Fear Blinds Us

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This week’s Torah portion, Vayechi, the last Torah portion the book of Bereshit, Genesis, tells the story of Jacob’s death. Jacob, our ancestor, knows that the end is near, and so he calls his 12 sons together for one last time.

Jacob has had a terribly hard life. He had to run away from the home he loved, in fear for his life*. He had to bury his dear wife, Rachel. He spent many years believing he had lost his beloved son, Joseph. Now, he’s sick (and, according to tradition, he was the first man to ever become sick before dying, so I match that he must have been confused and fearful, and undoubtedly in pain). And, even worse, he’s finishing his life in the land of Egypt. He and his family were saved from starvation in Canaan, true, but he is living his last days in a kind of exile from his home, and from our holy land.

 * The fact that his flight was of his own doing didn’t make it any easier for him.

As his sons gather around him, he begins addressing them by saying, “Come together, that I may tell you what is to befall you in the days to come.” (Genesis 49:1). According to a midrash (an ancient rabbinic story), as those words imply, Jacob was intending to tell his sons their future. But, the Shechina, God’s closest presence, departed from him in that moment, and he was no longer able to prophesy.

Why? Why did he lose access to God, and to prophecy? Many sages give the simple, obvious answer that God just didn’t want him telling anyone the future. Because, the future is always meant to be unknown. But, Rabbi Noah Farkas reads it differently. He proposes that it was something inside of Jacob himself which pushed away the Shechina, and which took away his ability to see the future. It was his fear, and his brokenness.

His fear, and his brokenness, kept him away from God, and took away his ability to see the future clearly. That’s the truth. Our fear, and our brokenness, can keep us away from God, and can take away our ability to see the future clearly.

There is so much to fear, right now. In general, the world seems to be on fire, and on the brink of something much worse. You just have to open the news to know what I’m talking about. That’s true for everyone, but is particularly, acutely true for those of us in the Jewish community. The rise of anti-Semitism, and the recent rash of terrible, horrific attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions, have all of us worried, most of us afraid, and some of us panicked.

The danger is real. The physical danger, to be sure, is real. We’d be foolish and naïve to not be worried. But, arguably, the real danger is different. It may not be as scary, but it’s more present. More likely. We’re in danger of losing our ability to dream, our ability to be brave. We’re in danger of losing our ability to see a future that’s worthy of us, and of our heritage.

The truth is that, in all likelihood, we are safe. Physically, at least. I’m not suggesting that we do so, but if we were to drop all of our security measures, odds are we’d make it through this Shabbat, and every foreseeable Shabbat, with no problem. We know that the 24 hour national, worldwide, new cycle makes the world seem more dangerous than it really is — every time anything happens, anywhere, we hear about it, endlessly, for days and weeks, and so it starts to feel and seem as if that horror is happening everywhere, all the time. It’s not. I’m not minimizing the horror of the attacks which have happened when I say that, on whole, the world is still a very safe place, especially for those of us sitting in synagogues tonight. Most of us are not in any real physical danger, thank God.

But, if we start acting as if we are, if we start acting too strongly out of fear, if we start pulling back, if we start leading with defense, and putting up walls around our community, and barring our doors, if we huddle and shelter rather than reaching outward, then we’re hurting ourselves. We’re damaging our ability to create holiness in our lives, and in this world.

Of course, actual, physical harm would be unthinkably horrific. Please don’t hear me saying otherwise. But I firmly, deeply believe, that that kind of harm is incredibly unlikely. It probably just won’t happen to us. But, what will happen if we stop trusting other people? What will happen if we stop trusting each other? What will happen if we let ourselves be cowed into living our lives through the lens of fear? Especially since a lens of fear always becomes, sooner, rather than later, a lens of suspicion, and of hatred. What kind of world can we build, when we believe we’re living in a world like that?

We have to ask ourselves not just how do we survive, but why do we survive? What are we here to do?

I think that our job is to bring holiness into this world. I’m not always exactly sure what that means, and am really sure how, precisely, we can do it. And, I know that people will have wildly different answers to that, and myriad different ways of bringing holiness to life. Many won’t even use those words, although I’d argue that they may still be engaged in holy work.

At the end of each day, we have to ask ourselves not just what we do to survive, but what we did because we survived. Not just whether we are still in the world, but how the world is better for my having been in it.

May we never have cause to fear for our lives. May we never have cause to fear, at all. But, when we do fear, may we have the strength to live in holy defiance of that fear. May God’s closest presence never depart from us, and may we always live with our eyes open, looking ahead to a future, to a world redeemed.

This is a version of a sermon given on Shabbat, January 10, 2020