Vayigash: Welcoming in 2023 - Send the light through!

At the end of the last episode of Downtown Abbey, Lady Grantham says, “It makes me smile, the way we drink to the future, whatever it may bring…”

 

There is nothing objectively different about the world when the clock strikes midnight.  We don’t live in the Cinderella story when midnight means the coach becomes a pumpkin and our nice clothes become our house clothes. 

 

What affects us is passing through the transitional time with the reflection on the past and all the unknowns for the future.

 

What do we do though when the future is not unknown, just hidden, when it’s standing right in front of us but we cannot see it.

 

If we knew the answers to our questions were within arm’s reach, would we act differently?  Would we feel less uncertain?

 

For the past couple of weeks, Joseph’s brothers have crisscrossed the border between Canaan and Egypt.  They’ve stood in front of their brother Joseph, and they’ve been unable to tell who he really is.  

 

We’d like to think if our sibling were dressed in different clothes, living in a different place, and speaking a different language we’d still be able to recognize them.  But, maybe not…maybe we see what we’re used to seeing from the perspective we have.

 

Rashbam explains Joseph has been holding back his true identity and keeping himself calm and poised when interacting with his brothers.  When they only see the Egyptian official, Joseph is scrutinizing them and wondering about the same question we’re asking today – what is thre future in front of me?  Who are these brothers of mine at this stage?

 

Rabbenu Bahya teaches us Joseph is unsure, and potentially afraid, of who these men are and how they will react when he reveals his identity to them.  He brings a midrash that tells us the brothers might still want to kill him, possibly to maintain the story they told their father and to finish the job they started long ago.  According to the midrash, he decides to open up to them and take the chance they’ll kill him rather than revealing to all the Egyptians in the room these men sold him into slavery.  So he orders everyone out of the room…

 

I suspect, in the moments before he re-introduces himself, Joseph is wondering whether he can have a future with his siblings…if the story comes out will it change his status or will Pharaoh punish them?...will his father Jacob be able to recover from the shock of finding out his son is still alive and will Jacob himself want ot punish the brothers for their treachery and lies?

 

Joseph makes a clear choice.  As he tells his brothers, God orchestrated everything that led up to this point in time.  God placed him in just the right situation to be able to help and support the family during the famine.  

In other words, he decides to show gratitude to God, to forgive the people who wronged him, and to use his power not for revenge but to support his family through the rest of the lean years ahead.

 

By the end of the Book of Genesis the entire family is reunited and all sons surround Jacob as his life winds down.  And so the Book of Genesis, a book that began with defying God, with a murder, with a flood, and generations of family conflict, anger, scheming, and violence, finally comes to a point of unity around the last of the patriarchs.  They’re all far from home, but they’re all together.  The suffering that will come along when a new Pharaoh steps in will not be the suffering of one family, but of a whole nation. 

 

Joseph is the one responsible for remaking the family.  He overcomes doubt and fear to embrace his brothers and reunite with his father.  

 

He teaches us the power of achdut, of unity, the power of gratitude, of forgiveness, and of the possibility we can evolve as people, avoid the pettiness that can come with grudges, and decide to set a new course through time…opening up new light into a place of darkness.

 

A long time ago when ships were dark below deck, and candles were dangerous on wooden ships, they’d place a deck prism, a cone shaped glass item that would draw the sun’s light and reflect it below the deck.  

 

Joseph is the deck prism – the conduit of light into a fraught time, a time of exile, a time when the prophecy to Abraham of his descendants becoming slaves in a land not their own is about to be fulfilled.  

 

We can be the deck prisms for 2023, sharing into the New Year everything we’ve thought about since our new year at Rosh Hashanah.  We can take our teshuvah and pay it forward into the New Year, and fill the dark winter days ahead with light, blessing, and all the mitzvah energy we can summon up. 

 

And so let’s do what Lady Grantham does, and toast to the New Year, whatever it may bring!

Vayishlach 2022/5783: Fear, and what's beyond it

 Does everyone remember reading in school the book 1984 by George Orwell?

 

The Party, with Big Brother as the head of it, uses prison room 101 to terrorize people with their worst fear.  Anyone being held by the authorities wishes for anything but being taken to Room 101.

 

It’s no surprise how powerful fear is for all of us.  Fear can cause us to become paralyzed, or, on the contrary, to act impulsively and irresponsibly.  When we’re full of fear we’re likely to be frustrated, anxious, exhausted, and unable to make good decisions.  When we’re full of fear it’s likely others will have more power over us, and we will have less agency in our lives than we otherwise might.  

 

Our tradition teaches us to fear God, but not anyone, or anything else.  Fearing God means for us to be aware, responsive, and cognizant of God’s Presence in the universe and also to be careful for our behavior with the idea God may inflict some punishment for misbehavior.  

 

But we moderate our fear of God when we remember about teshuvah, God’s permission for us to be human, to be mortal, fallible, and to recognize our wrongdoings so we can make different choices the next time.

 

Fear plays an important role in the events of this week’s Torah portion.  When Jacob hears Esau is coming toward him with his own entourage, Jacob fills up with fear, despite God’s repeated promises God will protect and guide him safely through life.  For the second time, Jacob pleads with God to save him.    Already God protected him when left home, and so we’d expect by this point Jacob would have few doubts about God’s promises.  

 

Rabbi Meir Levush, the Malbim, recognizes this dissonance and suggests Jacob has a different type of fear, an unnecessary or irrational fear.  Fear that is not based on a firm foundation is still a fear for us.  Until we come to terms with it, the fear feels as real as when there is an actual threat.  

We’ve all seen this type of fear in some form.  I saw it in my children when teaching them to ride a bike, or in fears of going to a doctor’s office.  

The Malbim teaches us Jacob himself recognizes the nature of his fear.

He says Jacob recognizes he’s not worthy of God’s salvation since he does not believe in God’s promises.  God made guarantees to Jacob’s ancestors, and to Jacob himself regardless of whether Jacob ever sinned at all, and so his own misdeeds should not even have been a concern.  For all these reasons, Jacob then turns to practical strategies he hopes will protect him and his family from the enemy he’s created Esau to be in his own mind.

 

Having faith does not mean we allow others to threaten us.  Not at all!   We live in strength and honor God in that strength of our hands and our spirit.  The Chanukah story is a good example of how physical and spiritual strength are two parts of our faith and relationship to God.  

 

Faith does mean though we realize we cannot control all variables of our lives or of the people or the events surrounding us.  And while we may not feel comfortable putting God completely in the driver’s seat, so to speak, at least we can give ourselves the kindness of realizing our limitations and celebrating our strengths.

 

As for fear without firm foundations, sometimes we can take a leap of faith, or find a way to experience something with a caring other person who talks us through it.  Jacob ultimately thinks he’s alone when facing his fear of Esau, and this fear will prevent him from a lasting repair of his relationship with Esau.  If he could have overcome his fear of the other, who knows where the story could have led?  Maybe instead of Esau’s descendants and Jacob’s descendants being enemies, they could have been civil to each other, or even friendly, and so let’s dedicate ourselves to identifying the fears we have that don’t have a firm foundation --  We never know what difference our overcoming these fears could have on ourselves, on our families and communities – as the great Rabbi Nahman of Bratzlav teaches us, “The whole world is a narrow bridge and the most important thing is not to fear.”  Let’s walk the bridge in confidence and strength, together, holding each other up and opening our eyes to our potential for strength, for courage, for kindness, and for the blessings on the other side of fear.

 

 

 

 

Vayetze 2022/5783: To know, or not know, the future

 My grandmother Ruth Lewis of blessed memory loved to read.  She passed that love to my Mom who passed it down to me.  However, Grandma Ruth was not patient – she liked to turn to the last few pages of the book, read them, relieve the pressure of not knowing how things shape up, then return to the opening pages.  This way of reading makes me think about how we deal with unknowns, like, who’s going to win in Doha? 

 

The world’s been watching soccer in Qatar the past week – sure wins, upsets, who will make it to the next round?

 

But except for someone who’d like to cheat at sports betting, do we really want to know what is going to happen next?  Isn’t the drama about wondering whether my team will win, lose, draw, stay or go back home, as opposed to knowing how things turn out in the end, or rather, the existential level, knowing things actually do get tied up and closed out in the end, regardless of whether a certain team goes home with the trophy.  If nothing appears to be proceeding toward a conclusion of any kind, would we like that type of competition also?

 

In a more general way, we might ask do we prefer stories that have a known ending, or do we prefer stories whose ending or resolution remains beyond the pages of a book or the running time of a movie or TV show?

 

This is a question for us to think about today as we read the story of Jacob who runs away from home, all alone, walking through the country side as day turns into night.  And let’s remember Jacob is not ish sadeh, an outdoors person, like his brother Esau.  Jacob is an ish tam yoshev ohalim, a simple person who stays in the tents.  Esau is a hunter.  Jacob, according to our Sages, studies Torah in the ‘tents’ of Shem and Ever, kind of a primordial yeshivah.

 

The simple student finds himself in the middle of nowhere.  Having left Beersheva, he stops in a place called ‘hamakom’, the place, makes a sleeping spot with rocks and lies down.  Everything sounds peaceful, but he is in the dark, alone except for God’s Presence.  And even then, after the dream is over, after God promises to protect him along the way, and after God promises he will one day return home, after all that, Jacob is still uncertain about the future.

 

He makes a vow, “If God protects me, and feeds me and clothes me, and returns me home…then Ado-nai will be my God.”

 

God tells him what will happen, but he cannot accept it.  It may be for him, for us too, knowing things will resolve themselves could be just as disconcerting as not knowing.  If we know the result, we may question every thought and action about whether we’re helping events proceed to the result.  Or alternatively, we may over-relax and switch off our awareness and turn into a robotic version of ourselves.  Jacob does not trust God’s prophecy for him.  In a way, he’s just like his grandfather and grandmother who both laugh when God promises them they’ll have a child at their advanced age.

 

This conundrum is clearer if we assume for a moment the result or end is not what we are hoping for – how could we possibly live knowing events will lead us to pain, suffering, or worse?

 

Many years ago Rabbi Edward Feld, a mentor of mine, offered me some advice when I was going through a difficult time.  He counseled me to embrace the uncertainty, to accept I only had a certain amount of control.  What I think he was really saying to me was ‘Trust yourself’ – You know what’s right for you, and no matter what happens you will have choices to make.  Make the best choice you can and, like Jacob, keep going on.

 

I’m not sure if it was at this time that I added a moment of prayer to my daily schedule.  Every day at noon my phone notifies me to “Say the serenity prayer”.  I wonder if the serenity prayer would have made Jacob feel better and trust in God’s promise.  It does not always work for me, but it’s there.  I suspect many of you know it, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

 

Let’s come back to the question, do we prefer knowing the ending, or do we prefer discovering through the unknown?

 

Both preferences can be challenging.  We may be happy to know the ending, but unhappy when we find out how we’ll get there.  And we may be unhappy to be in the dark, but the end may light us up and raise us up.

 

This is why our tradition calls us to trust in God, because only God has the ability to see time in both directions, and in a world we help to with God’s Presence with our prayers, our Shabbat spirit, knowing and not knowing the result, the end, the resolution are equally unimportant, even irrelevant – only kindness, compassion, community, and the search for holiness matter.

 

 

The Noah Story 2022/5783 - When it seems like another Flood feels imminent...

 This past week we remembered the 11 victims of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh.  

 

The ADL explains there was a 30% increase in Anti-Semitic acts in the US between 2020 and 2021.

 

Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement about potential offshore natural gas deposits, but they’re still technically at war with each other.

 

Israel’s about to go to its 5^th election in 2 years, Great Britain has its third prime minister in as many months.

 

In a week, the UN climate change conference will take place in Egypt and yet all reports suggest leading nations are nowhere near to the requirements for keeping climate change in check.

 

War rages in Ukraine and Russia tries to steer other East European nations like Moldova to their side.

 

War rages in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, having left at least half a million dead up to now.

 

Part of Wuhan, China is on lock down again.

 

Probably one of the most difficult issues of the day, a former nationals baseball team player is now a legendary athlete for the Philadeplhia Phillies.  Goodness!

 

And to top it all off, this week’s Torah portion, Noah, is about the end of humanity as we know it, and only one small remainder will survive.

 

And is Noah a great righteous person whose family deserves saving above all others?

 

Our ancestors are ambivalent about him, when the Torah introduces him as a tzadik, a righteous person in his generation, they say some interpret this as praise – if he lived in an age of righteous people he would be even more righteous than they, but others say he was only righteous compared to everyone else in his generation, and if he had lived in the time of Abraham he would have amounted to nothing.

 

Let’s put aside the planet for a moment, as George Carlin once said, the Earth, by and large, is a self-correcting system, and it’s been through lots worse than the age of humanity. 

 

Naturally the next question is are we, the people, worth saving?  

 

And the answer of our tradition is yes, we are worth saving – we have to earn it though, we have the opportunity, but we have only our lifetimes, a micro blip of time.

 

I wish I could offer a course of action grounded in Jewish tradition that can directly point the way for us to renew ourselves, renew humanity, reduce conflict, and beyond, but all I know right now is I’m grateful to be a part of the Shaare Shalom community.  Here we can share what we’re struggling with and our fellow community members listen.  And the Rabbis teach us “Teach yourself to say, I don’t know”, and so I’m following the teaching, I don’t know the answer, but I do know that knowing there’s a supportive community around us means I don’t feel like I’m facing the challenge alone because ultimately I’m convinced God judges us not on how well we create new technology or whether we’re able to stop a war, God judges us on how well we take care of each other, since, without that community, without the holiness of respect, honor, and kindness, even the longest life is less a blessing and more a burden.

 

This Shabbat, Purple Shabbat, is an event at the end of Domestic Violence Awareness month, what better a time for us to rededicate ourselves to creating a welcoming, inclusive, and safe community for all of us to try and fulfill to the best of our ability kol yisrael arevim ze bazeh, we are all responsible for one another.

 

 

 

Haazinu - 2022/5783 - The Sounds of Silence

 And in the naked light, I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never shared

And no one dared

Disturb the sound of silence (From Simon & Garfunkel)

 

As the Torah approaches the end of the story, now coming full circle from the creation of the world, a new creation is about to happen – the creation of a nation returning to and living on its ancestral land.

And God has told Moses the future – the people will enter the Land and stray from the covenant, but a song will remind them of God, the covenant, Exodus, Torah, creation and everything else God wants them to remember. 

The song is this week’s Torah portion and it begins, like the Shema, asking for attention…

Hear, O, heavens, and I’ll speak, Listen, Earth, to the words of My Mouth

But will the people hear and listen?

Or will they hear without listening, like in Simon & Garfunkel’s song?

 

Moses teaches the song to the people.

But as Menachem Chizkuni explains, the song calls heaven and earth to witness, why?

“This is a direct continuation of the last verse in the previous portion, Vayelech, in which he had announced this poem/song to the people. He now calls on the eternal heaven and earth to act as witnesses to what he had to say, seeing that he, as a mortal, cannot do so anymore.”

 

Moses can only speak, he can only plant the seeds…but will the people listen, internalize, and permit the seeds to grow in their hearts? 

 

This is an apt message in these days right after Yom Kippur.  For 10 days we lived in suspended animation, between ourselves of the past year and the selves we want to shape in the New Year.

We acknowledged our wrongdoings, we chanted them together, and the teshuvah journey goes on.

But now, just like the ancient farmers who came to Jerusalem at Sukkot to pray for a successful crop in the new year of planting, planting that begins right after Sukkot, we pray the seeds of teshuvah we planted in our hearts will germinate, grow, and flourish in the new calendar year, 5783.

It’s telling that the next verses of the song speak about God’s words acting like rain and dew, floating down and nourishing the soil of our souls.

And with this image I wonder if Paul Simon, who wrote the song, a son of Hungarian Jewish parents, was inspired by our parsha, listen to the verse toward the end of the song:

 

Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words, like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the wells of silence

 

 In the song, there’s no response, only silence.  In real life though here is always a delay between our speaking and someone else hearing and responding.  Good communication skills require us to clarify and make sure we’ve heard correctly, to rephrase what we heard in our own words before we respond.

 

In a way, this skill, of clarifying, checking in to make sure we’ve heard correctly, is the story of all Jewish history after this moment, the story of our ongoing relationship to God, and of Jewish communities all over the world.  We want to keep the line open, but, there’s lots of interference on the line, and the call often gets dropped, and sometimes we get disconnected for an extended period of time.

Sukkot is our reminder of this reality.  When we go into the Sukkah on Sunday night, a structure that is fragile and exposed to nature, we’re reminded of how uncertain the journey often is.

 

With another horrific attack on a school, this time in Thailand, we are reminded, again, about the fragility of life, and with the mounting tension between Israel and Lebanon about disputed sea rights in the Mediterranean, we’re reminded about the thin line between compromise and conflict, and with reports about Russia potentially using tactical nuclear weapons, we’re reminded about how the wicked crave silence around them so they can cause harm to others and the earth without remorse.

 

In these perilous times, may our teshuvah and the song we read today, help nudge the world back toward a place of milk and honey, a place of newness and unlimited potential, a place of hope, and calming sunsets, a place where plants and people grow, evolve, and both see, hear, and listen to know the humanity in one another.

 

 

Devarim 2022/5782: When is the most meaningful & potentially transformative time for us? Today!

 What time of the year, whether in the Jewish or the regular calendar, is most meaningful and important?  (Thoughts?)

 

In the Jewish calendar, we often think of the High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the days between them as the most meaningful, important, and the most likely to be a transformative time for self-growth and also for community building.

 

These days are significant, but our tradition suggests today, next Tuesday, or any other day, is equally full of promise, equally full of potential for transformation, for us, for our community, and beyond.

 

We see this lesson in a teaching of Rabbi Eliezer in the Mishnah – the background is Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the season of teshuvah, repentance, reconciliation, forgiveness.  And during that time, there’s extra motivation to do this holy work.  

 

Now let’s hear from Rabbi Eliezer, he teaches “Ve’shuv yom echad lifney mi’tat’cha.”  “Do teshuvah one day before your death.”

 

Since we do not ever know this date, Rabbi Eliezer is teaching us to work on teshuvah every day, as a regular and ongoing part of our lives.

 

We may be thinking this morning about the individuals in DC who died by a lightning strike in Lafayette Park, near the White House.  Putting aside the fact we should always follow the lesson of ‘when thunder roars, head indoors’, this incident reminds us how quickly life can evaporate.

 

As we begin reading this week from the 5^th Book of the Torah, Devarim, the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses is aware he’s coming to the end of his life.  He’s doing his best to keep to Eliezer’s lesson, to prepare the people for crossing the Jordan, to fill them with hope, to remind them of the covenant, and to strengthen Joshua who will lead them across.

 

Our Torah reading this morning ends with Moses telling Joshua, “Do not fear [the kingdoms on the other side of the river]…for it is Ado-nai your God who will battle for you.”

 

Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin teaches us Moses is trying to encourage and strengthen Joshua for what lies ahead.

 

And we need the same encouragement and the same wishes for strength.  Doing teshuvah regularly is draining.  Teshuvah requires us to confront our weaknesses, our growing edges, and the times we made poor choices for what we said or did, or what we did not say or what we did not do.  It is a humbling spiritual exercise.

 

Starting tomorrow we will have seven weeks until Rosh Hashanah, seven weeks of regular weekdays and regular Shabbats.  This is a good time to focus our thoughts on what we had hoped to accomplish last year, and what areas of growth we want to pursue in the New Year.

 

As a tennis player I learned a lesson after a few years of playing the game – whoever has the ball on their side at the moment, for the most part, has the advantage and can decide what will happen next.

 

Rabbi Eliezer teaches us every day the ball is on our side of the court.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parshat Pinchas: It's about time...

I’d like to try an exercise for our imaginations, try to imagine a world without time, not a world without clocks or even sundials and calendars, just an eternal now, but a world without time as we know it altogether?  Past, present, and future are all equally present.

 

Can you imagine this world?  What would it look like?  Or feel like?

 

The world and us would, for sure, be entirely different than what’s familiar to us, a jumble of everything that ever was, is, or could be, no sequential thoughts, so no memories.

 

For everything and everyone to exist in the way the Torah, and science, describe them, time is necessary, and the first thing God creates is a difference between day and night, signifying the passage of time making one day.

 

Because time is fundamental to creation, time is the source of all our celebrations – we literally celebrate the fact God enables us to recognize and make chosen times holy.  

 

This week, we read from the end of Parshat Pinchas, all about the festivals – Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot.

 

The Torah instructs us to celebrate nearly all festivals at the full moon, the middle of the Hebrew month.  

 

Clearly these festivals coincide with the climate and produce growing cycle of the year as well as our memories of significant events that occurred at these times of year.  

 

And so they follow both a linear progression of time, the progression of ancient events that happened in sequence, and they follow a circular progression of time, as we celebrate the same holidays at the same season with the turning of each year.

 

Time then opens up our hearts and souls to holiness, to community, to God’s hand in creating and renewing the world, but time also limits our physical existence.  We’re born, we grow older, we die.  

 

It’s a dilemma – without time, our existence would be so fundamentally different, little to nothing of what we know or love would exist in any familiar form.  But with time, we find the days may be long but the years are short, and time disappears faster than we can notice it.

 

Our tradition teaches us the response to this dilemma is to savor time, to mark significant moments with friends and family, with the smells of special foods, with prayers and reflections reminding us of our obligations, encouraging us to strive in every moment to dedicate ourselves to doing mitzvot, holy actions, that transform the ‘now’ into the a more holy and harmonious ‘now’ and set an example for others to do the same.

 

Maimonides teaches us about the days of the Messiah:

It should not occur to you that during the days of the Messiah a single thing from the “ways of the world”¹³⁵I.e. Nature.will be canceled nor will there be something novel in the Creation. Rather, the world will continue in its customary way.

 

The relationship between people will change, there will be new knowledge and insight, but the nature of the world will continue – there will still be time.  And so Maimonides teaches us an essential, compelling lesson about us, about our world, and about the world we hope to create.

 

If the time of the Messiah is a time the world functions as we’re used to it, then the Messianic world, the renewed and redeemed world, can exist in every next moment.  The next minute, the next day, can be the renewed and redeemed world, and we can shape what that world will look like – correction, we are, even right now, shaping what that world will look like.

 

Let’s get to work, there’s no time to waste!

 

Parshat Korach: July 4th, Aaron's staff and the Faith of Confronting Life's Unknowns

 

O say does that Star Spangled Banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

 

Francis Scott Key wrote these words while being held by the British on a ship.  He had been held on the ship all night, and in the morning, he saw Fort McHenry raise its immense garrison flag, 30 ft by 42 ft, and he knew the Americans had won the battle for Baltimore.  That flag was known as the Star-Spangled Banner, a flag originally made in Baltimore a year earlier by Mary Pickersgill.

 

The flag was the symbol of victory, of freedom renewed after this second war with England, and the latter-day version of this flag became the official flag of the United States.

 

At the beginning of our Torah reading this morning, God instructs Moses to put Aaron’s staff in the Mishkan, the Holy Place, at night.  The next morning, the staff has sprouted blossoms and almonds.  

 

Francis Scott Key sees the flag of victory flying over the Fort in the morning.  It’s a sign of victory.

 

Moses brings out Aaron’s staff in the morning, a walking stick that’s full of bright flowers and fresh almonds growing – not a sign of victory, but a sign of faith in God’s choice of Aaron and his descendants to serve as the priests for the people.

 

In both events, the outcome is unknown in the evening.  There is a time of waiting, wondering, uncertainty, anxiety, even fear.

 

And in both events, the morning brings hope and reassurance.

The Star-Spangled Banner flew in September, 1814 and continues to fly across the country.

 

And according to the midrash, the flowers and almonds that grew on Aaron’s staff never dried up and never fell off.

 

We ourselves face similar unknowns every evening.  As the sun goes down, and the darkness covers everything, we can turn on lights inside and out, put the TV on, play music.  We can do any number of things to push back against the literal and figurative darkness, but ultimately we know the way things will turn out is at least in some small part beyond our control.

 

Our ancestors write in the Book of Psalms, ba’erev yalin bechi, ve’la boker, rinah, tears may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning.  That is a hopeful vision.

 

Neither Moses nor Francis Scott Key were 100% certain of the outcome.  They both had to wait and wonder.

 

It goes without saying unknowns make us feel uneasy, unsettled.  It’s hard to sleep when our minds are churning, ruminating about what happened or what may, or may not, happen tomorrow.

 

But not knowing does not mean we are helpless or powerless.  Not knowing gives us the chance to free ourselves from what may be unrealistic expectations we make on ourselves or the way we internalize the expectations of others.  

 

To help us put our worries of the unknowns, or the future, aside so we can rest at night, it’s helpful to recite the Shema, a custom that’s been around for thousands of years.  Before going to bed we say “God is One”.  We may feel fractured and unsure, but God is One, unified, and the unifier of what often appears to be a chaotic world within a chaotic universe.  That God is One means there is a wholeness, a peace, that we can fall back into like we do in a trust fall, and we can breathe deeply, knowing at that moment there’s only one truth to hold on to.

 

And we might also think about Aaron’s staff, with the beautiful, delicate white flowers, blooming for eternity, and we might also think about Francis Scott Key, looking out at Ft. McHenry to see a huge symbol of freedom billowing in the morning light.

 

 

 

 

Shabbat Ha'Gadol 2022/5782: Can we ever bridge the rift between generations? Yes we can...

Try to imagine a world in which parents and children are totally in sync, both sides listening and understanding fully the other’s perspectives, no misunderstandings, no false assumptions, no unrealistic expectations of each other.

 

How likely does that sound?

 

Pretty unlikely?  I agree.

 

The new generation tends to challenge the previous one, if for no other reason than to establish itself, to feel independent, and to embrace the art, music, and perspectives of the time.

 

The Haftarah for today, Shabbat Ha’Gadol, the Shabbat before Passover, explains the time when the heart of parents will turn towards children, and vice versa, the hearts of children will be reconciled with parents.

 

But what is the connection here between parent-child reconciliation and the way Elijah will announce at that time the coming of the Messiah?  Wouldn’t we expect a different precursor to world renewal?  Maybe something like, nations lay down all arms, end of prejudice, racism, and oppression?

 

No, the prophet Malachi explains to us the renewal of the world is not something far off in a distant future.  It is right there at the Seder table, on Passover, when the conversation about the Exodus happens between generations.

 

Everything about the Seder is designed by our ancestors to invite us to ask questions, why is it we’re sitting more comfortably tonight than we usually do?  Why are we eating this flat crunchy bread?  And what’s with the bitter stuff we eat?  

 

The Seder’s underlying message is similar to the message of Malachi, if we can stay in dialogue with each other, we get to know each other, and ourselves, much better than otherwise.  If we can share our stories with all our senses involved, then we’ll not only remember the stories better, we’ll also feel like the stories are our own stories and not just the stories of our ancestors.

 

Whether it’s the Exodus story, or our own personal and family stories, we feel connected to others when we share them.  That’s the whole rationale behind the Story Corps project David Isay started at Grand Central in New York back in 2003.  Since then, they’ve amassed the largest amount of recorded human stories of all time.  This whole project came from a time when David was at Thanksgiving with his grandparents, and their siblings,  and he discovered a tape recorder with a microphone and recorded their stories.  He noticed how happy they were to share them.  Unfortunately, he lost that original tape, but still looks for it every time he returns to the old family home.  After Shabbat, go to storycorps.com to listen.

 

This Passover, and beyond, let’s do our best to draw out the stories, and the wisdom, and experiences of others so we can get to know better even the people we’ve known for a long time.  Let’s ask open ended questions and remain curious to discover new perspectives and, hopefully, to build stronger relationships while doing so.

 

In his commentary to Malachi, Avraham ben Hananya explains the turning of generations toward one another really means the whole world will do teshuvah, a turning of reconciliation, forgiveness, empathy, and striving for a faith in God, and in our unity, that transcends the many ways we feel separated and even alienated from one another. 

 

Our tradition teaches that Passover, the original time of national renewal, can be the hoped for day of renewal as well – if we can open up and share our stories, there will be renewal, understanding, empathy, and hope, even if the age old friction between parents and children continues.