*sermon (abridged) offered at Temple Emanu-El on October 27, 2023/12 Heshvan 5784
After the close of sitting shiva, after the first seven days of mourning, it’s customary to walk around the block. Walking represents the physical and emotional movement toward a different part of the mourning process, where those grieving can begin to resume some day-to-day activities.
In Reform communities like ours, it’s not often that we observe all seven days of shiva, however, the walking ritual has evolved into a more regular practice. We’ve walked with each other, not only circulating the neighborhood with keriah ribbons and hearts torn, but through the gradual return to healing and hope.
In the wake of the horrific pogrom on Oct.7th, we are wearing black keriah ribbons. For some of us, I mean this literally as we grieve specific people in our family and friend circles. And for many of us, we wear metaphorical keriah ribbons, carrying a collective sense of loss on a grief path without known markers of time. As we wait to see what will come with each passing day, it can feel like a hall of mirrors with shiva remagnified in endless ways.
As we try and navigate all this, gathering for Shabbat as a community and reading Torah can become essential signposts. As we make our way through this week’s offering of Parashat Lech Lecha, we find that it’s filled with timeless wisdom, beginning first with the opening verse:
God said to Avram, Lech Lecha…
Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house
to the land that I will show you.
As a well-known midrash suggests, we often think of Avram as the one who set out for Canaan after smashing the idols in his father’s home. We imagine a sharp break with the past and fiery rage as a necessary element in the story so that Avram and his family can build and establish monotheism.
But if you look at the end of last week’s Torah portion, Noah, we see that Avram’s father Terach took his son, his grandson Lot, Avram’s wife Sarai, and together, they set out to Canaan. They made it as far as a place named Haran, and it was there that Terach died. Perhaps, the words Lech Lecha, go forth, are a call to Avram in his grief.
I imagine God says: You are on a path that began before you. God’s voice resounds in Avram’s heart, saying: It is time to circle the neighborhood and begin to take the essential steps forward. It is time for you to join souls with a common, faithful mission. And with God’s blessing, Avram remembers that he doesn’t travel alone.
I admit, as last Shabbat and Sunday’s TE150 learning opportunities approached, I wasn’t sure how to grapple with such ideas and questions about our future amidst the constricted, torn keriah ribbon of my heart. But the whole experience reminded me of something I already knew. That creative expression of mind, body and soul through study, music, art, formulating questions, writing, movement and so many other practices IS one necessary expression of our trauma.
On a personal level, over the last six months fighting breast cancer, writing has been one critical lifeline for me. It reminds me to continually choose faith over fear. It reminds me that, while I can sit in and with trauma, it is not the totality of my being. Last weekend was an opportunity to begin to reclaim agency amidst terror, to begin to reclaim a vision for a vibrant Jewish future, to begin to imagine a shared destiny, even as we stumble to walk on a ground that is shaking and trembling, even as we fight for our welfare and strength.
Even with halting steps, unsure of our ground and direction, we may ask the essential question: who are we becoming? Embedded in the changing names of our patriarch and matriarch, Avram and Sarai, our Torah portion offers some guidance. Name changes in the Torah represent a shift in status or a spiritual transformation. Think about Jacob wrestling in the dark of the night when he becomes Israel. In Parashat Lech Lecha, Avram and Sarai’s name change to Avraham and Sarah. “Father of multitudes”, the meaning behind Avraham’s name, poses as an opportunity and a challenge. Consider the conflicts in the household between Sarah and Hagar. Consider their struggle to conceive of an heir and a future. Perhaps this is why the letter “hey” is added to their names, which represents the Divine name of HaShem. How were they able to embrace the presence of God, the divine “hey” within their tribal multitudes, as they fight and form, as they doubt and despair?
We look to their real,human trials and triumphs and see our lives reflected in these ancient words. Lech Lecha…can we experience God’s name in our own as we bear the pain and promise of our ever-evolving tradition and identity?
There aren’t easy answers to these questions. In our grief, some of us rage as Avram did against his father’s idols. Some of us feel downtrodden and can’t find the words. Can we channel our anger and fear into covenantal partnerships within and beyond our community to affirm our humanity? Within us there is such a range of feelings, and yet, we, inheritors of Avram’s vision, can hear the words as he did: Lech Lecha… We must and we will go forth, together. We never travel alone.
I sensed the multitudes that comprise our patriarch’s name, and at the core of who we are, during Sunday’s panel discussion. When our grief contracts time and space, Rabbi Ana Bonnheim said (and these are selections of her talk, which of course this tree hugging rabbi loved):
What if we thought about a place like Temple and the Jewish world in general as a living ecosystem, and not just any ecosystem, but one like a forest. A forest isn’t a monoculture…it’s existence depends on thousands of organisms each with different roles but who also depend on each other. It’s a place where life is ever-evolving not towards a single, perfect organism, but in a way that naturally becomes ever more diverse…there are so many ways to be Jewish to experience Judaism…Over time we find plants in a forest generally do support each other…they figure out a way to grow and thrive…evolving and adapting over time…this is our collective work, seeding and tending Jewish life and our multiple forests. To nurture them.
This is our collective work.
This is our name, this is our grief, this is our stubborn hope,
and this is how we walk…sometimes in dizzying circles,
sometimes with hesitant steps,
sometimes faltering forward to then fall back,
sometimes with only a hint of light on the horizon.
Our God, God of Avraham and Sarah,
help us to walk with fathers and mothers of multitudes,
who feel the loss of a single precious life.
Guide us as we reach out to each other and our people,
with nourishing roots of compassion and care.
And may the ecosystem that we call Israel, live on in strength.
Reflections by Rabbi Kim 