Rule-breakers: my Malkhut story

A colleague of mine who is creating his own start-up project recently met with me to pick my brain about Malkhut. At the end of the meeting he asked me if I could put him in touch with other “rule-breakers” like me. I have never felt so seen.

This week’s parasha tells the story of Korah, an infamous rule breaker who questions Moses and Aaron’s authority to lead the Israelite people. God causes the earth to swallow him up alive for his chutzpah!! But there are commentators who say that Korah was ahead of his time.

I do see us here at Malkhut as rebels, challenging the old ways of doing things. I sure hope the earth won’t be swallowing us up anytime soon. But I actually don’t think we are ahead of our time. The times we are in are crying out for new models of Jewish spiritual community that don’t adhere to post WWII ideas about what makes for the thriving of Jews or Judaism.

We are also not unique. Korah had a whole band of troublemakers with him, and Malkhut is part of a growing movement of new, independent rule-breaking Jewish spiritual start-ups across this city and this country!

Korah’s story, then, is a perfect frame for the Malkhut story I want to tell today. It starts with me, but it definitely doesn’t end with me…

Back in 2015 I was in my 13th year serving mainstream Reform movement synagogues, first in Texas and then in Connecticut. Even as I was a child of the Reform movement and a literal child of a Reform rabbi, I had always played on the edges of the mainstream and enjoyed working and learning in more progressive, lefty, and pluralistic Jewish spaces.

In rabbinical school in the 90’s and early aughts, Jim and I lived in Brooklyn and were part of a progressive start up shul called Kolot Chayeinu (shout out to founder Rabbi Ellen Lippmann who is here today and is a treasured mentor and friend.) During my Israel year I organized fellow rabbinical students to travel into the occupied West Bank with Rabbis for Human Rights for actions on behalf of Palestinian human rights. When I got back to New York I was the only rabbinical student I knew who was active with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice or who regularly took modern dance classes. A few years after ordination, I started training with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality where I fell in love with mindfulness practice through a Jewish lens, with Renewal style chant and prayer, and with Kabbalistic and Chasidic text.

At the same time I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the typical synagogue model that tried to be everything to everybody without centering a clear vision for spiritual practice — a model that centered the interests of members without much interest in transforming lives beyond who was already there.

I wanted to build a community that was outreach driven and progressive and that was intentionally centered around Jewish spiritual practice. I believe that Shabbat is what Jews and fellow travelers need in this polycrisis era of late stage capitalism, rising authoritarianism, and climate collapse. I yearned to create a prayer space where we could sink into rich music and incorporate embodiment, breath, and silence. I wanted the freedom to bring Torah to address the raw realities of our world, domestically, and in Israel/Palestine. These elements, I believed, could give us the spiritual nourishment we need in these deeply depleting times. And I wanted to come back to NYC!!

I didn’t find this clarity on my own. An important mentor during this time was Rabbi Ruth Gan Kagan, the founder of Nava Tehila, a Jewish Renewal community in Jerusalem, where a circle of musicians and singers lead the community in ecstatic and contemplative prayer and song.

For years Sara Zatz and Adam Nadel (who have connections to the community I served in CT) would corner me at the High Holy Days and tell me about the need for Jewish spiritual community in Jackson Heights. Early on I was blessed to find kindred spirits in Emily Herzlin and Kris Wettstein. Then there’s my husband Jim who looked at the demographic data, saw the opportunity here in W. Queens, and encouraged me to take this huge risk. This crazy rebellious idea became irresistible, and in the summer of 2016 my family leapt into the unknown and moved to Queens. I am so grateful to you guys — Jim, Amina, and Ziv, for supporting me and joining me on this adventure.

We started with monthly musical Kabbalat Shabbat at Astoria First on Broadway and Crescent street. At the same time, Sara and Adam helped organize Shabbat morning meditation, prayer, and study in folks’ apartments in Jackson Heights.

A bunch of parents, sitting around Sam Oppenheim and Mina Fasolo’s dining room table, designed what became our Youth Institute — committing to the idea that we were primarily creating an intergenerational Shabbat community and not a drop off Sunday school.

Throughout this experience we have not had a rigid plan for what we should look like 5 or 10 years from now. Instead, Malkhut unfolded organically, as we returned again and again to root ourselves in our original impulses and intentions. In fact, this rooting and unfolding is how I understand the name “Malkhut”.

In Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, Malkhut is the aspect of Divinity that we humans experience when we are aware of Being itself unfolding from moment to moment. Malkhut is the experience of God and of the potential for holiness in the Here and Now.

Malkhut is associated with Shabbat — a time each week when we intentionally cultivate Divine qualities of peace, compassion, justice, embodiment, beauty and joy in our hearts, minds, and bodies, so that we can then bring those qualities out into the world. Malkhut is also one name for the feminine aspect of divine sovereignty that we also call Shekhinah. Malkhut, Shekhinah — she is the Queen- and I just love this wordplay for our borough of Queens so much!!!

There is a lot more to our story that I won’t tell here. We’ll all have a chance to share later in different ways.

I also can’t name every single wonderful person who has been a part of making Malkhut happen. So many incredible staff, lay leaders, creatives, artists, musicians, singers, teachers, learners, cooks, schleppers, donors, collaborators, thought partners, funders, fiscal sponsors, care-makers, activists, children, teens, elders.

Without a doubt, these ten years have been the most fulfilling in my 23-year long rabbinic career. At the same time, these ten years have been the most challenging years as a rabbi, as a Jew, as a mother, as a person living in this world, in this city, living in a body.

There are a lot of painful moments in our story as we responded to the elections of Trump, the COVID pandemic, the grief and polarization after October 7th, immigrant neighbors being kidnapped from our very streets, attacks on queer and trans folks’ rights to just exist and live and have healthcare, and so much more.

What keeps me going every day is knowing that Malkhut was built exactly for this time. In the Talmud, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says, “Come and see how beloved the Jewish people are before God. As every place they were exiled, the Shechina — the Divine presence — went with them” (BT Megila 29a).

When we are in a state of exile or alienation. When we are in pain, when we are lost, when we are afraid. When it feels like the bottom is falling out of the world or our hearts, Shekhina, Malkhut is with us.

We also learn from the ancient rabbis that Shekhinah, or Malkhut is present whenever we share words of Torah (Pirke Avot 3.6). She is present whenever we pray together (Ibid). She hovers over the headboard of the bed when we visit one who is sick (BT Shabbat 12b). She even rides on top of the ark as the Israelites carry it from place to place.

Together WE generate that Divine Presence we call Malkhut. We bring Shekhinah into our world when we gather to learn and to pray, when we bring someone food when they are sick. She rides with us as we carry Malkhut from place to place, from Jackson Heights to LIC, to Astoria. Wherever we go.

She has been with us when we have needed her because we have been there for each other.

May we be blessed to dwell with each other, and with Shekhinah, for many years to come.

I love you all so much.