This week we read Parshat Emor.
It opens with a single, urgent command — and then immediately repeats it:
וַיֹּאמֶר ה׳ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה אֱמֹר אֶל־הַכֹּהֲנִים בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם…
“God said to Moses: Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them…” (Leviticus 21:1)
Emor — speak. Ve’amarta — and say. The Torah uses two words where one would be enough. Rashi notices this and teaches: the repetition is not an accident. Speak to the adults so that they will transmit to the children. The doubling is the point. Holy speech is never just speech — it is speech with a purpose. To teach. To share wisdom. To help others grow and benefit from what we know and what we have lived through. We are not merely commanded to open our mouths. We are commanded to pass something on.
Which brings me to Rachel Goldberg-Polin. In a recent interview with Katie Couric, Rachel shared three words that Rabbi Tal Sessler taught her: “Words are redemptive.” And then she said, “And that was it. It saved me. These words need to save me.” In our Jewish tradition, words can build worlds. Words can cause damage. And words can save, even bring about redemption.
This Sunday evening, we have the extraordinary privilege of welcoming her to our community. Her new book, When We See You Again, a New York Times number one instant best-seller, is an outpouring of the painful, brutal truth of what happened to her son Hersh — kidnapped, tortured, and then executed by Hamas terrorists after 328 days in captivity. There is no softening that. There is no way to make that truth less shattering.
And yet Rachel has consistently shown us something remarkable: how to face pain and grief and terror with dignity, love, and grace. Rather than live in anger or allow our pain to paralyze us, she has spoken out: to world leaders, to the President, to the Pope, to anyone who would listen, with a clarity and a humanity that changed the world. Ultimately, she wasn’t able to save her son but in so many ways she saved us.
That is Emor lived from the inside. Speech that teaches. Speech that transmits. Speech that takes unbearable private pain and turns it into something the rest of us can learn from.
Recently in an interview in Time magazine, Rachel said: “Grief is a badge of love that we wear because the love doesn’t die — the person can die, the love keeps growing. It’s like bamboo.”
This is what it looks like to speak holiness into the world, even, and perhaps especially, from the depths of the darkest grief imaginable.
If you can join us Sunday evening, please do. And if you can’t, please get a copy of her book. Read it slowly. Let it ask you the question Parshat Emor asks all of us: What will you say? And will it be worthy of being passed on?
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi