Dear {{first_name}},
There are times when writing is not the easiest thing to do. Normally it comes from one of two places: either too much to say or writers block. I think it’s easy to say right now it’s coming from the first… too much to say. But the reality is that there is so much to talk about and so much to share with our community.
In this week’s portion, Moses went to the people and tried to talk to them about leaving Egypt. The text said that they could not hear Moses because they were קֹּ֣צֶר ר֔וּחַ, their spirits were crushed. That feeling is most likely not a foreign one for any of us. Over our lifetimes, we will experience and confront times when we feel down and worn and unable to see past our sorrows. That is not a critique of us but rather a reality. A life well lived is a life that involves adversity, struggles, and dare I say, sadness as well. With that said, we each need to find a way out of that state of being. We all need to find ways to light candles and extinguish darkness. If we try hard enough, we’ll find that at times just the work of fighting the angst and hurt is enough to uplift our spirits.
The question is what is your light or your inspiration that helps bring back your spirit? In thinking about my answer, I think about the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. His vision of the world was not about the now but about the future. Yes, he would have liked to snap his fingers and make everything as it should be, but he recognized it was not that simple. So instead of that stance, he often took the long view. He often expressed his desire to see a world in the future that looked better than the world of the now. That is why his most famous of speeches, the “I Have a Dream” speech is about dreaming and about children and the world they’ll get to see and live in.
My light comes from Ayelet and from Galit, our daughters. My light comes from them because they do not get crushed like I do and they do not accept the world as it is. They are my light because their joy and happiness is pure and real. They are my light because inside each of them is my chance to fix the ills of society and to do my part to make our world a bit more just and a bit more Godly.
This week we celebrated Galit’s first birthday. It’s so hard to believe that a year ago today Carrie and I were on the phone for 75 minutes discussing her. We had received the call from the adoption agency that there was a baby for us and they asked if we were going to say yes. We had just quit our jobs and we had so much on our plates. But this felt right and it was right. Our 75-minute conversation yielded so many questions and so many fears. And at the same time, it yielded our agreeing that we had the opportunity to live our dream and to fill our house and we couldn’t pass that up. It’s hard to believe that just a year ago tonight Carrie and I went to Target to buy a car seat and other essentials for Galit as we had nothing left from Ayelet’s baby years. It’s hard to believe that a year ago Carrie, Ayelet and I went to bed a family of three (Ayelet slept in our bed that night) and were trying to figure out names for this new creation that was coming into our lives.
The reason I’m saying all of this is to say that Carrie and I suffered extensively through the years with crushed spirits. We heard the word “no” way too many times and every time it broke our hearts anew. But we persevered and made it through all the adversity and a year ago we were rewarded for our perseverance and for our ability to see past our crushed spirits. A year ago, we were able to make Ayelet a big sister and we were able to become parents a second time around. We could have given up, nobody would have faulted us for that. But we had a dream and we had a purpose and we had a drive and we managed to somehow make it work in the end.
I wish I could say that the dark times are behind us. I wish I could say our community, our country and our world are all bouncing back… But I know that is false and I know that we have hard times ahead. But at the same time, I can say without any doubt that we can never give up our hope. That we must see that we have so much we can do and giving up will not help us to achieve that. When we are broken and looking for the light and we need to get past this dark period in our lives, all we need to do is look to the children and to the future because they are all the light that we need.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Hearshen
