In Times of Great Failure
Sasha Perry’s Dvar Torah for Rosh Hashanah 5787
With deepest gratitude and acknowledgement to Rabbi Ari Lev and Daniel Delgado for their chevrutah work on this topic, and very necessary editing, along with Rabbi Susan Goldberg for the formation.
“This is not the end, it is the beginning.” That was the first statement made by the Prairieland Defendants Support committee after the trial of 9 activists had concluded. ANd it feels like a relatively accurate incantation for this moment today. In the Jewish calendar we are concluding one year and beginning another. In this community, ten years with the incredible founding Rabbi Brant Rosen has ended, and another has appeared. Some of you may feel like it's a beginning, and some of you may feel the ending more. Today, we are sharing this beginning and ending together. Hayom Harat Olam. Today is the conception of the world. This is the prayer we recite after the shofar blasts today as a reminder that creation is ongoing; that within it every day holds limitless unrealized potential. It can be a time of great relief, as we say, “let the year and its curses end and the new year and its blessings begin,” a time of hope, and excitement — but also anxiety and discomfort. Within that liminal space of becoming, all beginnings have the potential for loss, and failure.
“This is not the end, it is the beginning.” The Prairieland trial was a result of a noise demonstration in solidarity with detainees outside the Prairieland ICE Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas in July. 22 people were charged after a police officer on site was injured. Those charged ranged from organizers of the demonstration, to folks that just attended, people that left early, and one individual who wasn’t even there. In June, 9 of the defendants were sentenced to a combined 450 years in prison with sentences that ranged from 30 - 100 years per defendant. Lifetime sentences for being present at a demonstration at a detention center; something I personally have done dozens of times as many of you here in the room have as well. Elizabeth Soto was sentenced to 50 years for being at the demonstration because, as she puts it, “They didn’t like my book club.” Elizabeth and her husband produce zines for their Emma Goldman Book Club, named for the 20th-century Jewish anarchist, who was known for her organizing around labor and reproductive justice. Emma was eventually deported from the US for her activism, but was buried here in Chicago next to the Haymarket Martyrs in Forest Home Cemetery.
Autumn Hill, a 30 year old trans woman, left the Prairieland Detention center protest before anyone was injured, but later on had her house raided by the FBI and was charged and convicted of rioting and providing material support to terrorists for being in possession of fireworks. She was given a 50 year prison sentence. Daniel Sanchez Estrada was not present at the ICE detention center during the rally at all, but weeks later was charged with felony conspiracy after he moved a box of zines with ‘insurrectionist materials’ inside such as ‘guide to squatting.” ICE’s official instagram posted a photo of the box with the caption calling out that Daniel was a DACA recipient with a green card before stating “According to West Point, "insurrectionary anarchism is regarded as the most serious form of domestic (non-jihadi) terrorist threat." Daniel Estrada was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
This is not the end, it is the beginning.
Tomorrow, in Jewish communities across the world, we will read from the Torah the story of the Akeda, the binding of Isaac:
וְהָ֣אֱלֹהִ֔ים נִסָּ֖ה אֶת־אַבְרָהָ֑ם | And G-d put Abraham to a test.
G-d instructs Abraham to go to a mountain and offer Isaac there as a sacrifice. Hineni, Abraham is here and ready and willing. Hundreds of commentaries over the centuries have looked at this passage and asked the question; what kind of test is this and… did Abraham pass or fail? If the test was to have ultimate devotion/obedience to G-d and sacrifice his son, he failed, or maybe he succeeded because G-d never wanted him to kill Isaac in the first place. And why do we read about this failed test at the beginning of our year?
In the mystical tradition of Lurianic Kabbalah we receive a creation story that recognizes our beginnings and endings can be complicated and less binary. Rabbi Isaac Luria, also known as “Ari,” teaches us Shevirat HaKeilim, the shattering of the vessels. This Jewish creation myth follows that in the beginning there was nothing but undifferentiated light, also known as Ein Sof, meaning without end. Just endless light. So, in order to “create” there needs to be space. If the entire universe is full, what can you add? So Ein Sof, Gd, Divine, Boreinu, Our creator whatever name you need at this moment went through this process known as tzimtzum. This expansion and then contraction process where the Creator withdrew themselves from infinite to finite, thus creating a void. A void that would make space for Creation. In this process of tzimtzum, of contracting, the infinite light became differentiated, and encased in separate vessels. But this light was too much for the vessels, and so they shattered. Broke into tiny bits and scattered the shards and the light to every corner of the Earth. Shevirat HaKeilim, the shattering of the vessels. Everything is broken!. Hayom Harat Olam. This is the day the world was created. The day of brokenness. Shaul Magid explains the breaking of these divine vessels as a primordial cosmic trauma that makes brokenness a permanent part of existence. The act of Creation itself, he says, is a failure.
The act of Creation itself is a failure.
For the most part, Failure is presented as a binary: whether it is Abraham, you, or us, or them, either succeed or fail. It is not usually a positive term lobbied about when something amazing is happening. Shortly after the Arab Spring gave rise to protests across the region, anthropologist Fuad Musallam looked at the aftermath of an 18 month campaign by Lebanese activists that were moved by this campaign. In his research, their ascribed goal of “taking back parliament” in Lebanon failed, and the result was what so many of us have seen in movement spaces or work, or personal relationships. This Failure led to rupture; the immediate retreat and withdrawal from political engagement of those involved. The tzimtzum/contraction. How many times have we let failure create not only fractures, but endings? In these young activists’ world, it was understandable: so much time and energy spent in the expansion of possibilities, only to be met with more repression. Musallam writes of their reaction, something so many people I have spoken to over the past three years have also been feeling: “If nothing seems possible and your best ideas have gone up in smoke, why continue at all?”
After a year of mass mobilization against ICE abductions — anything from detention center rallies, mutual aid bond funds, neighborhood protective presence, helping un-arrest people, and electoral actions — there are still more people getting abducted by ICE now than last year. ICE resistance has been met with terrorism charges, and the murder of those who stand against it. After three years of genocide, and more mobilization for Palestinian liberation than we’ve ever seen, 1,350 Palestinians were murdered after a so-called ceasefire in 5786. Thousands more have been injured, countless displaced, living conditions continue to deteriorate. There are new settlements being built in the West Bank every day, a militarized state-sanctioned settler campaign to dispossess Palestinians of their homes, and their lands. The news reported a ceasefire, and yet bombings have continued, starvation continues. I don’t have to tell you how bad it has gotten, many of you in this room know it intimately. Even this list is insufficient. The more expansion of Palestinian livelihood, the harder those in power push for contraction, for the rupture. Rupture of the Palestinian state and the solidarity movements. And that contraction turns inwards, to our own sense of power, until we break under the weight of failure.
“If nothing seems possible and your best ideas have gone up in smoke, why continue at all?”
There is a question, in this tzimtzum, this contracting of G-d from the edges of infinity. What’s left in all that empty space before creation? The 16th century Hasidic teacher Rebbe Nachman says its Emunah. Faith. The light of Creation begins to separate, it holds all potential and possibility. And then, it shatters. And what's left? Faith.
I’m not here to tell you that the way to Palestinian liberation and the end of militarized ICE kidnappings, climate catastrophe, is unquestioning faith or hope. That someone or something beyond ourselves, will come in and fix this polycrisis for us. Emunah, with Hebrew root letters aleph, mem, nun, means to support, to be secure, to be trustworthy, to stand firm. Judaism invites us to access faith, beyond reason and ration as an action. Emunah is not passive, it requires work to be a support, to be secure, to be trustworthy.
Rebbe Nachman says that “the main creation of the vessels is through Emunah, because Emunah can accept the light of wisdom.” What does this mean? According to Nachman ,the original vessels that shattered were individualistic, rigid, separate from one another. But in the creation of new vessels, Emunah, this active trust and steadfastness, was able to stretch and return, expand and contract, and they did not shatter. The light of wisdom is recognizing that we can’t know the outcome of our beginnings or endings, whether now or in the future, but we channel our steadfastness into staying in the work. And this is how the cosmic crisis is repaired. Emunah is being with what is and imagining what is possible.
When I told a couple folks that I was likely going to talk about failure on Rosh Hashanah, someone asked me, “Are you going to say we failed Palestine?” While I don't plan on making declarative statements such as that, I want that question asked in this room. And I want you to feel what that means. What I do want is to bring up the tension for each of us, myself included, on how we engage with failure on micro and macro levels when we are bound to face it over and over again.
Last week at the Socialism Conference here in Chicago, Angela Y. Davis said, “We don’t see the consequences of what we’re doing in our lifetime. But yet we become disaffected when we see we’re fighting the same battle over and over again.” I think when you've been in the movement for so long, the lines between beginnings and endings become blurry. Angela said “What we fight for is rarely what we achieve… but our sense of what might be required expands.” Tzimtzum, expansion and contraction. What might be required is an imaginative process, with no end to possibilities. In this process, Angela Davis mentioned the need to use differences in our community to come together, and that without doing so, we are undercutting the possibility for unity which doesn’t require absolute agreement on everything. “I love conflict,” she said. “I’m bored when everyone agrees.”
Nadia Bolz Weber founded a church called the House for All Sinners and Saints, a place for those who had been rejected, left out, or unseen by major christian institutions, but who still needed somewhere to call home. Nadia speaks very openly about her role as a pastor, and the role of the church in communal missteps. “It’s a matter of when, not if. We will let them down or I’ll say something stupid and hurt their feelings.
“I’m not idealistic about any kind of human project,” she says. But she is realistic about the ability to redeem mistakes. After experiencing ruptures in her own religious upbringing, Nadia created a unique space to allow others to untangle their beliefs from the hurt they experienced. But it doesn’t always succeed as intended. Nadia starts all her meetings by acknowledging the fragility of the vessels, and the inevitability that they will shatter even in her own community. She tells them, “I’m glad you love it here, but at some point, I will disappoint you or the church will let you down. Please decide on this side of that happening that after it happens, you will still stick around. Because if you leave, you will miss the way that God’s grace comes in and fills in the cracks of our brokenness. And it’s too beautiful to miss. Don’t miss it.”
Like the House for All Sinners and Saints, Tzedek Chicago was born from a failure of religious institutions to live up to the ethics of their tradition and care for their people. Institutional Judaism has failed those who have rejected zionism but seek to engage with the spiritual richness of our tradition. The rigid individualization that is promoted by mainstream institutions, the supremacy, the xenophobia, the us versus them has left the void for the Creation of something new. Like Nadia, I am not idealistic about any kind of human project. But I am realistic about the ability to redeem mistakes.
So. Hi. I hope you love it here at Tzedek Chicago. And at some point, I will disappoint you, or the synagogue will let you down. Please decide, on this side of that happening, that after it happens, you will still stick around. Because if you leave, you will miss the way that Emunah comes in and fills in the cracks of our brokenness. And it’s too beautiful to miss. Don’t miss it.
Failure has been woven into the Creation, the very fabric, of the world. It will happen with each of us. The vessels will get overburdened, stretched thin, filled to capacity with light, or anger, grief, or frustration, or despair, or burnout.. and they will shatter. But that is what makes space for creation, new formations, new identities. Reducing the story of the Akeda, the binding of Isaac, to a pass-or-fail test flattens the meaning and complexity with which we are required to wrestle. But we know that after the story of the Akeda, Abraham and Isaac never speak again, and Sarah dies soon after. It became an ending rather than a beginning. How you fail matters. It is in the moments of failure that the deepest unlearning becomes possible. That's where we have the power to change things. We are trained to see so much of our lives, our relationships, our activism, our campaigns, the struggle for Palestinian liberation, as a zero sum game. Fail or succeed. Angela Davis said in her talk that “we haven’t figured out how to create the forms we need to transform our consciousness into a material force.” We don't yet have the vessels to hold the light, and I might argue Abrahm didn’t either.
We know that movements that fight against power, like the Prairieland defendants who are currently in prison, like PalAction in the UK, and so many others will face increasing repression, leading to more arrests and trials and terrorist labels. This cycle is as woven into power as failure is into the world. From Cointelpro, the Black Panthers, American Indian Movement, MOVE, the green scare, Black Lives Matter, movements against ICE and Palestine. Those in power want to render them failures. So we internalize that narrative ourselves and see it as the end and not the beginning. When this contraction happens, what can be created in the void left behind.
Hayom Harat Olam. Today is the birth of the world, today is the birth of failure. And It is what we do with the moments of failure that matters most. In the Ari’s Creation myth of the shattered vessels, it becomes our job, our purpose in life, to find the scattered sparks of light and restore them. This is the kabbalistic understanding of tikkun olam, restoring the world from the shattering. We collectively have the ability to transform the cosmic failure into wholeness.
When Prairieland defendant Benjamin Champagne Song was sentenced to 100 years in prison they addressed the court, their supporters, and I guarantee all of us here, by asking: What will you do in this time of great failures? What will you do?
Please G-d. May we allow the shattering of the vessels to expand what is required of ourselves and each other this coming year. May we develop our Emunah, faith and steadfastness with each other, our ability to be with what is, and to imagine what is possible in the face of all contraction and repression. May we remember Collective Liberation requires collective responsibility, and that if we leave, we miss it.
May we not miss it.