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(I wrote this d’var for tomorrow’s Shabbat evening services. Turns out I won’t be leading services tomorrow after all - so I’m sharing it here instead!)

I love being a Jew. I see it as an active thing – BEING a Jew. Living a Jewish life, making Jewish choices, taking part in our rich, meaningful traditions and fulfilling the mitzvot of the Torah.

However, if I said that I was living a Jewish life in every possible way – making all Jewish choices, taking part in all our traditions, and fulfilling all mitzvot – that would be a lie.

Those of you who come to Shabbat services regularly on Friday nights know that you will nearly always find me here, now. However, if you also come on Saturday morning, then you know that you will almost never find me there, then. I bake challah, but I do not light Shabbat candles. I take time off from my day job on Jewish holidays when I can, but I’m not always able to. I eat kosher foods, but I do not have kosher dishes, since I share my kitchen with three people who do not keep kosher.

I do what I can. Sometimes, I feel like I’m not doing enough.

It’s easy to imagine that G-d might also think that I’m not doing enough. After all, there are 613 mitzvot in the Torah. If your boss gave you an employee handbook with 613 rules for employee conduct, then you would assume that this is a strict boss with a very structured work environment, someone who wants you to obey their instructions without fail or flexibility.

But this week’s parsha makes it clear that “obey without fail or flexibility” is not an entirely accurate description of G-d’s expectations for Jewish people.

This week we read Parshat Vayikra – the beginning of the book of Leviticus. Incidentally, Leviticus has 243 of the 613 mitzvot – more than any other book in the Torah.

(If you’re curious, second place goes to Deuteronomy at 203 mitzvot, Exodus comes in third at 109, Numbers is fourth at 56, and Genesis has only two.)

So, Leviticus is the Big Book of Rules, right? In Vayikra, the start of this book, there are a lot of rules about making offerings at the temple. These are sin offerings. A person would admit wrongdoing and atone for their sin by making the offering. In Leviticus chapter 5 verse 6, the Torah explains, “he shall bring his guilt offering to the Lord for his sin which he had committed, a female from the flock, either a sheep or a goat, for a sin offering.”

But it doesn’t end there. The next verse, verse 7, reads “But if he cannot afford a sheep, he shall bring as his guilt offering for that [sin] that he had committed, two turtle doves or two young doves before the Lord.”

And then if we jump ahead a couple verses, to verse 11, the Torah reads, “But if he cannot afford two turtle doves or two young doves, then he shall bring as his sacrifice for his sin one tenth of an ephah of fine flour for a sin offering.”

(An ephah is a unit of measurement here, and according to Google, it’s about the size of a bushel. So you would bring a tenth of a bushel of flour. I’m not sure exactly how big that is, but it doesn’t sound like much. Certainly it sounds less than a whole sheep.)

So – the commandment here, the mitzvah, is to make a sin offering. And through the Torah, G-d gives specific instructions about what to bring and what to do with it – you bring a sheep, and this is how you kill it. It’s a structure for atonement. But the Torah also provides exceptions or alternate options for this sin offering. If you can’t bring a sheep, bring two doves, and if you can’t bring two doves, bring some flour. The Torah provides structure, and it also provides different structures depending on your individual means.

In doing so, the Torah takes a behavior that could be very limited – something that only rich people could do, the people who could afford to give up an animal because they had plenty more to eat or breed – and turns it into something that anyone could do, within their means, in the way that works best for them. It’s flexible. It’s also encouraging in a way – having these different options for how to participate in the mitzvah makes the whole idea of making sin offerings feel more accessible for anyone.

And this ties in well with how I see and experience Judaism. It’s accessible for all of us. Yes, there’s structure. Judaism includes instructions for every part of our lives. And like I said before, it’s an active thing. I don’t think that you can really BE a Jew if you aren’t doing ANYTHING that’s Jewish.

But you don’t need to do EVERYTHING.

A d’var torah (plural divrei torah, literally “word(s) of Torah”) - is a kind of speech or essay delivered by Jews, for Jews. The speech usually refers to the Torah parsha of the week. I’ve shared a couple of my divrei torah here on this blog, including ones about Tamar in parsha Vayeshev and about Balaam in parsha Balak.

For me, divrei torah are a lot of fun to write. I think of it as a “holy book report.” But I know not everyone thinks of a book report as “fun.” Recently, some people have asked me how I write them, how I know what to say and make it interesting. So today I am sharing my thought process for writing a d’var torah.

Here are my four "steps” to writing a good d’var!

1. Explain the Text

This is the “book report” part. Often, a d’var is delivered right after the Torah is read aloud to the congregation, but this doesn’t mean that everyone knows what this week’s parsha is about. It can be difficult to follow along, both in Hebrew and in English. Even if you can follow along, sometimes it’s just not very clear what’s going on, especially once you get out of the stories in Genesis and Exodus that we love to tell our kids and get into the laws of Leviticus. A parsha needs some explanation, just to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Now, I’m not telling you to talk about EVERYTHING that happens in the parsha.  Each parsha contains a LOT. Bereshit, the first chapter of Genesis, is not just those first seven days - it also includes Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, a lot of family trees, and the beginning of the story of Noah! You could write a dozen essays on any one of these pieces of Torah, but remember, this is a ten-minute d’var torah, not a thesis paper. Vayeshev has one hundred and twelve verses in it, but for my d’var, I just talked about those thirty verses that Tamar is in, and I had plenty to say!

Read the parsha, find something that strikes you as particularly interesting, and share those details with your congregation in your d’var torah. But what, you may ask, makes a part of the Torah particularly interesting? That leads me to the second step...

2. Connect to Today

This is really the whole point of a d’var - connecting the ancient texts to today. Why does this matter? Why do we read the Torah today, and what can we learn from it? How can the text give us a new perspective on our lives - or, how can our lives give us new perspective on the text?

Sometimes the answer is obvious, and sometimes not. It’s easy to draw connections between Esau and Jacob’s rivalry and your own sibling squabbles, less so to draw connections to the laws of kashrut if you yourself do not keep kosher. Fortunately, you’re not alone here. You can look up divrei torah written by rabbis throughout the years and quote them (with proper citation!) in your talk. Feel free to share contradicting opinions - “Rabbi X said this, but Rabbi Y said that.” As the saying goes, “two Jews, three opinions.” We love critical thinking and debate!

But here’s the thing - you don’t NEED to tell your congregation what other people think about this parsha. You can say what YOU think about it. What does this parsha remind you of in YOUR life? When I wrote about parsha Balak, I connected Balaam’s treatment of the donkey to behavior I’d seen from theme park guests at work, and drew from that a lesson about not assuming that people who disobey you have malicious intent. When I wrote about parsha Vayeshev, I talked about the mind-blowing impact that Tamar’s story had had on me as a thirteen-year-old, showing me that our culture has much more potential for feminist liberation than I had previously believed.

Which brings me to the next step...

3. Be Vulnerable

When you write a d’var torah, you are a teacher. In this moment, you are the expert on the text, like a professor giving a lecture. But think about the connotations we have for the word “lecture.” A teacher giving you a lecture is a neutral thing, but a lecture can also be a parent scolding you. I don’t see a d’var as the time to scold. If your audience gets defensive, then they will disengage with you and won’t learn from you.

Yes, connect the Torah to the real world, and share what we can learn from it today. But be sure to include yourself in that “we”! If you say, “Here is what YOU should learn from the Torah,” people might get defensive. If you say, “Here is what I’VE learned from the Torah,” people will sympathize with you and learn with you. When I talked about Tamar, I could have used her example to critique the status quo; instead I used it as an opportunity to talk about how I had been wrong in the past and how grateful I was to be a part of this culture. When you are vulnerable, you become memorable and inspirational.

4. Find the Humor

This is something I’ve learned in guest service: if you can get people to laugh, then they’re more likely to listen and do what you say. It’s common speechwriting advice, too, to use humor to connect with your audience. I began my Tamar parsha with a slightly self-deprecating joke about musical theatre, and my bat mitzvah parsha for Bechukotai - which I have not yet worked up the courage to share here - was a completely unintentional stand-up comedy routine. (Honestly, at the time, I had no idea why everyone was laughing. Now I get it, and I cringe.)

Please note that I am NOT telling you to insert humor to non-humorous situations. If you’re talking about the plague of the firstborns in Exodus, that is NOT the time for dead baby jokes. What I’m saying is, when you find humor in the Torah, do not shy away from it. Don’t get so caught up with the idea that this is a holy text you must respect, or that you have the responsibility of teaching your community on your shoulders, that you write something completely dry and disengaged. The d’var that has the congregation zoning out and dozing off is, frankly, not a good d’var. The d’var that feels like an amiable human conversation is one that people will remember.

Last week, I had the honor of giving the D’var Torah at my synagogue’s Saturday morning services. Here is the speech I gave!

This week’s parsha, Vayeshev, has my favorite story in the whole Torah. And I’m not talking about Joseph. Don’t get me wrong, I do love Joseph. I can basically recite the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about him by heart. But Joseph’s story is not my favorite. My favorite story in the whole Torah is the story of Tamar.

Now there’s a good chance that you’re now wondering, “Who is Tamar?” There isn’t a musical about her! (Though I’m tempted to write one!) I know I didn’t learn about her in Sunday School. I learned about her when I was thirteen. One of my bat mitzvah presents was this book called Lilith’s Ark, by Deborah Bodin Cohen. It’s a book for Jewish teenagers focusing on the women of the Torah. One of the stories here is about Tamar.

In case you’re like thirteen-year-old me and you don’t know Tamar’s story, here’s the gist of it. It’s not a long story – just thirty verses, in Genesis chapter 38. But a lot happens in these thirty verses.

Joseph’s brother Judah gets married and has three sons: Er, Onan, and Shelah. His eldest son, Er, marries a woman named Tamar. But before Tamar can have any children, Er dies.

You’ll remember from other stories in the Torah the importance of being a firstborn son – that’s the heir to the father, the heir of the family, who inherits the family’s wealth. So it’s a problem that Er (Judah’s heir who is named Er - the pun only works in English) died before having any kids. It messes with the line of inheritance.

So Judah has his second son, Onan, also marry Tamar. The idea is that the first child that Onan and Tamar have together will count as Er’s son, preserving that line of inheritance.

But Onan refuses to go along with this. He refuses to have kids with Tamar. The Torah says he “cast his seed on the ground.” And G-d does not like that. So Onan dies.

So Judah looks at everything that’s happened, and he thinks, “Huh. My first son married Tamar, and he died. My second son married Tamar, and he also died. I’m supposed to have her marry my third son now… but what if he dies, too?”

So Judah tells Tamar, “Hey, my third son Shelah, he’s too young to get married yet. You should go back to your parents’ house and stay there, and I’ll call you when we’re ready.”

When someone says, “I’ll call you,” that’s never a good sign.

Last week, I had the honor of giving the D’var Torah at my synagogue’s Saturday morning services. Here is the speech I gave!

I work at Disney World, at one of the attractions in Animal Kingdom. I’ve worked at this ride for three years, and every day, I interact with hundreds of families from around the world. What’s interesting is how often completely different people, on completely different days, repeat the same behaviors. Here is one scenario I’ve seen many, many times.

A parent comes up to the entrance of the ride, pushing their young child in a stroller. I or one of my coworkers ask the family to park the stroller in the nearby parking lot before getting in line. The parent tells the child to get out of the stroller. The child stays seated. The parent tells them again – and again – quickly, loudly, shouting at their kid – “Get out of the stroller! Come on, get up! Get up!” But still the child stays seated. Often, once the parent starts shouting, the child begins to cry. And then the parent finally looks down, and realizes – the child’s seat belt is buckled, and they are too young to undo it on their own.

It’s understandable for a parent to become frustrated with their child, if their child does not obey them. Parents are used to being able to tell their kids what to do! But every time I see this happen, I think, “what if the parent had taken a moment to wonder WHY their child was not obeying? Instead of assuming that the child was just not listening, what if the parent had first looked for the reason for disobedience? Maybe then they would not have made their child cry.” But the parent is usually in too much of a hurry to notice the reason their child is not obeying.

Allocate plenty of time. You may not actually write your d'var Torah until the last minute, but give yourself time to think about the parashah, to let your mind visit and revisit the text.

Read the parashah for the week and whatever interpretations you can find. You can obtain commentaries from your rabbi, your education director, and your library. There is no need to reinvent the wheel: People have been pondering these writings for thousands of years. Avail yourself of their wisdom. It will give you food for thought and different approaches to the text. Consider these sources:

Determine your approach. Consider these possibilities:

Analyze a small fragment of the text in great detail. You will know that you have picked a good one if other commentators are as interested in it as you are.

Observe the text from a distance, taking note of some of its interesting details. This approach is particularly suitable for parashiyot that deal with ritual details at great length. Discuss the role of minutiae in the building of a religious life. After all, it is said that God is in the details.

Begin with an idea from the text and apply it to another issue that is of great interest to you. For example, if the text contains a long list of names, present a history of the origins of some typical Jewish names, perhaps including the names of those present.

Analyze the characters of biblical figures and the events of their lives in ways that will shed some light on our own. For example, consider the sibling rivalry between Jacob and Esau and the issue of preferred children.

Using the classic form for the d'var Torah, present several apparently discrepant facts and then explain how they are not contradictions at all but instead point to a deeper meaning that is not obvious at first.

Historical insights can illuminate a text in an exciting way. Even if you don't draw any deep morals from this approach, it can still be enriching.

Write a first draft that grapples with the meaning. A d'var Torah does not merely summarize the parashah. If you are having a problem, try the indirect approach: After your initial reading of the parashah and some commentaries, write down any thoughts you have about it and then set what you have written aside. Keep it in the back of your mind. Read it right before you go to bed. Think about it when you are running or driving. Once you begin writing your d'var Torah, jot down all your thoughts no matter how tangential they are: They may lead you somewhere.