WAGMI: Leviticus Will Save Us
Shemini
Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. As we remember the greatest moral catastrophe of the 20th century and the murder of six million of our people, we reaffirm our obligation to memory and to our people’s fierce and loving pursuit of life.
Three nights ago, I landed at LaGuardia after a long travel day from Mexico. My kids and I were exhausted, slumped by the baggage carousel. Suddenly, a young man approached and asked my husband to join a minyan—the quorum of ten required for the evening prayer service. He agreed to be the tenth, and right there—on the airport floor—they began to pray.
It was an eclectic group: some in jeans, others in black and white, one pulling a yarmulke from his pocket. They’d never met before. But they stood together, reciting ancient words, recreating a sacred space away from home. Bleary-eyed on the tile floor, with my kids nearly asleep on top of me, I watched them daven. My mind wandered to the Mishkan, the portable sanctuary in the wilderness—the idea that God’s presence can dwell wherever we create space. We haven’t had a Mishkan in millennia, but we’ve never stopped building sanctuaries.
As the prayers continued, I felt something unexpected: a sense of calm and optimism. A quiet confidence that this—this ancient infrastructure of belonging and ritual—not only might make it through the chaos of our times, but might even hold the secret for how to make it through.
I needed that sense of calm. We had just come back from a beautiful Passover program in Mexico, where my husband served as the rabbi. The food was delicious, the scenery flawless, the people truly lovely. But the perfection felt dissonant. I felt unsettled—constantly contrasting the beauty around me with the instability so many of us sense unfolding everywhere else.
We’re not in an open crisis—not like the early days after October 7. But we’re not at peace either. In Israel, we’re heading into a second Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut with 59 hostages still in Gaza. With Hamas still ruling. With a governing class mired in strife. In America, I’ve started avoiding the news. I can’t swallow more headlines about frayed democratic norms, rising antisemitism, and political extremism from both left and right. The feeling that creeps up on so many of us is that too much is unraveling.
It is precisely here that Leviticus can help us.
At first, I didn’t think this week’s Torah portion would offer comfort. We had just left Passover and the Exodus—that breathtaking story of liberation and revelation—and returned to Leviticus: priestly rituals, Temple procedures, purity, and sacrifice. What could it possibly offer us now?
But this year, I saw things differently. Leviticus is not a relic. It’s a survival manual.
This week’s parasha, Shemini, describes the dedication of the Mishkan—the moment the portable sanctuary comes alive. It includes the shocking death of Aaron’s sons, who brought “strange fire” before God. It introduces the laws of kashrut—the dietary system that defines Jewish eating. At first glance: obscure, distant, irrelevant. But in truth, these are blueprints for something precious.
Leviticus, I realized, is about what lasts.
In internet slang, there’s a phrase drawn from the crypto world: WAGMI—We’re All Gonna Make It. Its opposite? NGMI—Not Gonna Make It. The terms are binary. In a rapidly changing world, things either endure or disappear.
Ross Douthat recently described this moment as a civilizational bottleneck. We’re not just overwhelmed, he argues—we still don’t grasp how much is at risk of extinction. Attention spans, communities, books, families, faiths—many of these may not survive. What does endure, he writes, will depend on how fiercely we fight for it:
“Languages will disappear, churches will perish, political ideas will evanesce... except among people who are deliberate and self-conscious and a little bit fanatical about ensuring that the things they love are carried forward.”
That line stopped me cold. Because this is exactly what Leviticus is about. And it’s exactly what Jews have done for millennia.
One striking example is kashrut, the Jewish dietary laws from this very parasha. Our tradition classifies them as ḥukim—laws with no rational explanation. We don’t keep them because they make sense. We keep them because they were commanded. And we’ve preserved kashrut with—yes—intentionality, intensity, and even a bit of holy fanaticism. In my own house, it’s muscle memory: my kids might whine for candy, but if I tell them something isn’t kosher, they instantly drop it. No follow-up, no debate.
We’ve passed our dietary laws down not through explanation, but through sacred repetition. Through unglamorous consistency.
That’s the logic of Leviticus: make holiness habitual. Make discipline a daily rhythm. Create sacred space wherever you are—on the Temple Mount, in your kitchen, by the baggage carousel at LaGuardia.
In this age of collapse and confusion, where even the basics—government, academia, institutions—are under stress, Leviticus whispers something countercultural: make it holy anyway.
We have no Temple for sacrifices, but we continue to pray in community.
Ritual purity and impurity in the sancta are no longer applied, but every morsel observant Jews eat is kosher—thoughtfully selected, carefully prepared, sanctified.
These rituals aren’t nostalgic. They’re how we hold the line.
Not everything is going to make it.
But Shabbat is WAGMI. Kashrut is WAGMI. Minyan as we travel is WAGMI.
And if we keep building sanctuaries wherever we go—so are we.
I love the "Shabbat Friendly Print Link" you provide with your articles.
Never knew there was a print link I was allowed to use on ש"ק. 😉
Brilliant!