D'var Torah - Post-Election

Friday, November 11, 2016, at Temple Sinai, Brookline MA

Parashat Lech L'cha 

This Shabbat, we find ourselves facing a future filled with uncertainty, and we are entering into a world in which we do not know what may face us.

In the days after the election, both Rabbi Shoshana and I have been approached by members of our community who are deeply shocked by the results, people who are stunned and confused, people who are fearful for the future, who are experiencing anxiety about what lies ahead.  Almost everyone we’ve spoken to had a strong emotional reaction.

The road ahead is uncertain, and we don’t know where it will lead.  We truly don’t know. 

We face an important personal and spiritual challenge in these days when we’ve been cast into a period of deep uncertainty, anxiety and even fear for ourselves, for the Jewish people, for those people in our world who are of color, or immigrants, or religious and ethnic minorities – the whole world, in fact, is walking into a place of deep uncertainty, into the unknown.

The week of the election fell during the Torah portion of Lech L’cha, with God’s words to Abraham:  “Go, you, from your land, from your parents’ home, from the place of your birth, to a land that I will show you… and I will make you a great nation… I will make your name great.”  (Genesis 12:1-3)

I can imagine Abraham’s reaction: “Lech L’cha” – what?  Go where?  Go where?  Abraham did not know the land to which God was leading him towards.   God said: “I will show you the place, but not now.”  Abraham was told by God to go to a place, from that which was comfortable, to a place indeterminate and unknown. 

The Sefas Emes, Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Lieb of Ger, the Gerer Rebbe, 19^th century, taught that as human beings, each one of us is a “walker” – we are all travelers on a road.  None of us ever knows where we are going, none of us ever knows what lies ahead.  There is always an aspect of life which is hidden from us, and which we cannot see on our own.

But he taught:  Two things made Abraham different, and gave Abraham a certain greatness.

First, Abraham recognized that there is no other choice but to go forward.  Abraham found a source of resilience to keep on truckin’ when faced with uncertainty.  That source is available to us, as well.  By accepting the reality that we have to go forward toward uncertainty, by standing up straight, upright, and just walking forward greeting that uncertainty with openness, we grow. 

Second, Abraham lived out the quality of chesed, loving-kindness.  In the mystical-symbolic tradition of Judaism, Abraham is associated with chesed, which is care and concern within the framework of relationship.  He personified love and compassion, listening, understanding, seeing the downtrodden and the outcast, and responding to them with a whole heart.  This was not just Abraham’s way of dealing with others, it was the way in which Abraham served God:  with full-hearted love.  Abraham’s chesed was his way of living even when he was walking toward the unknown, to “the place that I will show you.”  While he was traveling to this undetermined place, the place-to-be-named later, Abraham treated everyone he met softly, carefully, gently, lovingly. 

What made Abraham great?  For the Sefas Emes, “greatness” is living our lives with the quality of chesed – opening your heart to others and approaching them with compassion on their journeys, even when you don’t know exactly where your journey is taking you.

I share the deeply worry and concern at what it seems the future may hold for us.  Those of us who are still stunned by the election’s results do need some time to get over our shock.  But like Abraham, it will soon be time to embrace the future, to stand up, and to keep walking forward.  If we can adopt Abraham’s stance of chesed, of loving-kindness as a basic and fundamental way for conducting ourselves, being sensitive to the pain and suffering of others around us by responding to them, we, too, can bring healing and repair into the world, which the world sorely needs.

-        Rabbi Andy Vogel