The Call: Lekh-Lekha 5785 / 2024
November 08, 2024
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָ''ה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ׃
יהו’’ה said to Abram, “Lekh-lekha / Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. (Gen. 12:1)
Torah uses many different names for God. This is considered the most holy of God’s names, the one that seems to enfold all possible permutations of Was / Is / Will Be. This is God-Who-Is-Becoming, God Whom we mirror in our human capacity for growth and change. That’s the voice that says here to Abram, lekh-lekha: there’s a journey ahead of you.
This is not the journey any of us hoped to be on right now. I’ve spoken this week with so many of us who feel shellshocked and reeling. Me, too. We’re mourning the loss of a future where immigrants are welcomed, where no kid goes hungry at lunchtime, where climate science and vaccines are honored and understood, where trans and queer people can live without fear.
And so much more. Our world changed this week in ways I know I can’t yet wholly imagine. One of the most useful things I’ve read in the past few days was an article in Scientific American called Election Grief is Real: Here’s How to Cope. It’s an interview with therapist Pauline Boss, who originated the concept of ambiguous grief in the late 1970s. Pauline says:
We should normalize the anger and the sadness. I think we jump too quickly to pathologize emotions that are scary. I think you need to be patient with yourself if you’re feeling angry, sad, grieving right now. I think that’s a normal reaction to a surprising outcome and an outcome that, in our view, is going backward and not forward.
So accept your feelings. Know there’s no closure to grief. Know you had a loss.
We need to take our time in feeling this – even though frankly it feels terrible and none of us want to dwell on it. But a seismic national shift of this magnitude is going to have enormous impacts, on us and on the world, and if we pretend that away we won’t be in a position to navigate those impacts wisely or well. So the first thing I can offer is: let ourselves feel.
And then here’s a subtle inner shift, when we are up to it. We don’t want to dwell on these feelings, but we can dwell in them – and God* dwells in them with us. (Whatever that word means to each of us right now: source of meaning or justice or hope.) Another of our tradition’s names for God is Shekhinah, meaning God Who Dwells In this broken world… and in us.
When I say that God dwells in us, I mean possibility lives in us. Hope lives in us. Kindness lives in us. Truth and justice live in us. No amount of cruelty or coercion, bullying or gaslighting, can take these away. They are our birthright, and they are eternal. This is one of Judaism’s core tools for navigating difficult times: knowing that we are part of something that endures.
Pauline Boss goes on to say, one risk of grief is that it can immobilize us. We need to help each other forestall that possibility. She says, “You need to do something active in order to deal with a situation you can’t control… It will help to be active, not just to sit back and grumble and not just to lash out either. Action is psychologically what helps when you’re feeling helpless.”
This is true from the micro scale to the macro one. One night this week my teen and I baked cookies for one of the kids in his Shakespeare play. It was tangible and grounding: breathing in the scent of chocolate, feeling dough under our hands. And it brought unexpected joy to another kid’s afternoon. Little things like this matter a lot right now. Making and giving are acts of agency.
And on the macro scale: there will be forms of community care and community organizing that we can do in months and years to come, and they will be more necessary than ever before. And that brings me to the other most useful thing I’ve read this week, 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won, an essay by teacher, activist, and author Daniel Hunter.
He begins by pointing out that after pandemic and insurrection, amidst climate crisis (I would add: after a year of horrors in Israel and Gaza, which have had a deep impact on many of us) we are already exhausted and destabilized. “Authoritarian power is derived from fear of repression, isolation from each other and exhaustion at the utter chaos. We’re already feeling it.”
His first suggestion? Pay attention to our inner state. Trust our own emotional reality, trust what we know and feel and experience, because authoritarianism thrives by sowing and strengthening mistrust. Before we can begin to face trying to do good in this painful new world, we need to tend to our spiritual lives. We are running on empty. We need to care for our souls.
Some part of me frets, reading this: but there’s so much that’s already broken! And it’s going to get so much worse! Yes, there is, and it is. And that’s exactly why each of us must do everything we can to be steady inside, and to trust our own moral and spiritual compass. Judaism has tools for this. (Shabbat and regular gratitude practices are my first two go-tos on this front.)
Judaism has a lot of tools for this, actually. We are not the first generation of Jews to live through massive upheaval. Or to navigate increasing Christian nationalism. Or to figure out how to maintain our ethic of caring for the vulnerable in a time of rising fascism and authoritarianism. Much of human history has looked like this. Much of the world looks like this now.
And some of Judaism’s tools for this moment are a lot like what Daniel Hunter articulates in his essay. We need to let ourselves grieve, even sit shiva for what could’ve been – because if we don’t, some essential part of us may be frozen in the shock of this week, and that’s not good for us or for the world. We need humility, to recognize the vastness of the things we can’t change.
And then we need to find something we can change, and focus there. As I said to my teenager the morning after the election, we will figure out how we can help people who have it worse than we do. “Yeah, Mom. We’re white, we’re middle-class, we’re cisgender – we’re going to be fine. But other people won’t be.” Our job is always to help people who are more vulnerable than we.
So how are we going to help? Daniel Hunter suggests a quadrant of four possibilities: protecting vulnerable people, civil disobedience of unethical policies, defending our existing civic institutions, and building alternatives to what we know now. Sit with those, and see where your heart pulls you. And know that as you sit with this, you are not alone. We are in this together.
“Go forth,” YHVH says to Abram. Go out into the world and make a difference. Or maybe “Go into yourself,” because that’s another way to translate lekh-lekha – go deep, engage in soul-searching, plumb the depths of who you can be. The beauty of Torah, of course, is that the one phrase can be both at once, and both are instructions we need to take to heart this week.
We don’t know exactly what the future will hold. I don’t expect it to be easy. And yet there will also be joy and celebration and care for one another – because no one can take those away. In Brecht’s words, “even in the dark times there will be singing.” He wrote that in 1939, the year my mother and her parents fled the Nazis for what was then the safe haven of America.
No matter what the coming years hold, we know what our tradition teaches: it’s our job to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the Source of All. (Micah 6:8) It’s our job to care for those who are vulnerable. To help people who have it worse than we do. To stand up for what’s right. That is always Judaism’s call: in the best of times, and in the worst of times.
This is the d'varling I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)