In western Massachusetts I stayed with a rabbi I have known for some years through an online community. I had only heard her voice once, at an online memorial once the pandemic kicked in. But we have been there for each other through hard times, offering love and support through words and images.
She is not who I expected just through her words, I found; a pleasant surprise. Her words so often offer balm, succour, and peace; she takes the role of rabbi very much with her through our online community. But in person, outside of chat rooms and the video memorial, she is far livelier, a sparkling, poised, expansive presence.
Her house is loved, the walls beautiful with color and poetry, inscribed with words from her religion, the shelves thick with chapbooks. She was preparing her sermons for the High Holy Days.
In our chat rooms I have watched her struggle with intense emotions, with anti-Semitism looming over the parade of other news horrors that come to us through our devices.