January 16th, 2026 / 28 Tevet 5786

January 16th, 2026 / 28 Tevet 5786

Parashat Vaera Exodus 6:2-9:35

Haftarah Ezekiel 28:25-29:21

Dear TBE Community,

The name Abraham Joshua Heschel is evoked infallibly by many Jewish professionals – clergy, educators, administrators – every year come MLK Day. And that makes sense. The photo of Heschel and Dr. King on the Edmund Pettus bridge, marching to Selma, is an icon of Jewish activism, immortalizing an important moment of Jewish-Black fellowship.

Yet as the arson attack on Jackson’s Beth Israel synagogue taught the younger generations, there were other rabbis who supported the Civil Rights movement – for example, Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, who was the rabbi at Beth Israel in the 1960s, when this historic synagogue and the rabbi’s house were bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in retaliation for the rabbi’s political views. Or Rabbi Maurice Eisendrath, then president of the UAHC (the precursor to the URJ), who marched alongside King and Heschel, holding the Torah, and many more.

I wasn’t brought up Jewish in the United States, and I therefore have not been imprinted as much by the legacy of this significant chapter of the Civil Rights Movement that would come to shape American-Jewish, and especially Reform Jewish, understanding of Tikkun Olam for decades to follow. That is not to dismiss its relevance. But the first time I came across the name Heschel was not as the name of an activist praying with his feet. It was as the name of a poet.

What unlocked his legacy for me was a book – Not The Sabbath (though that as well) – but The Ineffable Name of God: Man.

I came across it during one lunch break in the Klay library at the New York offices of the URJ. I loved to peruse the shelves, dreaming of one day owning my own Jewish library, of being familiar with the names on the spines.

The book is a beautiful edition, bilingual in Yiddish and English. Inside, next to the title page, there’s a photo of the young poet – handsome, confident, discerning. Heschel wrote these poems between 1926-1933, when he was in his twenties; many of them while a student at the University in Berlin. As someone who had lived in Berlin for several years, I recognized the place this famous rabbi and scholar had known as a young man in the poems. More than that, I recognized in the Yiddish images and sentiments familiar to me from German poetry, a poetic stance and gesture with which I feel a kinship and that informs my own poetry, rendering it decidedly European. Nostalgia, longing, surrendering, even sorrow, are not common elements of contemporary American poetry, and European readers tend to be more embracing of such poetry than Americans.

Reading Heschel’s passionate and profound poems, I began to understand, not for the first time but maybe for the first conscious time, how human longing instilled by the beauty of nature, by the experience of love, can be a longing, a searching for God. Or maybe, to use Heschel’s language, of God’s longing “search for man.” And how that longing can lead to “radical amazement” but also to sensations of estrangement and loneliness. And that it was okay, as a religious and spiritual seeker, to experience such feelings.

This week’s parasha Vaera introduces new layers of the name of God. God has referred to the divine name as “I will be what I will be” previously. Now, God explains to Moses that the name his ancestors knew, El Shaddai, is not the name applicable to this new situation:

I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name יהוה. (Exodus 6:3)

God appeared to the ancestors in visions, and while those appearances significantly shaped and determined the lives of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God did not interfere with a historic narrative, until now:

I have now heard the moaning of the Israelites because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am יהוה. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I, יהוה, am your God who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians. (Exodus 6:5-7)

The irony of sorts is that when God was less involved, the divine name was pronounceable: El Shaddai. Now that God becomes more involved, with more layers revealed, the name becomes ineffable: Yud Hei Vav Hei.

It is this tension between closeness and knowing on the one hand and searching and longing on the other that can define a spiritual journey, a person’s poetics, and their theology. I respect Heschel for his civic engagement and support of the Civil Rights Movement, in a dangerous and volatile time and society. But the Heschel that touched my soul is Heschel the poet.

In the Evening on the Streets, by Abraham Joshua Heschel

Space is not filled with air,

But with unseeable light –

Lamps, newly revealed bits of light

Hang like a weightless Mecca Stone.

The asphalt lies like a cloth

On an unfamiliar keyboard.

Sounds ring out, disappear,

Drawing me to track their traces.

Oh, let me, here, be the first

To pray with your niggun.

I blunder on you as if in temple corridors.

I hear a jumble of noises mixed with screams of lust.

Perhaps the prayer of unrehearsed choirs

To an unknown God, or to an important nobody.

Oh, let me, here, be the first

To pray with your niggun.

Streets!

Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch

More Torah Tidbits

Hadas Cootware

Torah School Coordinator

Hadas Cootware has been teaching Hebrew and Jewish Studies for over a decade, joining our Temple Beth El Community in 2018. Born and raised in Israel with Hebrew as her native language, she previously served as a combat soldier and operations officer in the IDF. Drawing on her studies in acting and psychology, she published a children’s book in Hebrew, The Marshmallow Story, which focuses on delayed gratification. Outside of teaching, she is the proud mother of her son, Henry, and loves to travel.

TBEtorahschool@bethelsp.org

Ilan Davidson

Cantor

Cantor Ilan Davidson has been pleasing audiences with his singing since before he could read. At age five, he began singing with his Cantor, Philip Moddel, and hasn’t shut up since. At ten, he made his Operatic debut with the Fullerton Civic Light Opera’s production of Bizet’s Carmen, as a street urchin. Since then, he has performed roles in opera and musical theatre, performing, directing, and producing world-class productions.

Among his many accomplishments, Cantor Davidson is also known as a contemporary Jewish songwriter and performer, having delighted audiences all over the world, including Israel and Lithuania with the soulful sounds of his music. His recordings, Stained Glass (1995) and In A Hanukkah Mood (2007) are collections of original and covered songs by himself and many contemporary Jewish artists. His most recent recording, God Is In This Place (2020), is a collection of original liturgical pieces for the Friday night Shabbat Service, commissioned and written in honor of his 25th Anniversary as the Cantor of Temple Beth El.

Cantor Davidson left the stage and in 1995 joined the Temple Beth El family, in San Pedro, where, in his nearly 30 years of service, he has brought many new programs and much enthusiasm to all he does. Coming from a long line of Cantors, it must have been Besheret for Cantor Davidson, although talented in all areas of musical performance, to finally settle down into his career as Hazzan for Temple Beth El in San Pedro, California. In 2007, Cantor Davidson founded a new foundation, KindredSPIRITS, producing an annual world humanitarian aid event. KindredSPIRITS premiered on June 5, 2008 at Walt Disney Concert Hall, adding that prestigious concert hall to the ever growing list of venues around the world, where Davidson has performed. During the 10 years of humanitarian events, Global KindredSPIRITS, Inc., as an official 501©3, raised awareness and close to $500,000 for its beneficiaries over the decade.
As a past president of the South Coast Interfaith Council, Ilan fought for tolerance and understanding of ALL faiths in a difficult climate. For the past 7 years, Cantor Davidson has been service as an LA County Commissioner, representing the 4th District on the Human Relations Commission, where he currently serves as President. Whether it is raising his voice for justice, Hazzanut, Pop, Opera, Musical Theatre, or folk music, Cantor Ilan Davidson shares his soul and genuine love in every note.

When asked about his finest accomplishment, Cantor Ilan invariably responds, “After all the great concerts, services, and roles, my finest role in life is that of husband to my beautiful wife, Jodi, and daddy to my gorgeous daughters, Jordan and Zoe.”

cantor@bethelsp.org

Office: (310) 833-2467 Ext. 106

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