Tag: fear

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Sermons

A Contagion of Hope – Tazria/Metzora 5783

A fascinating news story crossed my desk this past week. It was about Chaim Topol, the Israeli actor who died last month at age 87, and was most famous for playing the role of Tevye the Milkman on stage in London and in the 1971 film version of “Fiddler on the Roof.” 

Some of you know that my family is big into musical theater, and this film loomed large in my childhood. I have seen it many times. Topol actually landed the role of Tevye following his appearance in the classic Israeli film from 1964, “Sallaḥ Shabbati,” which captures the tale of mizraḥi immigrants, those who came from Arab countries to Israel in the early years of the State, and the various ethnic and tribal forces in play during that time. When he first arrived in London, Topol could barely speak English, and learned his lines in Fiddler phonetically.

Topol, it turns out, was also a spy, and due to his international fame and the access to certain quarters which it granted, was able to work as a Mossad operative. He had a tiny camera and tape recorder which he always traveled with, and among his most remarkable exploits was an episode where he and famed Israeli spy Peter Zvi Malkin bugged the embassy of an Arab country by setting up what looked like a dentists’ office next door, and then drilling into the embassy through the wall. When the embassy’s security guards heard drilling and came to investigate, Topol was lying in the dentist’s chair and Malkin was pretending to work on his teeth.

Topol’s son, who went public with his father’s spycraft tales, claimed that his father enjoyed the adventure of working as a spy. It certainly makes sense that an actor enjoyed playing multiple types of roles, and “Mossad agent” is a pretty juicy role, even if there is no audience.

It is a great story, capturing the scrappy tenacity of the early years of the State of Israel, which turns 75 years old on Wednesday. But there is also a reminder here that things are not always as they seem.

That is, of course, one of the implicit messages that our bat mitzvah delivered a few moments ago. Things are not always as they seem. What the Torah describes as a skin disease, tzara’at, can be understood as a metaphor for a range of spiritual afflictions. And when we dig closely into the text of the Torah, we see that this is a completely reasonable conclusion. The symptoms of tzara’at as described do not resemble any disease we know today, and it is notable that the person who determines the course of action for an apparent tzara’at infection is not a doctor, but rather a kohen, a priest. And the thing about some spiritual afflictions is that they can spread easily. They are contagious.

One such affliction today which we seem to have in abundance is fear. We have so many things about which to be fearful: Train derailments! Climate change! Political division! Mental illness! Anti-Semitism! Virus outbreaks! Microplastics in our water! The list is long, and the folks in the news and social media biz are great at playing these things up, because they press our buttons and drive us to click on more articles and videos and ironic memes and so forth. And, of course, those things only serve to make us more fearful, creating a feedback loop of negativity.

That fear is clearly a contemporary contagion which spreads far too easily. It makes me want to, in the words of the Psalmist (Ps. 121:1), look up to the mountains and ask, from where will my help come? What will save us from all the modern plagues we face? Who will save us from the fear with which these things are infusing our lives?

The Psalmist answers (v. 2), as you might expect, that our help comes from God. God will save us from fear. And however you define God, there is quite a bit of wisdom in that. 

In challenging times, which for the Jews have been for the last 2600 years or so, we have always leaned into our framework of ritual and ancient wisdom to give us strength, to provide emotional support when we need it, to provide comfort in times of grief and loss. And that support is still available to us today. That is one reason why there are so many people here this morning: not only because we are a congregation that celebrates benot mitzvah, young women who have reached the age of majority, by calling them to the Torah, but also because we are a congregation that meets daily to engage in prayer, such that we can draw strength every day from our ancient poetry and rituals. Because we are a congregation that engages with words of Torah in many ways.

Psalm 121, was one that we recited in Shabbat morning services on October 27, 2018, after we heard the news about what had happened half a mile away, and we continued to recite that Psalm for a long time thereafter.

When I heard last week about the young man in Kansas City, Ralph Yarl, who was shot and wounded when he rang the doorbell at the wrong house, as he was trying to pick up his twin brothers, my mind immediately went to the contagion of fear. Thank God, 16-year-old Ralph is going to make it – he was released from the hospital four days later, and I hope that he succeeds in his goal of studying chemical engineering at Texas A&M University – it’s a great department. (It’s where I received my first Master’s degree, in chemical engineering.)

Unfortunately, 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was not so lucky. After driving up the wrong driveway in upstate New York one week ago, she was shot and killed. The shooter’s attorney has said that the accidental trespassers “created an atmosphere and a fear that there was menace going on.” 

What is truly tragic about both of these case is that some of us are so fearful for our own safety that we absolutely feel like we must shoot first and ask questions later. 

Do we feel so unsafe in our own homes that we answer the door armed? Do we value the lives of others so little that we assume that every interaction is going to go badly? Some believe that the way to prevent innocent people from being killed is to arm even more of us. Might this lead to even greater fear, an even greater preponderance of anxious trigger-finger shootings?

Fear is a contagion.  It multiplies. It spreads.

My wife observes that I’ve been sighing a lot lately. These questions are among the many reasons I keep sighing.

There is a reason that the national anthem of the State of Israel is Hatiqvah, a poem written by the Hebrew poet Naftali Herz Imber in 1878. Hatiqvah tells the story of the hope of the Jewish people:

עוֹד לֹא אַבְדָה תְּקְוַתֵינוּ, הַתִּקְוַה בַּתְ שְׁנוֹת אַלְפַּיִים

Od lo avdah tiqvateinu / Hatiqvah bat shenot alpayim*
We have not yet lost our hope / The hope of 2000 years

The source of the phrase “Od lo avdah tiqvateinu,” we have not yet lost our hope, is found in the haftarah we read two weeks ago, on Shabbat Ḥol Hamoed Pesaḥ, from the book of Ezekiel, in that prophet’s vision of the valley of dry bones, which are re-animated by God. And once they are a standing crowd of people, the entirety of the House of Israel, they say, “יָבְשׁ֧וּ עַצְמוֹתֵ֛ינוּ וְאָבְדָ֥ה תִקְוָתֵ֖נוּ נִגְזַ֥רְנוּ לָֽנוּ׃” “Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, we are doomed.” (Ezek. 37:11)

And then Ezekiel to reminds them that they will be returning to their home, to the land of Israel.

While this vision is understandably a favorite of Zionists, it is also a more universal metaphor. When all hope is lost; when we feel besieged and desiccated and despairing and metaphorically far from home, there is always hope for redemption. There is always hope for return. It is a comforting thought. Things are not always as they seem.

I wish that hope were as infectious as fear. I wish that we could look at the world and not see it falling apart, not see only decline and danger and poison and guns and threats to democracy at every turn. That miserable stuff is simply too easy to see all around us. 

I wish instead that we had a healthier spiritual affliction, one which causes us to see the good in others, the successes of contemporary life, the ways that technology continues to improve our lives, the ways in which we navigate the challenges of the current moment. We do not have to be in the valley of dry bones; we can instead emphasize the redemptive qualities of the world we have right now.

If I had one hope for humanity, it would be that, rather than inclining toward fear of the others around us, we should rather give the benefit of the doubt, and incline toward hope. I pray for optimism to be contagious.

And I am going to go out on a limb here when I say that, while my understanding of God is quite unorthodox and does not necessarily fit the descriptions which come to us from our ancient literature, I firmly hold that it is our willingness to perceive God’s presence in our lives and ourselves that compels us to reach out to one another in love, to see the beauty in all others, to feel the occasionally hidden, yet undeniable yetzer hatov, inclination to good in all people, and in humanity. That perception of God breathes the impetus of love into our being. 

Things are not always as they seem; our fear might mask our hope. But I have to believe that that hope is there, and is infectious, and that with God’s presence, we will be redeemed from fear once again. May there soon be a contagion of hope among us.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Shabbat morning, 4/22/2023.)

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Festivals Sermons

The Seder as a Model for Resilience – First Day Pesaḥ 5783

Last Wednesday, I was working out on an elliptical machine at the JCC when I received a text message. It was an EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION, in all caps, from the Jewish Federation Security Team. When I clicked on the included link, I landed at a page which screamed in red letters, “***This is a CRITICAL Notification***,” and explained that there was a BluePoint activation at Central Catholic, and that police were on the scene, and students were being evacuated to Rodef Shalom.

I figured that there was not much I could do, being there at the JCC in my workout clothes and all sweaty, so I went on with my workout. About a half-hour later, I received a notification that the event was a hoax, and as the day progressed, we all learned that a bunch of schools were targeted across Pennsylvania, and that they fell victim to a particular kind of terror attack known as “swatting.”

Of course, it was quite frightening for the students who were evacuated, or who were in lockdown in the building. The next day, I spoke to our friend Rev. Canon Natalie Hall, the rector at Church of the Redeemer on Forbes, and as it turns out, two of her kids were actually in locked-down classrooms. Her teenager was texting her from a closet, and as you can imagine, she was terrified. (A similar event happened at Beth Shalom a few years back when a 3-year-old accidentally hit the panic button and activated the system. Everybody in the building went into lockdown.)

I am grateful that we have systems that are designed to protect us. I am grateful that the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh has poured money into setting up these security systems; you should know that if you trigger one of the BluePoint alarm devices in the building, for Police, Medical, or Fire, not only do the emergency responders know where you are located within the building, but also everybody else who works in a Jewish institution knows that something is happening at Beth Shalom. I had no idea that we were also connected to the system at Central Catholic.

For the children who had to go into lockdown, what happened on Wednesday was completely real. They did not know, at least for a certain number of minutes, that this was a hoax. They were told that it was an active shooter. 

In our zeal to prevent terrorists from actually (God forbid) attacking people, some bad actors have discovered that they do not need to actually attack anybody (God forbid) to cause very real fear and harm. The police were tied up for hours. (Even so, somewhat ironically, I still managed to get a parking ticket, because I forgot to pay for parking at the JCC lot that morning.)

And unfortunately, it seems like fears are multiplying upon each other these days. Parents are afraid of what ideas their kids might encounter, or not encounter, in schools. Religious groups are afraid of growing secularism. Everybody’s afraid that they may be called out online if they say something that contradicts contemporary orthodoxies. Great anxiety now surrounds any type of election. We are all afraid of the water and the air and what might be in it. 

And, of course, here in Pittsburgh, some of us are quite anxious about the upcoming trial for the person who murdered 11 precious souls down the street from here on October 27, 2018. And not just for the details of the testimony, which, I am certain, will be quite unsettling. 

I am personally concerned that one unpleasant sight to which we may be treated will be people from extremist groups protesting the trial outside the courthouse. I hope those people do not show up, but as detestable as they are, they of course have the right to parade their hatred and anti-Semitism before us all, and they may just do that.

Fear, persecution, anxiety, terrorism, hatred, violence, genocide. Sadly, none of these things are new to Jewish life. We acknowledge the many ways we have suffered throughout our history at multiple points on the Jewish calendar, and Pesaḥ is a time that is especially heavy in this regard. The fear, and ultimate triumph, of our people is found all over the haggadah. Just a few examples:

  • In telling the story, the extended midrash on “Arami oved avi,” (“My father was a wandering Aramean,” Devarim / Deuteronomy 26:5-8) details the affliction, misery, and oppression which our ancestors suffered at the hands of the Egyptians. The midrash offers descriptions of the work as futile and the taskmasters as brutal oppressors who beat and terrorized and otherwise layered cruel punishments on our ancestors to maintain the level of fear and subjugation.
  • Elsewhere in the haggadah, we sing of the “ḥad gadya,” the single baby goat, who symbolizes the poor, enslaved Jews, and suffers at the hands of various, ever-larger and more dangerous predators until finally redeemed by the Qadosh Barukh Hu / Holy, Blessed One.
  • And then, of course, there is the moment when we “pour out our wrath” upon our oppressors, indulging in a rare, “Inglourious Basterds”-style fantasy of overpowering our tormentors, as we open our doors to beckon to Eliyahu haNavi, who will redeem us from all present and future harm.

For all the many centuries we have been telling this story, we have been subject to anti-Semitic persecution, and our current moment is no different. The Anti-Defamation League recently reported a significant jump in anti-Semitic incidents in 2022, nearly 3,700. That is a 36% increase over the year before, and a fourfold increase since 2014, when there were 912 incidents reported. 

And put in that context, the seder tells the story of Jewish resilience. We have continued doing what we do, even after the Romans laid waste to Jerusalem, after medieval blood libel accusations, after the Expulsion from Spain, after the Shoah. We keep telling the story of overcoming our oppressors. We keep welcoming in all those who are hungry. We keep singing about the poor baby goat who is redeemed by God.

Resilience is to keep doing what we are doing, and to not be afraid.

My double colleague, Rabbi/Cantor Lilly Kaufman, wrote a piece about fear and the Exodus story in which she pointed out that some fear is normal, but of course it is possible to be overwhelmed or even paralyzed by fear, and our tradition has some guidance for that. Next Wednesday morning, on the seventh day of Pesaḥ, we chant from the Torah about the dramatic escape of the Israelites from Pharaoh’s armies as they cross the Sea of Reeds on dry land. As the Egyptian armies draw near, the Israelites cry out in fear, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us out to die in the wilderness?” (Shemot/Exodus 14:11). Moshe responds by saying, (vv. 13-14):

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֣ה אֶל־הָעָם֮ אַל־תִּירָ֒אוּ֒ הִֽתְיַצְּב֗וּ וּרְאוּ֙ אֶת־יְשׁוּעַ֣ת ה’ אֲשֶׁר־יַעֲשֶׂ֥ה לָכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם כִּ֗י אֲשֶׁ֨ר רְאִיתֶ֤ם אֶת־מִצְרַ֙יִם֙ הַיּ֔וֹם לֹ֥א תֹסִ֛פוּ לִרְאֹתָ֥ם ע֖וֹד עַד־עוֹלָֽם׃ה’ יִלָּחֵ֣ם לָכֶ֑ם וְאַתֶּ֖ם תַּחֲרִשֽׁוּן׃

… “Have no fear! Stand by, and witness the deliverance which God will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again. God will battle for you; you hold your peace!”

Rabbi Kaufman adds, 

Moses speaks about fear without . . . fear. This is perhaps the most important thing he does: he names the overwhelming feeling and confronts it directly and succinctly. He is supportive, confident, and empathic. He speaks not only about what God will do, but about how the Israelites will experience it. Moses promises that they will see God’s redemption, and he predicts a defining shift in how they will see Egypt from now on.

As we face whatever forms of ugly Jew-hatred come our way in the near future, we must acknowledge the fear, as Moshe does, and also look to the future when we will be redeemed from this fear. We have come so far, over so many centuries, and left so many haters in the rear-view mirror. And we have, all along, drawn strength from the framework of our tradition, drawn strength from each other as a community, and drawn strength from the Qadosh Barukh Hu.

Regarding the trial, let me suggest the following: if you are concerned about hearing or seeing unsettling details or extremist protestors or anything that will upset you, try to avoid watching TV news or reading those articles in the paper or online. I myself do not want to hear/see/read that stuff. But also know that, whatever happens, we as a community will of course do our best to keep everybody safe and to keep the haters at bay, to look out for each other and to keep on praying to God for our spiritual well-being.

But something that you might also do, particularly if you are gathered around the seder table tonight with family and friends, is to have a discussion about fear and resilience. Ask the question: “What are we afraid of right now, and what steps are we taking to overcome that fear?” Our tradition wants us to name the fear, to listen to the fear, to address the fear, and to understand that we will ultimately prevail.

Our traditions, our textual framework are there to help us navigate what has always been a frightening world for the Jews. Take these opportunities, on this ḥag ha-ḥerut, this festival of freedom, to demonstrate to each other that we shall overcome. אל תיראו. Al tira-u, said Moshe. Have no fear. 

חג שמח!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, first day of Pesaḥ 5783, 4/6/2023. A version of this sermon appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on 4/9/2023.)

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Sermons

More Yir’ah, Less Fear – Yitro 5782

Let’s be honest with each other: We are all a little more fearful right now. Thank God that what happened in Texas last Shabbat ended safely for the four hostages. But it certainly has not helped with our own sense of ease in our own beit kenesset, our house of gathering.

It is OK to be not OK right now. And so I am proud that, particularly for those of us in the building, that you are here despite the fact that we are not necessarily feeling OK. 

So I want to begin by saying, thank you for being here. Thank you for not letting fear keep you away from your community, from engaging with our tradition, from breathing life into words of prayer in public, from being proudly and proactively Jewish.

In particular, having lived through what we have lived through in Pittsburgh, we all know that the fear is not far from the surface. 

Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, the Emory professor who has made a career of studying and writing about anti-Semitism, published an essay in the New York Times this week titled, “For Jews, Going to Services Is an Act of Courage.” 

Of course, it should not be. And yet, here we are.

***

Truth is, I was thinking about fear before I found out after Shabbat last week about the events at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. 

Fear had crossed my mind when I read a column by David Brooks entitled, “America is Falling Apart At the Seams.” Not the kind of fear you are thinking of, however. Rather I was thinking about yir’at Hashem, which is sometimes translated as “fear of God,” although perhaps is better understood as “awe” or “reverence,” or perhaps even Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s “radical amazement.”

Brooks invokes some horrible statistics to show that we are angrier, more anxiety-ridden, more abusive, more irresponsible, more drug-addled, more hostile, and more heavily armed than ever. And even worse, he concludes the column by saying, 

… [T]here must also be some spiritual or moral problem at the core of this. Over the past several years, and over a wide range of different behaviors, Americans have been acting in fewer pro-social and relational ways and in more antisocial and self-destructive ways. But why? As a columnist, I’m supposed to have some answers. But I just don’t right now. I just know the situation is dire.

And that is the end of the column. Not only is his lack of suggestions not particularly reassuring, in my head it only raises more fear.

I read the article in print, and upon reaching Brooks’ non-conclusion, I looked up and sighed. And it occurred to me that an answer that Jewish tradition might offer is yi’rat Hashem, fear of God.

Why? Because I think that it is fear of God – the good kind, not the bad kind – which could save humanity. 

What is the good kind of fear, Rabbi? I’m so glad you asked!

Yir’at Hashem – awe, reverence, radical amazement – these are the good forms of fear, and it is this sense of yir’ah which has driven human beings to treat each other better. If we have no reverent appreciation for what we have, if we feel nothing awesome about this world or our existence or Creation or our fellow human beings, of course we will behave badly. Of course there will be terrorists, even those purported to be driven by religion. Of course there will be more abuse and hostility and, well, the bad kind of fear. Without fear of God, we see only ourselves, a distorted, myopic perspective wherein folks are driven by selfishness, greed, and short-term gratification.

You know the story about the three Ḥasidim who are boasting about how holy their rebbes are? The first one says, “My rebbe is so pious, so filled with yir’at Hashem, that he trembles all the time, knowing that he is constantly in the presence of God.”

The second says, “Well, my rebbe is so holy, that the Qadosh Barukh Hu trembles, for fear of displeasing my rebbe!”

The third says, “At first, my rebbe used to tremble. Then God trembled. And then, my rebbe said to the Qadosh Barukh Hu, ‘Look, why should we both tremble?’”

We are all living in God’s presence. It does not matter how you understand God. God is with us, around us, inside of us, up there, down here. We should all be trembling, just a little, just enough to remind ourselves that our duty on Earth is to fulfill God’s word, to act on the 613 mitzvot – opportunities for holiness – which have been given to us.

And what is that framework of mitzvot and halakhah / Jewish law, if not a fulfillment of this yi’rah? Yes, of course there are mitzvot bein adam lamaqom – the mitzvot between humans and God; to some extent they reinforce that sense of yir’ah. 

But all the moreso, the mitzvot bein adam leḥavero –  those that apply between human beings – they ensure that we treat each other like people. That we respect everybody around us, whatever their station in life, or however they behave, or which language they pray in, or indeed who they vote for. By seeing the humanity in each other. By understanding that wherever there is pain, it is up to us to try to soothe; wherever there is suffering, it is our job to at least try to mitigate it. Yes, of course we are first obligated to take care of those who are closest to us. But that does not mean that we can give up on everybody else.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is yir’at Hashem. That is fear of God. It is in some sense the glue that binds us together as individuals. We eliminate that glue at our own peril.

A few years back, Rabbi Harold Kushner gave a Rosh Hashanah sermon in which he pointed out that one of the first requests of the High Holiday Amidah, is:

וּבְכֵן תֵּן פַּחְדְּךָ ה’ אֱ-לֹהֵֽינוּ עַל כָּל מַעֲשֶֽׂיךָ וְאֵימָתְךָ עַל כָּל מַה שֶּׁבָּרָֽאתָ

Thus, grant that fear of you, Lord our God, be found among all your creatures.

“The fear of God,” says Rabbi Kushner, “means a sense of morality, an awareness that certain things are wrong and should not be done.” And then he goes on to say:

If I could change one thing about the world for this coming year, that would be it – that every human being come to recognize that certain things are wrong and should not be done, that hurting people is wrong, that cheating people is wrong… that your sense of grievance against society for the way your life turned out does not give you license to strike out in blind rage against that society… That’s what made our first ancestors, Adam and Eve, different from the animals. They acquired a knowledge of good and evil.

A little fear, a little awe, is a fundamental human trait; something that we all need. It maintains our morality.

The scene that we read in Parashat Yitro this morning, the one where God speaks to Moshe face-to-face on Mt. Sinai, is set with fear. There is lightning and thunder; the people are warned to keep themselves pure, not to have sex, not to go near the mountain and touch it.

And then, in the midst of all that fear, just after the Decalogue is completed, and the Israelites are trembling in fear, the following happens:

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֣ה אֶל־הָעָם֮ אַל־תִּירָ֒אוּ֒ כִּ֗י לְבַֽעֲבוּר֙ נַסּ֣וֹת אֶתְכֶ֔ם בָּ֖א הָאֱ-לֹהִ֑ים וּבַעֲב֗וּר תִּהְיֶ֧ה יִרְאָת֛וֹ עַל־פְּנֵיכֶ֖ם לְבִלְתִּ֥י תֶחֱטָֽאוּ׃

Moses answered the people, “Be not afraid; for God has come only in order to test you, and in order that the fear of Him may be ever with you, so that you do not go astray.”

Al tira-u. Do not fear, says Moshe. (The Israelites are probably thinking, “Well, why didn’t you say that before?!”)

We need a little more yir’at Hashem; the world needs a little more fear of God, so that we do not go astray, so that we can fear each other less. So that we can sit under our own vine and fig tree, and none shall make us afraid.

The very last hemistich of Adon Olam, which most of us are probably not thinking of too much because at that particular moment we’re generally folding up our tallitot, headed for the door, looking forward to lunch, is:

ה’ לִי וְלֹא אִירָא

Adonai li velo ira.

God is with me, and I shall not fear.

It’s a brief, all-too-easy-to-overlook reminder that this is why we are here: to overcome the fear of humans by fearing God. I fear God, therefore I follow God’s laws, therefore I treat others as I wish to be treated, therefore God is with me, and I have no reason to fear my fellow citizens. Adonai li velo ira.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am hurt and upset and more than a little anxious after two years of pandemic and after just about everything that we have experienced in recent times. I am as raw as the rest of you. And I yearn for a better world, one in which David Brooks can write columns with happy endings. I pray that no synagogue-goers should ever have to experience what happened last Shabbat.

And the way to get there is if we all have just a little more humility, a little more reverence for what we have, a little more respect for all of God’s creatures, a little more prayer, and a lot more yir’at Hashem.

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Shabbat morning, 1/22/2021.)

Categories
Sermons

Fear and Brexit – Shelah Lekha 5776

A Facebook friend pointed out that if you pronounce the word “Brexit” as if it were Portuguese, you get something sounds a lot like the first book of the Torah in Hebrew: Bereshit. Go figure. ‘Course, we’re still almost two books away from that, so it seems that the Brexit referendum was not some kind of devar Torah in code.

However, you could not get away from it in the news these past two weeks. (It was a welcome change from the American presidential campaign, which already feels like it’s been going on for at least four years.) The British vote to leave the EU has shocked the world, and Europe is in political turmoil. The British pound has dropped precipitously. Scotland is threatening to leave Great Britain to rejoin the EU. The aftermath of the vote has been so shocking that there are millions of Brits who have signed a petition for a second referendum.

From what I have gleaned from the news, there are a few reasons why 17.4 million Britons voted to leave. Among them is the resentment of having to kowtow to the EU leadership in Brussels. But there is no question that one of the major concerns of those who voted to leave the EU is the apparent anxiety over the numbers of immigrants, from within and without the EU, who have come into Britain in recent years. That concern is related to similar sentiments that many have on this side of the Atlantic regarding immigration, and particularly illegal immigration.

Map of Europe

Put another way, many who voted to leave the EU did so out of fear: fear of change, fear of the other, fear of governmental control in a distant land by people who are not like you.

Fear is actually a major theme in Parashat Shelah Lekha. Moshe sends twelve spies, leaders from each tribe, on a reconnaissance mission to scope out the land of Canaan. Upon returning to the Sinai desert, where the Israelites are encamped, they declare that the Promised land is indeed a land of milk and honey. But ten of them raise the fears of the people by claiming that the Canaanites are gigantic and dangerous, with fortified cities that they cannot conquer. And suddenly, Moshe and Aharon are under attack for leading the people to their perceived deaths.

As you know, the story does not end well for those who whipped up the people’s fears. But let’s face it: fear plays a significant role in the palette of human emotion.

What are some things we are afraid of?

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Fear is a natural human response to change and uncertainty. In this world, how can you not be scared? There is so much to fear.

We the Jews are especially accustomed to fear, owing to the fact that we have been persecuted throughout our history. I suppose that it’s somewhat ironic for us as Jews to watch the internal struggles of the EU from across the ocean, when Europe was the scene of so much oppression and misery and murder of our people for so many centuries.

I am reminded of the time that I sat down with my grandparents to record memories of their lives. My grandmother, aleha hashalom, was born in what is today Ukraine, and came to the United States at age 8, settling in Boston. While my grandfather, alav hashalom, was willing to tell as many details of his school-of-hard-knocks tales as he could recall, my grandmother kept saying, “Why do you want to hear about these things? We were poor and miserable, and the Russians hated us.” She had no interest in or reason to recall the past. It was gone. She had left it on the other side of the ocean, and they were far more comfortable on the welcoming shores of Di Goldene Medine (the “Golden Land,” a Yiddish term for America) than they ever could have been in Europe. And, of course, that was a full two decades before the Nazis arrived.

Europeans continue to struggle with the strangers in their midst. The Jews began to achieve European citizenship beginning with the French Revolution in 1789. But as we all know, their European neighbors never quite thought of them as French or German or English or Russian. They were always Jews. Xenophobia is a long-standing tradition in Europe, and so it’s not too surprising that it is an ongoing challenge to this day.

So we should consider, for just a moment, how this fear continues to shape our world, our opinions, our political choices. And we should acknowledge that we as Jews are called to reach out to the stranger, not to fear him/her. Consider the language that we see over and over in the Torah (e.g. Exodus 22:20):

וְגֵר לֹא-תוֹנֶה וְלֹא תִלְחָצֶנּוּ, כִּי-גֵרִים הֱיִיתֶם בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם

You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

Our history of oppression, going all the way back to Egypt, mandates not only that we treat the foreigners in our midst fairly, but also that we recall actively what it means to be an outsider. The great 12th-century Spanish commentator Avraham Ibn Ezra tells us that this is about power. Just because you have more power than the stranger, he says, does not give you the right to abuse that power. Remember where you came from!

Indeed, remember where we came from, not quite as far back as Egypt. Remember the Pale of Settlement of Eastern Europe. Remember the shtetlakh, where the Jews were confined to live. Remember the pogroms. Remember the forced conscription of Jewish boys into the Czar’s army. Remember the Nuremberg Laws, the ghettos, the Einsatzgruppen. Remember the Shoah, the destruction of European Jewry in the name of fear and hatred fomented by the Nazi state.

We are not required as Jews to love others who are not like us. But we are indeed forbidden from oppressing them, from mistreating them, from taking advantage of them, from hating them. And on some level, it is our duty to bring that message to the greater world.

The 18th-century Hasidic rabbi Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl (yes, THAT Chernobyl) wrote in his Torah commentary, Me’or Einayim, that we all have the potential to feel threatened by others around us, but that the real cause of our discomfort is not the evil in their hearts, but rather the tum’ah, the impurity in our own. Rabbi Shalom Noah Berezovsky, the Slonimer Rebbe, responds in his work, the Netivot Shalom, that,

“To succeed in overcoming the forces of tum’ah that are deliberately placed in our way, we need to be able to eschew our own inner voices, and align ourselves perfectly with the tzaddik in our midst.”

So these Hasidic masters saw our challenge as an internal one rather than an external one. We fear the other because we are responding to our own inadequacy, and our task is to overcome those fears and reach out.

A third Hasidic rabbi, Rabbi Nahman of Breslov, put it so smartly and succinctly that his saying on the subject has become a popular, sing-along tune:

כל העולם כולו גשר צר מאוד, והעיקר לא לפחד כלל

Kol ha-olam kulo, gesher tzar me’od, veha’iqar lo lefahed kelal.

The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the most important principle is not to fear at all.

We have to overcome fear of the other, because fear is a destructive force. Not that we should not be vigilant; not that we should be careless; but we should make our choices from a place of confidence and intelligence rather than fear.

Verrazano-Narrows Bridge - bridge-info.org

Had our British friends learned this lesson, perhaps the outcome would have been different. But it’s not too late for the rest of us.

Veha’iqar lo lefahed kelal.

Shabbat shalom!

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Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Shabbat morning, 7/2/2016.)