Being a congregational rabbi gives you a very particular perspective on the world’s events. People tend to share things with me about what’s going on in their lives, and in the lives of their relatives. From all those little conversations I tend to get a picture of what people seem to be worried about, what problems they’re currently facing, how they’re trying to deal with those problems — a highly localized picture, to be sure, but as the teachers of the kabbalistic tradition remind us, the microcosm is often a mirror of the macrocosm.

One thing that emerges from that microcosmic picture these days is that a lot of people are either actually struggling with job loss or in the position of having to worry about their job security because of the massive upheavals going on right now in the U.S. federal government. This kind of disruption has a tremendous impact on people’s financial wellbeing, as they suddenly find themselves scrambling for a job or having to help relatives in that situation. But this also has a spiritual impact, because most of us care deeply about the work we do, and it is a wrenching experience to see the work we’ve dedicated our lives to upended seemingly on a whim.

Thanks for reading Dag Gadol! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I was in communication recently with a person who has a book that’s about to be published. They are feeling really concerned now that the book they have been working so hard on might end up facing book bans and other forms of pushback in the current political climate. They asked me for a prayer appropriate to the moment and I searched my head and came up with this one from Psalm 90:

ויהי  נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו׃

“May the favor of the Lord, our God, be upon us, let the work of our hands be firmly established for us, and make firmly established the work of our hands!”

Note that the last part of the verse could also be read to say, “and may the work of our hands make God firmly established!” This, for me, is the prayer of the moment, because this is the way it works: We pray to God to establish the work of our hands, but we also do our best to make sure that our work is establishing God in the world by promoting a just and righteous society and helping people in need. When that is happening, our hands and God’s hands work in partnership, the same hands dedicated to the same good ends. 

In times such as these when, as the sages of the Zohar might put it, the attribute of Gevurah seems to have reign over the world, it can be incredibly hard to hang on to that perspective — which is a pity, because maintaining that attitude toward the work we do is even more important at such times. Come what may, may God establish the work of our hands, and may the work of our hands help establish a godly world.