"Our best days are ahead." — Rabbi Lizzi On Facing Uncertainty

At our Virtual Friday Night Shabbat service on June 16th, Rabbi Lizzi explored how our self-doubt can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann 
so there is a famous Jewish folk tale of a king, who had a beloved ring. Stop me if you've heard this one. Maybe it was a Ruby, maybe it was a sapphire. But it was pure and clear it was it was a gem. And he would admire it every day. And he would polish it and place it down on a little stand where it rested when he wasn't actively admiring it. And one day, he picked up the ring, and was horrified to see that there was a crack in it at the center of the stone running right down to the bottom. And he called on every gem ologists in the land, and no one could fix it. And he was distraught, and he offered a great reward to anybody who could fix the crack and make it disappear. No luck. Until one person, of course, because it's a Jewish folk tale, this person is a rabbi. In any case, someone with no stone cutting experience, but who is very wise, comes and says, I think I can help you. And he says, but that you're going to need to trust me. And the king was in such a state. He said, please just make my ring beautiful again. And the wise person took the ring home, and a week later brought it back, and with trepidation presented it before the king with trepidation knowing that she had done something that might not be rewarded. So the king looked at the ring. And a smile slowly spreads across his face. And he says you did not restore my rings, former beauty. You made it even more beautiful. How had she done this? Well, rather than try to erase the crack, she turned the crack into the stem of a beautiful rose that she etched into the top of the gem, creating more of the very thing that the king thought that he couldn't stand. Putting it together in a way he couldn't have possibly imagined creating something more beautiful than he could have possibly imagined. And this is a classic Jewish folk tale meant to teach a lesson that is evident in this week's Torah portion as well. And that is if we try to return things to the way that they were to go backwards in time to try to achieve a result that might have been true in the past, although honestly probably wasn't. Nonetheless, we will only discover disappointment and unhappiness. Not to mention we prevent ourselves from moving forward toward a different future than the past and toward a door through which possibilities exist that we can't yet imagine. So, how this appears in this week's parsha is that many chapters ago, in the book of Exodus, you may remember the Israelites have been liberated from Egypt. And the text goes out of its way to say that God took them on a round about route from Egypt to the Promised Land. Right? The journey from Egypt to Israel is about 11 days on foot at most. However, in in God's route, it was going to take months, if not over a year to get there. And the reason God gives God shares God's inner monologue is it because God was concerned that at the sight of something uncomfortable, despite all the pain they had endured in Egypt, they would turn around and run back to Egypt rather than face the unknown of the wilderness and the discomfort of it. God or you know how I like to say the character called God in the Torah, who is leading these people, training them day by day for their task of inheriting the land of Israel. God wanted to create a people that was brave and resilient and unafraid to embrace a future that was going to be fundamentally different from their past. And you know what? their past was right, God took them a long way to distance them from the pain and oppression of Egypt. Because God wanted them to envision and embrace a fully different future. So God navigates them off, you know, through the Red Sea on dry land, and drowns their enemies before their eyes. God reveals God's self at Sinai, God feeds the Israelites mana in the desert for months over a year, you would think you would think that this people would be primed to do whatever brave thing. God is setting them up for feeling that they are ready for anything like they have a partner and an advocate in God and Moses, their leader. And it turns out that God's concern was very well founded. Sadly, unfortunately, because this week, in the book of Numbers, we see a pivotal moment unfold, like the slow motion train wreck that God predicted. And of course, after this incident, these Israelites do not merit to enter the promised land, they will never see it. So God knows a little something about human nature. And as the Israelites are poised, you know, to stand on the cusp of entering the land of Israel. They send spies in to go scout it out and bring back a report so they know what to expect there. And what happens next is they come back with the report. And it's beautiful, and it's grant, and they're terrified. And they say, We can't do it, we can't do it, and they start crying. And they start spreading rumors and saying things like, this is the country that devours its inhabitants. All the people we saw were huge, that were huge. And we looked like grasshoppers in our eyes, and we looked like grasshoppers to them. If only we had died in the land of Egypt, they just ratchet it up line after line if only we had died in the land of Egypt. Or if only we might die right now, in this wilderness. Why is God taking us carting us off to fall by the sword, they say, our wives and our children will be carried off? It would be better for us to go back to Egypt. Let us go back to Egypt. Yes, they say let us go back to Egypt.

Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann  
So how, how often in a moment of uncertainty, or struggle, have you just wished you could go back to a more comfortable time, to a time when what you're dealing with now was not part of your life, when you knew what was coming? That's understandable, you know, you can relate to them. But I want to note something here that is very much present in this story. And I think is often present, when we envision going back in time, and that is false assumptions. false assumptions. These people have seen some things with their eyes, they saw and actually brought back some very big fruit. Some really big grapes like grapes, the size of apples or watermelons. They saw some big people. They saw some fortified walled cities. However, they assume that these people see them as tiny as squishable little grasshoppers. And they assume that the people in these walled cities will want to devour and destroy them. But there's no actual evidence of this. My do, in fact, Rashi comments that a walled city is actually more evidence of fearful people, people who are scared, rather than people who are looking for a fight. You know, perhaps these people equally scared of strangers, especially the famous children of Israel, traveling with the God of Israel, perhaps these folks might have been very motivated to make peace with these with these people with these new people. But they are not given that opportunity. The fear and insecurity driving the Israelites and the leaders and heads of their tribes prevents the possibility of what could have been if they had actually investigated, listened, learned. Instead of assuming their worst fears were true. How often do we assume our worst fears are true? Right, it has been said to assume is to make an A S S of you and me. If you haven't heard that one before, I want you to send me an email to assume is to make an ass of you and me, and there's a Midrash and actual Midrash that makes this point less profanely so in Midrash Tahoma it says as much God says to the Israelites in this Midrash that you see yourselves as grasshoppers that much I can forget But you say, and we appeared as grasshoppers in their eyes. Now you have gone too far. Who told you? You didn't look like angels in their eyes? Who told you you didn't look like angels in their eyes? I don't know why this Midrash like makes me want to cry. I love this Midrash I love it because it recognizes that it's natural for us to feel insecure in the face of the unknown, to feel small to wonder if we will fit in. Well, how often we walk into a room and people are laughing? And like your immediate thought is what's on my face? Are they laughing at me? Right? It's natural as if you've as Orenburg writes, This is how human beings begin life, small and powerless in the presence of immense powers. And this is perhaps how we, in fantasy remain. But, but to project one's own fantasy, onto the other, is to limit the possibilities of fantasy and otherness. The Midrash allows, she says, For the power of fantasy, even for the terrified fantasy of the helpless little person to limit the equivalent freedom of the imagination of the other, however, is to presume too far, what God is particular about, she writes, is preserving some sense of the difference, and therefore the possibility of possibility. I know that's a dense sentence, but being inclined to look backward, because you can't imagine a way forward is very tempting. It is a very tempting illusion, right? In moments when we are unsure or feeling nervous or insecure, our imagination can run wild, and convince us of things that are patently false, but feel true to our fear. And our imagination, therefore, prevents us from imagining a better future by telling us how good things were before, and how justified We are therefore, in trying to get back there. You know, like thoughts, like as I age, rather than embracing the challenges and possibilities and opportunities of my aging, body and mind, I think to myself, if I could just get back, the body I had 10 years ago, if I could just make my face look a little younger. Right? I could just hold on to what I had. Were in romance, right? Rather than imagine that love may, in fact, be in your future. We look backwards, we per separate on past relationships. Maybe he and I never should have broken up. We're thinking about people years later, wondering about them. You know, maybe we could have worked through our issues, maybe we still should. If I could only go back and do things differently, then I'd have the options I really want now, I wouldn't be so scared or sad or unsure. Essentially, let's turn around and go back to Egypt. And it's a spiritual trap, a very compelling spiritual trap. You know, slogans like Make America Great Again, make my gemstone beautiful. Again, these are backwards looking, trying to take us back to a mythic past and tricking us into assuming that our future can't be great, without imitating the past unless it imitates the past. But teaching our history in a way that sanitizes the past and covers over what made it complicated and oppressive and embarrassing for us, encourages us not to look forward but to look backward toward Egypt, imagining that it was really great back there. So Monday is June 19, otherwise known as Juneteenth, the day that in 1865, the slaves in Galveston, Texas were finally made aware that two years earlier, there had been this thing called the emancipation proclamation that had determined that they were free. It took two years for the civil war to end but then another few months on top of that, for them to get this message because the slave masters in Texas wanted to get one more harvest season out of their slaves. And so kept them in the dark about history marching forward. And it strikes me that white supremacy in this country, and truthfully, legally enshrining any kind of supremacy of one people over another race or nationality or gender or sexuality, of people relies on the rationale that we know their mind their intentions. And we must control them because they threaten us. And this kind of thinking keeps us in Egypt, trying to control the environment control other people keep our surroundings familiar, so we don't have to grow. So we don't have to face the unknown. Because we assume the worst intentions of the people who are not us, like the Israelites, then we justify choices that keep us focused on the past, and tether us to the past, which prevents us from moving forward. With the benefit of hindsight, it's a subtle difference, it is a subtle difference living in the past versus moving forward. With the benefit of hindsight, like on a personal level, there is nothing wrong with a little looking backward, my son turned six today, and my phone delivered me a wonderful slideshow set to totally appropriate music, of showing me pictures from June 16 of years past going back to when I was a single person, and then me with a boyfriend, maybe with a different boyfriend, and then with my, you know, with Henry, and then 10 days before our wedding on June 26 2016, you know, and then a year later, with a little tiny newborn. And then the next six years on this day of watching this little guy grow now he's going into first grade, and I enjoyed that that's, it's fun to be nostalgic. It's when we start to stray into the territory of wishing we were back in that past, wishing that you were the person you were 10 years ago, or five years ago or two years ago, or that the people around you were the person they were 10 years ago or five years ago or two years ago. That's what's spiritually corrosive. When we start to position ourselves, so that our necks are facing backward looking, well, our bodies cannot help but move forward because that's the only direction they move.

Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann  
This is a recipe for hurting ourselves, and the others who we try to bring along on this reckless, backward looking forward moving errand. And if we do it as a society, it's like a mass hallucination. Because as long as we're looking backward longingly, we can't accurately assess our present plan for a future, imagine the future a different future, one that takes into account where we've been, and where we are now. And where we could go. That could and should be different from where we have been looking backward. Excuse me, looking forward, rather than looking backward, allows us the creativity and spaciousness to imagine carving a rose into the gym instead of perseverating on how we might erase the crack. So, I want to bless us during this month of pride, and during this Juneteenth holiday weekend, to know that our best days are ahead of us. Even if we don't know exactly how we will get there. It requires standing on the cusp of the unknown, which we are in every moment. And being willing to step into the breach with confidence and faith that what we don't know yet about our own capabilities and about other people in our world may actually reveal more connection, more commonality, more strength, more resilience, more creativity, and more cause for hope in the future than we could have ever imagined. But it's a gamble. And so in closing to quote, author Rebecca Solnit, in her gorgeous little book hope in the dark, to hope is a gamble. It's to bet on your futures, on your desires on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous. And yet, it is the opposite of fear. For To live is to risk. All of us are cracked gemstones, in one way or another. Certainly our country is but let us be the ones who are creative and brave enough to craft beauty around those cracks day by day, week by week, year by year, decade by decade in a way that redeems all those cracks and redeems us in the process.