The Loneliest Road: God Says, ‘I Will Be with You’
February 10, 2025
We have a hard road ahead, but not a lonely one. We have each other. And we have the Divine at our side, at our back, and within us.
Rabbi Irwin Keller has served as spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Shalom in Sonoma County, CA, since 2008, and as founder and faculty of the Taproot Community since 2017. He authored Chicago’s first comprehensive human rights law, in effect since 1989, and served at the helm of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel of the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a founder of the Kinsey Sicks, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet and is most recently the author of Shechinah at the Art Institute: Words, Worry, Wonder.
We have a hard road ahead, but not a lonely one. We have each other. And we have the Divine at our side, at our back, and within us.
I have always seen Joseph in the text, winking across the ages, inviting me to explore more fully the shared elements of our experience.
I have been in relationship with Joseph for years — wondering, puzzling, collecting the many hints in Torah that point to some queerness, some difference in Joseph’s gender.
The Book of Esther offers a clue about what it takes to be a leader who risks charging into the breach. When like Queen Esther, we lose ourselves in beauty or in purpose, it is divine Malkhut (majesty) asserting itself. And in that state, there is much we can do.
Serving as central organization of the Reconstructionist movement
Training the next generation of groundbreaking rabbis
Modeling respectful conversations on pressing Jewish issues
Curating original, Jewish rituals, and convening Jewish creatives
