Friday Shabbat Shalom

G-d said to Abram “Go, you, from your land, your birthplace, and your father’s household to the land that I will show you…” We need to understand the matter here which is presented to us in “Yesod Ha’Avodah (Part 4; a, b) in the name of Rabbi Isaac Luria: “No individual is similar to another from the time he/she is created onward, and no single person can repair (in the world) what is meant for another to repair.

Noah and family must have witnessed inconceivable carnage. Everyone they knew died and they drifted aimlessly for over a year, presumably amidst floating corpses and other horrors. The world was a wasteland that they had to rebuild with the nightmarish memories of survivors. It's no wonder that Noah planted a vineyard and drowned his sorrows (Gen. 9:20-21).

There are words that change the world, none more so than two sentences that appear in the first chapter of the Torah:  Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

If I were to ask you if you thought Orthodox Jewish belief supports only a literal interpretation of the creation story in the Torah, you might be inclined to say yes. After all, don't Orthodox Jews believe that the Torah is an accurate historical account dictated by G-d to Moshe Rabbeinu/Moses our Teacher on Har Sinai/Mt. Sinai?

Sukkot is tonight, and I'm not really feeling the approaching Zman Simchateinu (the season of our joy) all that much. Between the coronavirus keeping us all more isolated and unable to host many people on the holiday to the presidential debate and this horrifying election cycle (just in time for Halloween- who needs artificial scariness?!?), I'm having a difficult time 'getting my joy on.'

We’ve all been there. We’re on a video conference, and someone will be trying to make some point, but we can’t hear him or her. Or we’re talking but no one is hearing is us… So all the participants on the conference yell – in unison – “unmute yourself!”

Jon Stewart of Daily Show fame was fond of comparing the Jewish holidays to secular ones. He once quipped about Rosh Hashanah, “On the secular New Year, most people wake up New Year’s Day and regret the events of the preceding evening. The Jews just skip that part and go right to regret!” While I wouldn’t call Jon Stewart a great scholar of Jewish history, his humorous comment strikes a chord that is resonant during these times.

This past summer I had the great joy of kayaking in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. As my kayak would slip over the dark waters of the lakes, I would often peer down into the water, keeping myself quite still, so that I might catch a glimpse of the life below. Sometimes, when the light was just right, I was able to witness schools of fish darting around. Twice I saw large Muskies poised in the midst of a hunt, as they hid behind a column of water plants.