“Droughts and Floods” Rabbi Dan Slipakoff’s Qabbalat Shabbat Sermon, 8/1/25

Rabbi Dan Slipakoff
Devarim 5785 | Tisha B’Av| Droughts and Floods
Qabbalat Shabbat, August 1, 2025
Temple Israel of Boston

There is a spiritual power to the Jewish calendar.
Rabbi Arthur Waskow teaches that Jewish time has a sacred rhythm,
mirroring the ebb and flow of the natural world.

Just as seasons turn and tides shift, the Jewish year moves us through cycles of joy and grief, contraction and expansion.
The calendar doesn’t just mark time—it shapes it,
guiding us through emotional and spiritual landscapes. 

Today we find ourselves at the lowest point of our Jewish calendar.
Israel is dry as a bone baking in the sun.
We are close to the summer solstice,
and so very far from the life-giving waters of the rainy season.


This is a time of mourning.

These past three weeks, leading into Sunday’s observance of Tisha B’Av, are known as bein hametzarim, the time between the narrows.
There is a tightening and restriction, meant to embody the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple.

According to our sages, the destruction was the culmination of human failure, of leadership breakdown,
of unchecked greed, and of cruelty justified in the name of survival.

We read rebuke in this Shabbat’s Haftarah,
from the beginning of the book of Isaiah:
See how the faithful city has become a harlot!
She once was full of justice; righteousness used to dwell in her – but now murderers!
Your rulers are rebels, companions of thieves;
they all love bribes and chase after gifts.
They do not defend the cause of the fatherless;
the widow’s case does not come before them.

The destruction is also canonized in the book of Lamentations.
In Hebrew Eicha, Alas!
We will be reading it together tomorrow evening.

 

Scholar Adele Berlin reminds us of the reality beneath the poetry of Lamentations.
Ancient empires, she explains, used siege warfare as a brutal tactic
to break the spirit of a people.
Cities were blockaded until starvation and disease decimated those trapped inside.
No distinction was made between civilian and soldier.
The suffering was indiscriminate. 

All of this poetic outpouring is addressed to God,
so that God may feel the suffering of the people, rescue them,
and restore them to their country and to their relationship with their God.
The entire book may be thought of as an appeal for God’s mercy.
Yet throughout Lamentations, God remains silent.

 

The last two verses of Lamentations are perhaps the most distressing verses of our sacred texts:

 

Take us back, O God, to Yourself,
Oh let us come back;
Make us again as we were before.

But – if you have utterly rejected us, and remain so very angry with us…

And that’s it.
The if/then clause is left unfinished,
and we are left to sit in the pain of existential uncertainty. 
What if we cannot go back?

Tisha B’Av is a time for witnessing this pain. Our tradition demands it.

 

This week I have read and reread Lamentations side by side
with the endless news stories and first-hand accounts of the hell-like devastation being wrought in Gaza.

Our sacred texts are leaping off the page,
we are living the destruction in real time

We are witnessing civilians being herded into tighter and tighter spaces and then being shot at
We are witnessing lying and greed, self preservation over the sanctity of life
We are witnessing human beings die in the rubble from starvation and disease

There is no water, there is no flour
And where there is no flour, there is no Torah

I am sickened by this war being waged in the name of God
Adonai, Allah, whatever name you want to ascribe
And I fear to call it rock bottom,
because if this nightmare can somehow grow worse…

Read the articles, see the photos, and sit with the pain –
Let it break your heart
Let the pain pierce your soul in a way you will never forget.

—-

I have been asked “what can we do?” and I wish I had a more direct answer

I have found myself putting my efforts behind organizations I believe in,
I have sought to get to the core of the change I want to see, and try to determine who is doing it best.
Who is feeding children?
Who is mobilizing Israelis towards peace and political shifts?
Who is fighting to take greed out of life and death decision making?

I was listening to a conversation between Yehuda Kurtzer and Donniel Hartman where they compared the length of the arc of impact as seen by the educator, and the agent of change.
From their point of view, the educator needs to surrender an amount of control over influencing short-term change.

They cannot vote, they cannot stop the bleeding.
But they can flood the marketplace with ideas and morals and values,
They can teach, and inspire, and spread awareness until the tides shift

I find myself somewhere between
But what sticks with me from their conversation was the use of the word Flood.

While working on these words, and leaning in to the imagery of dryness and drought
It rained – a lot.
It rained last night while I taught Intro to Judaism,
As our class interpreted Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof
And determined that we are called on to pursue Justice time and time again
That we must pursue justice even when it might not be in our personal best interest
And that we must pursue justice, because we cannot rely on someone else to do it for us, especially someone in power. 

And it rained this morning right before I left for La Collaborativa
As 20 of us met under the bridge in Chelsea to help distribute food.
Like we try to do every month
It felt so good to feed someone in need of nourishment
Without judgment, without red tape, and in defiance of injustice
It felt like change in the right direction,
It felt like the words of Torah in the work of our hands

When we find ourselves in a moral desert,
we must flood our world with good in every way we can.

We must make justice burst forth like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.
The waters will find their way to the low places, to the dry places

 

Tisha B’Av is for witnessing. For mourning.
For facing the screams and the silence.

But it is not the end.

Immediately after the low point of Tisha B’Av, our calendar implores us to climb again.
Next Shabbat is called Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of comfort.
And as we begin the Book of Deuteronomy,
We begin again the long arc toward return, toward hope, toward the possibility of change.

No one said the climb would be easy. It is slow. It is steep. One foot in front of the other.

So I ask you: as we turn this corner in Jewish time, what do you hope to see in our times of renewal?
By Rosh Hashanah? By Simchat Torah?

What changes feel beyond your control—and what actions are within your reach?

And where is the stretch—the courageous stretch—
that brings those two poles just a bit closer together?

Let us walk together, upstream. Toward the headwaters. Toward what is pure. Toward a world where righteousness flows again—not in poetry alone, but in policy, in practice, and in peace.