Click to view the January/February 2021 issue of Neveh Shalom’s Chronicle Please note that the file is large, thank you for your patience.
Rabbi Kosak is on vacation this week. Oasis Songs will return next week. In the meantime, please don't forget to use the link below to see Torah commentary from the Conservative Yeshivah and the movement.
While we’re all physically apart from each other, it’s easy to forget that we all have to live with each other in every sense of space. Portlanders share one city. Oregonians share one state. Humankind shares just one planet. Vayigash means “and he drew near,” and the parshah reminds us to draw near to each other and meet each other in the here and now.
As I type these words, I am looking out the basement window and across the ravine, to where my neighbor’s deck is battened down for the winter. This is a seasonal view, obscured through most of the year by dense foliage. The vertical rails of their deck fence seem suddenly barren, and I am reminded of a Wallace Steven’s poem entitled “The Plain Sense of Things.”
Parshat Miketz, which is read around Hanukkah, a time of year when we have more darkness than light, is about reserving for the future. Besides emergency supplies, we should savor and reserve the light of the Hanukkah candles in our memories. Store your moments of light, of gratitude, because you never know when you’ll need to tap into them.
Could I have done more? It’s one of those questions you ask yourself in moments of tragedy. It’s difficult to know which piece of advice, which kind word, which heroic gesture will make a difference, or if any of them will. But in reality each little contribution, no matter how big or small, can make a difference.
What is it that makes some people hated? That makes it easy to discriminate against others? To harbor bigotry and feel you are in the right for doing so?