Tag: torah

Wisdom from the Wilderness

On By scatteredleaves322In D'var Torah, Holidays, Sermon, SermonsLeave a comment

There’s a name for what we’re experiencing . That feeling of having our hearts broken so repeatedly by the news cycle. Flash floods, fires, mass shootings, wars within us, wars between us, and wars in the world. Wars that make us question who we really are as a people. One day you’re worrying about climate change, the next it’s a group project, AI taking over, what you’re going to do with your life, the next pandemic, your situationship, economic collapse, or drama within your friendgroup. There’s never enough time to process one crisis before another begins. Even when the crisis is no longer acute, there’s a pit in our collective stomach, and it’s not just because we’re Jews with stomach problems. There’s anxiety pulsing through our communities as we wonder what will happen next. The feeling is called “existential whiplash.”  An instagram post from a mental health service called Spring Health says that “existential whiplash” is the emotional strain of trying to keep up with daily life while everything around us feels uncertain or overwhelming. 

Our ancestors knew a thing or two about this feeling, and what it’s like to yearn for stability, while knowing that change is going to keep coming. They survived slavery, escaped Egypt, and crossed the Red Sea. They had a dramatic experience at Mt. Sinai. They reached the Promised Land.  In between these major events, they wandered in the desert – trying to live amid existential whiplash, just like us. The Hebrew word for desert is “midbar.” It also means “wilderness.” The word  midbar appears approximately 270 times in the Torah. It represents uncertainty, wandering, a feeling of lostness in a world churning  with change. 

We’ve spent a lot of time here too, bamidbar – in our own spiritual wilderness. Believe it or not, 2020 was only five years ago. It’s been a long five years, and it’s been utterly exhausting. But all that intergenerational trauma we’ve acquired – going all the way back to our ancestors in the midbar – comes with intergenerational resilience. We are still here.  Still moving forward. We’re even still complaining about it, much like our ancestors in the desert.  

Tonight, I’m going to share 7 lessons for our spiritual wilderness based on our ancestral experience, as well as a few lessons based on the literal wilderness. Some of our most powerful spiritual technologies mirror the interdependent systems of the natural world. In the wilderness, we have an opportunity to learn from that which is wild, around and within us. We will see what our ancestors and the natural world can teach us about the resilience we have right now – and the ways we can build it for the future.  

7 Lessons from the Wilderness 

Lesson 1: Build sanctuaries. “V’asu li mikdash, v’shohanti b’tocham” – God says. “Make for Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell within them.” The mishkan – the communal, portable sanctuary in the desert – was elaborate. Five Torah portions in Exodus discuss the building of this space, sometimes in excruciating detail. The mishkan teaches us that at times of uncertainty, we should build something beautiful. We should pour our energy into creating, especially co-creating something that will serve the community. 

What sanctuaries have you built in our wilderness? What does your mishkan look like? Your mishkan might be your dorm room, a friend’s car, or your favorite coffee shop. It might be the arboretum or another outdoor space where you feel at peace. When you can’t change the whole world, you can still create something beautiful. Something safe. Something meaningful to you and those around you. 

The commentators point out that “v’shohanti b’tocham,” means “that I may dwell within them.” Yes, we must build physical sanctuaries, and we do – and on another level, the text may be referring to the people themselves. “Make for Me a sanctuary that I may dwell within them,” the people. The mishkan, the dwelling place for the Divine – is within every one of us.  

This means you can both build and be a sanctuary – for yourself and others. When have you been a sanctuary for someone you care about this year? When have you been your own? What does it look like to know there is a safe and sacred space within you, one you can always return to? The ultimate mishkan – traveling temple – goes wherever you go, and is there for you no matter what. This is the first lesson of the wilderness: In times of existential whiplash, build sanctuaries. 

There are many examples of collaborative building in the wild that can be instructive for us. Bees build hives and make honey through a process called festooning.. These “festoons” create structural support and regulate the temperature of the hive. Within the hive, there are worker bees who build honeycomb, nurse bees caring for the young, and scout bees who search for optimal hive collections. Each bee contributes to the structure that enables the hive to thrive. 

This leads me to lessons 2 and 3. Lesson 2 is Everyone has something to offer. God instructed every person to bring gifts to the sanctuary, telling Moses, “You shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved.”  Everyone was asked to give from their heart, and every gift was accepted.  

What can you do to sustain yourself and your community?  Are you an expert problem solver? Someone with powerful listening skills? Are you creative? Are you the person who can always make your friends laugh? Think about what you can give, and give it with love. It might be exactly what your community needs. Lesson 2. Everyone has something to offer. 

Like bees, when we contribute our skills and strengths to our community, we also benefit from the skills of others. This creates a more capable community that allows people to flourish – even or especially in the wilderness. This is where lesson three comes in. Ask for help. In the mishkan, Kohanim were the priests, who made sacrifices on behalf of themselves and their communities. The Levi’im played music and managed the practical aspects of Temple worship. There were also specific roles for individuals. Miriam was the one who could always find water. Betzalel was an artist who designed that first mishkan. 

Lessons 2 and 3 are connected. If everyone has something to offer, you can help others – and others are here to help you, like the bees in their hive. We all have different skills to share. Who, in your wilderness, can you turn to for help? Who can you reach out to when you experience existential whiplash?  When your well has run dry, find a Miriam who can help you locate a new source of lifegiving water. If you can’t serve God by leading song, find yourself some Levites who can. 

Hasidic master Sefat Emet wrote, “Each one gave their own offering,  but they were all joined together by the Mishkan, and became one. Only then did they merit the Divine Presence.” Each person had something unique and precious to offer – but they could not experience the Divine Presence until they shared these offerings. We became a people united not by what we took, what we achieved, or what we conquered. We became a people united by what we gave to one another.

Ecosystems are interdependent. Beavers create habitats, and those habitats are shared with other life forms. Recent research suggests that trees of the same species are communal, and will form alliances with trees of other species. Some claim that forest trees live in cooperative, interdependent relationships, maintained by communication similar to an insect colony. We are both of and in the wilderness. No one can make it through the wilderness alone and fortunately, we don’t have to. Third lesson from the wilderness: Ask for help. 

One Jewish practice that speaks to lessons 2 and 3 is the act of praying with a minyan – ten people. Mourner’s Kaddish is one prayer we only say when we have a minyan. We show up to support the mourners so they can say this prayer during their time of vulnerability and grief. In my prayer services, we count the Jews who are in the building, not just the ones who are in our service, because we are here together for the same reason. We are here because we know we are interdependent, because it strengthens the community, and because we believe in showing up. 

In April, there was a 5.2 magnitude earthquake in Southern California. A livecam from the San Diego Zoo showed all the adult elephants making a protective circle around the two youngest elephants. This behavior is a natural instinct to protect the most vulnerable. An elephant minyan. I think about it when we pray Mourner’s Kaddish together. We can’t protect anyone from grief. But there is so much power in showing up, like the elephants – it makes the grief just a little more bearable, a little less lonely. 

When there’s existential whiplash, make the minyan.  When others ask for help, it’s ok to not always have the right words. Sometimes, showing up is the help. When people are vulnerable, when things are uncertain, when the ground itself feels shaky – count your people, leave no one behind, show up, and be counted yourself. 

Lesson 4: Practice mindful awareness – be present and look around. Our ancestors often found what they needed in the wilderness when they least expected it.

Jacob ran into the wilderness after deceiving his brother and his father. He fell asleep with his head on a rock, and he dreamed of a ladder with angels ascending and descending. Jacob awakened, saying “Mah norah hamokom hazeh!” God was in this place, and I didn’t know it. 

Moses was also bamidar when he saw a bush, burning, but not consumed in the fire. He had run away from Pharaoh’s land, struggling with his conflicting identities as a master in Pharaoh’s palace and a Hebrew, like those Pharaoh enslaved. God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, saying, “Take off your shoes. The place where you are standing is holy ground.”  It was existential whiplash. 

Moses and Jacob were in the wilderness – physically, emotionally, and spiritually – when they received these messages. The Israelites were in the wilderness when we received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Midrash Rabbah Numbers 1:1 teaches that this was because the Israelites had to be “free and ownerless like the desert” in order to receive it.  The lesson is to be aware of your surroundings. God was in that place. The ground itself was vibrating with holiness. That which appears empty is full of potential. Make yourself free and ownerless like the desert. That which appears mundane may actually be sacred.  Lesson 4.  When facing existential whiplash, practice mindful awareness.  You never know what the wilderness of our moment might reveal.  

Lesson 5 is to forgive. Yom Kippur is the anniversary of the day God forgave the Israelites for one of the greatest sins of all-time – building and worshipping a golden calf. Moses went up Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah from God. The Israelites were afraid and uncertain as they waited. We’ve all been there. We turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms in the wilderness of the unknown, just like our ancestors did.  Even Aaron, Moses’s brother, a leader in the community, took part, inciting the group to not just build, but worship the false idol. 

We have all worshipped false idols in the last year. We have doomscrolled through the desert, worshipping headlines, statements, and trends, arguing in comments instead of taking responsibility for our errors. Your leaders, like Aaron, have also committed this sin. But the story of the golden calf and God’s forgiveness of our ancestors remind us how important it is to forgive, even if it means forgiving idolatry. 

Individuals can’t be perfect, communities can’t be perfect, and the world can’t be perfect.  Ecosystems can’t be perfect either –  even a slight shift in one element can create significant and damaging change across the system. Without grace for the flaws of individuals, communities, or the world, we lose interest in showing up to help each other. We instead cut ourselves and others out. Our communities suffer as a result, much like our ecosystems when something is missing. 

On Yom Kippur, we pray for God to forgive us, as God forgave us for the golden calf. But the only thing we can really do is forgive each other and ourselves. Adonai, Adonai, El Rachum v’Chanun, we chant, listing God’s 13 attributes of mercy – God, God, compassionate and merciful. Can we be compassionate with one another? Can we have mercy on ourselves? Can you forgive yourself for your own idolatry? Can you forgive your community? The world? Can you forgive God? It’s a tall ask. It’s not always possible and it’s not even always the right thing to do. But most of the time, it is – and we must try. Lesson 5. Forgiveness. 

Lesson 6 is to make space for grief. Miriam, Aaron, and Moses – all great leaders – eventually die in the wilderness, before the Promised Land. We’ll focus on Moses and Aaron first. Regarding Aaron’s death, the Torah says “All the house of Israel bewailed Aaron thirty days.” Regarding Moses’s death, we read, “The Israelites bewailed Moses in the steppes of Moab for thirty days.”  To this day, shloshim – 30 days – is one of the mourning periods after a death in Jewish tradition.  With their deaths, Aaron and Moses taught us how to grieve. 

Elephants revisit the remains of deceased herd members, touching and examining the bones, or standing vigil for extended periods. Some cry and refuse to eat after losing a companion. Dolphin mothers may carry their dead calves for periods of time, and other pod members may assist in carrying the body or guarding it. 

Loss happens in the wilderness. In ours, it may seem like everyone is grieving, all the time. But announcements of anguish for suffering communities does not reflect a full grieving process. Existential whiplash leads to “statement culture.” Everyone feels the need to say something about the most recent bad news. It’s often necessary, but it keeps real grief itself at a distance. We need to pause. We need to wail, like the Israelites cried for Moses and Aaron. We need to reflect and remember, like elephants revisiting their herd members’ bones. Make space to mourn. That’s lesson 6.  

Lesson 7 is to practice trust. God appeared to the Israelites as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. The pillars  were with them at all times, reminding the Israelites that they were safe. That’s right. They had an emotional support pillar-of-cloud.  Still, as a people traumatized by a history of enslavement, it took them a long time to trust their safety, their leaders, and God. Even when the Israelites were on the verge of the Promised Land, they believed false risk reports, and acted out from a place of fear. They had to wait another 40 years before going into the land as a result.  Nonetheless, the pillars of cloud and  fire stayed with them; a Divine Presence. A reminder that they could learn to trust. 

When you are hypervigilant, or overly attuned to risk – what is your pillar? What shows you that you are safe, that you can trust the process, that you will be cared for, no matter how the future unfolds? Can you trust yourself? Your leaders? Your community? Lesson 7 is to “practice trust” because in times of emotional whiplash, it really does take practice. But our ancestors learned how. And so can we. 

I want to share one case study from the wilderness that shows what happens when we miss the mark in each of these lessons.  When Miriam died in the wilderness, “The community was without water, and they joined against Moses and Aaron. The people quarreled with Moses, saying, “Why have you brought God’s congregation into this wilderness for us and our livestock to die there? Why did you make us leave Egypt to bring us to this wretched place, a place with no grain or figs or vines or pomegranates? There is not even water to drink!”

Miriam was the one who made wells of water appear in the desert, so their concern about water was understandable – but by now, they had been bamidbar for a long time. God had provided what they needed, from manna to eat, to the Torah herself.  By whining for the Egypt they left behind, the Israelites abandoned the sanctuaries they built together.  With mindful awareness, the Israelites might have made space for Moses and Aaron to grieve for their sister. Instead, they panicked, quarreled, and cried for water. Ultimately, God told Moses to speak to a rock, and water would pour from it. In Moses’s rage, he hit the rock instead. 

It’s so relatable. The communal experience of water anxiety. The personal loss. The competing needs, everyone yelling over everyone else. And all of it happening all at once. It was existential whiplash. Instead of grieving, he had to make it stop. He had to fix it. Can anyone relate? Me too. With awareness, Moses might have said “I hear your concern for water. God will provide. Give me a few minutes to myself before I ask God for help.” Instead, he lashed out, hitting the rock in his rage. 

We are living in a wilderness, experiencing profound existential whiplash. The Israel / Palestine crisis, the climate catastrophe, rising antisemitism, lack of access to health care – the list goes on.  While the issues themselves may be new to us, the experience of wilderness is, for lack of a better term – precedented. We have been afraid and uncertain before. We know what happens when we act from a place of fear, building false idols that don’t really protect us. We know what happens when we jump into fixer-mode, without first making space for grief.  We are interdependent, like so many animals in the wilderness. When just a couple of wolves can’t trust the others, it threatens the health of the whole pack. 

We also know what it’s like to build and to be a sanctuary, for each other and for ourselves. We know how to make a minyan, how to lean on each other, and we know how to make offerings that come from the heart.  We know that every bee’s role is urgently needed for the health of the hive. We know how to see the sacred where we least expect it to find it. We can lessen the pain of existential whiplash by looking to the midbar – the wildernesses of our past, the wild world around us, and the wildernesses within, to discover what we need to thrive.  

To recap: 

Lesson 1. Build Sanctuaries. 

Lesson 2. Everyone has something to offer. 

Lesson 3. Ask for help. 

Lesson 4. Practice mindful awareness.

Lesson 5. Forgive. 

Lesson 6. Grieve. 

Lesson 7. Trust. 


A midrash teaches that midbar, wilderness, is linked to the word “midaber,” which means speech. We can use our speech, our words, to teach one another these lessons when we’ve forgotten. We can use them to write down our stories, so we can return to them in the next wilderness. We can use them to remind ourselves that our ancestors passed down their grit (along with all that anxiety and the stomach problems), and that we are stronger for it. We are always in the wilderness and there are always sanctuaries and we keep trying and learning and becoming. There are words for what we are experiencing – existential whiplash. And there’s a term for the antidote – it’s what happens when we learn from everything behind us, around us, and within us. It’s resilience.

Hovering: Rosh HaShanah 5785

On By scatteredleaves322In Communal Tragedy, D'var Torah, Holidays, Sermon1 Comment

Wow. What a year. I have to be honest, friends. I don’t know what to say about it. I don’t know what to say about the year we are leaving behind. I don’t know what to say about where we are now – with rockets flying in multiple directions, slogans screaming across Instagram, countless lives lost and relationships shattered since October 7th. I don’t know what to say about where we are going in this new year when there’s no resolution in sight. We eat apples dipped in honey, illustrating our hopes for a sweet new year. But it can be really hard to think or talk about sweetness when we are tasting bitterness at the same time. 

The beauty of Jewish holidays is that they are both commemorative and experiential. We are asked to remember something that happened in the past – AND we experience it in real time. At Passover we are told that we ourselves are coming out of slavery. Rosh Hashanah is a time when we both remember and experience renewal, rebirth, and creation. When God began creating the world, 5785 days ago in Jewish time, the earth was tohu vavohu, chaos and void. And choshech, darkness, was on the face of the deep. And Ruach Elohim, the spirit of God, m’rachefet, hovered on the face of the water.

What was God feeling in that moment, hovering over the darkness? Was God afraid of the void? Anxious amid the chaos? What did it take for God to find the courage to say “yehi or,” “Let there be light?”

We, too, have known darkness this year. We have also faced the depths. And right now, we, too, are hovering – m’rachefet – between darkness and whatever comes next. What is it like living in this hovering uncertainty? What will it take for us to risk looking forward at all, let alone looking forward with something like hope? I don’t know. But I do know we have examples in our tradition of other moments like this one, and we can learn from our ancestors. 

Our ancestors shared an experience of darkness, chaos, and confusion at Mt. Sinai, waiting for Moses to bring Torah down from the mountaintop. When Moses ascended Mt. Sinai, the Israelites didn’t know when he would return, and they were terrified. In their fear and anxiety, hovering beneath the mountain, they turned to a destructive but familiar coping mechanism, like so many of us have in those uncertain moments – they built a golden calf, a false idol. 

How many of us have turned to an unhealthy habit in moments of anxiety in the last year? Me too.

Moses came down from the mountain with the commandments on two luchot, two stone tablets, and when he saw the golden calf, he was so furious that he shattered them. Moses climbed the mountain again. Even though he was angry at the Israelites, he pleaded with God on their behalf. And God forgave them on the 10th of Tishrei – a day that we now experience and commemorate each year: Yom Kippur. Then Moses descended with new luchot. 

A midrash – which is Torah fanfiction – on this Torah portion tells us how our tradition treats the brokenness we experience in times of darkness and hovering. When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai the second time, with new tablets, the Israelites kept the broken ones. They placed the broken luchot, along with the new ones, in the holy ark.

Why keep this symbol of our own fear, this casualty of rage, this set of broken laws? Because brokenness and wholeness live side by side in the world and in our hearts. Because we had to be in the wilderness, hovering, waiting, lost and afraid, worshiping a false god before we could worship our One God from a place of trust. We kept the broken tablets because learning is part of becoming. We kept them alongside the new ones, because brokenness itself is holy. The broken tablets, carried along with the whole ones in the Aron HaKodesh, the holy ark, represent the resilience that carried us through the rest of the uncertain wilderness.

Rabbi Harold Kushner (z’l) raised an important point about this story “…The saga of the golden calf, God’s anger at the people, Moses’ intervention and God’s forgiveness raise an interesting question: When something breaks, something that was precious to us, is it ever possible to put it together again so that it’s as good as new?” 

So much shattering occurred over the last year. Trust was broken. Relationships ruptured. Communities crumbled. October 7th splintered us again and again. How can we repair? Is it even possible to build ourselves up again so that we and our communities are as good as new?

Rabbi Kushner continued, “It would be nice to believe that a God of second chances would make that possible, but the reality seems to be no, you can’t. If it’s broken and repaired, it will never be the same. The crack will always show. But what a God of second chances does is make it possible that you will end up with something in its place that will be even stronger and better than the original.” 

What would it look like for us to build something better? And what examples can our textual tradition offer for guidance? 

After God hovered in darkness, over the face of the water, God said “yehi or” “let there be light,” and went about the work of creating the world for us. When we finished hovering in the darkness at the foot of the mountain with the golden calf, we went about the work of creating a Mishkan for God, an elaborate and collaborative traveling sanctuary. Each person contributed something of their own to the creation of the Mishkan. The sages consider the golden calf incident to be one of the darkest moments of our history – despairing, leaderless, and chaotic. Our ancestors came through that darkness and said “yehi or,” “Let there be light.” And they created a mishkan. 

The truth is that there is always darkness, brokenness, and loss. And – we can always say yehi or – while we hover within the tohu vavohu, within the chaos. Kohelet says “To everything there is a season, a time for joy and a time to weep.” In his poem, “Kohelet Wasn’t Right,” Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai responds that no, these are not separate times. “In the days when each hour collides with the next,” he says, “we have no choice but to cry and to laugh with the same eyes, to mourn and dance at the same time.” We have to carry the broken tablets with the whole ones. We have to create light while the darkness swirls around us. When false idols have made us forget that we are One, we have to build a mishkan together. 

Does it sound impossible? That’s ok. It won’t happen perfectly, or all at once. Creation didn’t happen just one time – creation is always unfolding, all around and within us. 40 days and nights passed before Moses came back down the mountain with the new tablets after seeing the golden calf. It took time for the Israelites to return to the mishkan. Healing is a long and by no means linear process. We may continue hovering – m’rachefet –  over the depths for awhile.

In the meantime, we have ancestral tools, handed down in our hearts and in our liturgy, that can help us make incremental change. One of these tools is selichot – forgiveness. Rabbi Kushner wrote that “The crack in the first set of tablets was the loss of the dream of perfection. Now the challenge facing you is… can you replace that dream of perfection…with a more realistic one… that will make allowance for human frailty? … Can you give yourself and those around you permission to be human…? On Yom Kippur, so many years ago, God forgave the people who built the golden calf. He forgave us for being human beings, with hopes that we would learn to forgive each other as well.” 

Can you forgive yourself for the moments when the darkness was unbearable, the moments when the shattered pieces of your heart cut so deeply you couldn’t see the whole ones beside you, the moments when hovering was the only option because you couldn’t find light amid the chaos? Can you forgive your community for the moments when we failed to hold you in the way you needed to be held? Can you forgive God for God’s imperfect world? 18th century Ukrainian rabbi, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, taught that Moses was able to find the nekuda tovah – the good point, the Divine Spark – in the Israelites when he pleaded with God on their behalf on top of the mountain. Nachman teaches that this is what allowed the Israelites to move from building the golden calf to building the mishkan – all it took was one person seeing the good inside of them. Forgiveness is another way to say “yehi or.” Let there be light. 

5784 had darkness, chaos, confusion, and grief. We have been at the foot of the mountain with the golden calf.  At this exact moment, when we remember and experience the story of creation, we are m’rachefet – hovering – on the face of the depths. How can we say “yehi or,” like God, when God created from darkness? How can we say “yehi or,” like our ancestors who contributed to the mishkan after contributing to a golden calf? How can we build new tablets – while we hold onto the broken ones? We have looked at an ancestral tool, but we can and should draw on personal experience as well. 

Take a deep breath. Think back on some of your own, personal, darkest moments from this last year. What are the qualities you already had inside you, what are the roots you returned to, what did you discover that was grounding, replenishing, and brought you a little more light? What did you try? What was helpful for you?

Even in this dark year, you were able to find “yehi or” moments. Looking back on our year at Hillel, I can also see examples of times when we said “let there be light” as a community, not in spite of, or even because of, the chaos – but because it is what we do. It’s part of who we are. 

Yes, there was rupture within our community. And, over the twenty-five Bagel Brunches we shared on Sunday mornings, we ate 1,250 bagels in total. There’s an ongoing hostage crisis and war in the Middle East. There was anger, distrust, and antisemitism on campus. There was also Matzo Ball, a festive Hollywood themed semi-formal at Joe’s at the beginning of spring semester. We were anxious and uncertain, but we also celebrated Purim with 300 of our besties at the seventh annual Purim drag show. The news cycle was relentless and depressing. And we played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. We said “yehi or” when we piloted a wellness-themed Jewish Learning Fellowship, where students shared from their hearts and deepened their relationships. We said “yehi or” when we welcomed the angels, and each other, by singing Shalom Aleichem together before each Shabbat meal. With the darkness – light. With the brokenness – creation. With the hovering – a mishkan, a gathering space for sacred community. 

Contemporary scholar of kabbalah, Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed, writes that “An envelope of bitterness encases the divine sweetness,” yet we can “reach the sweet, divine essence hidden within the layers of the world’s bitterness.” So we will dip our apples and our challah in honey for a sweet near year. We will practice forgiving ourselves and each other for our imperfections. We will rebuild relationships and repair our community. It won’t be the same as before, but it will be stronger. We will honor our brokenness and our wholeness. We will turn away from false idols and we will work together to create a better world. We will say “yehi or.” Say it with me: “Yehi or.” Let there be light. 

Shared with gratitude to Rabbi Bluth and Josh Feldman for helping me figure out what to say in a year when none of us really know what to say. Your friendship and mentorship means the world to me.

The Narrows and the Expanse

On By scatteredleaves322In D'var Torah, Holidays, SermonsLeave a comment

Min ha’meitzar karati Yah
Anani ba’merchav Yah

From the narrow place I cried out to God;
God answered me with an open expanse.

These words from Psalm 118 have been on my heart this year as I’ve prepared for Passover. Every year, we relive the Exodus, saying that we ourselves were slaves in Mitzrayim – a Hebrew word that means both “Egypt” and “Narrow Place.”  This year, we are all trying to make sense of slavery and freedom in a post October 7th world. Each of us has our own meitzar (narrow place) to escape, and our own merchav (expanse) to explore. We have our individual enslavements, our personal Pharaohs and seas to be crossed. But like the Exodus, the war in Israel is being experienced collectively as well as individually.  We all need to find our way from our communal meitzar to the merchav, and we need to do it together. 

For the Hebrew slaves, the narrowness – the meitzar – was Egypt under Pharaoh. The Haggadah tells us that Pharaoh forced the slaves into hard labor. But the subjugation went far beyond the physical. When Moses told the Hebrews that God would free them from slavery, they could not hear Moses in their suffering – literally, according to the text, due to kotzer ruach, shortness of breath, or spirit.  Their spirit had shrunken until they couldn’t grasp the idea of freedom. Netivot Shalom, a 20th century Hasidic rabbi, wrote that “Israel was subjugated in total. They had no independence, even in thought.” The Hebrews “became like breath caught in the throat, subsumed in Pharaoh completely, body and spirit.”  In the narrowness, they could not hear, think or speak for themselves. A numbing silence came from deep trauma, their thoughts swallowed on the inside before they could name them, even to themselves or each other. The Zohar calls this a “galut ha’dibbur,” an exile of speech. 

The path to freedom opened when the Hebrews opened their own mouths and spoke. Exodus 2:23-24 lists four types of outcry: The Hebrews anach, (sighed), za’ak (called out), shav’ah (cried for help),and n’akah (groaned). The beginning of redemption was their own awareness. After generations of feeling and thinking only what Pharaoh told them to, the Hebrews recognized their own suffering. The next step was to call out. At first, they groaned before they could speak. It may have been unintelligible, but the pain and their voices were their own. “When they left Egypt, they went from subjugation to everlasting redemption and received anew the aspect of speech,” writes Netivot Shalom. “Peh-Sach can be interpreted as shorthand for peh (mouth) that sach (speaks). This is the essence of the holiday of Pesach.” They went from slaves that couldn’t think, feel, or speak for themselves, to human beings with awareness of their own pain, and voices that could tell their story. 

After the Hebrews crossed the Sea of Reeds, they found themselves in their merchav – the wilderness.  And they were terrified. We joke about it, but it’s true – after singing at the Sea, the Hebrews immediately used their newfound voices to complain. They complained in Egypt they’d had cucumbers, onions, and melons. Would they starve to death in the desert? What would become of them in this wasteland? These complaints were about physical needs, but they spoke to an underlying spiritual question. Enslaved in Egypt, they’d known what to expect. The Hebrews knew who they were, understood their roles, knew where their meals would come from, and when. There was security in the structure. 

Today, sometimes our structures confine and define us as strongly as Pharaoh. Our polarized political discourse is the most constrictive structure I’ve witnessed and experienced since October 7th. This meitzar is one of certainty, and obsession with our own correctness. In this suffocating narrowness, we categorize people, things, and actions into good or bad, right or wrong. People are forced to be on the side of Israel or Palestine, the side of peace or war. We are enslaved to the echo chambers we created, narrow spaces that limit our perspectives. Students who don’t fall clearly on one “side” or the other have shared that they, like our ancestors under Pharaoh’s rule, can’t speak. They don’t want to ask questions because they are afraid they will be alienated from friends and communities they hold dear. The Passover seder is all about asking questions, but we have become experts at silencing voices that question the Pharaoh. It’s so easy to unfollow or unfriend, to curate a meitzar where we feel secure – and sometimes we may need to! Like the narrow place that enslaved our ancestors, this meitzar has its benefits – it’s predictable, expected, understood. But at what cost?

If our meitzar is a place where we are constricted by certainty, the merchav – the expanse – is uncertainty, a wilderness of not-knowing. We are free when it is safe to be unsure of our stance, and we are open to engaging with different viewpoints. In the merchav, Pharaoh no longer dictates what we believe. Once again, the beginning of our redemption is our own awareness – an awareness that there’s something outside the narrow confines of our own perspectives. We have learned to speak – this time, with people outside the echo chamber. And perhaps more importantly, we’ve learned to listen.  In this expanse, we can be expansive. We can hear one another, acknowledge complexities, and hold multiple truths. 

No longer trapped in the narrowness of what is, we are able to imagine what could be. In this merchav, students who are unsure about their views on Israel and Palestine are welcome to voice their questions without being forced to choose a side. In this merchav that we create, two students who completely disagree with each other sit down for coffee, hear each other’s stories, and learn why each of them cares so deeply about this cause. Neither one convinces the other – and neither one expects to change the other’s mind. They leave the conversation richer because they understand one another better than before they entered this merchav together. 

The possibilities are exciting and terrifying, much like the merchav the Hebrews encountered. It’s scary to hear the voices of those who disagree, when our beliefs feel fundamental to who we are. Will we lose ourselves in the process? Will we forget where we came from? No we will not, because, as the seder reminds us: Avadim hayinu, ata b’nei chorin. Once we were slaves, now we are free. 

As we approach Passover this year, I invite you to use the seder as an opportunity to truly reflect on the meitzar and the merchav. Throughout the week, consider: Have you made a Pharaoh of your opinions? Are you 100% correct, or is that Pharaoh telling you what to think? When you feel the urge to retreat to the security of the meitzar, remind yourself of the consequences. Passover is an opportunity to reflect on what we believe, how we formed our beliefs, and how those beliefs may be forming us. This year, the Peh – Sach, the mouth that speaks, must be one that asks questions, as we always have in our seders. The Haggadah reminds us that we cannot return to Pharaoh. We must free each other, and we must do it together.