# Video: 2025 Billings Preaching Competition Finals April 23, 2025 Each spring, the Office of Ministry Studies organizes the Billings Preaching Prize Finals, an annual preaching competition open to all HDS students who have not previously won. Congratulations to Hannah DeSouza, the 2025 Billings Preaching Prize Competition winner, and to finalists Caleigh Grogan and Sara Zemelman for their incredible talents. The finals were held during Noon Service on April 23, 2025, in Williams Chapel. The event also featured readings from Michael Fuhrman, the Massachusetts Bible Society scripture reading winner, and Sabbi Lall, the OMS reading prize winner. SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School. SPEAKER 2: Billings Preaching Competition Finals, April 23, 2025. TEDDY HICKMAN-MAYNARD: Good afternoon and welcome. My name is Teddy Hickman-Maynard. I am associate Dean for Ministry Studies. And on behalf of everyone in the Office of Ministry Studies, we welcome you to this year's annual billings preaching competition finals. We have in our midst with us a number of alumni and field supervisors who every year look forward to coming back and being a part of this celebration of preaching and of storytelling. And so we welcome our wider family into this space. We're so grateful. This year, we had, I don't know if it was a record, but it was a lot of submissions. And so this year's finalists were chosen from among a very, very healthy and worthy the crop of preachers. Along with the preaching prize, we also award, today, the prizes for reading. And so the Massachusetts Bible Society Prize for the reading of scripture, and the OMS Prize for the reading of literature are also going to be bestowed today. I want to start by honoring those folks. And so this year's Massachusetts Bible Society Prize for reading of scripture goes to Michael Fuhrman, Michael. Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] And our OMS Prize for reading of literature goes to Sabbi Lall. \[APPLAUSE\] You will be hearing from both of those winners in just a few moments. We also want to honor and to celebrate all three of our preaching finalists who we will hear from today. Those being Hannah Desouza, Caleigh Grogan, and Sara Zemelman. \[APPLAUSE\] You are in for a treat. But as I get out of the way, I want to leave us with this one thought. When we think about the work that we do here at Harvard Divinity School, I am often reminded of the words of Michelle Alexander, who is a lawyer and civil rights activist, most famously known for her work on ending mass incarceration in the United States. Upon leaving her Stanford School of Law to teach at Union Theological Seminary, she was asked, why would you leave a career in public policy and law to go and teach students of theology and religious studies? And she said, I've been doing this work for decades, and what I know about the work of Justice is that we are not lacking for policy ideas. We are not lacking for information about what to do or how to achieve the good that we seek. We are, however, lacking in the moral will and vision to support such action. And so what we need are not more policies, but we need more storytellers who can give us a vision of a better world. And I want to go where the storytellers are being prepared. I'm so glad that we are in a place where the storytellers are being prepared, who will cast vision for the world as it should be. And so now prepare your hearts to hear from these wonderful five storytellers. \[APPLAUSE\] HANNAH DESOUZA: Thank you, Dean Teddy and everyone for being here. As an international student, here, on a visa, I will try not to be too controversial this afternoon, but I did ask Eddie to man the door just in case. And he is there. So that is good. So my reading today comes from Genesis 16, and it reads. "Now Sarai, Abram's wife had borne him no children, but she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar. So she said to Abram, the has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my slave. Perhaps, I can build a family through her. Abram agreed to what Sarai said. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, Hagar began to despise her mistress. 'Your slave is in your hands,' Abram said. 'Do with her whatever you think best.' Then Sarai mistreated Hagar, so she fled from her. The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert. And he said, 'Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from? And where are you going?' 'I'm running away from my mistress Sarai,' she answered. Then the angel of the Lord told her, 'Go back to your mistress and submit to her. I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.' She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her, 'You are Elroy, the God who sees me.'" The first class I took at HDS was religion and liberation, in the novels of Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, with Professor Carrasco or Profe, as we call him. And usually we would begin by going around the room and introducing ourselves. But Profe, to my surprise, asked us to introduce instead one of our grandmothers to the class to say her name, the languages she spoke, and maybe her favorite book if we knew it. And I thought of my father's mother, Cynthia. She is from the island of Curacao in the Caribbean. She was part of the Windrush generation that emigrated to England in the '50s and spoke Dutch, Spanish, French, and her local dialect Papiamento, and taught my dad none of them, which I'm still grieved by. I imagined her favorite book would be the Bible, because I know she used it to teach my dad and his brothers how to read. One by one, each student introduced their grandmother to the class and then Profe said, we have now brought our ancestors into the room. In a world where it can be tempting to think we've arrived on our own strength or merit, especially at a place like Harvard, it was grounding to begin my time here by acknowledging that we are all standing on the shoulders of others that have come before us. And I've been thinking about how true this is in a spiritual sense also, the spiritual forefathers and foremothers that ground us in our respective traditions, some known, some less known. As a preacher's kid, I grew up singing songs about Father Abraham and his many sons, but little about Mother Sarah and nothing at all about Mother Hagar, the Egyptian slave woman of Abraham and Sarah. She enters the narrative as a solution to a problem, a forced surrogate for God's chosen couple who, as you can see, don't fare well in this story. In fact, Abraham and Sarah never once referred to Hagar by name. She is simply slave girl. Ranita Weems, a biblical scholar and minister, says that we ought to listen for the untold story. And there is so much I want to know about Hagar the woman. Oppressed, mistreated, and now pregnant, Hagar flees to the wilderness. And it's in the wilderness that she will find the divine. Or more accurately, the divine will find her. Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? When God asks people questions in the Bible, I've come to realize they usually for their sake, more than for His. Before Hagar can move forward, she has to acknowledge where she is, where she started. The divine being acknowledges her situation that she is a slave of Sarai, and in the same breath affirms her humanity, and most importantly calls her by name. Names are important. For the last year, I've worked as a tour guide for Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, and while we're accustomed to seeing the names of prominent figures in Harvard's history around Cambridge, like Brattle on Brattle Street or Agassi on the side of the Peabody Museum, we don't see the names of the individuals enslaved by them and other staff and faculty between the 17th and 18th centuries, whose own forced labor helped to create the Harvard that we know today. Caesar, Sicily, Diana, Titus, George, Agnes, names on the tour that we speak over the lands upon which they worked. Although I've always had a feeling that the land knows them intimately. I joked, at the beginning, about being an international student. But the truth is, I felt trepidation even writing this sermon as we're seeing real consequences about the names that are being said or not said, or the humanities that are being affirmed and not affirmed today. In this story, we see the first appearance of the angel in the Bible to a person, and it's not to Noah, or Abraham, or Moses, as we might expect, but it's to one whose own humanity was denied, an Egyptian slave woman who God knows by name. Some Christian scholars have argued that if Hagar did, indeed, see God as a physical presence, then this could be read as a preincarnate appearance of Jesus. And I like to think that just as Jesus chose to appear first after his Resurrection to Mary Magdalene, a formerly demon possessed woman, then it's fitting for this first appearance of a preincarnate Christ to another woman dwelling on the margins. Perhaps it's empowered by this. Hagar will go on to give this God she encounters a name. And she's actually the only character in the Bible to give God a name. She calls him Elroy, the one who sees me. The year before I came to HDS, I was working as a youth minister in Moldova, which is a small country in Eastern Europe that borders Romania and Ukraine. And I lived right by the Ukrainian border when the war started. And I have vivid memories of waiting in the lobby at night to welcome people after truck pulled up with Ukrainians-- mothers, fathers, children, babies, pets who had suddenly become refugees overnight. Moldova is one of the smallest countries, but they took in over 100,000 Ukrainians. And in the days that followed, I would take some of the teenagers into the town center. And as we got nearer, we started to see handwritten signs in the windows of restaurants and cafes. Some were even written in Ukrainian, and they said, "Welcome, you are safe here." All my favorite free lunch for Ukrainians, which usually meant free lunch for me too. It was moving, though, to see their eyes light up, that their presence was not just being tolerated, but welcomed. The name Hagar means in Hebrew Sojourner or foreigner. I'm not sure if this was the name that she was given at birth by her mother, but in this she comes to represent all foreigners, all outsiders, all those deemed the other. And in calling God Elroy, she affirms that God sees the outsider. For feminist biblical scholar Phyllis Trible, she writes that the story of Hagar is a text of terror, one you won't usually hear preached from the pulpit on a Sunday. Something I've learned in my three years as a student here is that sacred texts can be used to terrorize and to liberate. The same text, in fact, can be used to instill fear and terror, as much as to instill hope and freedom. It all depends on the lens of the one wielding it. Taking the two greatest Commandments of Jesus to love God and neighbor as the foundation of his interpretation, Augustine said, "Whoever thinks that he understands the Holy scriptures or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them that does not tend to build up this two-fold love of God, and our neighbor does not yet understand them as he ought." The book that follows Genesis is Exodus, in which we will see a reversal take place, as it will be the Hebrews, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah that are brutally enslaved by the Egyptians. And in need of being seen in need of a liberator, our freedoms are all intertwined with one another. And God himself will go on to command his people in Deuteronomy, love the foreigner, since you yourselves were foreigners in the land of Egypt. What I've come to appreciate about the story of Hagar is that it hasn't been hidden in the biblical text, as we often do in history, with stories that don't hit the preferred narrative or don't make the heroes shine. Hagar was not part of this chosen people, but as Howard Thurman would say, she too is a child of God and sought out and provided for by him. She's given a promise of descendants and a lineage similar to the one given to Abraham, but in her own right. Hagar will go on to be one of the central figures in womanist theology, a mother for the marginalized, and all those that might see themselves as the other in the story. In the spirit of listening for the untold story, I wrote a poem from the perspective of Hagar that I titled Elroy and I. It ended like this. "At desert edge, at death's edge I found you Beneath harsh Beersheba sun God of promised land and of desert, God of abundance and of famine, God of the chosen and half chosen, God of the full and of the empty. Though unseen by man, you see me. Though unseen by man, I see you. Adam named animals. I will name God. Elroy and I, we through wilderness run. May we remember those that came before us, The forefathers and foremothers, Physical and spiritual, Whose shoulders we stand on. And may we not dismay And we find ourselves in a season of wilderness Because often we may be on the cusp of a divine encounter. And in the spirit of Elroy, May we, in our communities and as individuals, Always have eyes to see the outsider To have hanging in our windows, 'You are welcome here,' Regardless of the messaging that's in our world, Because we never know when it may be us In need of that welcome." Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] MICHAEL FUHRMAN: Hi, everyone, I'm Michael. It's such a joy to be on such a beautiful lineup with both old friends and new. And I'm proud to get to read this mass resurrection scene from Ezekiel, which for so many of us may be the ultimate hope, but for so many others might be the ultimate impossibility. So this is Ezekiel 37:1-10, the Valley of Dry Bones. "The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley. It was full of bones. He led me all around them. There were very many lying in the valley and they were very dry. He said to me, mortal, can these bones live? I answered, oh, Lord, God, you know. Then he said to me, prophesy to these bones, and say to them, oh, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus, says the Lord, God to these bones I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I had been commanded. And as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, prophesy to the breath, prophesy mortal, and say to the breath, thus, says the Lord, God, come from the four winds, oh, breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. I prophesied as he has commanded me. And the breath came into them, and they lived. And stood on their feet, a vast multitude." Thank you. \[APPLAUSE\] CALEIGH GROGAN: Our reading comes from Cosmos by Carl Sagan. We have held the peculiar notion that a person or society that is a little different from us, whoever we are, is somehow strange or bizarre to be distrusted or loathed. Think of the negative connotations of words like alien or outlandish. And yet, the monuments and cultures of each of our civilizations merely represent different ways of being human. An extraterrestrial visitor, looking at the differences among human beings and their societies, would find those differences trivial compared to the similarities. The cosmos may be densely populated with intelligent beings, but the Darwinian lesson is clear, there will be no humans elsewhere, only here, only on this small planet. We are a rare, as well as an endangered species, every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In 100 billion galaxies, you will not find another. So here we are, out of some 100 billion galaxies, each with their own 100 billion stars, we ended up on this planet, spinning around this star. Each of us began through the miracle of birth, emerging, one way or another, from the comfort, the aquatic comfort of the womb into the harsh and dry world. And in the end, each of us will die. And for some reason, all of us here have chosen to spend some of the time in between at Harvard Divinity School. In all the corners of the Earth, among all the miraculous things we could be doing with our precious lives, what are we doing here? Once upon a time, the answer for the majority of us would have been studying Christian ministry and theology. And once upon a time, the vast majority of us in this room would not have been welcome at this school for one reason or another. But fortunately, times change. And now we come to this place for any number of reasons, with an incredible diversity of goals, and dreams, and values. Some of us arrive here without a clear goal or vocational path in mind, only a sense that there is more to learn. Perhaps, an inkling that there is something bigger, something more valuable than what many of us have been enculturated into valuing. Whatever our goals and motivations, we have sought out this intentionally and vocally diverse community, chosen to be surrounded by people who, for the most part, do not share our context. We find ourselves at the world's most religiously diverse Divinity School, a school that strives to cultivate an inclusive community in service of just world at peace, an equitable world, at a time when the very concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion are under attack from the American government. And I don't think it's a big surprise to anyone here why there would be a coordinated effort to squash out these values in all areas of public life. And yet, the rapidity with which rights and protections are being torn away is intentionally and effectively jarring. But those who study history have been warning us, and those who live with the daily realities of racism and white supremacy, transphobia, and phobia, xenophobia, ableism, and other forms of pervasive systemic hate, know that this is not new. This is more and more of the saying the quiet part out loud. We know that efforts towards diversity, equity, and inclusion, when done well, are not just for show. They are not acts of virtue signaling or attempts to disrupt some kind of natural order. We pursue diversity, equity, and inclusion because we know what Carl Sagan said is true. All of our differences, the ways our bodies move and look, the songs we sing, the values that drive us, the art we create and worlds we build are all just different ways of being human. We know that every one of us is precious. Sagan urges if a human disagrees with you, let him live. But let us go further. If a human disagrees with you, help them thrive. Because we need one another. At this school, I am constantly reminded of this fact, not only through the relationships that have sustained and transformed me, but through our curriculum. In theories and methods, many of us encountered the work of Shawn Wilson, a Cree researcher who describes an Indigenous ontology in which all that really is, is relationship. In more than one course, I've been asked to read Judith Butler, the queer philosopher who writes about how we are only recognizable even to ourselves, thanks to our inescapable connection to others. And in reparations as spiritual practice, Dr. David Ragland introduced me to the concept of Ubuntu. Alive in various forms across many African religious and spiritual traditions, Ubuntu is frequently translated as, I am because you are, or I am because we are. And these are just a few examples of the infinitely many sources of wisdom that we all might be blessed to encounter if we live in a world that accepts and celebrates all people, all ways of being human. But when I say, all, I do not want us to fall into the paradox of tolerance. If your way of being human is predicated on the oppression of others, if others existing in a way that is unfamiliar to you feels like a threat, I'm afraid you've lost the plot. We are watching people with money and power desperately clinging to a narrow and life-limiting way of being human, while a new world rooted in our shared humanity is relentlessly and joyfully being born. It can be hard to remember, especially when the futile resistance to this birth is so close and so threatening. But as Carl Sagan reminded us more than 40 years ago, in the swirling vastness of space, somehow against the odds, humanity ended up here making a home on this small planet. Despite centuries of our best efforts at self-sabotage, humanity persists. So what are any of us doing at Harvard Divinity School? It seems to me that we are soaking up the life-affirming lessons that spring out of our many traditions, learning about the many ways humanity has survived, how humanity has met every challenge and lived to tell the tale. We are learning how to serve a world that is still being created. And may we continue to do so beyond the walls of this University. May we bring what we've learned through relationship back into the communities that formed us and into the communities we've yet to meet. Because despite all this institution has done for us, despite this University's role in bringing us together, in helping many of us tap into the wisdom that stretches out like roots across our shared humanity, I do not know if there is a place for this institution in the world that is being born. I don't believe there will be a place for any institution that must bend to a fascist regime in order to survive. For any institution that cannot fully name and offer reparations for the harm it has caused. For any institution that relies on the profits of war and genocide. But I do know that no matter what form the world is taking, there is a place for you, for each of us. The world that is dawning knows you are precious and needs you to thrive. Blessed be, and may it be so. \[APPLAUSE\] SABBI LALL: So I'm going to read today from the great body of Hindu texts called the Puranas, specifically the Vishnu Purana, which is dedicated to Lord Vishnu. And you may know one of his forms, which is Krishna. "Listen carefully to the deeds of the great and prudent Prahlada, whose actions were always noble. In former days, Diti's son, Hiranyakasipu, received a boon, so powers from Lord Brahma, and he brought all three worlds under his control. The stature, of course, Hiranyakasipu, usurped the authority of Indra, the Lord of the gods, and then assumed the functions of the sun, the wind, fire, and water, and even the moon. The gods fled their divine abode, fearing him, and they wandered the world. After the Daksha had conquered all three worlds, he grew arrogant. Because of this universal sovereignty. And while Gandharvas sang his praises, he indulged his favorite senses. Apsaras dancing that delightful Crystal Palace in the clouds, where the demon, filled with pleasure, spent time fulfilling his senses. Hiranyakashipu had a gifted son, Prahlada, by name. And one day, that pious youth, accompanied by his teacher, came before the Lord, his drunken father. When Prahlada bowed to touch Hiranyakashipu's feet, his father lifted up his child and asked, recite for me, my dear boy, your favorite verse that you've learned to date. And Prahlada said, listen well, dear father, and as you command, I'll diligently recite, the most important thing, the thing that occupies my heart, I bow to him who has no start, who has no middle, and has no ending. I bow to you, who's unborn, unaging, undying, and unchanging, destroyer and maintainer of the universe, the cause of every cause. Hearing this, the eyes of the Daitya king grew red with fury. He glared at his son's guru and berated him, his bug like lower lip alive with rage, saying, teacher, what insulting nonsense in praise of my arch rival, have you been teaching my son before? The guru denied everything. So Hiranyakashipu turned to his son and said, tell me, boy, who's been teaching you this? And Prahlada, answered, Vishnu, teacher of all the world, who is fixed within my heart. Apart from him, the highest spirit, what remains to be taught by anybody. Hiranyakashipu said, who is this Vishnu, you prattle on about, you silly boy? I am Lord of the three-fold worlds. Prahlada, the boy replied, what ascetics might contemplate his higher state, but it cannot be described. From him arises everything. He is everything. He is Vishnu, the highest Lord. His father was livid. How could anyone be called the highest Lord, while I'm here, you foolish boy? If you want to die, mention Vishnu one or more time. And as you might expect, Prahlada did. He said, Vishnu not only occupies my heart, but he fills all these three worlds. He is the universal being who enjoins me, you, and all other beings to take action. 'Take this wicked boy away,' said Hiranyakashipu, 'Punish him. Who encouraged this stupid child to falsely praise my enemy?' Some time later, the king summoned Prahlada again. 'Sing something for me, son,' he said to him. Prahlada took a breath and said, 'May Vishnu, from whom matter and who spirits of unscrupulous world and moving things ensues, and who is the cause of everything, show mercy to you.' Hiranyakashipu was livid. This child is worthless because he will bring ruin on this family. He's like an ember in my house. And so Prahlada was attacked by Daksha's minions with swords, serpents that spewed venomous flames, and sly, poisonous snakes who struck Prahlada every limb. With his mind fixed on Krishna, even as the snakes attacked, the boy was unaware of his own body and filled with bliss. Eventually, the snakes' hoods were sore and their hearts trembled. And then the guru said, 'Childhood is a time of errors. We'll take this boy. We'll teach him that you're the Lord.' \[INAUDIBLE\] So what did Prahlada do? He taught all the other boys at the school about Vishnu. And he said, do not think while I'm a boy I'll do as I wish. Do not think we're only boys, and we are too weak. For the youth and old age are the way of the body, not of the soul a discipline. Do not wait for improvement. You'll run out of time. A discerning being should always strive to improve without regard to their state. The other boys were persuaded, and the furious Hiranyakashipu asked his service to bind Prahlada with certain ropes. So commentaries, serpents uses ropes a lot in Indian mythology. The sea itself placed Prahlada, even though they threw him into the sea back onto the land. And the boy cried because he didn't understand what he had done to be treated like this. The minions tried again. This time they piled rocks on him under the sea, and from beneath the rocks the praises of Vishnu rang. I bow to you, lotus-eyed deity. I bow to you Supreme being, I bow to you, heart of the world. I bow to you, wielder of the discus. I vow to the deity of the pious, benefactor of the world. To Krishna, to Govinda, I bowed again and again. Gods, yakshas, demigods, siddhas, nagas, humans, animals, birds, rocks, ants, Earth, water, fire, Sky, wind, sound, touch, taste, form, smell, mind, intellect, ego, time, and the qualities known as the goodness, you are the highest of these, Lord Vishnu. Om. May I always bow to Vasudeva. Nothing is distinct from him, but he is distinct from everything. One with Vishnu, Prahlada rose from the ocean and then Vishnu himself appeared. The sources diverge here. The Puranas tend to because they are handed down across generations. The living narratives. But Vishnu arrives to destroy the deity. And what Prahlada does is to ask for forgiveness for his father. Just as Hari shielded Prahlada in his trials, he'll protect anyone who listens to this tale." \[APPLAUSE\] SARA ZEMELMAN: Thank you, Sabbi. This past Saturday was the anniversary of my grandmother's passing. In Jewish tradition, this commemoration is called a Yahrtzeit. It's marked with the lighting of a Yizkor candle. Yiddish for May 1 remember. And the recitation of Kaddish. \[SPEAKING HEBREW\] glorified and sanctified be the great name. I recited Kaddish for the first time at my grandmother's funeral. I've since recited it every year on her yard site. I have a complicated relationship to my grandmother, and every year I'm faced with the question of why I continue to say this prayer. I was an adult when she passed, but I never met my grandmother while she was alive. I experienced her in stories between relatives, in the bitterness of my dad's expression when asked questions about his childhood, and in his pride when he told me that I have her singing voice. By the time she died, she was already a spirit to me, woven of questions, memories from my aunt and father, and a box of fabulous feathered hats in my aunt's garage. It wasn't until her funeral that I learned her name was Fania. \[SPEAKING HEBREW\] glorified and sanctified be the great name. Did you ever meet Fania? She might have gone by a different name when you knew her. Frankie, Frances, Fania, although at no point did she take her given name, Francesca, or a different religion. She went through at least as many or a different husband. You might remember her restlessness. Fania, saw herself in constant flux, a seeker, though never settled. Of one thing, you could be sure, whatever her journey, it was about her. Fania stirred drama at every turn to prove that her needs were not met, to prove that the anger that weighed on her was righteous. Did you ever meet Fania? Did you meet the woman who was so caught up in her own drama that when she attempted suicide by overdose, she did not consider the impact on her nine-year-old daughter, who was at the time in the house and charged with saving her life. Did you meet the woman who, when her husband refused to put up the money for a kitchen remodel, struck a match, tossed it in a garbage can, and went out for brunch? I did not, although my dad did drive me past the place where that house once stood. My dad, her oldest son, along with both siblings, two husbands, and four stepchildren, cut her off completely. It was the best my dad could do to protect my brother and I, he said. I don't remember whether my dad said Kaddish at her funeral, but he stood with the rest of us as we rose to say, glorified and sanctified be the great name. There are people in my family, like my father, who blame Fania for the death of her youngest son, Rob. Fania's depression kept her in bed when her youngest was an infant, sometimes for days on end, and Rob would spend the time without food or attention in his crib. My mom rightly points out that the neglect of a child is not the sole responsibility of the mother. Fania's husband, a doctor beloved by his patients, was also an addict who had an eight-year affair throughout their 10-year marriage, unable or unwilling to tend to Rob or his suffering wife. Rob grew up to be a severely disturbed adult. When he was 30, Fania made him fire his therapist because the doctor had identified her as much of the problem. Rob shot himself within a month. At his funeral, my cousin remembers Fania sobbing, how could he do this to me? \[SPEAKING HEBREW\] How do you recite this prayer at the end of such a life? There was a man who spoke at my grandmother's funeral. When he met Fania 40 years ago. He was homeless and an alcoholic. He had $20 in his pocket and asked to see her. Because for all that she was, Fania was also a therapist. She took his $20 and saw him for 20 years without charging another cent. By the time he took the podium at her funeral, he was married with two children of his own and owned his own home. "She saved my life," he said. The same woman who drove her youngest son to death nursed a man who would one day become a father back to life. I learned this the day. I learned her name. How does one say Kaddish at the end of such a life? To my father, she is the parent who killed his little brother and modeled such anger that he himself could not keep a marriage together. To the man who stepped up to the podium, she is the therapist who saved his life. To her father, Avram, she was the first baby born to him after he saw his parents and siblings dismembered by their Russian neighbors. To her surviving relatives in Europe, Fania was the little cousin they would never meet, who learned Yiddish in middle school so that she could write them letters until they could no longer write back, sometime in the early 40s. To her younger sister, Devorah, Fania was a second mother who filled the house with Spanish and Yiddish folk songs. She was also Devorah's greatest emotional betrayal, threatening to kill herself and little three-year-old Rob if Devorah did not drop out of college to take care of her. To the unhoused, Fania was a woman who would turn her car around to offer the raincoat in her trunk. To her housekeeper, she was the client who showed her a gun, and said she had bought it to kill her husband. To immigration and naturalization services, today known as ICE, she was an undocumented Cuban immigrant who successfully fought her summons for deportation at the age of 18. To the Subversive Activities Control Board, her prominence in several Jewish leftist organizations warranted the summons that revealed her documentation status. To the folk singers of her age, she was a warm hostess and fundraiser for the anti-war effort. To the ACLU in Los Angeles, she was the dedicated program director. To the couple in the neighboring apartment as her dementia took over, she was the crazy lady next door who reported them to an elder abuse hotline after they filed a restraining order against her. Interesting thing about Kaddish. It wasn't originally designed for funerals. Kaddish was born in the house of learning. In the \[HEBREW\] of the 19th century, students would recite Kaddish as a blessing for the lesson. It became customary to recite Kaddish at the burial services of great rabbis. The custom was eventually democratized, and now the Kaddish is said in honor of every person. The Kaddish at its roots, recognizes every human being as a valuable teacher. It is a prayer of gratitude for the lessons that may be derived from any human story. Glorified and sanctified be the great name throughout the world. In Jewish tradition, the great name refers to \[HEBREW\] the divine name, which comprises every gradation of God, the entirety of Torah, every facet of creation in all its paradox and vast array, all that was is, and will be. To sanctify Fania within the great name is to sanctify neglected cribs, postpartum depression, raging fathers, vanished relatives, three languages, three children, four stepchildren, Yiddish lullabies, Russian bayonets, erratic driving, suicidal ideation, suicide divorce, affair, conversion, cut contact, constant seeking, name calling, drama stirring, binge drinking, hand-holding, life-giving, life-taking, life-saving, candle lighting, match throwing, pill popping, Fania, Frankie, Frances, Francesca in all her iterations, in every fiber of her creation. Ritual is a carrier of lineage, worldview, culture, and values. One of the few Yiddish songs that passed down from Fania to me \[HEBREW\] expresses this beautifully. \[SPEAKING HEBREW\] On the hearth of the fire burns and the room was warm and the Rabbi is teaching little children the alphabet. Learn children, don't be afraid. Every beginning is hard. Lucky is the one who studies the Torah. What more does a man need? When you grow older children, you will understand by yourselves how many tears lie in these letters and how much they meant. When you children will bear the exile, and will be exhausted, may you derive strength from these letters. Look at them. With \[HEBREW\] parents give their children the tools by which they can handle the human condition. One tool that has remained constant from Avram to Fania, to my father, to me is Kaddish. Every parent in my family has armed their child with Kaddish to face the moment in which we must accept our parents in their full array, and ourselves, accept our lifelong wish to admire them and receive their admiration. The moment they are done changing. One cannot honor Fania by reconciling her contradictions. In staring honestly at her broken, scattered, contradictory parts, the act of remembering offers me choice in the lessons I pieced together to affirm life as I know how. In saying Kaddish, I affirm that Fania is held within the great name, that before every individual I may love, cut off, grasp for, pass by, or be cut off from in my lifetime. During my days, I can unconditionally rise in praise of a great teacher. \[SPEAKING HEBREW\] Amen. \[SPEAKING HEBREW\] Amen. May her memory be for a blessing. \[APPLAUSE\] TEDDY HICKMAN-MAYNARD: Thanks, everyone. And in light of the hour, I'm going to ask all of our preaching finalists and our reading winners to come up after service has ended to receive the flowers that we've gotten for each of you. But we do want to celebrate one more time our reading prize winners, Michael Fuhrman and Sabbi Lall. \[APPLAUSE\] And we recognize all of our preaching finalists once more, Hannah Desouza, Caleigh Grogan, and Sara Zemelman. And now, I'm going to ask Dr. Monica Sanford, we have a winner, I'm going to ask you to come and-- oh, OK. All right, this year is Billings Preaching Prize competition winner is Hannah Desouza. \[APPLAUSE\] I'm going to ask the-- we're going to do pictures after. I'm going to turn the service back over to the Noon Service Committee to close us out. Thank you so much. \[APPLAUSE\] SPEAKER 2: Sponsors Office of the Chaplain and Religious and Spiritual Life. SPEAKER 1: Copyright 2025, the President and Fellows of Harvard College. 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