A Broken World

Newsletter July 14, 2025 Together, we're #keepingitsacred...

Back in 2020, after decades of advocacy working to address the very flawed carceral system in Los Angeles, Measure J, finally passed. I had joined the movement for justice in those last years before the vote after seeing with my own two eyes and hearing the pained stories of family members whose loved ones were brutalized by the system, and was just one of thousands of Angelenos who put countless hours and boatloads of emotional energy into the measure. 

Unsurprisingly, immediately after it passed, it was challenged in the courts who deliberated for months only to come back with a verdict in our favor. It seemed that the wheels of justice were finally going to turn and Measure J, with its life saving remedies WERE we’re going to help vulnerable people. 

Until this past week, when it was discovered that due to a clerical mistake by LA County during the recent governmental overhaul, the entire measure vanished. Gone. Into thin air. After 2.1 million voters had passed it in 2020, it was accidentally repealed when votes approved measure G in November 2024. That’s right: it was obliterated by a clerical mistake.

This kind of thing is unfathomable and beyond disappointing. Especially as I personally worked closely with people for whom the measure would represent a turning towards justice, but also because I was an active advocate of the measure, It is nauseating to know that the cement-like strength of the diverse and broad coalition of movement organizations that forged this measure and fortified it with the successful court case over the span of years was, in one instant, smashed into a thousand pieces. Broken (hopefully not beyond repair). 

It feels like so much in this world is broken right now. This is just one measure in one part of one country that broke. 

Exactly 1,955 years ago yesterday, the Jewish people observed mourning for another kind of breakdown of something else beautiful and sacred forged by the good will of our people: yesterday marked that anniversary of the breach in the outer wall of Jerusalem by the Romans, that, three weeks later, would result in the complete obliteration of our sacred Temple in Jerusalem (observed on Tisha B'Av).

This three week period has been commemorated every year since, as a time of mourning and sadness. The entire book of Lamentations was written to lament this loss, and ritual practices around it include sitting in the floor, wearing black to sackcloth, and fasting. I appreciate the fasting part because who can eat when we have known this devastating nauseating brokenness. 

From 1,955 years ago to this week, our people have grappled with unimaginable brokenness in the world and in our personal lives. Judaism doesn’t try to sweep any of this under the rug or pretend it didn’t happen. Like when the first precious set of tablets were brought down from Mt. Sinai and smashed by Moses himself after witnessing the people’s idolatry, the community lifted up the cherished broken pieces of the tablet and carried them in the holy ark along with the second set of whole tablets provided by God. I imagine the ark to be doubly heavy with the broken tablets and whole tablets in there. A weight way too heavy for one person to bear alone. And so, many people would have had to carry the weighty ark through the rest of the journey, through the barren desert, together. Relying on one another to hold up the weight to ensure no one would be crushed by it.  

I have spoken with so many of you and we are each like the Israelites back then, each carrying so much brokenness and heaviness right now. All around us it is hard to see anything working right. From personal relationships to public policy to diseases to wars to weather. We are all carrying so much right now and it is more important now than perhaps ever in our lifetimes to find places and people who can hold our heaviness with us. Who can help steady us under the crushing weight. 

I imagine that as the Israelites bore the weight of the broken tablets in the massive ark on their shoulders together, coordinated, and with every step forward, bent over, they looked to those on their left and right also bearing the weight and appreciating the other’s back-breaking load-carrying role in the struggle. 

Our Healing Circle has become a place for each of us to gather and acknowledge the load that we are each carrying these days. It is a place for community members to acknowledge and humanize one another’s struggle. Please know that you’re welcome to join us on Thursdays at 10:30am PT/1:30pm ET to hold space for one another. We don't have to bear the weight on our own.

Much of our resilience relies on the idea that others see our sacred struggle, and help us bear the load.  We know that in community, we can hold each other up and lend resilience through the act of sacred witness to one another’s struggle. And in a world so broken, that bit of humanity is all the more cherished. 

Honoring what each other is carrying is how we are keeping it sacred. 

Together, we’re #keepingitsacred…

Rabbi Heather Miller

Founder, Keeping It Sacred

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The above is an excerpt from a Keeping It Sacred newsletter. If you want to read the entire newsletter or any from our archives, please head over to: keepingitsacred.com/news 

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