January,2021 Megillah
RABBI'S NOTES
Dramatic times in Torah-reading land! We’re finishing the Joseph story, which also concludes the book of Genesis. Joseph, via the deceit of his brothers, has landed in Egypt, where he experienced the harshest fall and the most meteoric rise in fortune. His brothers have journeyed there from Canaan begging for bread. There is a reckoning, a reconciliation (of sorts; one wonders…). Joseph is magnanimous. He sends for their aged father, Jacob, and settles them all in splendor and plenty down in Egypt.
Unbeknownst to all the characters (except, one might say, God), that is the last time in Torah that anyone will be in the Promised Land for more than the briefest visit. The rest of the Torah narrative takes place in slavery in Egypt and then on the long, bumpy journey through the midbar, the wilderness, the desert. Next Simchat Torah, when we finally arrive at the end of the scroll, we will leave the Israelites at the edge of the Jordan River, looking across to Canaan. Moses will die just short of the finish line. And we’ll roll back to the beginning of the story and start the journey again
Liminality. Between-ness. Crossing over. Remembering good old days and looking ahead to promised lands. In Torah, and ever so much more in life, the action is in the midbar. As I write this, COVID vaccines are traveling the country and world in quickly-manufactured super-coolers. Committees are urgently delineating stages for the roll-out, wrestling with impossible ethical dilemmas as they do: all first responders or just those on COVID wards? Everyone 75 and over or just those in nursing homes? What about prisoners? How serious does a pre-existing medical condition have to be? Meanwhile, a soon-to-be former president is disintegrating on the world stage, holding hostage the economic relief for millions. On Christmas people are traveling or not traveling, hosting or not hosting. We anticipate a surge-upon-a-surge of COVID infections in the weeks to come. The action is in the midbar.
For some of us, this year has been excruciating: we have been ill or have lost beloveds to the virus. We have closed businesses or struggled heroically to keep them open. We were poor before and have become further impoverished. Some of us have struggled with crippling depression or isolation. At the same time, many of us are dealing with less painful issues.
We’re in our houses way more than ever before. We’re letting stuff accumulate or we’re getting rid of it. We’re trying to figure out how to get some exercise. We’re doomscrolling. We’re drinking more alcohol. We’re hearing from people in our pasts.
We’re starting projects, completing them, not completing them, losing interest. We’re making resolutions, keeping them, breaking them. We’re looking anew at our relationships. We’re remembering things we haven’t thought about in a long time. We’re getting more comfortable with our computers. Or not. We’re missing and longing for much. We’re secretly loving not having to get dressed to go out and see people.
Whatever else this time is, it is incredibly interesting. It is thick. It is weird. As I begin to imagine that the COVID crisis, and possibly the Washington crisis as well, will recede at some point, I find myself wanting to…what is the word…? It’s not “savor” exactly, but notice deeply, pay attention, enjoy this time not in the way I enjoy a vacation, but in the way of being in a complicated, scary, exciting story. As I start to believe that sometime the thickness of this time will be behind us, I don’t want to miss what is happening now.
In saying this I certainly mean no disrespect to people who are suffering terribly. Though it makes me think about a tool for pain relief that I have experimented with when I have a headache. I don’t get migraines, and my headaches, while not infrequent, aren’t generally devastating, but they do hurt and I can be pretty miserable. Occasionally, if I remember to, I try to pay close, curious attention to the pain. Where exactly in my head is it? Can I touch the spot? Where does it not hurt? Is the pain sharp? Steady or throbbing? Hot or cold? On the surface or deep inside? In my limited experience, this attention doesn’t make the headache go away, but it changes my relationship to it, I don’t enjoy it, but it becomes kind of interesting.
I used to know a brilliant Jewish calligrapher named Marilyn Andrews. (Marilyn, if you’re out there, fond greetings!) One of her pieces has driven me a little crazy over the years, and I find myself thinking about it lately. Surrounded by beautiful flourishes are the words GODE IS IN THE DETAILS. Yes, “GODE.” Misspelled. Messed up. Distorted. Not how I expect to see it. “In the details.”
Someday this may be a story we tell, like the Purim story or the exodus from Egypt, but right now we’re deep in the details. With GODE. One of these days, when I’ve been on Zoom for 12 hours and haven’t left my house in a week and everything is a mess and I’ve been picking up piles of junk and setting them down on top of other piles and it is yet again too late to make the phone call I’ve been resolving to make all week and our fridge is a hellscape and I have to make some dinner out of it and so on—you know, just another day wandering in the midbar—I hope I might start looking at it all with a different eye. I hope I might even savor the weirdness of the stage we’re in, the Torah-like mix of drama and banality, and the sense that it is a privilege, or at least a trip, to be alive in these times.
I hope you are all safe and stay safe. I hope you are all well and stay well. As we begin to feel that this won’t last forever, I hope we find time to reflect on the chapter we are in
