Hukkat, Moses, Independence Promised, Bitter End

Perhaps the quintessential weekend convergence  is Shabbat Hukkat, Fourth of July weekend  and a birthday.  Between the fireworks (in the sky, and otherwise) and the family time (quality and quantity) it is…a lot. My weekend brightened and reverberated with fireworks the lessons of Moshe Rabbenu, family, strangers, and a venerable downtown bar in the East Village called, “the Bitter End.”

Growing up with the Fifth of July as a birthday, one learns to share and try not to expect too much on birthdays. Mine always meant school was out, and no one was around. Adjacent to Independence Day, my birthday was tacked-on to the pageantry of our nation.  I especially remember a messy pie-eating contest I watched at the age of six in Tenafly, N.J. during the Bi-Centennial,  and an absolutely amazing video my family made for me when I turned 50 during the height of the COVID -19 pandemic.

This year, we were fortunate to enjoy the  pageantry of the full-on fireworks display with generations of family and machetonim. We never take family or country for granted, especially this year, with two Americans still held hostage by Hamas terrorists.  Our families fled from Iran to the United States and Israel to escape religious persecution in order to live better, safer, freer lives. Mom, Pop, and Apple Pie for us means more than apple pie. It means diaspora, loads of trauma and hardwon joys and struggles, and halva,  too.

Shabbat began with a pre-sundown, multigenerational saffron-infused BBQ cookout, complete with hookah, before sundown and backgammon after. Very Middle Eastern, delicious,  and blessed.

Shabbat morning was improvised in Manhattan with extremely well-received assistance from random strangers: Manhattan is not-exactly Israel. It is so-not the Promised Land. These days, especially.  Yet, I was gratified to find kindness there. Particularly while wearing my Jewish and hostage dogtag symbols openly and looking pretty  “semitic.”

I struck up lots of conversations. As we moved from services on the Upper East side, to Central Park, to the Reservoir,  to the Met, to  an adorable new family who had just adopted a baby, to a group of potheads wearing Palestine tee shirts, to a man in line at Cavo with a shirt that read “Holy Time: Pure Blessed Time,”  to a guy wearing a shirt with the words of the US Constitution printed on it, to a lesbian couple, to a fellow Cancerian man sitting on a bench near the chalk “good luck spot”  at Washington Square Park, to the  bridal manager at the luxe Indian bridal salon, to the his-and-her chair masseuses, to the the bouncer at the Bitter End. With each interaction, I found I could *still* breathe in conversation,  where I had feared I might not.

I kept thinking of the lyrics of the Joan Osborne hit, “What if God was One of Us?” in which she asked, “What if God was just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home.” This time, in July 2025, it was me who felt the stranger.   I moved around the city purposefully asking random people random things.   No one beeped. No one cursed. No one was in a hurry. No expressed sarcasm or hostility. No one was rude.

By midnite, onstage, in a seemingly cosmic experience, a younger birthday woman birthday celebrant named Paula Cruz, coincidentally resplendent in a royal blue gown and white satin gloves, performed onstage at a venerable downtown club called the Bitter End. Cruz seemed to be experiencing a Joyous Start, as she announced from stage it was her birthday.

Accompanied by a seven piece band of live musicians,  Cruz and the musicians disabused this very human birthday celebrant of any concerns regarding AI.  AI will never, ever  replace human craft, grit, practice, work,  ingenuity or ingenues!  As the band’s confidence onstage built it crescendoed with each piece.  The band and Paula belted out original compositions and cover pieces including  “Sweet Love” by Anita Baker.   Sweet Love, is a song about love, shame,  trust, and . . .faith.

Back then, to Hukkat. Why was Moses punished? Why could this good man  who had led the people through the desert not make it to the Promised Land? Surely, he  knew better.  Moses revealed his anger, lost his face, and also,  showed hubris instead of gratitude to God.

In parshah Shelach Lecha the scouts return and are too fearful. They spread their fears like wildfire, losing their stations.  By contrast, in  parshah Hukkat,  their leader Moses loses face and station by losing his humility, showing hubris.  Moses had previously been stoic and humble. He loses access to the Promised Land as a consequence.

Perhaps Moses needed a day off, or a pause. Perhaps Moses needed some perspective. The opportunity of Hukkat and Independence Day coinciding is perspective.  Even if for a few days, in a sea of humanity, celebrants of America, whether youth,  middleagers, residents, vacationers, or weekenders  weekender have the opportunity to feel anonymous, take in the message of gratitude and humility, and to return to stations of responsibility, IYH,  with all the generations until the “Bitter End.”