Dear Friends,
This week, I’m trying to find inspiration in the parsha to help me manage uncertainty. I don’t know that I struggle so much with change, but I really, really struggle with feeling like I don’t have control over that change. For myself and for my family, I want to know what to expect, and I want to be able to emotionally and logistically prepare. I’d like to think I’m decently good at preparing for changes and challenges when I’m given the opportunity to do so – but sometimes we just have to roll with it, and we have to try to be okay with that rolling. That’s hard for me.
I’m trying to get into the mindset of Avraham and Sarah (Avram and Sarai, at the time) when they were told “Lech lecha,” “Go forth,” and they left everything they knew behind to settle down in a new land, with a new religion, and build a new family. It obviously doesn’t get much more uncertain than that. We don’t really see any indication in the Torah of their fear or their doubt. Honestly, in next week’s parsha, Avraham will also not indicate any fear or doubt when asked to bind and kill his beloved son, so it’s not clear to me that this blind faith is a totally positive example – but I could probably handle a little bit more faith and a little bit more calm in the face of much more mild comparative uncertainty than our ancestors experienced.
Instead of responding with fear, doubt, or hesitation, Avram responds to God’s command to set forth with silence. It’s easy to interpret that silence as Avram just blindly obeying, but I’m going to choose to read it the way Rabbi Richard M.C. Kellner does. He wrote, “Completely awed by the moment, Abram responds with silence, contemplating the outcome, hoping that the encounter with the divine voice and the sacred word would endure far beyond the spoken moment.” I love the idea that Avram’s response to uncertainty is awe.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (nice namesake) wrote, “When we stand in Awe, our lips do not demand speech, knowing that if we spoke, we would deprave ourselves. In such moments talk is an abomination. All we want is to pause, to be still, that the moment may last… The meaning of the things we revere is overwhelming and beyond the grasp of our understanding.” I’m going to try and pause my fear and replace it with awe. I’m going to try to stop spinning out and trying to fix and finagle everything, and I’m going to just be silent and stand in Awe. Life is truly wild, my friends.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Hannah