There was a front-page article in the San Francisco Chronicle that told the story of a female humpback whale who had become entangled in a spider's web of crab traps and lines. She was weighted down by hundreds of pounds of traps that caused her to struggle to stay afloat. She also had hundreds of yards of line rope wrapped around her body, her tail, her torso, and a line tugging in her mouth.
A fisherman spotted her just east of the Farallon Islands (not far from the Golden Gate) and radioed an environmental group for help. Within a few hours, the rescue team arrived and determined that she was so badly off, the only way to save her was to dive in and untangle her. They worked for hours with curved knives and eventually freed her.
When she was free, the divers say she swam in what seemed like joyous circles. She then came back to each and every diver, one at a time, and nudged them, pushed them gently around as she was thanking them. Some said it was the most incredibly beautiful experience of their lives. The guy who cut the rope out of her mouth said her eyes were following him the whole time, and he will never be the same.
May you, and all those we love, be so blessed and fortunate to be surrounded by people who will help us get untangled from the things that are binding us, helping to enable all of us to enter the New Year having grown and matured with our past experience but unburdened by its weight. And, may we always know the joy of gratitude, as our Rabbis teach us, the word ve’natnu, meaning “and they gave” -- this word is a palindrome in Hebrew – it reads the same way forwards and backwards, because in every sincere act of giving, we also receive blessings in return, as the divers did when they helped the whale to be free.
The story of the whale is also an appreciation of life and the ability of love to cut through differences between human and animal, between one person and another, and to create in their place ties that bind us closer together, with this spirit we wish each other Shana Tovah, a year of goodness, happiness, good health and blessings. Amen.
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