Vayakhel-Pekudei 5777 / 25 March 2017

There is a tradition in Judaism to chant חזק חזק ונתחזק hazak hazak v’nithazek! at the end of each book of Torah. It doesn’t happen every week, just when we have come through one part of the five-book cycle. It means: be strong, be strong, and stronger still.

It’s an old tradition, dating at least back to the late 12th century一the earliest evidence of the practice comes from Abraham ben Nathan haYarhi, a rabbi and Jewish legal scholar in Provence. There, he described a practice where, when a person finished reading Torah, the person leading services would respond back, loudly: חזק! Hazak! He says, describing textual justification he found for the practice already widespread in Provence, that God directed Joshua to his task of leading the Israelites after Moses died:  חזק ואֹמץ! Hazak v’Amatz! Be strong and brave! You can do this impossible thing! Believe in yourself and be strong!

Can you imagine hearing these words regularly? They are spoken in response to the one reading Torah, but they are said loudly, reverberating around the whole community, a directive to all. חזק חזק ונתחזק, be strong, be strong, and stronger still. Constant encouragement. Acknowledgement that life is challenging, that it is difficult to be alive in this world, that we need support, uplifting.

I need these words. I imagine that you do, too. This week, another of our beloveds died. Emma od’d in San Francisco. She is not the first of our beloveds to die like this, and she will not be the last, we know. Each one brings up the others. I know I’m not alone in thinking at this time, even though I didn’t know Emma, about our other lost beloveds: Taueret, Bryn, Amanda, and more. In this world, we一queer and trans people, people of color, poor & working class people, people living with HIV/AIDS一we are not really people. Our humanity is not supported and uplifted. And when someone’s not really seen as a person in this world, well, anything can happen. We are disposable. Sometimes others dispose of us, and sometimes we do that work for them, because the work of living in this world is too hard. Because we need the horrible ride to stop. It is devastating. But it happens. 

So what is there to say in this world, hell-bent on our deaths? 

Here, I am speaking to you, my community, from inside you. I’ve been told, like you: oh you are so brave, to …. Fill in the blanks. To be out as trans. To be out as a survivor. To be yourself. To live as yourself every day. It is not bravery, I know. Lucille Clifton, too一she wrote:

born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay

Not brave. Just myself. I’m tired of being brave, exhausted to the bones. But it’s from within these exhausted bones only that I’m willing to hear that refrain, from others just as tired: Be strong, love. Be strong and even stronger still. Be brave. We know that that’s what living in this world takes: strength, and bravery. We fight death-defying odds.

The prophet Ezekiel lived through the destruction of Jerusalem in the 6th C BCE. He saw waves of his beloveds and his people killed and deported in the violence of Babylonian conquest. He knew death and destruction to his core, knew what it was to live in a world that is bent on killing you. Knew the exhaustion of living in that existential threat. So he is a person I can hear, straightforwardly. There is a text in Ezekiel where God takes the prophet to a valley of dried up bones. God looks around and asks Ezekiel: do you think these bones can live again? Ezekiel looks at God and laughs in God’s face. Only you know that, God. God understands this, knows how much Ezekiel grieves. How many of these bones Ezekiel knows. Knew. God told Ezekiel: Through you, I’ll say to the bones: I’ll breathe breath into you, and you will live again. I’ll make sinew and muscle cover you, and skin around that, and then breath, and then you will be alive again. And while God was talking through Ezekiel to the bones, there was a shake and a rattle and the bones started connecting, feet to shins to femurs to pelvis to spine to ribcage to arms to neck to head. The sinews and muscle and skin came. And then, finally, breath. The bones came alive.

Most days it seems the world is a valley of dry bones. Too many deaths. Not always my beloveds, but connected enough, to my community, to the circles encircling my world. I feel them. I know many of you do, too. What I would give for Ezekiel’s power to raise those dry bones up. For the world to be made anew, for our beloveds to be restored, and for us to live into a world in which they did not die. A world where our lives are celebrated and cherished. Where the act of living alone is not brave, but merely living. Where bravery describes something phenomenal being done and fighting for survival is not phenomenal. We deserve that world.

חזק חזק ונתחזק, be strong, be strong, and stronger still. These words catch me every time. Today, the practice is not that the leader says them to the person reading Torah alone. Instead, everyone stands up, the leader chants the words, loudly, and the whole community echos in one voice: חזק חזק ונתחזק hazak hazak v’nitkhazek. A call from the community leader to the community. A response to that call and encouragement to each other from within the community. Will you be strong as you can? We will be strong. We will. We will be even stronger than we can imagine.

What would it be like to live in a world where our people were not just seen as fully, wonderfully human, but were also encouraged to be more of ourselves. More wondrous. More trans, more wild, more free, more expressive. More more more. All of that more: that is חזק hazak. That is strength. This is my call to you, to us all, today. We cannot raise up our beloveds bones. We cannot make the people of this world be different than they are. But we can “love each other and protect each other.” We can lift up and support each other. We can be strong and strengthen each other when we are down. We can recognize with each other, and in each other, that though it shouldn’t be, being alive in this world is brave, and we need that strength and bravery, that חזק ואמץ hazak v’amatz, to keep on going. 

We will not stop grieving, I am sure. I am angry about this, but I know it is true. But in order for us to do more than survive, in order for us to ensure that our exhausted bones don’t turn into dry bones, we need to lift each other up as much as possible. To carry each other when and how we can, but mostly just to love and strengthen each other into each new day.  

That same Lucille Clifton poem before, here it is again to send us out: 

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

Won’t you celebrate with me, by Lucille Clifton

חזק חזק ונתחזק. Strength, strength, and be strengthened. Keep on loving, keep on fighting. Keep on living. And help each other do the same. That bridge of starshine and clay is where we stand. Though it might go over a valley of dry bones, we are here, lively and enlivened, propelling ourselves and each other into each new day. חזק is the sound of that celebration. Each of your names is the sound of that celebration. Each cry, each laugh, each kiss. Celebrate with me. Live.