others would be

treated with dignity, so that migrants

would be welcome in Minnesota and in our

country.

These images

and videos of Alex and the people

fighting in Minnesota, they're emerging

and one of my rabbitic colleagues,

although I've seen it in other places

too, he calls it the occupied Minnesota.

They're all coming out of this occupied

Minnesota. And among these images are

also

an image that I can't get out of my

mind, which is of a young five-year-old

Liam Ramos, a preschooler. He's wearing

a blue hat. I don't know if people saw

this. He's wearing a blue hat that has

little bunny ears on it and it has

dangling pompoms coming down. And he's

standing beside a large black car. You

can see there's an adult behind him just

in black clothing just from the waist

down. And the hand of the adult is

placed on his backpack, his Spider-Man

backpack. And in another photo, they

show Liam stands at the door of a home

which appears to be a masked agent, an

ICE agent that's behind him. And the

exact circumstances have been brought up

in the news. And there's dispute around

what happened. And Homeland Security

claims that he was being held protective

after his father fled. But his school

and the public school district is saying

that they circulated these photos to

show that he was used, this 5-year-old

was used as bait to lure the adults and

his family so that they could take him

and they could separate them and put

them into detention, which is what ended

up happening. They sent them all the way

down to South Texas to a family

residential center where there are new

images of Liam and his father. He's

looking lethargic. He's withdrawn. and

people are doing interviews with them

saying that he is depressed and he wants

to go back to school and wants to be

with his friends and his family. And

it's this week that the federal judge

said that he and his father, they're not

going to be able to be transferred or

deported while their case proceeds.

The hate and the fear-mongering,

it knows no bounds. Children, adults,

it doesn't matter. mothers, ICU nurses,

people standing up for what is right,

only to be silenced by violence.

What do we do from here from New York

City?

We can send money. We can call our

senators. We read. We protest. We

strike.

Maybe even some of us have been able to

go to Minnesota to stand on the front

lines.

And we also as a community we deeply

believe in and we build together a

sanctuary here of belonging.

A space of radical welcome for people of

all ages where each of us and our

children can feel seen and loved as we

are dignified and at that same time

challenged to be our very best selves

and to understand how we can each help

create the community we hope for and

even more broadly the country and the

world that we want to live in. It starts

here. It starts right here.

And as always, our tradition and the

Torah is going to give us language and

images for this journey that we're on

together.

We're about to cross the sea to become a

people, Ben Israel, the children of

Israel.

A nation once enslaved. A nation of

people who were outsiders, strangers in

a strange land. A nation embarking

together on a spiritual journey to serve

God and bring holiness into the world. A

nation of people of all ages, ensuring a

future generation who will strive to do

the same kind of service and to bring

that same holiness into a world that

needs it.

The midas teaches us that the daughters

of Israel when they walked through the

sea, they were actually holding their

children. And if their children got

hungry, they would just reach their hand

into the walls of the sea that were

split and they would grab an apple or

they would grab a pomegranate and they

would give it to their children to eat

on this journey. Children were not only

present at this moment, but they were

central to the moment of our redemption.

There are midrashim that talk about

children as being the first ones who

recognized God when the sea split.

The midash recounts that when parro

decreed the death of all of the baby

boys, the women didn't stop giving

birth, which in and of itself is an

incredible, incredible miracle.

They went into the fields to deliver

their children. And when the babies were

born, they turned to God and they said

and they had they said, "We've done our

part, God. Now it's time for you to do

your part."

And so God became a mother. God takes in

all of these children and raises them

and protects them in the fields until it

was safe to return them to their

families. This is the image of the

midash.

So when they get to the sea and they saw

God, they the children, they point with

their fingers. They take their mothers

and they say they point. They say

they say this is my God and I will honor

God. This is the one who raised me, the

one I will prepare a home for, or the

one I will honor. This is the one

who has brought me here and who we are

going to continue to serve and be in

relationship with.

It's also one of the opening lines of

Shiatayam

and it's the song of the sea. It's our

redemption which reminds us of this

moment and this connection.

The word anveu which is often translated

as I will honor or even glorify him

although I want to make it genderneutral

when talking about god it can also be

the root can also mean to dwell or to

create a home or a space

and so it's the children that cared for

who first recognized God in this moment

the who made a home for them, who gave

them safety and a sense of belonging.

And it's the children who in that very

moment teach the adults what a loving

and caring God looks like. That this is

the God of our ancestors and that it is

now our responsibility to help create

that same home for God and holiness in

the world. That is how we are going to

honor God.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Hesshel notes

something quite extraordinary about

these words. He teaches that we each

have two sources of religious

understanding.

Memory which is the collective

experience of our people. The memory is

the way we connect to each other as a

people and personal insight. All of our

experiences that we have as an

individual as a person walking through

the world. And the song of the sea shir

hayam has both of these within it. We

say ze vanu eloh ai armenu.

This is my god and I will honor or if we

want to play with it or I will build a

home for god the god of my ancestors and

I will glorify god.

Hesshel explains that a person must

first arrive through personal insight.

This is my God before they can truly

understand the God of my ancestors.

Access to the universal Jewish

experience he teaches comes through our

own lived encounters with God. It starts

with our experience. It expands to

understanding our peoplehood and what we

are a part of. And what I want to do is

take this one step further. When we feel

at home in ourselves and a sense of

belonging in our community and our

history, the next step to that is that

we can come to an understanding of not

only the central Jewish truth that is

repeated over and over of our own story,

but that that story is deeply connected

to the story of all of humanity and all

people. that we were strangers in Egypt

and therefore we are commanded to treat

the stranger with dignity and with care.

Feeling at home enables us to turn

outward and create that same sense of

belonging for others. When we come to

understand what it means to find God

within ourselves and then to find God as

a collective community, we come to

understand also what it means to make

space and a home for God in the world.

We do this through treating each other

and each and every person with dignity.

This is why over the past few months

there's been a group that I've been

working with of staff and lay leaders, a

small group here of people who often are

ushers in the community and also

families who have young children. And

we're developing guidelines to help us

continue to build a sacred home of

prayer here at BJ supporting both our

youngest dvenars, those who pray at all

ages and our adult daveners alike. It's

not just guidelines. This is the

building blocks. These are the sparks.

This is where it all begins.

This is how we create ways for all of us

to feel welcome, to feel understood, and

to feel held, and to feel a sense of

belonging while also cultivating a sense

of longing for God, for community, and

for connection to the past, present, and

even I would say future of the Jewish

experience. And we do this so that we

can go out and help make the world a

holier place. It starts here.

We strive to set the space here where we

can point to our own God. Zalei. That is

my God. And then we can understand that

that same God is the God of our

ancestors and ultimately that that God

is the very God of creation in which all

of humanity is made in the likeness of.

In the coming months, you're going to

see opportunities to join our Shabbat

welcoming team. It was going to be

today. It was actually moved. So there's

going to be after kadouch on March 7th,

there's going to be a gathering to come

and to become a greeter, become somebody

who welcomes. You're going to see signs

throughout the sanctuary that remind us

how we welcome and respect one another

and intentional practices that affirm

that all people of all ages belong here.

This is where it starts. This is the

holy work. This is the sanctuary where

we start building and we don't stop.

That once again we try to celebrate each

and every person while also holding each

other accountable to reaching and

striving to be our best. Part of this is

a practice of saying I see you for who

you are and I also want to push you. I

also want there to be some reaching and

some striving.

May this be may our sanctuary be a

makome a place where we have and we

create the opportunity to find holiness

together to feel that holiness and to

carry that holiness into the world

instilling it in ourselves and in the

next generation so that we each have a

deep sense of purpose belonging and

sacred responsibility

raton. May it be

Shabbat shalom.