Getting ready for the new normal - The journey forward for our ancestors and us

We welcome Shabbat this week at a time anti-Semitic words and physical violence are again on the rise, and as a Hamas leader in a public statement threatens Israel.  We are also living through a transition time, some parts of our country and the world are opening up more, traffic unfortunately is increasing around the DMV, and still we’re not completely past the Covid 19  yet.  The level of uncertainty is still high, requiring a Plan A, a Plan B, even a Plan C. 

 

And in our Torah portion Behalotcha this week, our ancestors are on the verge of a major shift in their lives.  After 430 years of slavery in Egypt, after nearly a year at Mount Sinai, our ancestors are finally going to start their journey toward the Holy Land.  And let’s keep in mind, at this point the journey was going to be a short and direct one.  God had not condemned the people yet to 40 years of wandering.  Still, Sinai was, compared to Egypt, a peaceful place to live, and the desert was a barren and lawless place.

 

So we can imagine our ancestors felt then like we do now as we begin to think about readjusting our lives, as some of us return to public transit, or to offices for work, as students look ahead to full time in person school in the fall, as houses of worship open up and welcome us in person after more than a year of connecting remotely.  They and we feel ready, excited, hopeful and also a sobering dose of reality that putting ourselves out there again, whether in the street today or the desert back then, means we’re exposed to all the messiness, chaos, and vulnerability of life that we may have been shielded from for a long time.

 

And our Torah portion compels us to think about these forward-looking steps as we compare them top when our ancestors’ previously marched forward into the unknown.

 

In this week’s reading, the Torah explains in the 2^nd month, on the 20^th day of the month, the Israelites started their trek, and this trek proceeded al pi Adonai, when God say to walk, the people walked, when God signaled them to stop and wait for however long, they camped and waited.  

 

They followed God’s command, depended on God to lead them.

 

Earlier, at the Sea, they were looking out and wondering how they would cross the Sea of Reeds, when God said to Moses, “Stop praying, and encourage the people to walk forward…”  

 

In other words, at the Sea God told them to take the initiative.  God would only create the miracle enabling them to cross after they took the first steps on their own.

 

And my question to us for reflection is, in which situation is the will to move forward more difficult to summon up?  Is it more difficult to seize the day, take the initiative with the reassurance of a miracle in short order?  Or, is it more difficult to pick up after a long time of peaceful camping at the holy mountain, and begin a long trek through the wilderness?

 

Please think this over – we don’t have time for a discussion tonight, but I’d like to know your thoughts…

 

For the moment, here are my 2 shekels…I think it’s easier in the excitement of the miraculous moment to leap forward.  It’s kind of like what I imagine skydiving to be, something I do want to do one day.  I imagine it’s more exhilarating being up there on the plane and getting ready to jump, knowing in our heart that the jump is soon to be inevitable and that it’s scarier and more intimidating on the ground, gearing up, and seeing ourselves up there on the plane because when we’re on the ground the jump itself is still not a sure thing.

 

For this reason, for our ancestors and for us, picking up and restarting parts of our lives that have been quieter, less interactive, even dormant over this past year can feel disorienting, even overwhelming.

 

And that is why God insists we carry the Torah with us in the desert, because the Torah is our anchor, our comfort.  And allow me to suggest that on whatever day soon, when we find ourselves returning to an activity or a place that we haven’t done or where we haven’t been in a while, let’s help ourselves through those moments with a little bit of Torah.  Try to think of a story, a sentence, an idea from our Torah that we can repeat to ourselves, or write down on a card and place in our car or wallet.  

 

Mine will be the line from Genesis that Jacob says, God was in this place and I didn’t know it.  This means the places where I know I’ll be, the things I will be doing, may be different or feel different but one thing remains the same, no matter how different they may seem, one thing is constant, there is holiness there, there is blessing, there are opportunities to do a mitzvah…even if this requires us first to sit in soul-crushing Beltway traffic. 

 

 

 

 

 

Passover 2021: Pulling the boat out of the mud

By now, most of us likely have heard about the EverGiven, a massive Japanese owned container ship that is stuck and blocking the Suez Canal.  The Suez Canal connects the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and is a vital artery for international shipping.  If only Moses could raise his staff and part the waters again to free the ship and reopen the lane!

 

But on this Erev Pesach, with the first Seder tonight, for the moment, the lens will be both Aaron and his sons and Moses, all at the same time.

 

Moses will be involved though, he’ll be the agent who consecrates Aaron and his sons as kohanim, as the priests who will perform the rituals in the Mishkan, the portable holy place our ancestors will take with them through 40 years in the wilderness.

 

Unlike the splitting of the sea, the consecration of the priests is not a miracle.  It happens with a detailed set of instructions about preparations before the ceremony and what happens during the ceremony.  There are special clothes for the priest candidates to wear, and the holy place is complete and has itself already been consecrated.  

 

The contrast with the scene at the sea could not be more striking.  At the Sea there is fear, confusion and noise, crashing waves, the rumble of approaching chariots, and although Moses has faith, God tells the people to walk forward toward the water even before it parts.  

 

At the Mishkan, there is silence and the comfort of procedure.  There is fear, but a different kind of fear, a holy fear of the candidates hoping they can withstand the restrictions until the holy moment arrives. 

 

There is one element in common in the fear experienced in both locations, the fear of life and death.  At the sea our ancestors see the powerful Egyptian chariots closing in, ready to strike.  At the Mishkan, the priest candidates know that if they trespass in the holy places, they expose themselves to God’s requiting that offence with harshness.  

 

For this reason, the priests receive an ancient form of protection.  During the ceremony, Moses daubs of Aaron and his two sons with the blood of a ram, on their right earlobe, their right thumb, and the big toe of their right foot.

 

 Jacob Milgrom, the great scholar of the Book of Leviticus, explains in the ancient world this ritual daubing, of the extremities, the vulnerable parts of the body, both purified the individual and warded off demonic forces.  Abraham Ibn Ezra observes in this ritual daubing the blood atones for Aaron’s soul, through the spirit of life which it formerly contained, nefesh tachat nefesh, a soul for a soul.  

 

We notice the parallel with the Exodus story we will tell tonight.  The night our ancestors leave Egypt they daub the doorposts and lintels of their homes with lamb’s blood, the doorway that, like the earlobe or big toe, is the outer part, the extremity of the home, the part that faces out to the world, and where the world meets the people who live inside.

 

But there is a key difference here between the daubing of the priest and of the Israelites homes according to the Midrash.  We usually think of our ancestors smearing the blood on the outside facing part of the door, visible to passersby on the street.  Rashi explains, based on the Midrash, this traditional view is incorrect.

 

He explains our ancestors smeared the lamb’s blood on the inside part of the lintel and doorposts, such that anyone outside the home would not know about it at all.  Why does the Midrash suggest the blood is on the inside part of the doorway?...Because God does not need the blood on the outside of the door to know which homes belong to Israelites and which to Egyptians, according to the Midrash, God already knows.  

 

The point of the smearing is then not to identify the homes to the outside world, but rather to serve God’s way of beginning to instruct the soon to be free Israelites in having faith in God’s instruction.  God wants to see the people doing this mitzvah, this instruction, and then God will pass-over and go on with the night’s tasks.

 

While our Seders still happen indoors, just like the first Seder on our night of freedom in Egypt, over the centuries the Seder has evolved to give us the courage to open our doors to those in need and to open our doors with messages we want to communicate to the world.  At the beginning of our Seder we say kol dichfin yatay ve’yachul, all who are hungry let them come and eat.  Would that we could do this again soon, and open up our Seders to welcome people looking for connection into our homes.  Over the years prior to the pandemic, both my wife and I have run into people at the Supermarket shopping for Passover, started up a friendly conversation, asked about their plans, and then invited them to our house if they were looking for a Seder, and the same has happened through the synagogue, or work. 

 

And we open the door to welcome Elijah, Eliyahu Ha’Navi, either traditionally with a defiant message of strength and will against our enemies, or an updated version of hope for spreading love and God’s spirit of compassion to the world.  

 

The Seder, whether the indoors part or the parts where we turn outward to the world, challenges us – asks us to be sensitive, aware, to be courageous, to never give in to injustice, and to live in strength since, as we unfortunately are all too aware, there are Pharaoh type forces today, just in a different form.  We cannot take our Judaism, our Jewish communities for granted, in a metaphorical way, we either all leave Egypt together or we do not leave at all.  If one is still enslaved, we all are.  The Seder is a statement that family is important, our and that our tradition and its teachings are still relevant.  It a statement that justice requires both faith, courage, and often, some level of sacrifice.  

 

And so we return to the Ever Given, stuck in the Suez Canal, try to imagine one of us pulling the chain to move the boat, and then one more, and another, until we’re all pulling together, in the same direction, then, if we could work like that on all our challenges, we could address them united, supporting and strengthening one another, and we could free whatever and whoever is stuck, anytime anywhere – and, in real life, shipping through the canal affects all of us.

 

I’m thinking about rolling up my sleeves and heading over to the canal, anyone care to join me?

 

The Day In-Between: Shabbat Before Passover 2021

When I lived in Jerusalem, and on shorter visits, I always smiled, even chuckled inside as I passed the Great Synagogue.  I think they should have changed the name to a great synagogue, because after all, Bnai Tzedek, and so many others, are great synagogues, too!

It happens that, similarly to the large Jerusalem synagogue, our tradition calls the Shabbat right before Pesach Shabbat Ha’Gadol -- for many reasons.  We will hear the word ha’yom ha’gadol, the great day, in tomorrow’s Haftarah, looking toward the hoped-for day in the future when Elijah, Eliyahu Hanavi will announce the coming of the Messiah, a day of redemption and renewal that parallels our liberation from Egypt.

 

And this Shabbat is a transition into Passover.  We officially searched for chametz and so technically we do not eat bread now but we also cannot eat the matzah for Passover yet.  

 

This type of moment is called a liminal period, a time of change, a time of ambiguity.  It’s like the times when we used to be in the airport, waiting for our flight.  We’re not at home, but we’re not at our destination yet.  

 

So many of us this Shabbat are eating Egg Matzah, known in Hebrew as matzah ashirah, enriched matzah.  Similar to the liminal time, it’s not one thing or another, egg matzah is not chametz but it’s also not official Passover matzah.  It’s somewhere in between.

 

As scholar Jacob Milgrom teaches, the same is true of the kohanim, the priests, we will read about in tomorrow’s Torah reading, the priests who will be officially consecrated as priests.  They have to wait, in the limbo of the liminal time, secluded in the court of the Tent of Meeting, in silence, separated from everyone, only accompanied by their fear of breaking any of these taboos that might disqualify them from serving.  

 

While liminal time is fraught with anxiety, uncertainty, and vulnerability, it is also a time for reflection, for stepping off the treadmill of life and checking in with ourselves, and with people we care about.  The collective discomfort gives us permission to check-in on the teshuvah we started seven months ago at Rosh Hashanah, see how we’re doing on the promises and plans we made on empty bellies at Yom Kippur, as we welcome in the spring Jewish New Year on a full stomach.

 

While we may feel anxious or vulnerable in this transitional moment, God asks us to step forward with courage and confidence when we journey out into the new life beyond it.  When our ancestors reach the edge of the Sea of Reeds, and see the waves crashing, they are scared, and God, noticing Moses’ is speaking at length to the people, says, Why are you crying out to me?  Tell the people to move forward.

 

I pray for us that when we move on from Passover this year, we will hear God’s voice and step forward with confidence, with bitahon, with trust that no matter what we face, God travels with us, and though still constrained as we are by the pandemic we are free in so many other ways, how will we celebrate this physical and spiritual freedom this year?  

 

Shabbat Parah: Cleansing Home & Spirit before Passover

 

One result of all the time we are at home during the pandemic is we are also, as George Carlin said so well, around our stuff more often.  It is much more difficult to avoid and ignore papers piling up, and we begin to wonder what’s in those boxes we haven’t opened in years.  Trash and recycling collection companies across the country have been overwhelmed with the amount of materials left on the street during this past year.

 

We feel a need, admittedly some of us more than others, to keep an organized living space and periodically to empty and refresh our spaces, to remove what is unnecessary or unused.  We may even find things we really want or need as we search through our items.

 

In these weeks as we get ready for Passover, we begin a similar journey of spiritual cleansing or purification that parallels the physical cleaning we will do as we remove Chametz before the holiday begins.

 

Both the home organizing and the Passover preparation work help us to feel free of excess physical and spiritual weight that burden our muscles and crowd our spaces, making us feel constricted.  Passover is about the Exodus, and the Hebrew word for Egypt, the place we want to leave, is Mitzrayim, from the root tzar, meaning narrow, or constricted.  

 

To aid us in the spiritual purification, we will study tomorrow morning during the Torah reading the ancient ritual of using the ashes of the red heifer to purify those who came into contact with death.  That there was, once upon a time, such a powerful remedy for the most powerful impurity reminds us to do our own spiritual cleansing at this key transitional time, a transition of two kinds – Passover is both about leaving Egypt and starting a new life, and, it is the beginning of a New Year, when the cycle of the major festivals begins:  Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.  

 

But in this work spiritual self-reflection and renewal, just like anytime we write something, we may not be able to step outside of ourselves to see what really needs editing.  I’ve spoken often about how in high school I resisted showing my writing to my Mom, former English teacher in New York city schools, because I thought the first draft was great.  Needless to say, when God created the world, we all remember what happened with the flood not long afterwards.

 

And it’s likely that something seemingly small or insignificant to us may escape our attention.  Allow me to share an example from the great Rav Yosef Yozel Hurwitz:

 

In the place where he spent the summer, R. Yosef Yozel placed his own mezuzah.  On taking it down at the end of his stay, he looked at the parchment and turned white.  It contained a tear in the letter Aleph, which evidently had come from nailing the mezuzah to the door without sufficient care.  He remarked later, “A person can make the mistake of thinking themselves a tzaddik (meaning, a righteous person), when in truth the person is missing the aleph.”

 

The aleph is especially meaningful as we reflect on where we are spiritually before Passover because the letter aleph is a silent letter.  The aleph represents both the parts of ourselves we want to see grow and evolve, the ones we know about, but also the silent parts of ourselves that we don’t even admit to our consciousness.  The message of this time is if we avoid these aleph things, then we’ll have to try to leave Egypt burdened by their weight, and we can only carry so much.

 

Let’s take this Shabbat as a time to reflect on what we’d like to leave behind in Mitzrayim, the proverbial Egypt, the place of narrowness, the parts of ourselves that make us feel like we’re living in one of those micro apartments in New York or Tokyo where you can touch both walls if you reach out your arms.  

 

After Shabbat, try writing down three things:  behaviors, ways of thinking, frustrations and the like that we’d like to leave in Egypt, in the previous year as we get ready to see new color and growth in nature, a spring of green and possibility even under the shadow of the pandemic.  And when it comes time to burn and dispose of the chametz for Passover, burn or dispose of that paper with the chametz and we can all leave Egypt a little lighter, with a deeper breath of free fresh air.

 

 

 

Shabbat Shekalim: One small mitzvah

I want to make a proposal, it’s only a hypothetical one, so please don’t quote me on this to the Washington Jewish Week, here it is:

 

This Shabbat we’re observing Shabbat Shekalim, as you heard during the Torah service, the first of four special Shabbatot that remind us Passover is on its way, just a month and a half away.  In all likelihood, we will not be past the pandemic yet, and many of us again will not be able to celebrate with family and friends as in years past.  So, I propose we set aside Passover altogether, let it go, take a pass on it.  We mention the Exodus every day during our prayers, and on every Shabbat and at every other festival, Dayenu!  Instead of observing Passover as we normally do, each of us, or each family, needs to choose to do one thing, one action that is safe given the Covid restrictions, to ensure that at least one person in the world who is not free, not free in some way or another, becomes free, and that will be our Passover this year.

 

With this proposal in mind, take a moment to think about what that action might be.  If our only obligation on Passover was to somehow ensure or promote the freedom of at least one person, or persons, in the world who is oppressed, alienated, exiled, whether physically or mentally, or both…what one action would we take on his or her or their behalf? 

 

Please think about that for a moment as we reflect on Shabbat Shekalim, the first of the special Shabbatot that carry through Purim and the weeks up to Passover.

 

One action, one concrete action.

 

The inspiration for this proposal comes from the way the Torah describes the half shekel donation to the Temple.  While the ancient Tabernacle and Temple benefited from the half-shekel donation, the donation itself is a census.  The Midrash explains the Israelites are counted 10 times after they leave Egypt, with the last one mentioned in the Book of the prophet Jeremiah, a prophecy looking toward the unknown times ahead with a promise that God will continue to watch over the people into the distant future as a shepherd counts each of the flock, showing awareness and care.

 

A census is a simple, straightforward action, a counting, and the act of giving a half-shekel, a fixed amount for every person regardless of status, is a small and concrete action to show we’re one people, all created in God’s image, all of us responsible for the upkeep of our holy places since it’s holiness and blessing that sustain us and keep up our spirits.

 

As Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev observes, we may entertain lofty thoughts of serving God, only to be brought down to earth with the necessities of our lives and the realities we live in and through, and so, he continues saying:

 

We must do this also by something tangible in ‎addition to the lofty thoughts that he entertains while doing so. ‎Allegorically speaking, the performance of a tangible ‎מצוה‎, ‎commandment, is considered as if person helps the Presence of the ‎Lord to arise from the dust on earth [where it appears to ‎have been buried. Ed.].

Giving of the half-shekel is a tangible mitzvah, like dropping a coin in a JNF tzedakah box, that has the power to open up our hearts.  The half-shekel is the beginning of building up to remembering and celebrating the Exodus at Passover, but we cannot rise up to the heights of Exodus glory overnight.  So, we start small.  And Passover is about all of us, leaving Egypt together, walking out with heads held high.  We cannot achieve that overnight either.

 

In the words of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the mission of Israel is dependent upon the unity of the whole.  By putting in a half-shekel, we take the first step in that direction.

 

The word shekel comes from the Hebrew meaning to weigh, because the Biblical shekel was based on weight rather than market value as currencies are today.  The weight of one half-shekel is minimal, but thousands, millions of half-shekels can make a huge difference.   The great Maimonides said as much when he taught that if we have say, one hundred shekels to give, we should give one shekel each to 100 recipients rather than all 100 to one recipient.

On Shabbat shekalim we make a pledge that our faith and our mission  can be as simple and meaningful as helping one other person to be free.  The beautiful rituals we have, the symbolic foods, the prayers that lift our spirits, these can help us to focus on what is important, but they cannot substitute for the way that over and over again, as we read the Torah beyond the Exodus story, God says we must act with righteousness in the world because we were slaves in Egypt and we know the soul of the slaves, we know what it was like, it’s in our collective memory, our spiritual DNA even if we’ve never been slaves ourselves.  

 

Let’s get back to the proposal, that I pray won’t end up on next week’s front page…we will forge ahead with cleaning and Seders, with chopping up horseradish root, and singing Chad Gadya, and even as we’re still restricted during these times, let’s commit to the spirit of the half-shekel, that each of us is infused with a spark of God’s Presence, the same God who humbled an empire, set our people free, and believed in them, in us, through all their rebelliousness through 40 years so they could stand up confidently themselves and also stand up for others.  All that is within each of us, what a holy gift, a holy strength, and what a holy responsibility.  

 

 

Parshat Beshalach: Exodus from Egypt, The Life of Trees, and the Story of Holocaust Survivors - The Power of our Physical & Emotional Journeys

When my wife Rachel was little her parents planted a blue spruce tree for her.   Last year, we were traveling near where she grew up and we all wanted to see the small town of Orwigsburg, PA and their old house.   The tree was still there, standing tall, now 39 years old.   But what was the story of the tree?  

We never know the story of a tree just by looking at it.  We don’t know their good or bad years.  When you chop down a tree you can examine the rings and start to understand more of the trees story, with fatter rings you can see years with good rain and thinner rings representing drought.  But those marks are on the inside.  

It is kind of like that with us too.  When we look at someone we don’t know about their joys and the traumas that they carry.  They may smile and be standing tall like the tree but be hiding tremendous pain. They may look like they have everything, but might have experienced tremendous loss and not have who they really need in life with them.  It’s also possible that someone looks weathered on the outside, having been through life’s gauntlet, but on the inside they have a well of peace and strength. 

We all live a story, a holy story that gives context and meaning to our lives in relationship to the larger story of the Jewish people.

This week we experience the confluence of three stories of the Jewish people, International Holocaust remembrance day, the day we remember the liberation of Auschwitz, Tu Bishevat, the new year of trees, and our parsha from today, the miracle of God splitting the sea – the last act that seals our physical freedom from Egypt.

I use the term physical freedom for a reason, our ancestors may be physically free but mentally, emotionally, they are not fully free yet.  It is one thing for God to take the Israelites out of Egypt, it is another thing altogether to take Egypt out of the Israelites.

In our parsha, our ancestors joy comes after they’ve experienced tremendous suffering.   They were slaves to pharaoh in Egypt – they were oppressed in so many horrific ways.  And they weren’t just freed when Moses came, and demanded their freedom, as if things couldn’t get any worse, they were tortured even more and had to work doubly hard.  The plagues were as much about convincing our ancestors God cared about their fate as they were about persuading Pharaoh to change course.

After the Israelites are saved from the Egyptians at the Red sea, the Torah proclaims, “Vayosha Hashem bayom Hahu’ – (14:30)God saved them on that day.  The Ohr Hachaim explains that it was only on ‘that day’ (the day of being rescued at the see rather than the day that they were released from Egypt) that the Israelites were saved by Hashem, since they now had the opportunity to have emotional freedom (in addition to physical freedom). Until they saw the dead face of the Egyptian that tried to kill them, the Israelites were emotionally scarred and haunted, still in fear that they might come back. Thus only when the Israelites saw the Egyptians crushed under the water they were truly saved.  In other words, knowing that their trauma was truly over and they could not be enslaved by Pharaoh again, gave them the beginnings of an emotional freedom they did not previously have.  

Like the trees we celebrate on Tu Bishevat, the emotional scars of slavery and exile in Egypt are engraved inside the people.  Long after their external wounds heal and they can take deep breaths, set their own calendar, and live their own lives, the marks of years and generations past are there, no matter how old or young they are.  Tu Bishevat, through this lens, is a holiday of resilience, of growth with and despite the elements, like the olive trees, hardy trees that once established can survive drought, neglect, fire and wind.  While we usually sing about the beautiful shekdiyah on Tu Bishevat, the almond tree, I vote for the olive tree, etz zayit, as the leading example, whose branch symbolizes renewal and peace in the mouth of the dove after the flood, whose oil has sustained people in Israel for centuries, and also lit the Temple menorahs – including the rededicated menorah after the Syrian-Greeks defiled the Temple.  Yes, other trees die, and olive trees are not immortal, but they shape the landscape and tell the story of our people from the earliest years to the most recent.

International Holocaust remembrance day tells a story similar to the Exodus, except that unlike that ancient story it happened in our time, and strikingly, it was only at Auschwitz that our people were tattooed with marks on their arms, showing their degradation both outwardly in addition to the unspeakable emotional wounds inside.  Like the weathered and beaten olive trees though, some of those who survived rose from the ashes , journeyed here and elsewhere, and created new lives, new families, and new hope.

All these story lines from this week connect to us, but they’re over there, so to speak, in ancient Egypt, on the hills and in the forests of Israel, and in the darkness of Europe during World War 2.

Right now we are all living through a personal and communal trauma, a story, a sad one – the coronavirus pandemic.  We live with the fear that we can catch this horrible virus.  And I think there is a parallel – a 2 step process we will go through to reach our own full emotional and physical freedom.  Right now we are getting vaccines – Thank God for the vaccines.  Thank God for the scientists who helped create them.  Thank God for the pharmacists who are injecting the vaccines.  Thank God for every member of the supply line from the people manufacturing the vaccines to those delivering them, and then the next step comes, in the aftermath…

When we move past the pandemic, in what ways will it still be inside us?  What lines are being written inside of us, like the rings of trees that record their lives?  And how will we re-adjust our lenses like the survivors who moved forward with determination?

As I often explain at the beginning of classes I teach, I see my role in teaching as bringing the questions to the table, sparking discussion so that we can sharpen the questions.  The better the question, the more successful the search for truth will be.  Answers are elusive, and certainty is fleeting.  

Between these questions and the search for truth is faith, and for today’s story to be fulfilled and fully realized inside us, we need to try our best to do what the Rabbis ask us to do every Passover, bechol dor vador chayav adam lirot et atzmo ke’ilu hu yatzah mimitzrayim, in every generation each of us must see ourselves as though we went out of Egypt with our ancestors, or equally, that we are going out of an Egypt-like situation yesterday, today, tomorrow – Mitzrayim is the word for Egypt but its root word means a place of narrowness, restriction, trouble, suffering, and by extension they ask us to have faith that God’s saving hand will come again, despite all the moments when it appeared God was distant and silent.

And so we hope that we can say  Vayoshienu Hashem bayom hahu- and it was on that day God saved us, instead of the way the same word appears and speaks about God saving them, our ancestors back then.  The word Vayoshienu is in the TaNaKh – one time in Isiaiah (25:9)– where the text reads – Vayoshienu – God will save us because, as the prophet proclaims,  You have been a strength to the poor,
A strength to the needy in his distress,
A refuge from the storm,
A shade from the heat…

And God will swallow up death forever

And wipe the tears from your faces…

We always experience frustration, between the story of the world and our lives as they are now and the many alternatives we imagine they would have been or could be now.  But in God all those are one, let’s place all our frustrations on our journeys in the hands invisible One of the Universe…at least we can try, at least on Shabbat, at least for today, and then hopefully we’ll feel other emotions, other memories rise up, rekindle the spark of our interests and passions, and ironically muse about all the things we want to believe in and accomplish on the one day that God tells us we don’t need to do or make anything new.  But again, hopefully, we’ll feel that flow of energy into the week ahead.

May the stories we told last week give us strength, the strength to have faith, the strength to live fully and spread our resilience to a world grinding through adversity, the strength of the blue spruce in Orwigsburg, PA that’s been growing for decades through the hottest summers and coldest winters.

 

Welcoming in 2021: The Best & Worst of Times

In an article by Michael Rosenwald in the Washington Post (Dec. 30 issue), he reported on a question posed to 28 professors of history at major universities:  What was the worst/most stressful year in world, U.S., British history?

The strong consensus was the worst year in world history was 1348 when the Black Death claimed 200 million lives.  2020 ranked sixth among the worst years for the world.

 

For families who have lost loved ones to Covid-19, 2020 will likely rank at the top of worst years for them without any mental comparisons to other historical moments including plagues, wars, and the like.

 

The reasons for these feelings need no explanation, but we can benefit from perspective on just how painful such losses are and how we should avoid thinking of individuals in terms of ‘statistics’.  In the Mishnah, the fundamental text of Rabbinic Judaism, we find this perspective in a section about how judges question witnesses in capital cases.(Sanhedrin 4:5)  Because the justice system of the time relied on witnesses, judges admonished those coming forward with testimony that the results of false testimony would be catastrophic.  The judges would say:

 

“Adam was created alone to teach you that anyone who destroys one soul…the Torah condemns him as if he destroyed an entire world.”

 

One life is an entire world, a world of love, friendship, experiences, contributions to the world, and more.  While fewer people have died from Covid19 than the Black Death, the loss is no less painful to each victim’s loved ones and this pandemic has already changed the fabric of our societies just as the Black Death transformed European society.

 

While the world around us is changing, one element that can help prevent changes for the worse is, given the recognition of “every life is an entire world”, that we continue to take action to protect ourselves and others.  By protecting ourselves with masks and distancing we help ourselves and we also help others, and the reverse is true as well.  We can be responsible for ourselves and for others at the same time without compromising our freedoms or individuality.  In the Talmud, the Rabbis make a statement that clarifies our responsibility to sanctify and protect the lives of others from threats, no matter who they are:

 

A certain person came before Rabba and said:  An official of my place said to me:  ‘Go kill so-and-so, and if not I will kill you.’ (What shall I do?)  Rabbi responded:  Let [the official] kill you and you should not kill.  Who is to say your blood is redder?  Perhaps that one’s blood is redder.

(Sanhedrin 74a)

 

Rashi (France, 1040-1105) explains ‘blood is redder’ to mean, “Who knows that your blood [your life] is preferable and more pleasant to Your Creator that the other’s…”

 

If neither person’s life is “preferable and more pleasant” than another’s, then we are all responsible for ensuring the health and safety of others when pressed into action by an outside force.  The outside force in the teaching is an official with local power and influence, but we can easily translate the teaching to name Covid19 as the outside force.  The difference with Covid19 is no self-sacrifice is demanded other than taking reasonable precautions even for people who must go out of the house for work every day.  

 

As we enter 2021, we now have two ways of thinking about responding to the pandemic that can guide us as we take actions to protect that one life that multiplies exponentially to many more.  If every person we see is that ‘one life’, and we’re able to protect that ‘one life’, then hopefully 2021 can be at most a year of anxiety and inconvenience rather than a world-destroying tragedy.  The pandemic is bigger than us, bigger than our country, and transcendent of the world, but we are each an integral part of the world and the limits we place on ourselves now can help us to live into the future in ways that are unlimited.  

 

May 2021 be a year of healing and blessings, and if not one of the best years ever, then let it be a year when hope grows a little stronger each day.