We Are In This Together
Va-yishlah 5780 / December 12, 2019
גַּם כִּי־אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת
לֹא־אִירָא רָע כִּי־אַתָּה עִמָּדִי׃
Gam ki elech b’gei tzalmavet, lo ira rah, ki atah imadi
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no harm, for You are with me;
I have been singing this verse from the 23rd psalm over and over this past week.
גַּם כִּי־אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
These words have been on my heart as I have mourned those killed in Jersey City on Tuesday, in a shooting targeting the Jewish community at a kosher supermarket-taking the lives of
Leah Mindel Ferencz,
one of the shop’s owners, a young mother, an anchor of the growing Hasidic community in Jersey City, Moshe Deutsch, a twenty-four year old rabbinical student, Douglas Miguel Rodriguez, an immigrant from Ecuador, who worked at the market, who died as he helped other victims get to safety, and Jersey City Police Detective Joseph Seals, a father of five.
Devastating losses in a diverse community, shattered by hatred.
גַּם כִּי־אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
לֹא־אִירָא רָע כִּי־אַתָּה עִמָּדִי׃
I will fear no harm, for You are with me;
But the truth is, I am afraid.
After recent shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, Antisemitic attacks in Brooklyn and Antisemitic grafitti on a synagogue in Washington DC, I am afraid.
I am afraid of the poison of white supremacy in this country.
I am afraid of the unchecked access to guns in this country.
I am afraid of fringe elements that have been emboldened by the current climate.
I am afraid that there are so many people out there who don’t believe, who don’t know, who refuse to see that –
Jewish people are beautiful, beloved and worthy of dignity and life.
And we are, my people –
We are beautiful.
We are beloved.
We are worthy of dignity and life.
We are resilient.
We are survivors.
From generation to generation,
we robe ourselves in the armor of Torah.
We carry the medicine chest
of our stories and songs.
We cling to the truth that we,
and all human beings,
are woven in the image of God.
We are courageous warriors of love.
We are lovers of peace,
wrestling for blessing,
thirsting for life –
choosing life.
More life.
***
גַּם כִּי־אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
לֹא־אִירָא רָע כִּי־אַתָּה עִמָּדִי׃
I will fear no harm, for You are with me;
We are Yours and we are afraid, God.
Be with us and help us to choose life.
Rashi teaches that King David wrote these words of the 23rd psalm while running away from King Saul, who was determined to murder him. Hiding in the forest, on the brink of starvation, David is paralyzed with fear.
In the midst of all of this, the Holy One gives him a taste of the “World to Come,” a sense that he is not alone, that there is something beyond the peril of the moment, and David is able to press on.
Like David, this week, in our parsha, our patriarch Jacob, is on the run. He, too, is afraid. Jacob sends messengers to discern the intentions of his brother Esau. They return with info that Esau is coming to meet Jacob with four hundred men in tow. Jacob is terrified. The Torah tells us:
וַיִּירָא יַעֲקֹב מְאֹד וַיֵּצֶר לוֹ…
Jacob feared greatly and was distressed. (Genesis 32:8)
Our sages in the midrash ask, “Are not fear and distress identical?
Why does the Torah include both of these phrases?”
They respond, “The meaning must be that ‘Jacob was afraid’ lest he should be killed. וַיִּירָא שֶׁמָּא יֵהָרֵג
‘and he was distressed’ that he might have to kill someone.”
וַיֵּצֶר לוֹ אִם יַהֲרֹג הוּא אֶת אֲחֵרִים
Jacob thought: If Esau proves stronger than I, he might slay me, and if I prove stronger than he, I might slay him…
(Rashi, Genesis Rabbah 76:2, Tanhuma)
Jacob is terrified of losing everything. He is afraid of dying and he is afraid of the moral compromises he might have to make in order to survive. He divides up his family and his flocks in the hopes of minimizing his losses. He prays to God, begging, “Please be with me. I am afraid. Keep your promise to me…”
Then Jacob takes another approach – what Nahum Sarna describes as a “diplomatic initiative.” He sends messengers to shower Esau with valuable gifts of goats, sheep, camels, cows, and donkeys, male and female – tall, grande, venti…you name it…if you are looking for gift ideas for Hanukkah, just take a look at Genesis Chapter 32…
After all of this – Jacob, is left alone, to face his fear and his conscience. The Torah describes a strange being that appears in the night and wrestles with Jacob. When darkness rolls into dawn, the angel insists it’s time to go. Jacob, limping, his hip socket wounded, calls out, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” The being gives Jacob the new name Yisrael – Israel:
Meaning:
One who struggles and prevails.
One who wrestles with beings Divine and human and keeps on keeping on.
And if “name is destiny,”
we, who are called the People Israel,
our destiny is tenacity…
We will endure brokenness in search of blessing.
We will hold both –
the brokenness and the blessings
As we pass through valleys
and cross rivers,
as we reach peaks.
When at last Jacob and Esau meet,
the two embrace,
and Jacob says,
כִּ֣י עַל־כֵּ֞ן רָאִ֣יתִי פָנֶ֗יךָ כִּרְאֹ֛ת פְּנֵ֥י אֱלֹקים
Seeing your face, my brother, is like seeing the face of God.
And Esau says to Jacob,
Let me walk beside you.
***
גַּם כִּי־אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…
לֹא־אִירָא רָע כִּי־אַתָּה עִמָּדִי׃
I will fear no harm, for You are with me;
These words of the 23rd Psalm were on my mind on Tuesday because the morning before the shooting in Jersey City, I shared this verse at a multi-faith summit at Eastern University in celebration of the upcoming release of the film “Just Mercy.”
The film is based on the memoir Just Mercy, written by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer who is an alumnus of Eastern University. Bryan Stevenson grew up in a poor African American family in rural Delaware. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where he founded the Equal Justice Initiative and where he has dedicated his career to helping “the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned.” The book Just Mercy centers on the story of Bryan Stevenson’s relationship with Walter McMillian, a black man who was wrongfully accused of murder and sentenced to death in Alabama in the late 1980’s.
Bryan Stevenson is passionate about helping Americans face the history of our country and see clearly the way the past persists in the present. He worked to establish the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice so that we will tell the story of how this country was built on the stolen bodies and forced labor of enslaved human beings of African descent. So that we will name the humiliation of racial segregation, the terror of lynching and the lethal legacy of racial bias that runs through the justice system. So that we will not forget the two million people who are currently incarcerated in our country, the largest prison population of any country in the world.
And yet in spite of everything, Bryan Stevenson refuses to give up hope –
He insists, “Hopelessness is the enemy of justice.” He teaches that “one way we can sustain hope and advance justice is by getting close to those who are vulnerable.”
“Proximity,” he says, “is a pathway through which we learn the kind of things we need to know to make healthier communities.”
From Bryan Stevenson and from our patriarch Jacob, we learn that proximity, that getting close, that facing our past, and facing one another with open eyes and open hearts can move us from a stance of fear to a place of blessing.
גַּם כִּי־אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת לֹא־אִירָא רָע כִּי־אַתָּה עִמָּדִי׃
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no harm, for You are with me;
I am with you. We are in this together.
This is proximity.
As a Jewish community, we are rightfully afraid in these times of rising Antisemitism.
And we are called to stand with those who are vulnerable within our community and beyond our community.
Instead of letting our fear divide us and immobilize us, how can we extend ourselves to offer and receive blessing?
As we wrestle with loss and injustice, how can our connections to beings Divine and human hold us and give us life?
I want to close with the words of my mentor, Rabbi Rob Scheinberg who leads the United Synagogue of Hoboken, just a few miles down the road from Jersey City. He writes:
“Keep Jersey City in your hearts and your prayers this Shabbat and in the coming days. Think of and pray for the Ferencz family, the Deutsch family, the Seals family, the Rodriguez family. Keep in your hearts and your prayers the Hasidic community of Jersey City, and the entire Jewish community of our region, shaken by yet another act of hatred…
Keep in your prayers this Shabbat the most diverse city within the most diverse county within the most diverse state in the United States.
Keep in your hearts its people from more than 100 countries speaking 75 languages, its mosaic of hundreds of religious institutions representing at least 12 different religions.
Keep in your prayers its leaders who strive to promote justice and equality and to help everyone see that they are mirror images of each other.
And pray that we can work together to bring about a world where each and every person will be able to look in the eyes of any other person, and find a way to communicate to them the message that Jacob communicated to his brother in this week’s Torah portion:”
כִּ֣י עַל־כֵּ֞ן רָאִ֣יתִי פָנֶ֗יךָ כִּרְאֹ֛ת פְּנֵ֥י אֱלֹקים
Seeing your face is like seeing the face of God.
גַּם כִּי־אֵלֵךְ בְּגֵיא צַלְמָוֶת לֹא־אִירָא רָע כִּי־אַתָּה עִמָּדִי׃
