Rabbinic Reflections: Getting grounded

Whiplash seems to be the reality these days. Liberal or conservative, politics have taken abrupt turns this past month. Here in the Brandywine Valley and certainly in the Florida panhandle, weather has shifted dramatically, hot and cold, category 2 to 4. Jewishly (and for schools closing for Jewish High Holy Days) life was filled with stops and starts as the holidays broke up week after week. The abrupt shifts from good times to bad or bad times to good, from celebration to fragility or from somber to jubilant, have filled the fall season and left us aching.

Perhaps because a result of all this commotion was that my Jewish day school just had its first full week of classes now, I felt for the first time a piece of Jewish wisdom embedded in the cycle of Torah reading.

At the close of all the fall holidays in the Jewish calendar, we celebrate the Torah itself. We finish reading the end of Deuteronomy and moments later begin again at the start of Genesis. I love the celebratory dancing, the fanfare, and the sweet treats that accompany Simchat Torah(literally, the “Joy of Torah”) holiday that comes at the end of Sukkot, the Festival of Tabernacles (or “booths”) that follows shortly after the High Holy Days. In my love of Simchat Torahand in my relief as a rabbi in finishing guiding others through the series of holidays, I missed what subtly happens next.

Jewish tradition does not just have us start reading from the beginning again, Jewish tradition grounds us. The grounding is two-fold: on the one hand, we read our origin story, being reminded that Creation is much bigger than any one human’s story; on the other hand, that story is stretched out over the entire book of Genesis and even into Exodus, we barely get to experience tribalism among other peoples until just before slavery in Egypt. The Torah reading, on a weekly cycle, takes us well past the shift to winter, including the Chanukah. Jewish tradition demands that we slow down and see that our experience of the world is not even a grain of sand in the hourglass of history.

This time period is not only devoid of Jewish holiday celebrations, apart from the crucially important weekly rest and reflection of Shabbat; this time period is a call to get grounded. More than understanding that each of us is insignificant in the grand scheme, we are being asked to focus on values. Many of the greatest moral teachings come directly from the flawed and famous family in Genesis.

From Genesis, we learn the importance of stewarding the earth, of being our brother’s keeper, of remaining righteous even when those around us are not, of defending the life of innocents, of honoring commitments, of struggling with our past misdeeds and even with God, and of repairing the wrongs we commit. These lessons and more come through the text all the more so because we are not distracted by swings in physical and emotional experience like the holidays. Jewish life slows down so that we can learn how to be, so that we can be grounded in moral and ethical values that will sustain us no matter what life may bring.

We are, as the saying goes, “cursed to live in interesting times.” I pray that we are able to find our own ways past the recent whiplash and instead into a period of activity grounded in the spirit of values that enrich our lives and make us and our world a better place, so may it be God’s will.

About Rabbi Jeremy Winaker

Rabbi Jeremy Winaker is the executive director of the Greater Philadelphia Hillel Network, responsible for West Chester University, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and other area colleges. He is the former head of school at the Albert Einstein Academy in Wilmington and was the senior Jewish educator at the Kristol Hillel Center at the University of Delaware for four years. Rabbi Winaker lives in Delaware with his wife and three children.

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