The ability for me to find warmth is a huge blessing, and it makes me aware of how many people do not have that luxury. It’s a reminder of how much there is to do to support those who need warmth and shelter, especially in these cold and wet months in Portland.
An old congregant from Cleveland wrote me this past week, sharing a davar torah she had penned for last week’s Torah reading on the topic of the mi-khamokha line in our liturgy, which comes straight out of the Torah. She explored why the word mi-kamokha first appears without a dagesh, the little dot inside of certain Hebrew letters, while just three words later, it is written with a dot. This obscure grammatical question is one I asked Rabbi Stuart Kelman the year before I began rabbinical studies.
I am terrible at asking for help. I almost always accept it when offered, but it takes me a really long time to actually ask for what I need. Perhaps there’s a lesson or two in this week's parshah for all of us. If Moses can ask for guidance, so can I.
Most of us have invisible markers of identity that form and shape us, but which go unobserved by others and are often unremarked upon by us. One personal marker is the ringing in my ears, perpetual company since a bomb blast installed it there long ago. It’s one of the reasons I love music, for when I give it my full attention, this cacophony of crickets inside my brain quiets down, lulled into inaction by a greater sound of joy and feeling.
I feel for Moses, being put through so much for the sake of community without the ability to really rest, but of course that’s the work of so many leaders. And like other leaders, Moses relies on the support of those around him to hold him up while he serves others, albeit literally in his case.
A couple of weeks back, I wrote about how grief places a mourner outside of the normal world. The concerns of grief are universal, timeless, but also highly individualistic. One consequence of this has been that I have not followed the news cycle as closely as normal. This morning, for example, I heard the terrible report of an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue. If you follow news from the Middle East, you have probably heard something about this already.
If there was one lesson that stuck with me the most through the pandemic, it might be not to think any plans are permanent. Faith is not necessarily about preparation, but about how we react. It’s those pivots and adjustments that help us continue to move forward, despite what may lie ahead.
