Fueling the Fire
I was in my early twenties and visiting a friend in Groningen, a quaint historic city in the northernmost reaches of the Netherlands.
I was in my early twenties and visiting a friend in Groningen, a quaint historic city in the northernmost reaches of the Netherlands.
The images are such stark ones that they have become a staple of our culture. The Golden Calf, the shattered tablets, a people oscillating between orgies of elation and crises of despair.
He doesn’t quite remember how he made it back. His white linen tunic was sullied and torn, his headdress had been lost in the chaos.
We feel the weight of this moment and the long shadow it casts over our hearts.
The personal dramas of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs have always played out on the stage of historical change and in this sense, their lives are no different from our own.
Darkness is an overarching theme of Jacob’s life.
In many ways, the story of Abraham in Parashat Vayera, is the detail – what the Rabbis called the ‘p’rat’ – of the Noach story.
Can we be like Abram? Can we center ourselves on our morality and center each other’s humanity? Can we hold difference and create space? Can we recognize grievance and pain, diversity and blessing? Can we leverage wealth and power not for prestige and conquest but for compassion and the common good?
‘Did they’, she wondered out loud, ‘consider the gardens they planted, their last garden?’