Action-Packed Judaism

Eve PosenLeave a comment

This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on Saturday, May 16, 2026.

One of the fundamental differences between Judaism and Christianity is the order in which these words go: faith and action. Christianity is rooted in the idea that a deep faith in salvation naturally leads to righteous action. In Judaism, the action, the practice comes first. By actively performing mitzvot, we understand and internalize our faith.

This is true not just in our traditional rituals, but in Jewish communal life too. Did you say yes to the committee before you knew the workload? Have you shown up to comfort someone before you knew what to say? Maybe you’ve started a new role, relationship, or responsibility, carrying equal parts hope and uncertainty. And somehow, along the way, clarity comes not before the doing, but through it.

That is the heartbeat of our congregational theme this year: Na’aseh v’nishma. “We will do, and we will learn.” This month’s reflection pushes us even further: Say yes to doing something meaningful before you fully know the details. Step in with trust. What did you discover by acting first and learning as you went?

Parshat Bamidbar opens in precisely that space of uncertainty. The Israelites stand in the wilderness, not yet settled, not even really fully formed as a people. God commands Moses to take a census, counting the people tribe by tribe, preparing them for the journey ahead. On the surface, it sounds administrative. Logistics. Numbers. Troop organization.

But beneath the census lies a deeper spiritual truth: the Israelites are learning who they are by showing up for the journey before they fully understand where it will lead. The medieval commentator Rashi notes that God counts the Israelites repeatedly because of love. Counting in Torah is never only about numbers; it’s about mattering. Every person is seen. Every person belongs. Even in the chaos of the wilderness, they are reminded: you are part of something larger than yourself.

And perhaps that is what allows them to move forward despite uncertainty. They don’t wait until they have complete confidence. They step forward together first. There is something profoundly Jewish about that. Like Moses himself, rarely do we feel fully prepared to lead, to heal, to forgive, to build community, or to hope again. If we waited until certainty arrived, we might never begin at all.

The wilderness teaches us that faith is often discovered retroactively. We act, and then we understand. We say yes, and then we learn why it mattered. Have you ever heard the word “orthopraxy”? Think of it in contrast to “orthodoxy.” Orthodoxy is about having the “right” or “correct” opinion, and orthopraxy is about having the “right” or “correct” practice.

So this Shabbat, I want to offer us an orthopraxic charge: do not underestimate the holiness of stepping in before you have every answer. Say yes to the meaningful conversation. The act of service. The invitation to community. The opportunity to help carry someone else through the wilderness.

Because sometimes na’aseh is what makes v’nishma possible.

A Legacy in Relationships

Eve Posen1 Comment

This is the d’var Torah I delivered on Friday, May 8, 2026, at Congregation Neveh Shalom.

There are people who come and go from our lives, having just a momentary impact. And there are those who, over time, quietly but steadily shape who we become. If you’re lucky, you can name them because you never forgot them. A teacher who saw something in you before you saw it in yourself. A mentor who nurtured, but also challenged. And if you’re really lucky, that same person is still walking alongside you decades later, bearing witness to the chapters of your story as they unfold.

This week, as we read Parshiyot Behar and Bechukotai, the Torah turns our attention to time that stretches beyond a single lifetime. In Behar, we learn about Shemittah and Yovel, the sabbatical and jubilee years, built-in rhythms that force us to think generationally. The land rests, debts are released, and we are reminded that what we “own” is never fully ours. In Bechukotai, we encounter blessings and consequences tied not just to individual behavior, but to the collective path of a people across time. Together, these portions ask us to consider: what does it mean to live a life that echoes beyond us?

The Torah’s answer is both grounding and demanding. You don’t build a legacy through grand gestures alone. You build it through consistency, through values lived over time, through relationships that endure. “If you walk in My laws… Im bechukotai teleichu” is not about a single moment of faithfulness, but a way of being that accumulates meaning across years and generations.

And that kind of legacy doesn’t happen in isolation. It is shaped through the people who guide us, challenge us, and believe in us.

This Shabbat, we have the extraordinary privilege of welcoming Rabbi Danny Nevins as our Scholar in Residence. For me, this is not just a professional honor; it is deeply personal. Rabbi Nevins has known me since I was 11 years old. He was my rabbi and teacher, the one who stood with me at my bat mitzvah, who guided my family through the grief of my father’s funeral, and who officiated at my wedding. He has been a constant presence across the most sacred thresholds of my life.

This is what leaving a mark on someone’s life looks like. This is what we mean by “legacy.”

It’s not abstract; it’s lived in relationships that span decades. It’s in the investment in another person’s growth. It’s in showing up, again and again, at the moments that matter most. Rabbi Nevins didn’t just teach Torah, he modeled what it means to live it. And whether he knew it or not, he was planting the seeds for my future, and for who I would eventually be here, at Neveh Shalom, in this community.

Has anyone seen the 2016 movie Arrival? Where Amy Adams plays a linguist whose job is to decipher an alien language? What she discovers – spoiler alert, even though it was 10 years ago – is that humans, just like the aliens, are capable of seeing time as one big picture rather than as linear. They just have to learn the language.

In a sense, that is the invitation of Behar and Bechukotai: to see our lives not as isolated stories, but as part of a much larger unfolding. To ask ourselves: what are we planting, and for whom? What rhythms are we creating that will outlast us? Who are we investing in, not just for today, but for the generations we may never meet?

Here’s the part that might challenge you a bit: legacy isn’t something you leave behind at the end of your life. It’s something you’re building right now, whether intentionally or not.

So be intentional.

Show up for someone consistently enough that they can count on you years from now. Teach something worth remembering. Model the values you hope will endure. Be the person whose presence shapes another person’s story in a way that lasts.

Because one day, someone will stand where you stand and tell the story of who helped them become who they are.

Make sure that story is worth telling.

We Were, We Are

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This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on Friday, May 1.

There’s something disorienting about coming home and realizing you’re not quite the same person who left. The streets are familiar, the rhythms unchanged, and yet, something in you has shifted. Last week, I welcomed Shabbat in the Douro Valley, the oldest demarcated wine region in the world, after having visited the Crypto Jews of Belmonte. I returned from Portugal carrying images I can’t shake: magnificent cathedrals preserved in full glory in contrast to a quiet doorway in Évora with nothing but the faint imprint of a mezuzah. No plaque. No grand recognition. Just a trace. A whisper: Jews were here.

Parshat Emor moves between sacred rhythms and sacred responsibility. We read about the laws governing the kohanim, the priestly class tasked with maintaining holiness in the public sphere. We are given the calendar of our festivals, Pesach, Shavuot, Sukkot, marking sacred time in a world that often forgets it. And threaded throughout is a powerful charge: v’lo techalelu et shem kodshi, v’nikdashti b’toch Bnei Yisrael. “Do not profane My holy name, and I will be sanctified among the people of Israel.”

We often understand this as a call to act in ways that reflect well on Judaism, to live ethically, visibly, proudly. But after what I’ve seen, I hear something deeper. Because sanctifying God’s name is not only about what we do when it’s easy or celebrated. It’s about what we carry when it’s hidden, when it’s threatened, or when it could disappear.

In Belmonte, Jews lived as crypto-Jews for over 500 years. They held onto fragments of ritual and identity, often at great risk. The only Hebrew word that endured in their prayers was “Adonai.” Everything else adapted, softened into Portuguese, reshaped for survival. And still, they held on. Before entering the church for their “baptism” they’d recite: “My body enters, but my soul remains sacred for Adonai.” A vow they could recognize and annul if needed on Yom Kippur in their own way. Rabbi Joshua Stampfer described that community as proof that Am Yisrael chai, not as a slogan, but as a fragile, defiant truth.

And now I stand back here in Portland, where we are blessed with freedom, visibility, and community—and I feel both gratitude and responsibility pressing in. Because the truth is, Jewish history does not always leave behind monuments. Sometimes all that remains is an imprint on a doorway. A memory carried quietly across generations.

V’nikdashti b’toch Bnei Yisrael. Holiness doesn’t depend on grandeur. It depends on continuity. So what does that ask of us, here, now?

It asks us not to take for granted what others risked everything to preserve. It’s coming together to pray on Shabbat, or to learn at Aliyah or with our scholar in residence next weekend, or to sit and eat in the Neveh sukkah this fall. Recognize that every time we gather, every time we teach our children, every time we mark time as Jews, we are doing something profoundly consequential.

It asks us to be visible—not recklessly, but intentionally. To place mezuzot on our doorposts not just as symbols, but as statements: we are here, and we’re not going anywhere.

And it asks us to live in a way that honors both the fragility and the strength of our story. To carry forward not just survival, but meaning. Not just identity, but purpose.

As we enter Shabbat together again, the charge is both simple and weighty: don’t let it fade. Be the imprint that endures. Live so that generations from now, whether through grand institutions or the faintest trace, someone will be able to say not only that Jews were here, but that we lived, we gathered, we believed—and we carried it forward.

These Days

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This is the d’var Torah I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on Friday, April 17.

The spring calendar asks something enormous of us. Within the span of just days, we will move from the depths of grief to the fragile edge of pride. From sirens that stop a nation in its tracks to celebrations that fill the streets with song. It’s almost disorienting, how quickly we’re meant to shift, how much we’re meant to hold. And yet, this is the rhythm of Jewish life: to remember, to mourn, to honor, and still to rise.

In Tazria and Metzora, we encounter the strange and intricate world of tzara’at, a condition that appears on skin, garments, even homes. The priest is tasked with careful examination: לראות, to see. They look, they wait, they look again. When someone is afflicted, they are set apart from the community, not as a permanent rejection, but as part of the healing process. And then, just as carefully, there is a path of return. The Torah outlines rituals of reentry, moments of being seen again, restored to the fullness of communal life.

These parshiyot are, at their core, about seeing, about not turning away from what is difficult, painful, or unsettling. And that is exactly what this season of Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron, and Yom HaAtzmaut demands of us.

On Yom HaShoah, we refuse to look away from the horror of what was done to our people. We bear witness to absence, to loss that cannot be repaired. We say: we will see it, we will remember it, even when it is unbearable. On Yom HaZikaron, we narrow our gaze again, this time to the faces and names of those who gave their lives for the Jewish people and the State of Israel. The grief is particularly piercing. Each life is a world. Each loss, a tear in the fabric of our collective story. And then, almost impossibly, Yom HaAtzmaut arrives. A day of return. Of stepping back into the fullness of Jewish life, of celebrating resilience, continuity, and the fragile miracle of a homeland. Not in denial of what we have seen, but because we have seen it.

Tazria-Metzora teaches us that to be a community is to develop the courage to see clearly, and the compassion to bring one another back in. After isolation, there must be return. After rupture, the possibility of renewal.

As we move through this series of sacred days, don’t rush past any part of it. Just as you let yourself feel the weight of memory on Yom HaShoah. Honor the cost of survival on Yom HaZikaron. And when Yom HaAtzmaut arrives, allow yourself, even if it feels complicated, to notice the light.

Pay attention to who around you is carrying grief. Pay attention to who struggles with celebration. And let us be the kind of community that knows how to hold both. Because to be a Jew, in this moment, is to see deeply, to remember honestly, and still—to choose life, יחד, together.

Memory is Physical

Eve Posen1 Comment

This is the Yizkor sermon I delivered at Congregation Neveh Shalom on April 9, 2026.

There is a moment, perhaps you know it well: a memory jolt. Memories don’t always arrive gently; sometimes they interrupt when you least expect them.  

You’re standing in line at Fred Meyer, you’re driving downtown, you’re setting the table, and suddenly something breaks through. A smell. A phrase. A familiar cadence of music. And in an instant, time collapses. You’re no longer here, you’re somewhere else. With them. In a moment that feels as vivid as if it’s happening now. 

What catches us off guard is not only the memory itself, but its force, its insistence, or its refusal to stay in the past. 

On this eighth day of Passover, as we gather for Yizkor, we stand in a sacred tension between past and present. For seven days, we have told the story of our people, of יציאת מצרים, of leaving the narrow place, of moving from constriction toward possibility. We have fulfilled the mitzvah of “והגדת לבנך” telling the story, shaping memory through words. 

And now, we turn inward. 

Yizkor asks something quieter, and in many ways, something more demanding. Not the retelling of a national narrative, but the encounter with our own. 

Jewish tradition is deeply attuned to the complexity of memory. We are commanded again and again to remember, זכור. But our tradition never assumes that memory is straightforward. 

There is the memory of narrative, the facts we can recount. Who they were. What they did. The stories we tell at tables and anniversaries. This kind of memory is structured. It gives us coherence. 

But there is another kind of memory, less orderly and far more powerful: the memory that lives in the body. The memory of relationship. Of how it felt to be known by this person. The tone of their voice. The safety, or the challenge, they brought into our lives. The ways they shaped us, often without words. 

This is the memory that finds us unexpectedly. The one that can bring both comfort and ache in the same breath. 

And on a day like today, we are invited to hold both. 

The Israelites, too, carried layered memory as they left Egypt. They didn’t leave with a single, unified story. They left with fragments: the bitterness of slavery, the urgency of departure, the fear of the unknown, the fragile hope of freedom. Their memory was not resolved, it was alive, evolving as they moved through the wilderness. 

So too for us. The memories we carry of those we love aren’t fixed. They aren’t static. They shift as we shift. As we grow older, as we encounter new challenges, as we stand in places they never stood, we come to understand them differently. Isn’t it fascinating how your relationship with a parent who died years ago can continue to evolve? As we get older, the experiences we had with them take on new meaning, they become more complex. Maybe a relationship you thought you understood deepens or raises questions. 

Even grief itself changes shape over time, and this can feel unsettling. We might wonder: if the memory changes, is it still true? Our tradition answers: yes. 

Because to remember is not to preserve something untouched. It is to remain in relationship. It is to allow what was to continue to shape what is. 

The word זיכרון in Judaism is not static recall; it is active presence. It is why we say, “זכר יציאת מצרים” we don’t just remember the Exodus, we bring it into this moment. And at Yizkor, we do the same. We don’t simply look back; we allow those we have lost to stand with us, to accompany us in who we are becoming. 

This means that memory carries a responsibility, not only to remember people as they were, but to ask what part of them lives on through us. What values did they embody that now yearn to be part of our lives? What unfinished goodness calls out through their absence? What would it mean for their love, their courage, their humor, their particular way of being in the world, to find expression in our lives? 

Just to reassure you, this is in no way replacing them. It’s how they live on. In Judaism, the truest measure of memory is not how vividly we recall, but how faithfully we carry forward. 

So on this day of Yizkor, I invite you to do more than remember. Let the memories come, the easy ones and the painful ones, the clear ones and the complicated ones. Let them be as they are, without forcing them into something simpler than they feel. 

And then, gently but honestly, ask: What am I carrying forward? 

Choose one thing. One איכות, one quality. A patience you learned. A generosity you witnessed. A stubborn resilience. A way of showing up for others. And make it real in the days ahead. Not abstractly. Concretely. 

Perhaps there’s a phone call you’ve been putting off. Maybe there’s some forgiveness waiting to be offered. Show the kindness that feels just slightly beyond your comfort. Speak the words that need to be said. In doing so, you transform memory from something that happens to you into something that lives through you. 

This is the quiet, radical promise of Yizkor: that those we remember are not only part of our past, but an active force in our present, and, through us, a blessing for the future. 

זכרונם לברכה 
May their memories be a blessing and a becoming.