Sean Graham's d'var Torah

Dvar Torah
July 25 2026

Shabbat Shalom! I’m so glad to be here with you today.

I can not stand in front of this congregation today without acknowledging the death of Corey Ruiz. I lived in the Williamson community for twelve years, right around the corner from Batch and Ha Long Bay, and I feel deep compassion for Corey’s friends and family. I believe it is difficult to take a human life if you see that person as a full human being. Brutality demands that we close a door in our hearts. There is no policy or reform that can keep our hearts open. This we can only do in community.

Before I share my dvar Torah, I’d like to read a short letter that I wrote to myself. The morning before my beit din, I sealed this letter in an envelope and labeled it, “Open In Case Of Conversion”:

“Dear Sean:

If you are reading this letter, chances are you’re Jewish. Mazel Tov! You have transitioned from a wandering to a wondering to a becoming and finally to a beginning. Before you set out on your new Jewish path, however, let’s remember that you didn’t do any of this alone, so let’s give thanks to the people who helped you on every step of the way. Thanks to your husband Brian, who was your fearless champion from day one; and to your best friend Josh, who was your faith when your own faith faltered; and to Rabbi Laurie for her practicality, patience and good humor; and to Rabbi Donna Cephas for her commitment to Judaism as a font of joy; and to Cantor Jacob Niemi for his insightful questions; and to your mother-in-law Patricia Graham, may her memory be for a blessing, who bought you your first Shabbat candlesticks and your first menorah; and to members of Shaarei Shamayim, too many to name here, who have shown you in action what thoughtful, joyful, radically-inclusive Judaism looks like. Make sure they feel your gratitude and understand that but for them, you would not be here. To everyone, Todah Rabah.”

And now for my Dvar Torah.

I will start with a proposition: No person can be understood without compassion, and the heavier their burdens, the deeper the compassion required to see that person clearly.

This week’s parsha is Va’etchanan, or, “And I pleaded,” which finds Moses and the Israelites in a time of transition: the Israelites from wanderers to settlers, Joshua from minister to leader, Moses from a frustrated supplicant to a cautionary tale.

I do not mean to diminish Moses by describing him this way. On the contrary, I can’t read this Torah portion without thinking, “Poor Moses.” I believe Moses saw himself as a frustrated supplicant, and his life as a warning to the Israelites: “Do as I say, not as I did.”

Or as my accident-prone father would say whenever he hurt himself: “See what I just did? Don’t do that!”

On the last day of his life, Moses didn’t just bless the Israelites and remind them of their unique obligations. He held up his own personal tragedy, the denial of his dream to enter the promised land, as a warning. I imagine him beating his own chest, crying, ““Even I, who God chose to lead you out of Egypt and through the desert, and now to the very doorstep of the promised land, can be punished for my shortcomings!”

I still can’t tell whether, in the end, Moses embraced his transition or was merely resigned to it. Even prophets have a hard time letting go.

In her 2024 Yom Kippur sermon on “Confronting Disappointment,” Rabbi Laurie suggested that we can’t spark new dreams until old dreams are mourned and put to rest. Moses did many good, just, and even miraculous things while shepherding the Israelites between Egypt and the River Jordan. Yet he ended his life yearning for what was denied him: to set foot in the promised land. A lifetime of struggle, wisdom, courage and leadership, blotted out by an unfulfilled dream.

This may resonate with those of us who believe our achievements are simply what’s expected of us, whereas our setbacks are personal failures. But that isn’t true at all. Our victories are gifts, and our losses result from the same unfortunate circumstances and bad luck that could befall anyone.

We may wonder why Moses didn’t choose differently in how spent his last moments with the Israelites, but we can’t make choices that we can’t see. Moses’ vision may have been clouded by his hopes, dreams, and inflexible perceptions.

There are many theories for why Moses was denied physical entry to the promised land and merely permitted to survey it from atop Mount Nebo (or Pisgah).

Was it a matter of simple disobedience? God told Moses to speak to the rock at meribah, but instead he struck it twice in a moment of frustration with the thirsty Israelites. A straightforward story of actions and consequences that appeals to our cultural ideas around authority and punishment.

But is the literal reading enough?

Perhaps Moses just ran out of time. He reached “the measure of his years” -- 120 -- as decreed in Beresheit 6:3. Was his death at the doorstep of the promised land the same disappointment we all face at the end of our lives, when we realize that we won’t witness the next chapter of the world, that it will be written by others?

Or were Moses’ repeated pleas (whether 3 or 515) unsuccessful because he pleaded alone, without the voices of the Israelites to support his case? In this context, Va’etchanan -- “and I pleaded” -- feels so lonesome. Again, poor Moses, pleading with God all alone. Australian Rabbi Paul Lewin suggests that Moses didn’t fail, but rather he was failed by his community.

My own theory is that Moses could not successfully petition God because he could no longer see God clearly. His dream -- and his fear of failing to achieve it -- got in the way. Despite Moses’ many exhortations against idolatry in Va’etchanan, over the course of his relationship with God and the Israelites, he may have unintentionally created a false image in his heart.

In The Future of the American Jew, Mordechai Kaplan attempted to expand or, as he put it, “revalue” the concept of idolatry to include “any false god, any inadequate conception of deity” that is nonetheless “worshipped with loyalty, idealism, and faith”.

If Moses’ concept of God was altered by the rigid prism of his hopes and fears, God would no longer be a source of strength and would become merely the gatekeeper of Moses’ desires. God as a means, not God as an end.

Is our human desire to be seen a manifestation of b’tselem Elohim? There are few things in my experience as painful as reaching out to someone I care about yet feeling invisible. Was God stung, not by Moses’ disobedience, but by the veil between them? It’s difficult to experience one another’s divinity unless we set aside our expectations and preconceived notions. Perhaps the only way God could feel seen by Moses was to say no.

This past Wednesday evening, the same day Corey Ruiz lost his life at the hands of Madison police officers, Jews observed Tisha B'Av, which marks the destruction of the Temple. The Shabbat following is called Shabbat Nachamu, the Sabbath of Consolation, which moves us from mourning to hope as we prepare for the new year. On this Shabbat Nachamu may we take comfort that, after deeply grieving our own losses and the losses of our community and our ancestors, we can make room for new dreams and possibilities. We can consider what transformative healing Moses might have denied himself by placing a filtered, imagined God between himself and the divine hand that guided his long and exceptional life. What might we gain for ourselves by setting aside the idols of old dreams and rigid expectations, and attempting to see one another as we really are?

Shabbat Shalom.