First Day Rosh Hashanah 2021/5782: The Power of Hope

 

What lessons do we remember from elementary school?

 

I before E except after C.

 

Writing letters in block and cursive, or in more recent years, making a presentation on Google slides.

 

There is a lesson from Mrs. Nielsen, my fifth-grade science teacher that’s stayed with me over the years, a lesson that does not so much speak to me about science but more about our faith and confronting a New Year that is, unfortunately, feeling like an extension of the previous 18 months rather than a whole new world and a broader return to life as we knew it.

 

This lesson is called the law of conservation of energy, which explains the energy within a system cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another, unless energy gets added from the outside.

 

When we come to this moment, the beginning of a new year in the Jewish spiritual calendar, especially this year, as energized and enthusiastic as I am about being here with you and joyfully welcoming the New Year with an open mind and heart, I suspect I’m not the only one feeling some heaviness of spirit and fatigue at the lingering and growing Coronavirus numbers, here, in Israel, and elsewhere in the world.  

 

We walk around at times with weariness and dread.  For example, when I was at the bus stop with the other bus stop families on the first morning of school, after the cheer that went up after the kids boarded the bus, everyone was saying how they hoped schools will stay open.  Again, concern, and a gray cloud over an otherwise hopeful moment.

 

As we wait for vaccines for our youngest community members, and for vaccines to get to people all over the world, we need to find an outside source of energy  to infuse us with a fresh sense of hopefulness, purpose, and meaning as we experience a time that is chaotic not only because of the virus but because along with it we’ve witnessed social, political, environmental upheavals of a variety and intensity, both here and abroad, that feel unprecedented, complicated and transcendent. 

 

And so, let’s make all our 5^th grade science teachers proud today, and apply the law of conservation of energy to open up for us a new way of experiencing Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the New Year.

 

It’s at this time of year our tradition teaches us that the outside energy we’re looking for is available, and happily for us it is available to us all at no out-of-pocket cost, and it is zero emissions, zero negative emissions.

 

We heard this words in today’s Haftarah – dirshu Ado-nai be-hi-matz-oh, k-ra-u-hu bih-yoto karov – Search out God where the Holy One can be found, call to God when God is near.

 

Our tradition teaches us that these ten days, Rosh Hashanah, the days in between, and Yom Kippur are the days when God is especially close.

 

The Baal Shem Tov encourages us to stay positive though about the potential for God’s energy to infuse us with new strength this time of year.

 

He teaches us the Rabbis of the Talmud (Yevamot 105a) tell us God is close by during these days but for an unexpected reason.

 

Looking back on our history we might have thought God was always close to us during the days the Temples stood in Jerusalem, those holy places to where all the people turned their hearts, where the Ark of the Covenant and the priests pronounced the mysterious Name of God once per year and all the people who could made pilgrimage.

 

He argues – to the contrary -  it is easier now, in the days after the Temples, for our prayers to be answered and for us to experience the ru-ah ha’Kodesh, the Divine spirit.  Why is that?  He says when a monarch is in the palace, it’s much more difficult to approach that person than when the King or Queen is out there on the road, where anyone can approach him or her.

 

That’s us, we’re the ones out on the metaphorical road.

 

 

So how, under these circumstances, do we approach God and tap into the spiritual energy we need?

 

We all have access to this energy whatever the nature of our belief or questions of faith.  

What’s most important to enable us to access this energy is to nurture hope in ourselves -- not a smarmy, Hallmark-holiday special type hope, but an earnest, durable feeing inside that what we do, however minimal it may feel, however insignificant we may feel, makes a difference.  If we can do that, then our hearts will be open and our souls receptive.

Rabbi Hugo Gryn, who was a prisoner in Auschwitz, tells the story of hope in the unlikeliest of places.   Another inmate who approached him on a cold December evening in the camp to say tonight is the first night of Chanukkah.  His father made a little menorah out of scrap metal, he used threads from his uniform for wicks, and for oil, a little butter he somehow got from a guard.  This was a huge risk, and Gryn protested at the waste of precious calories.  Wouldn’t it be better to share the butter on a crust of bread than burn it?  His father said, “Hugo, both you and I know a person can live a very long time without food.  But Hugo, I tell you, a person cannot live a single day without hope.  This is the fire of hope.  Never let it go out.  Not here.  Not anywhere.  Remember that, Hugo. (R. Kenneth Cohen in Chicken Soup for the Jewish Soul, 247-248)

 

Real hope restores life.  The prophet Ezekiel tells the compelling story of the valley of dried bones he sees in a vision, with the voice of the people from this place saying “Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone, we’re doomed.”

 

Rabbi Meir Levush reads these words, our hope is gone, and reminds us that hope is the kusta de’hayuta, the stuff of life, it is the energy source that in our mystical tradition is a part of the soul that stays active while we sleep enabling us to wake up in the morning.  There it is, definitively, hope as a source of power!

 

On a national scale, it is the energy source that leads our ancestors from slavery to freedom, and gives us the wherewithal to do all the mitzvot necessary to  raise up our world, in our time, to justice, to inclusion, to faith in each other, our tradition, and faith in the Source of Creation itself.

 

I’m arguing that hope can be a real motivational force in our lives, a force that ties directly to the latent potential in the air and water of these holy days as expressed in the prophecy of Isaiah.  Even so, my gut tells me for many of us hope may be a rare commodity.  If we’ve experienced so many setbacks that our lives are at a stand-still, if our health is compromised and we can’t fully realize our goals, if we’re in a dark place emotionally or in our relationships, if a relative or friend is suffering, or has succumbed to Covid 19, the most persuasive message of hope may sound at best empty, and at worst insulting.

 

Still, allow me to share an adapted version of a message from Rabbi Naomi Levy, that I pray can be helpful for all of us in this moment.  Here’s the message:

It’s so much easier to be hopeful in life’s highs…easier for the Children of Israel to find hope in the Exodus, in the face of miracles, of seas parting, than it was to find hope in the schlep, in the journey out of Egypt through the desert in the heat without shade or food.

But that’s our challenge, to find hope in each day.

It’s so much easier to find hope in the ideal of God, the loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God of the universe who neither slumbers nor sleeps, than it is to find hope in a God who is silent in the face of suffering and death and disease and terror and war and genocide and natural disaster.

But that’s our challenge, to find hope and faith in this broken, breath-taking world.(From Hope Will Find You)

 

Let’s be as courageous as we can be for this challenge.  To do so in this New Year we will have to challenge ourselves.  For those who may have watched the TV show Seinfeld, you may recall the character George Costanza at one of his lowest moments, when he tells his friends about how every instinct and decision he’s ever made were wrong and made his life worse.  And so his friends urge him then to just do the opposite.  And when he does, to his surprise, his life begins to change, for the better.  This bit does not mean we should also do the opposite, but it does mean that teshuvah, reflecting, changing direction, and remaking the world in a way that is full of hope, requires courage, scrappiness, and a willingness to flirt with failure.

 

We will need to get up to act at times we feel full of fear or we’re on the fence, and we’ll need to move when we’d rather sit still, and reach out to God in prayer when we’d prefer not to even speak.

 

The energy we need is outside our system – for all of us today here and joining us from home, without touching, we’re going to need to virtually join hands, and then we’ll see that although the God to whom we pray, who is the Source of Hope, is invisible, and silent, the people we see around us are very real and in need of hope as much as we are.  If you are able to feel this hope in the New Year, share it, let it spread like electricity until we all feel it, in our own capacity.

 

And then let’s all thank our 5^th grade science teachers for the lessons in the fundamentals of science that continue to help us open our eyes and hearts and to not only welcome in a New Year, but create a year that is altogether new, renewed, and re-energized for us, for Israel, and for the world.  Amen.

 

 

Tashlich, 2021

 Tashlich is the ceremony for symbolically letting go of our sins of the past year.

This poem is a reflection on Tashlich:

Tashlich

 

It’s easier to throw

Than to really let go

 

Crumbs and pebbles sail and sink

What we want to cleanse in our souls, though

Weighs heavy

Concrete blocks bound to our feet

Head too heavy for the neck to hold it up

Shoulders burdened by an invisible yoke

 

And as the crumbs

Drift away

There is a mental switch

The bread should stay on shore

And be the base for something delicious

And nourishing

 

It’s me should be in the water

Drifting

Floating

For a few moments, the water’s hands

Carrying the weight for me

Beginning to dissolve the thickness

The agglutination of all my wrongdoings, and wishi’ddones,

My It’snotformetodos, my conventientlyoverlookeds,

And my Itookthemforgrantedagains…

 

It’s so much easier to throw

Than to really let go

 

Parshat Shofetime 2021/5781: Unity for the People and for Purpose

 

            

    The classic story goes something like this…The new Rabbi starts at the synagogue and during Shabbat services notices something strange.  During the chanting of the Shema, half of the congregants in the sanctuary are standing and half of them are sitting down.  During the kiddush after the service the ones who stood during the Shema were arguing with the ones who did not.  Waving this off as a fluke, he is surprised to see the same thing happen the following week.   After Shabbat he visits the Emeritus Rabbi and says, “I noticed half the congregation stands for the Shema and half sits.”  “Yes, that’s correct.”  “ So, is the tradition to stand for Shema?”  “No, that’s not the tradition.”  “Is the tradition to sit for the Shema?”  “No, that’s not the tradition.”  “So what’s the tradition?” The new Rabbi said, exasperated.  The Emeritus Rabbi responded, “The tradition is to argue about it after services.”

            The two sides of this debate are not so far apart in their thoughts and practice.  They both agree the Shema is an important prayer, and both sides belong to the same synagogue.  

            This week we’ll be reading from the Torah portion Shofetim, all about judges, and law enforcement officers.  Another name for this portion could be Law and Order.

            Our Torah portion includes one of the most prominent and memorable statements Tzedek, Tzedek Tirdof – Justice, justice, you shall pursue it!  Twice the word justice calls out to us, emphasizing that while justice cannot solve all conflicts between us, the justice system, also imperfect, is the way we can strive to bring God’s hope for a just society into being.

            But the only way we can have a justice system in the first place is if we all agree to live by that system, to recognize the law as binding, in other words, we have to be unified or else the justice system will have no authority.

            The Shema argument story is a good example of how we can have unity without having uniformity.  We don’t have to agree, we don’t have to dress the same, talk the same, like the same food or art.  In fact, God has been wary of uniformity since the beginning of time.  This wariness about uniformity is the reason God destroys the Tower of Babbel in the days after the great flood.  At that time, everyone speaks the same language, thought the same way, and they are all consumed by fear.  After God topples the tower, we all start speaking the different languages of the world, all of us with a different sound and look, but all of us from one line, one family, unity but not uniformity.

            Still, unity is no easy goal for us to reach.  It can be elusive.  Despite video chats and social media, many people feel lonelier and more isolated, even more so during the pandemic, and stress, anxiety, depression and other related conditions are everywhere.  

            When we read Tzedek, Tzedek, Tirdof, Justice, Justice you shall pursue it, we hear a lesson pointing toward hope.  Tirdof is in the singular, and so it sounds like the Torah is speaking to each of us as individuals.  But I think during these times we need to read it differently.  When the Torah says ‘you’ shall pursue it, I believe it’s the communal you, all of us together.  We’re one whole, and by looking out for each other, and seeing each other as part of our extended family, means we stand up for each other especially at the times when we may not have the strength to stand up for ourselves.  And our help may not be about legal issues, it may me enough to cheer someone up, to do a small act of recognition and kindness to spring us from the shells we may build around ourselves during these difficult times.  And if anyone wants to debate standing or sitting for the Shema, see you after services!  

Shabbat Shalom.

            

            

 

 

 

The Olympic spirit and the Book of Deuteronomy: "They shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not grow faint." (Isaiah 40)

The opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics are all done.  The parade of nations, lighting of the torch, and the games are officially open.  I’ve always loved the Olympics games, the way so many countries gather in one place for sport, to meet and greet, to show that as a species we can be competitive without being in life and death conflict, that at least for a few weeks people can put aside politics, ideology, and historical baggage to do something fun and inspiring together.  

This morning I heard a news story about a unique Olympic team, a team of 29 refugees, who are competing on behalf of 80 million refugees worldwide.  This team includes a woman, a judo competitor, who escaped from war ravaged Syria and made it to the Netherlands where she started a new life, continued training, and eventually brought over her husband and family.  

 

In spite of all this inspiration, and all the perspiration about whether there should be a games this year or not, with the looming Covid crisis with the Delta surge here and abroad, the games still represent an ideal, a hoped for state of relationships between countries and people.  The Games are neither convenient nor cheap to put on, even without a worldwide Covid problem, and terrorism and politics have impacted the games, just a few examples, in Munich in 1972, and in the Moscow games in 1980, and the LA games in 1984.  

 

So the Games, and the vision they offer, are fragile, and they represent nothing less than a risk that’s taken every couple of years, a risk to the country that commits to put them on, a risk for the athletes who dedicated their lives to try and get a spot on the national teams, a risk to the fans to attend – remember Atlanta 1996, we’re just a few days shy from 25 years since that bombing attack.

 

But I hope we can agree that the Games are a worthwhile risk, the same way God, and Moses, believe that leading our ancestors over the Jordan to a new life in the Promised Land is a worthwhile risk.  The entire Book we’re reading now through the end of summer asks the question of whether the special relationship between God and our people can survive us crossing the Jordan and living settled amongst the many people of the land, and whether, once we’re building farms, planting crops, and tending flocks we will have the same closeness to the Invisible God of the universe we did when we depended on the manna falling from the sky or the miraculous water coming up from the desert ground.  

 

It’s a big risk, especially because so many times since we went  free from Egypt we’ve challenged and rebelled, and returned, and then challenged again.

 

And so we can only see the lessons of these summer Torah readings as God having faith in us, giving us the spiritual and legal tools to keep the fire of our faith and connection burning from one generation to the next.

This way of thinking suggests a question we need to ask ourselves, a question that Olympic athletes undoubtedly ask themselves every day of training, and every day of competition, while others – God, coaches, family, friends, fans may have faith in us, do we have faith in ourselves?  

 

This Shabbat, the first after Tisha B’av is called Shabbat Nachamu, The Shabbat of comfort, and the message is while we may lose faith in ourselves, or struggle, or fall, while hope may be elusive, there is nothing more inspiring at an Olympics, or in life, than the person who gets pushed, or falls, or falls behind, and who nonetheless finds a way to finish the race, and that by opening our heart to reaching out the invisible and ever present Source of Strength in the universe, we may begin to find the will and to rise, as the prophet Isaiah tells us with words that, in my view, speak to our ultimate source of will whether on the playing field or on the pathways of life, “Adonai, God of the Universe, the Creator, never grows faint or weary…God gives strength to the weary, fresh vigor to the spent…Those who trust in Ehyeh, the Source of Being, shall renew their strength as eagles grow new feathers, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not grow faint.”

Balak: In search of control

 We all would like to feel a sense of control, of knowing what will happen to us.

 

We design elaborate plans when we’re working on a project, or say, for example, writing a Dvar Torah, and we may feel we’ve covered all the points, all the concerns, all the possibilities for the project we’re developing or the message we’re writing, and still they go off in directions we did not expect and by the end what we envisioned is no longer what originally planned.

 

As an example, when I was in college and started singing a capella music with the Jewish group on my campus my voice teacher told me that even with good technique, and breathing, and knowing the music, occasionally a sound will come out like a voice breaking, and he said, go with it, don’t judge yourself by that result, maybe someone who heard it thought it sounded interesting!

 

The bottom line is however much we try to control outcomes, we may often find the facts of the matter may have changed or our perspective may have been too narrow or ill-defined in the first place.  

 

My teacher for Tai Chi Chih explained it to me this way.  He said, don’t try to do the moves, just let the happen.  

 

In this week’s parsha, Balak, the King of Mo’av, seeks to curse the Israelites after hearing about how they defeated the Amorites.  In order to take hold of his fate, he summons Balaam the magician to act on his behalf.  Balaam turns down the offer to curse the people after God tells him not to do it, but then Balaam goes along with Balak and his people, ostensibly to perform the curses against the Israelites.

 

Now Balaam gets himself in trouble for the same reason.  As Balaam rides his donkey on the way, the donkey sees an angel of God with sword in hand and so walks off the road.  Frustrated when the donkey lies down in front of the angel that Balaam himself cannot see, Balaam beats the donkey three times until the donkey speaks to him and  God opens Balaam’s eyes to see the angel in front of them.

 

Balak here wants to control the outcome and steer his fate, but he only has one way in mind to do so.

 

Balaam similarly wants to take control of the donkey who has seemed to get out of hand.

 

In the end, God frustrates both Balak and Balaam.

 

Instead of cursing the people, Balak stands on the heights and proclaims blessings instead of curses, among the blessings he says the familiar words we heard at the start of the service this morning, “Ma tovu ohalecha Ya’akov mishkenotecha Yisrael…” How good are your tents O Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel.”

 

In both situations Balak and Balaam try to direct the flow of action and outcome and the more they strain, the tighter their grip on their vision and expectations, the further they get away from their goals.

 

God humbles them both.

 

Balak and Balaam are well-spoken and clever, but Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains they both become unhinged by passion and greed, so they become unworthy of their gifts, and God then intervenes…

 

The lesson then of the story of Balak and Balaam is the only way to achieve righteous goals is with sincerity, purity of purpose, and the humility to continually re-evaluate all these elements to make sure we’re pursuing more than what feels right or good for us in the moment.

 

When we are watching the search and rescue effort after the collapse of a building, or a tide of evil pushing back when an army re-deploys from a conflict zone, or when we leave extra early but end up sitting in traffic anyway, we may begin to ask whether any effort is worthwhile when forces beyond our control appear to stifle us at every turn.

 

The faith we pray and practice here can help us navigate the jagged, unpredictable, and undulating surface of our lives.  For thousands of years, these prayers, that have changed but a little, remind us there is so much more to know than we can possibly register with our senses.  They remind us the goal for us as individuals, and as a people, is to move beyond the animal spirit of survival and to enable us all to feel God’s Presence within and around us.  All the prayers, all the Torah learning, all the art and symbolism point toward this goal, and no other.  There is no higher goal than living a life that transforms, the lesson of a story like Balak and Balaam into a goal in and of itself, the goal that more control, more knowledge, may give us a feeling of comfort and stability, but the message that ties all Torah stories together is that God does not want us to always feel safe, comfortable, and reassured that we can direct the course of events, because that is God’s job!

 

No, instead, the Rabbis of the Talmud teach us the most important lesson of humility, an’ve’tanut, that we must lamed leshoncha lomar ani lo yo’de’ah, we must teach ourselves to day I don’t know, or like Rashi, and other great explainers of Torah and Talmud write in their commentaries, Lo yadati peyrrusho, I don’t know what this means.

 

These thoughts are helpful to us since we will strive to fulfill our visions, even if we’re jousting at windmills, God appreciates our efforts as long as we remember that we’re mortal, and fallible, and and the better striving, the real striving for us, is contributing to the sanctification of life and community and love which are ongoing projects for the Jewish people and so by definition open to our efforts but beyond our complete control because they’re really God’s projects!

 

And how sweet, and wonderful, and challenging and compelling it is for us to be a part of these projects that don’t result in skyscrapers, longer lasting lightbulbs, or better public transit but rather result in a sense that we are family, one family, one people, dreaming together. 

The Red Heifer Ritual, Juneteenth, and Shabbat: Journeys of Liberation

 Shabbat Shalom!

 

This Shabbat is the first official Shabbat we’re back in the sanctuary, an open door to everyone, we’re back to reading seven Torah aliyot, so many of us have received the vaccination that the average number of new cases per 100,000 residents in Montgomery county over the past week is under 1.

 

During these times, we are hearing, we’re getting back to normal.  But we could only be returning to normal if we are the same today as we were fifteen months ago.  The past months and it’s impact on us cannot be undone so that we re-enter life picking up from the spot we exited our timeline back then.  

 

We cannot go back.

 

To illustrate this point, some of us may remember the film version of Tom Clancy’s gripping story The Hunt for Red October, about Ramius, a Russian submarine commander, who as captain of an advanced new nuclear submarine, conspires with his officers to defect to the United States and hand over the apocalypse machine  The key scene in this film is a private meal Ramius takes with his officers, who, feeling nervous about their plan, begins to say we should go back, and then Ramius interrupts them saying, there is no going back, because Ramius informed a Russian admiral of their plans.

 

I will try to say it as he did, “There will be no going back.”

 

The wisdom of today’s Torah reading corroborates this point of view.  The ritual of the parah adumah, the red heifer, underlines the way the Torah, and our entire tradition, teaches us that moving from impurity to purity is a visible and tangible.  

 

The effort to find an appropriate red heifer, to prepare all the materials necessary, expresses how monumental and fundamental is this transformation.  When it is complete, the person who undergoes these rites is no longer the person who came forward to receive them in the first place.

 

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch emphasizes the ritual of the red heifer is, quote, the “clearest public proclamation of ritual purity, and [this ritual, which is referred to as a ‘fundamental statute of the Torah’] is indeed the fundamental concept of moral freedom of will on which the entire Torah is based.”(Commentary p. 584)

 

The red heifer ritual is public, it is visible to all, and it is tangible, full of color and solemn pageantry.

 

In our own way, we’ve been living through an extended modern-day version of the red heifer ritual during the pandemic.  Many of us have had to alter the basic contours of our lives, our families, our work, our socializing, our communicating and gathering with others, nearly everything.  Our keeping with the needed rules and regulations, doing things in ways that are so different from what we knew, mirrors the mysterious spectacle of the red heifer, since in both cases, the pathogen, whether a spiritual one or a biological one, is itself invisible.

 

But what does Hirsch mean when he argues this ritual that we read in detail today is the fundamental concept of moral freedom of will on which the entire Torah is based.  

 

He argues, if we cannot purify ourselves from contact with a dead body, which is the purpose of the ritual, something that cannot be avoided, then he says it would be impossible for us to observe the Torah as such.  

 

In other words, there has to be a clear, structured way for us to transform ourselves and restore ourselves to being able to gather together with the rest of the community, with the rest of our people.

 

But what the ritual of the red heifer does not do is remove the mixed emotions that are likely to fill the hearts of those who go through it.  The ritual purifies a soul, but it cannot purge the sense of grief of loss the individual feels over the death of the loved one for whom the individual impurified themselves to tend with love and gentleness to their final arrangements. 

 

Stepping forward into this new world, it is important for us to keep in mind not only the people who we’ve lost to Covid19 but also other losses we’ve experienced, at minimum, the dislocation we feel from the changes we’ve had to make to our lives.

 

But the point of Rabbi Hirsch’s observation goes beyond the ongoing conversation we have about what we’ve lost, what we’ve learned and what we now hope for.

 

He is explaining to us that our spiritual journey is about a choice we have to make.  The people must choose to perform the red heifer ritual or face living in a world in which they can neither participate in nor appreciate the blessings the Torah offers.  That decision is in our hands as much then as it is today.

 

No doubt, God is gracious and compassionate, but as Rabbi Hanina teaches in the Talmud, everything is in the hands of heaven except the fear of heaven.  The relationship must involve both parties meeting each other at a common border. 

 

Joining in with the community in prayer, to make the minyan as we’re doing today, is a critical step in creating the moral universe the Torah and our later tradition challenges us to create.  Gathering for prayer re-emphasizes for all of us the values we strive to live by, the hopes of peace we reach for, and helps wake us up from our lives that especially over the past year I’ve heard described many times as a blurry hamster wheel of time best represented not by the Hunt for Red October but by another film, Groundhog Day.

 

And what better symbolic example of making real our hopes for creating a world of justice and tolerance today than the adoption of Juneteenth just a few days ago as a federal holiday.  Today, the 155^th anniversary of the time slavery was abolished in Texas, is a similar experience to the mysterious ritual of the red heifer, one that makes official a moment of recognition and transformation, like Passover, the holiday for which we read the red heifer ritual as a preparation every year, like Passover Juneteenth is a reminder of avdut l’cherut, the transformation from slavery to freedom, physical and spiritual liberation from the shackles of the past, and an expanding lens of hope for the future.

 

I cannot think of a time when on one Shabbat I’ve felt blessed to stand at the intersection of so many spiritual pathways from restriction to freedom, from despair to hope.  The ritual of the red heifer releases the impure to rejoin the community and fully participate again.  Juneteenth tells a story of celebration and liberation that rings through the years from aftermath of the Civil War and through the 400 years since the first slaves were brought to our shores.  And then there is Shabbat itself, an oasis of time when we let go of the week that’s passed, permit ourselves not to think of the week to come, and glory in this present, holy day, a day that is for deep breaths, for appreciating what we often take for granted, a day that is celebrated zecher litziat Mitzrayim, in memory of our own liberation from slavery in Egypt.

 

May these stories and these transformations renew our hearts, strengthen us, challenge us, and enable us to envision not a return to normal, but a journey toward an amazing, meaningful, and holy new reality that God has asked us to help create.

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.