From our Rabbi

What do our biblical ancestors Jacob, Isaac, Moses, and King Saul have in common?

In modern terms, every single one of them lived with a disability.

Isaac lost his sight in his old age. Jacob walked with a distinct limp for the rest of his life after wrestling with the divine messenger. Moses lived with a heavy tongue—a speech impediment, perhaps a stutter. And King Saul wrestled with profound, overwhelming waves of depression.

In our most sacred texts, in our Tanakh, disability is not a rare exception banished to the margins. It is woven directly into the fabric of leadership, covenant, and holiness.

While we often treat disability as a minority experience, the reality is that disability touches every single family. According to public health data, one in four adults in the United States lives with a disability—a number that rises to two in five among adults over sixty-five (CDC, 2022).

As our beloved congregation ages, more of us will experience changes in our mobility, our vision, our hearing, our cognition, and our energy. Disability is not a separate story belonging to “other people”—it is the human story. It is our story.

Over the past year, our community undertook a major physical transformation. We rebuilt our building to make it ADA-accessible. That work matters deeply. Removing physical and remote barriers honors the sacred command in Leviticus: “You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind” (19:14).

But tonight, on Kol Nidrei—the night when we reset our vows and examine our highest aspirations—I want to ask us a radical question: Is physical accessibility where our work ends, or is it where it begins? 

In her work Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole, Rabbi Julia Watts Belser (2023) points out the profound difference between accommodation and thriving. Accommodation asks: “How can we alter our structure just enough so you can get through the door or watch the stream?” Thriving asks: “How do we build a community where your whole self is honored, celebrated, and essential?”

Rabbi Belser contrasts two prophetic visions in our tradition. The prophet Isaiah envisions a redeemed world by declaring: “Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame will leap like a deer” (35:5–6). To many, these words sound like hope. But as Belser notes, for those of us living in disabled bodies, Isaiah’s vision can feel like erasure—suggesting that our value depends on our bodies being “fixed” to match a non-disabled norm.

She shares a story about a Deaf child in a religious school whose teacher promised, “One day, in the world to come, you’ll be able to hear.” The child looked back and replied, “No. In the world to come, God will sign.”

The prophet Jeremiah offers us an alternative promise. Jeremiah envisions God gathering the people home—not by erasing their disabilities, but by gathering “the blind and the lame among them… a great assembly returning on a level road where no one stumbles” ( 31:8–9). Jeremiah’s vision is not about fixing bodies; it is about reshaping the world so everyone can travel together.

This distinction is not academic for me. It is the lived truth of my daily life.

Many of you know—though some may not—that I live with a neuromuscular disease called Charcot-Marie-Tooth, or CMT. Walking takes a bit more effort for me, and I’m grateful that my leg braces make walking easier for me.

For many years, like so many people in a culture steeped in ableism, I was trained to view my physical reality through a lens of deficit—focusing on what my body couldn’t do, or the extra energy required to navigate spaces designed for a single type of body.

During my sabbatical last year, I had time to reflect deeply on work, productivity, and rest. Our TBO President at the time, Wanda Bresnick, reminded me that sabbatical is meant to be regenerative, not productive time. That insight struck at the core of how ableism operates. In a culture driven by relentless output, we are conditioned to believe our worth is tied strictly to what we produce or how much we do.

Laura Hershey—a pioneering disability activist and poet who spent her life fighting for independent living and dignity—put it this way: “Remember, you weren’t the one who made you ashamed, but you are the one who can make you proud…You get proud by practicing.”

When we practice disability pride, we realize that living with a disability is not a tragic flaw to overcome. It shapes how we understand ourselves, how we practice patience, and how we care for one another.

This brings us to the heart of our congregation. We are a warm, vibrant, volunteer-driven community. We pride ourselves on showing up, cooking meals, setting up chairs, and driving committees. Giving of our time is a mitzvah. But when a community measures belonging solely by doing, it accidentally creates a new stumbling block.

There are seasons in every human life when we cannot cook the meal, chair the committee, or carry the heavy load. There are seasons when showing up—whether in a seat in this sanctuary or joining us online via our livestream—is your entire contribution.

I want to give every person in this room and watching from Zoom explicit permission tonight: Your presence alone is a gift to this community.

You do not need to “produce” to earn your seat in this sanctuary. You do not need to hide your fatigue, your braces, your walker, your anxiety, or your illness to be whole in the eyes of God or in the eyes of this community.

Shabbat teaches us this every week: our holy value is in our being, not our doing.

So, what does it actually look like to move from an accessible building to a community where everyone thrives?

First, it broadens how we welcome one another. When someone joins our congregation—or when we check in with a longtime member—we often ask, ‘How would you like to help?’ That matters, but we also need to ask: ‘What do you need from us to truly thrive here?

Second, it means expanding our understanding of what it means to show up. It means making it completely normal to sit during prayers, to step out when your body needs rest, or to join us on the livestream without feeling like a second-class participant. It means honoring our limits instead of pushing past them to perform.

And finally, it means being a sanctuary of real solidarity. In a time when public support systems and funding for disabled individuals are under constant strain, our synagogue must be a secure haven—a place where we protect one another, advocate for one another, and stand together.

On this night of Kol Nidrei, as we release ourselves from false vows and expectations, let us release the lie that any human body or mind is broken.

Our renovated building gave us physical ramps, and technology gave us open channels. Now, let us build Jeremiah’s level road in our hearts—a community where no one has to pass as non-disabled, where no one has to apologize for their limits, and where every single one of us is celebrated as an image of the Divine.

May we all be sealed in the Book of Life, exactly as we are.

In July, my daughter Galit and I took a mother-daughter road trip from Northern California to Southern California. To maintain peace on the highway, we had a strict rule: we took turns choosing the music. My turn, Galit’s turn. My turn, Galit’s turn.

Galit announced early on that because her bat mitzvah is coming up, we needed to put her study playlist—a recording of the traditional Shabbat morning Shacharit service—into the car rotation.

Picture driving down Highway 1, sun shining, ocean on our right, and out of the speakers comes blaring: “Barechu et Adonai Hamvorach.” Galit sang along with absolute confidence. Every time she knew Hebrew better than I did, she gave me a triumphant grin.

Wanting to hold my own as her mom and a rabbi, I chimed in: “You know, Galit, I might not have every word memorized, but the basic structure of this Shacharit service was laid down in the Mishnah almost two thousand years ago!”

Galit reached over and cranked up the volume to drown me out.

When Shacharit finished, Galit made a surprising choice: Coolio’s 90s classic Gangsta’s Paradise.

“I like the ‘oldies,'” Galit explained with a grin.

“Galit, did you know this song samples Stevie Wonder’s 1970 hit Pastime Paradise?” I offered to switch to the original Stevie Wonder track, but Galit shook her head: “Mom, wait for your turn.”

Listening to Coolio borrow from Stevie Wonder while driving with my 21st-century daughter—who had just been practicing prayers sampled from material thousands of years old—it hit me: Judaism is the ultimate art of sampling.

Most of the prayers in our siddur are direct samples from the Tanakh. The Shema is sampled from Deuteronomy. The Mi Chamocha is sampled straight out of Exodus.

Consider how we end our Torah service. These words, which resonate so deeply during this season of Teshuvah, are a direct sample from the final lines of the Book of Lamentations (5:21):

Hashiveinu Adonai eilecha v’nashuvah, chadesh yamenu k’kedem.
“Turn us back to You, O God, and we will return; renew our days as of old.”

I brought this verse to our General Membership meeting this past Spring because it is so timely to our Beth Or community: How do you make something brand new—chadesh—while remaining deeply true to the ancient past—k’kedem? How do you honor the soul of an original melody while allowing it to become a fresh anthem for a new generation?

As a Reform Jewish community, this paradox is our superpower. But change is rarely easy. When we introduce a new melody or alter a familiar ritual, our knee-jerk reaction is often resistance. We ask: Is this still authentic? Are we losing who we are?

Yet what we now consider timeless traditions were once radical innovations.

Think back to the 1960s and 70s. For generations, worship in many Western synagogues was formal and passive—the cantor sang from the bimah, and the congregation listened in quiet reverence. Most folks simply didn’t sing along in shul! But inspired by the folk music movement, Debbie Friedman brought a guitar into sacred spaces and wrote melodies meant for every voice to sing together.

When Debbie Friedman wrote her Mi Shebeirach during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, weaving in the Matriarchs and setting them to an English lyric, imagine the initial reactions! Some surely gasped at hearing English on the bimah or feeling a folk guitar in a sanctuary. Yet today, that prayer is an indispensable pillar of our communal healing.

We see this same holy evolution in how we mark Jewish adulthood. A century ago, when Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan organized the very first bat mitzvah for his daughter Judith in 1922, many wondered if it threatened the integrity of Jewish life. But today, embracing young women and gender-diverse youth at the Torah has breathed fresh life into our ancient covenant.

When we pair different samples together, we create new meaning called midrash. Liturgy pairs that line from Lamentations—Chadesh yamenu k’kedem—with a familiar verse from Proverbs (3:18):

Eitz chayim hi la-machazikim bah, v’tomcheha m’ushar.
“She is a tree of life to those who hold fast to her,
and happy are those who support her.”

In Midrash Bemidbar Rabbah, our sages teach: “Just as a tree grows and produces new branches, leaves, and fruit, so too do the words of Torah produce new insights continuously” (14:4).

A tree that stops producing new leaves dies. But a tree without deep roots topples over in the very first storm. Our history and core values are the root system holding us fast; the fresh ideas, new melodies, and creative sampling we bring today are the leaves and branches reaching toward the sun.

While working on this sermon, a colleague pointed me toward a remarkable example of how a living tradition stays alive. In Custodians of Wonder, BBC journalist Eliot Stein profiles the Q’eswachaka grass bridge in Peru. Every single year, this 500-year-old Inca rope bridge decays, sags, and rots. And every single year, the community cuts the old bridge down into the gorge below. For three days, hundreds of villagers gather to hand-weave miles of fresh, living grass into massive cables, stretching a brand-new bridge across the canyon.

The ancient bridge doesn’t survive because it is static stone. Like a tree, it survives precisely because it is organic—because it sags, wears out, and must be completely remade by hand by every single generation using the woven strands of the past.

Innovation isn’t replacing the tradition—this continuous act of creative sampling and re-weaving is the tradition.

The Jerusalem Talmud offers a radical claim (Peah 2:4):

Kol mah she-talmid vatik atid lechadesh lefinei rabo, kevar ne’emar le-Moshe mi-Sinai.
“Whatever a veteran student is destined to innovate in front of their teacher was already spoken to Moses at Sinai.”

When Debbie Friedman picked up her guitar, when Judith Kaplan stepped up to read Torah, or when Coolio sampled Stevie Wonder, they were pulling on strands of tradition already waiting to be re-woven into something new.

Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel, summarized this sacred dialogue in a famous mandate:

Ha-yashan yitkadesh ve-ha-chadash yitchadesh.
“The old shall be made holy, and the new shall be renewed.”

We don’t throw away our ancient tradition—we infuse it with fresh energy. And we don’t reject the modern world—we elevate it and make it holy.

As we look around our expanded physical space tonight, we are witnessing this exact holy balance in action. We didn’t build to replace our past, but to give it a future. Every upgrade is designed to give the founding vision of Temple Beth Or room to breathe for decades to come. The footprint has grown, but the heart beating inside it remains unchanged: our warmth, our commitment to radical inclusivity, our spirited prayer, and our vibrant, diverse soul.

Look around this sacred room tonight. To those who first gathered here four decades ago—who picked up hammers, painted walls, and poured their sweat equity into making this historic 1913 sanctuary our home: your lived experience is the root system that keeps us standing upright. And to those who have joined our family more recently, along with the young people filling these pews with their energy, questions, and music: your presence is the new growth reaching toward the sun. We need both the roots and the branches to thrive.

Together, in this reimagined space, on this holy night of new beginnings, may we continue to weave our grass bridge across the generations—proudly rooted in our history, boldly stepping into our future, and always renewing our days as of old.

Shanah Tovah U’Metukah—May it be a good, sweet, and beautifully renewed New Year.

I recently read Rabbi/Cantor Angela Buchdahl’s new memoir, Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi’s Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging. Rabbi Buchdahl is the senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in Manhattan, leading one of the largest pulpits in the United States. 500,000 people streamed her Yom Kippur services during COVID, and many have continued to follow her teaching. She is, without a doubt, one of the most influential rabbis in the world. Steven Colbert even helped launch her new book.

And most significantly for us? She grew up right here in Tacoma, Washington, at a small Reform congregation very similar to Temple Beth Or. She beautifully describes how the Pacific Northwest and Mount Rainier shaped her Jewish and spiritual identity. As I read Rabbi Buchdahl’s book, I found myself kvelling – bursting with pride – that one Jewish girl from Tacoma could have such a great impact.

In just a few days, on Sunday evening, December 14, Hanukkah will begin. We will start the holiday by lighting our shamash candle, the helper candle that ignites and spreads the light to the additional candles on the hanukkiyah. The shamash reminds us that small things can have a big impact.

Inspired by Rabbi Buchdahl, by Pacific Northwest Jewish pride and by the message of Hanukkah, I want to share eight ways Jews from Western Washington have spread our energy and light and had a great influence:

• Rabbi Buchdahl is the first East Asian-American to be ordained as a rabbi, and the first East Asian-American to be ordained as a cantor. She is also the first woman to serve as senior rabbi of the historic Central Synagogue in New York.
• The song “I Have a Little Dreidel” has been a Hanukkah hit since it was written by Cantor Samuel Goldfarb, who served as the musical director at Temple De Hirsch Sinai in Seattle from 1930 to 1968.
• Smooth Jazz saxophonist Kenny G is one of the best-selling artists of all time. Kenneth Gorelick grew up in the Jewish community in South Seattle and studied music at the University of Washington.
• David Guterson, author of the 1994 number one best-selling novel, Snow Falling on Cedars, grew up Jewish in North Seattle and also studied at the University of Washington.
• In addition to faith and the arts, PNW Jewish folks have influenced the corporate and consumer world, too. The late co-founder of Costco, Jeffrey Brotman, grew up Jewish in Tacoma.
• Before Costco, many of the grocers who helped establish Pike Place Market, the oldest operating market in the U.S., were from the Sephardic Jewish community of Seattle’s South End.
• At around the same time Pike Place was being built, Ashkenazi immigrants in Everett were building their first synagogue on Lombard Avenue. Did you know that our Temple Beth Or building is the longest continuously used religious building in Washington state? (Shameless plug: Don’t forget to donate to the Capital Campaign to receive generously offered matching funds!)
• It is not only our little building that has a big impact. Temple Beth Or members played a critical role in establishing Camp Kalsman, the largest Jewish summer camp in the PNW, where more than 1,000 kids attend each summer.

This list is a wonderful reminder that despite being a relatively small Jewish community here in Western Washington, our collective light shines brightly and reaches far. This year, as we light Hanukkah candles, remember that you, too, are a shamash. I hope the stories of these local Jews inspire you to share your unique energy, your talents and your light with the world. You never know how far the flame of a single candle can spread!

Our hearts are heavy with grief as we move into this Shabbat. The recovery of the bodies of six hostages over the weekend, murdered at the prime of their lives, brought with it a fresh round of mourning in the ongoing collective grief since October 7. At the same time we hold on to sorrow, we are inspired by the families of hostages who have taught us so much about responding to tragedy by taking action, building community, and bringing people together to work for the greater good. Amid their pain they have continued to advocate for the lives of hostages and limit the damage to innocent civilians in Gaza.

During this week of loss, we began the new Hebrew month of Elul, the month leading to the High Holy Days. In this sacred season of reflection, may we work together to bring true repair to our broken world.

I look forward to spending time with you during this month of Elul and during the High Holy Day season. We hope you will join us this evening at 7:30 pm for our Shabbat service in-person at TBO and streamed online, led by Vicki Schwartz and Shoshana Stombaugh.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Kort

A time to grieve

A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven:
A time for being born and a time for dying,
A time for planting and a time for uprooting the planted;
A time for slaying and a time for healing,
A time for tearing down and a time for building up;
A time for weeping and a time for laughing,
A time for wailing and a time for dancing…
A time for loving and a time for hating;
A time for war and a time for peace. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4; 8)

Many Jewish leaders and academics have called the past few decades of Jewish life a “Modern Jewish Renaissance.” Jewish institutions thrived. At least in America, antisemitism was at an all-time low. Jews held prestigious positions in governments and institutions. Israel, the “Startup Nation,” had a vibrant economy and the terrorism that disrupted life in the late 1990s and early 2000s had subsided. While Kohelet, the Book of Ecclesiastes, notes that there are good times and difficult times, hardship seemed to be behind us; a history to study and not our lived experience.

Our situation as a Jewish people has radically changed over the past six months. These are not easy times to be Jewish – in America, in Israel and around the world.

This is not the first time our people have suffered hardship. We can look to the wisdom of those who came before us to help navigate the hardship we are living through. Our Rabbinic sages who led the Jewish community after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem used the calendar as a tool to reframe Jewish life without a central gathering place and system of sacrifices that the Torah described. These Jewish leaders chose to focus on collective Jewish memory as opposed to collective Jewish offerings. For example, the Torah simply describes the upcoming holiday of Shavuot as an agricultural holiday, while our sages link Shavuot to the historical event of revelation at Sinai. After the destruction of the Temple, our sages not only created space in our Hebrew calendar to mark celebratory events in our history, they made space for us to mourn difficult times, too.

Perhaps with the exception of the modern holiday of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), in past years, I tended to highlight the celebratory days in our Jewish calendar and downplay dates dedicated to remembering hard times and events. During these tough days we find ourselves in as a Jewish people, I am inclined to lean into the dates on our Jewish calendar that are reserved for us to recognize loss and take time to grieve.

While the hardship of being Jewish is a new experience for many of us, our sages remind us that suffering has been a large part of our people’s three-thousand year history. If you add together the days the rabbis mark for celebration and the days they mark for collective mourning, the calendar is weighted toward the latter. We observe this in the spring holiday cycle we are in the midst of right now. The days dedicated to celebrating our Exodus from Egypt and the giving of Torah at Sinai are bookends to the forty-nine-day period of the counting of the Omer. While the Torah simply explains the Omer as an agricultural count, our rabbinic sages, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Temple, suggest that these seven weeks should be ritualized by mourning practices similar to those instructed after the loss of a close relative.

There is much for us to grieve as a Jewish people right now.

The Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7 were the worst attack on Jews since the Shoah. War is being waged against Israel on multiple fronts. Antisemitism in America and around the world is rampant. The war between Hamas and Israel has caused division in our Jewish communities and families. As we hold onto our people’s pain, our hearts are heavy responding to the extreme loss of life and humanitarian crisis for Palestinians in Gaza, too.

While it is my typical nature to focus on the positive, this spring I feel compelled to embrace the wisdom of our sages and take time to mark loss and grieve as a community. As I lead you in counting the Omer at Shabbat services this month, in addition to the traditional blessing and count, I will pause and share a reflection on collective grief. The past few years, I have highlighted the celebration of Lag BaOmer in our Temple Beth Or calendar. This year, I will highlight the modern Jewish observances of Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) and Yom HaZikaron (Israeli Memorial Day for soldiers and victims of terror). I hope you will join me for a special Shabbat service on Saturday, May 11, where we will honor Yom HaShoah and Yom HaZikaron with special poetry, music and our El Malei Rachamim memorial prayer.

“There is a season set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

We pray for times of peace and tranquility, but must take time to recognize the loss we have experienced as a Jewish community. Looking at the many terrifying times our Jewish people have faced throughout our three millennia history offers comfort to us too. We are reminded that while we have faced horror, we have remained resilient as a people.

Rabbi Rachel Kort (she/her)