Rabbi Dan Ornstein

Before I rushed off to worship services one morning, I glanced out my backyard window at our bare black oak tree that shook in the frigid, late February wind. Alighting peacefully on one of the branches was a striking, sharp-billed blue jay.

Chapter Two of the biblical Book of Exodus compresses into a mere five paragraphs the extraordinary story of Moses the Israelite boy born into a slave family who becomes the prince of Egypt and then a liberator of the oppressed. Surrounding him are compassionate, powerful women who subversively resist the genocidal decrees of the Egyptian Pharaoh to enslave and destroy the Israelites. Most important, Moses’ character develops as he makes courageous choices to side with his actual people, the persecuted; these choices are wildly out of sync with his supposed status as a member of the royal household.

I made the mistake of reading the news on my iphone the moment I woke up this past New Year’s Day. The world before and after midnight, January 1st was the same cesspool of misery and meanness that my most ardent magical thinking failed to transform.

This year, a lot of people have commented to me, “Rabbi, it’s amazing that in 2024 the first night of Hanukkah coincides directly with Christmas day. That’s so rare.” This coincidence is rare, having occurred only four times since 1910, but it’s not amazing.

In October, my family and I experienced the entire journey from birth to death in less than a week. The long-awaited arrival of my great nephew infected us with tremendous joy as his tiny presence in our lives suddenly expanded our embrace and our hope for the future. All of us -from his great grandparents to his aunts and cousins – revel in every photo my niece and nephew send us, every story of his newest discovery of the world, every mention of his sweet name, which bears the legacy of a revered uncle who died too soon. He is stealing our hearts and replacing them with even bigger ones.

When hiking throughout our region, I occasionally come to a full stop, I stand under a thicket of trees, close my eyes and listen: to the wind as it tests the varied surfaces of the many leaf species; to the crickets, cicadas and bees as they perform the music of their vibrating bodies and wings which is their innate genius; to the rush of creek water rapids over silent stones.

Driving through the Chicago suburb of Skokie a few weeks ago, my wife and I hankered for a good lunch at one of its kosher restaurants. Since we observe the Jewish dietary laws, it is rare for us to dine out for a burger or deli sandwich.

The old curse, “may you live in interesting times”, has a strange, apocryphal history as a reputed ancient Chinese imprecation. No actual source for it in traditional Chinese literature has been found; the nearest that Chinese writings come to this biting and ironic statement is a proverb from 1627 by the author, Feng Menglong: “Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos.”

The rushing sound of Kinderhook Creek along the Rensselaer Plateau sings a gracious love song about how God put beauty into the world. My wife and I have hiked the creek several times over the past few years, stopping intermittently to listen to its fugal melodies formed by the movement of water, the leaves rustling in the wind, and the birds chanting chorales from their nests.

My ancient ancestors believed that we experience a kind of mini death when we go to sleep. Though they were astute observers of dreams and of the body’s many functions, they had no understanding of how sleep works. In their imaginations, sleep and dreams fall upon us when our souls leave us to travel to the highest heavens and to the deepest places below the earth and the sea. When we wake up, our souls return to us refreshed, affording us new strength as if we had just been created.