Weekly D'var Torah

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As we pray for our friends and family in Israel whose lives over the past two weeks have been, as my daughter writes me, “pure hell”, it is difficult to make any sense or find clarity in the events around us.  Golda Meir, fabled Israeli Prime Minister, famously said about old age:
 
My dear, old age is like an airplane flying in a storm. Once you're in it there's nothing you can do. You can't stop a plane, you can't stop a storm, you can't stop time. So you might as well take it easy, with wisdom.
 
Golda may as well have been talking about tough times in general.  Sometimes it’s not the tough times themselves that become the problem but people’s reactions.  Panic, uncertainty and anxiety break us down and in those times, the lowest parts of ourselves, of humanity, can be loosed upon the world.
 
This is surely what happens in this week's Torah portion, Parshat Korach, where, facing a forty-year journey through the wild, the Jewish people rebel against Moses and Aaron and seek one last time to return to the false security of Egyptian slavery.  How does the Torah portion of the Great Rebellion end?  Not in blood and death.  Not in pain and submission.  It ends in flowers.  G-d provides a final sign that it is through enduring the journey, through the guidance of Torah and Mitzvot as embodied in Moses, Aaron and Miriam, that Israel will attain its destiny.  Aaron’s staff, along with the staves of the other tribal elders, is placed overnight in the Holy of Holies, the section of the Tabernacle containing the Ark of the Covenant.  In the morning, Aaron’s staff has blossomed, bearing leaves, flowers and almonds, the symbol of G-d’s promises fulfilled.  

I recently joined other members of the Morris County Human Relations Commission for a Juneteenth Commemoration, celebrating the end of slavery in America in 1865.  We attended a screening of the documentary Sense of Urgencytracing the healing journey of mother, wife, daughter and attorney Queen Stewart, through advanced cancer back not only to health but a degree of fulfillment and joy that she had not imagined possible on the grim day of her diagnosis.  Queen documented her journey through short videos on her cell phone of the darkest days of treatment when nothing was certain, and on the way, she decided to reclaim her life.
 
This very directed young woman realized that in her drive to succeed professionally and personally, she had left behind her artistic/creative powers.  She took a stand up comedy class and struck back at her illness through humor, self-disclosure and openness.  She also began to record original songs and set lyrics of her friends and relatives to music.  Incredibly and courageously, Queen transformed herself not despite the ordeal she was experiencing but through it to a higher self of joy, life, celebration. Following watching the movie, meeting Queen and her family was so moving.  Queen’s personal experience was infused with the historical experience of African Americans, the unspeakable suffering and struggle and the triumphs that are the ongoing odyssey we study and celebrate on Juneteenth, a holiday that has much to teach us all as Americans. 

The message?  We can choose to seize the staff of our own life’s journey no matter how difficult.  We can find the nurturance to grow, become, learn and renew ourselves.  We can find the seeds of renewal within ourselves and transform the hardest times into times of transcendence and even joy.   We can grow our own flower. Kein Yehi Ratzon- May it be G-d’s will- Shalom Al Yisrael.

Queen Stewart, Professor Cliff Dawkins and Rabbi Rudin 

Recent Run for Their Lives rally in support of our hostages