Twenty-two years ago, the film Prince of Egypt retold the Exodus story in colorful animation with its most memorable and climactic song, “When You believe”. There can be miracles when you believe, though hope is frail it’s hard to kill. Who knows what miracles you can achieve? When you believe somehow you will…
The irony for us is that as a matter of faith, there is a significant debate about whether as Jews we must believe in something. Some argue, we’re born or convert to Judaism, then we’re Jewish, regardless of what we believe in our hearts and minds. Others argue the first of the ten given at Sinai is a command, rather than an opening statement, that we must believe and accept Ado-nai is God. Once, on a Hillel retreat in college, a guest speaker said, in his view, the only thing that all Jews believe is that we’re Jewish and that’s meaningful to us. Tragically, even that vague and minimalist statement isn’t 100% true.
For us, here and now, during this time of dramatic change, when the world is turned inside out, and nothing proceeds as we’re used to, it is a time when apart from this debate about Jewish religion, we may be questioning our previously accepted beliefs, and assumptions, and also our previously formulated outlook on life both in the present and what will be in the near future and long-term future.
And, as it so often happens, what we are reading in the Torah at this moment, during a pandemic, right before a national election, our Torah portion provides wisdom on how to navigate these fraught moments through the story of Abraham, who as you heard in this week’s reading, is himself at a crossroads in his life, at a time when circumstances challenge his recently acquired belief in the One God of the Universe.
He has followed God’s command to risk his life to travel hundreds of miles west, when God does not even specify exactly where he is going. And he has heard God promise him that his offspring will be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand under his feet. But he does not have a child of his own. When God makes the promise to him he will have his own offspring, Abraham responds with belief.
The Torah says at this moment he didn’t do anything, it was all internal, he chose to believe.
V’he’e’meen B’Ado-nai
And when God notices this, the sentence ends: Vayach’she’veha lo tzedakah, and God credited this belief to Abraham as a righteous thing.
At this moment, Abraham accepts without question that a miracle will happen.
Shmuel David Luzzato observes the language here, the Torah says ‘ve’he’emeen’, past tense, suggesting he already believed in God before the promise made to him. And so the promise here only confirms his belief.
That is to say our beliefs are not static. They can change or they may remain consistent but they can evolve and adapt. When we’re celebrating, we may focus our beliefs on God as a source of life, light, and blessing. When we’re mourning, we focus on God as the source of compassion, the Eternal One, the creator of consolation. Sometimes we may think of ourselves in religious terms, sometimes we think of ourselves as part of the Jewish nation, and other times we spark our Jewishness when we eat foods cooked to a recipe from a parent or grandparent.
In the messiness of belief, of doubt, of renewed belief or of disillusionment, our ancestors, starting with Abraham, issue us a challenge, a challenge for us to hold onto beliefs that can strengthen us at times like this, when our lives are changed, and restricted, when due to the stress of not knowing when this situation will end, we become filled with anxiety, with a constant pressure of heightened awareness about infection and sanitizing. All these things take a toll, just like the toll of not knowing his destiny troubles Abraham. At times like these our tradition asks us to have bitachon, a sense that the universe, however random and maddening it can be, exists here for a reason just as we do, and that however dark the moment may be, our ancestors challenge us to summon up strength and conviction, that is bitachon, the conviction that the nature of our beliefs may change, but the intensity of our desire to live, to learn, to be a part of a holy community of support and love, all these things do not change.
As Rav Yosef Yozel Hurwitz teaches, if you see that someone came to the station after the train he wanted had already left, do not say that the man was late and missed his train, but that he came early for the next train. For everything is in the hands of heaven.
And so, thinking back on the lyrics from the Prince of Egypt, our ability to believe is itself a miracle.
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