Parashat Lekh Lekha | Rabbi Felicia Sol | November 1, 2025

I grew up in a small town in Connecticut

with very few Jews.

I remember a penny being tossed at me in the school hallway

in elementary school, and I have a hazy memory that, as the new girl in town,

I wasn't invited to a sleepover at my Evangelical Christians Friends house

because I because I was going to hell.

We lived on a pond.

My parents still do.

And after I learned about the Shoah,

I started to have a recurring nightmare

that the Nazis were invading the pond

over and over again, night after night.

I never truly felt unsafe in our small town,

but my Jewishness was always exposed.

Something that fills me with both pride

and a profound sense of vulnerability.

I haven't felt

that same kind of exposure as a Jew in 40 years,

but I'm feeling it now.

Not in my small town in Connecticut,

but in the very Jewish city of New York.

We are close to the end of a very volatile mayor's race,

where Jews in Israel have been at the center of the conversation.

You could be a Jew who is Zionist or anti-Zionist.

Secular or religious?

Liberal or conservative.

There is no escaping the magnifying glass.

The Jewish people are under.

For such a small people, we sure do

get a lot of attention.

This past week marks seven years since the massacre

at the Tree of Life synagogue, where 11 Jews were murdered

for attending shul on an October Shabbat morning.

Who imagined in 2025

that we would be speaking about the rise of anti-Semitism?

Who would have

thought that Israel would be an issue that would take up so much airtime

in our local and national elections, and discourse?

The exposure

that the Jewish community is experiencing is deeply unsettling,

to say the least.

This past summer, Jewish

teen groups on tours in Europe

were told not to wear any jewelry

or clothes that identify them as Jews.

No margins of means, no mezuzah hanging from their necks.

Israelis have changed the way they travel and where they go.

Boulder, DC and Manchester are locations that we've added

to the list of Pittsburgh, Paoli, Poway and Colleyville.

I understand the fear and the worry.

The world is on fire.

Israel is on fire.

Our country is on fire

and our city is on fire.

And this week's Paris.

Avraham receives the call now from my Aunt Sara.

And we will light at her when we beit Tuffy her Ella. Our.

It's our share of Raqqa.

Go forth from your native land and from your father's house

to the land that I will show you,

because the Torah grants us no information

about why Avraham or Avram was commissioned by God.

The Midrash try to fill in the blanks.

And very sweet.

Rabbi, Rabbi Yitzhak teaches on the opening verse of the haka

when we read, and he brings in a verse from the Psalms.

Listen, daughter, see, and incline your ear.

Forget your people and your father's house.

Me beats Avi.

You hear the verse from Lara that says you should go forth.

Me beats from your father's house.

And then you hear that

same word in this verse, from Psalms, from your father's house,

and then that's called the picture, the opening lines, the Midrash.

This is analogous to one who is passing

from place to place and saw a castle on fire.

He said,

is it possible that this building has no one in charge of it?

The owner of the building looked out.

Oh, sorry.

Looked out at him and said, I am the owner of the building.

This is likened to Abraham saying, is it possible

that this world is without someone in charge?

The Holy One looked at him and said,

I am the owner of the world.

This moment when Avraham notices

the metaphorical castle ablaze and asks

whether there is a master of the house, is the very moment,

according to the Midrash that precedes God's summons to him

go forth!

What about this moment?

Cause God to commission Avraham?

One reads.

One read of this midrash is that Avraham was chosen because he felt

the intense dissonance between order,

beauty, and grandeur of the palace and the destructive chaos

and disorder of the fire consuming it.

How could it be that a creation design designed

with such intention and purpose devolved into such madness?

It is this gap and this dissonance, that causes

Avraham to question whether anyone is in charge.

It is his assertion also that

there is a gap between what is and what ought to be.

The tragic gap.

As Parker Palmer calls it.

That is the beginning of his faith and his calling.

In his

time, Abram seems to be the only one who notices

the world engulfed in flames and is disturbed by it.

We, however, are living in a time where we can see all the beer ads,

or look at the castle of flame and feel the fire surrounding us.

What differs in our time, I think, is

what we believe has caused the fire

for some of us.

Assemblyman mundane is language feels dangerous

not just because it is anti-Zionist,

but because it feels like incitement.

His seeming obsession with Israel, the occupation

and the disavowal of the legitimacy of Israel's right to exist

as a Jewish state is not only deeply disturbing,

but an affront to the Jewish people and our most precious commitments.

Of course, it's important to say that there are many Jews

that are attracted to him, particularly young Jews, for that very reason.

For others,

Governor Cuomo is a candidate who has been a danger to women

and has not owned his mistakes.

In addition, there is profound, profound concern

that he has too much allegiance to our current president

and those in his government who have sounded anti-Semitic tropes,

conspiracy theories, and weaponized anti-Semitism

for their own pernicious ends.

This puts the Jewish people at risk.

I know

there is also significant concern among many of us

that the Jewish people's power has diminished.

After all, if someone like Mamdani can even win the primary,

that is in some way an indication that Jewish power is diminished.

We are fractured.

There is deep discord where our priorities lie.

Israel, being among the most contentious.

Our dirty laundry is being displayed

and played out on the local and national stage.

This mayoral election is the prism

through which to see all the divides amongst our community.

Divides between generations around what Zionism

should or shouldn't be, or whether it even should be at all,

or even what safety looks like for the Jewish people.

I think for most of us,

the discourse has become so toxic,

categorical and extreme amidst

an election where it feels like there is no good choice,

and there is so much confusion that the greatest fear

is that our communities will become as polarized as our nation.

Instead of being a place or places

of resilience, comfort, compassion

and inspiration.

I am not going to rank

these hierarchies of fear, endanger.

I believe there is some significant truth in all of them.

But I can tell you that you all, we all rank them differently.

What scares some of us the most is not the same thing

that scares others of us the most.

The reality is that we all have a hierarchy of values

that drive our feelings, and our analysis of this present moment,

which is informed by our own lived experiences and histories.

In Jonathan Height's book The Righteous Mind

Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,

he argues that our moral intuitions

are guided by six foundational values.

The first.

Care versus harm.

Sensitivity to suffering and the need for compassion and kindness.

Second, fairness versus cheating.

A sense of Justice and reciprocity.

Three.

Loyalty versus betrayal.

Group cohesion.

Patriotism and the Obligations of Belonging.

Four.

Authority versus subversion.

Respect for social hierarchy.

Tradition and order.

Fifth.

Sanctity versus degradation.

Reverence for the sacred and avoidance of contamination.

And six.

Liberty versus oppression.

The desire for freedom from domination and the opposition to tyranny.

All human beings

are guided by these values in some way.

But the emphasis and hierarchy of these values is different for everyone.

His book is premised on the notion

that liberals and conservatives high

rank these particular pieces

very differently, that liberals tend to prioritize care.

And, And conservatives tend to prioritize authority and loyalty.

So that's just what it is.

And so he says that we all prioritize.

It's not that any of us are devoid of care,

or that we're not devoid of loyalty or the sense

of what our relationship is to authority, but based on where we are.

And often that aligns around political alliances.

We all have a different way.

What kind of gets at us the most?

Implicit in this understanding

is that when we prioritize certain values over others,

we also often have gaps in awareness

or blind spots that prevent us

from tolerating other people's opinions.

I'll admit that at times I can understand

what makes people believe what they do, and that makes it hard.

Especially now when tensions run

high, when fear hovers close,

and when amongst us are among us are those who are drawing

painful lines of division through our community.

Even rabbis and other leaders, some are drawing those lines, and others

are being cast as loyalists or traitors

based solely on how they might vote.

I might disagree with your particular practice,

your particular analysis.

You might disagree with mine.

If we had the chance to sit down together and talk it through.

And that's all right.

It's okay that we have a different analysis.

You and me.

Those of us sitting in this congregation, those joining us from afar.

It's okay.

I can live with that.

I hope you can too.

If what we see

or what we seek is a monolithic community,

one that does not tolerate diversity even to the slightest degree,

or celebrate the beauty of the tapestry that makes up our congregation.

That would be a choice.

But it is not a choice

that really, Becca or I are willing to make.

Certainly not over an election that will be decided

in just a matter of days

when all the ballots are counted on November

4th, or perhaps in the early hours of the fifth.

Our work as a community will remain the same.

To pray together, to learn together,

to care for one another and to pursue justice together.

No matter who is elected, our responsibility will be to hold him

and someday her.

I hope, accountable for the safety

of our people and the safety of others.

For the words he speaks and the actions he takes.

We will continue to fight for the values that matters most to us

and the city we call home.

That calling does not change whether our candidate wins or loses.

Whether he is a Republican, Democrat or independent,

the castle is a flame.

There is no doubt.

Might we be like Avram in this week's Paracha,

who looks at the fire engulfing what is most precious to him

and feels the gap, feels the discord,

feels the pain of so much that is crumbling

before our eyes, but knows it should be otherwise.

It is in the discord that Abraham's faith is born.

Might we look inward at our own commitments

in faith rather than castigating someone else's choices?

With all his doubt about this world.

Avram asks if the palace had an owner.

He couldn't fathom that no one cared enough to put out the flames.

He raised his voice to both question and protest

at the same time in his question and God's response.

A number of powerful possibilities begin to emerge.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes,

When God said, I am the owner of the palace,

it is as if God were saying to Abraham,

I need you to help me put out the flames.

Doctor Paul Mandell of the Schachter Institute offers another response.

He teaches that when God responds, I am the owner of the palace.

God is saying that God is in fact trapped in the fire.

God, too, is engulfed by the flames and needs Avraham

to rescue God and God's image in the world.

And Rabbi Sarah Hurwitz provides an alternative read Abraham's questions.

She says, is it possible that the castle has no owner?

Catalyzes God into action?

Abraham implies

in asking that question that the world is no longer sustainable as it is.

Something must change.

God hears Avram and has an awakening

and says, I am the master of the world.

It's a very radical read of the text.

I'm just going to say it again. If you missed it.

She says, Rabbi Sarah Horowitz, who's them first?

Met her at?

She says, When God when Abraham asks

the question, who's the owner of the palace?

Who is the.

Does the palace not have an owner?

She said Abraham is implying that the world is no longer

sustainable as it is, which causes God to consider.

I have to act.

I have to be the owner of this palace.

It is God that Abraham.

God hears Abraham, and it's God

that has the awakening, not Abraham.

She catalyzes God to have the awakening.

Or Abraham catalyzes God.

Sarah catalyzes us to realize is that Abraham causes God to have an awakening.

I am the master of the world.

God realizes and sends Abraham away

from the burning castle out into the world.

Abraham sees the fire and catalyzes God to act.

In this

uncertain moment, with fear and anger abounding,

where the discourse has become more and more hateful and polarizing, of which,

by the way, the Jewish people are a big factor in that.

We need to own that.

The Jewish people are a big, big part of what is making this campaign

hateful and polarizing, not exclusively, but significantly.

Perhaps we, like Abraham, need to pay attention to the fire

that is ablaze, to listen to the fear in each other's voices.

And as Rollie said last week, to awaken some compassion

in and for our broken hearts, our tattered souls,

and our moral injury which needs some care,

reducing the complexity of this moment will not make us stronger.

After the election.

And maybe we all need to hold

little doubt in our self-righteousness.

Like Abraham.

God needs us to

put out the flames, not douse them with oil.

We need to rescue our faith, its purpose and mission.

We need to affirm God's presence in the world

and to resist evil and hatred, inflammatory speech,

and to demand a different world, not to succumb to the world as it is.

Oh dear people, Israel,

a people that I love,

that I have devoted my life to.

Our beginnings were with Avram.

Let us not forget his audacious ness and his faithfulness.

Let us not give in to a world on fire,

but affirm a faith, a tradition

that sets us on a path to a promised land that has yet to be learned.

Haha. Get out of your land.

The mess that Amit says on this verse,

a person should always keep on walking her made her laugh

like her to some new possibility.

Let us try to walk forward no matter what comes on Tuesday.

Believing it can be so and working to make it so.

Maybe then instead of being a world ablaze,

it will become a world full of light, a castle full of light.

Which is another read of that midrash that instead of being a world

ablaze, it is a castle filled with light.

Can you hear that sound?

So may it be.