Chochmas Nashim: Vayechi: Hello 2021
By: Suri Davis
AND HE LIVED!!! The name of this week’s torah portion.
I know many are saying goodbye to 2020. Kicking it out like unwanted baggage. Can’t do that, too much happened which affected me for me to be ungrateful for the year. Believe me, it wasn’t all that I had prayed for, I was going to write that it wasn’t all good, but my faith autocorrected to it wasn’t all apparently good, not what I had wished or prayed for.
To be ungrateful for this year, would be like Joseph looking back at the decades of his youth, kicking it around, and carrying it as baggage, rather than events which shaped his life leading to his becoming viceroy.
Did the Jews come out of the holocaust with blinding rage which they used as an excuse to destroy, or were they determined to use their experiences and vow to show Nazis and Germany, that they will not merely survive, but thrive, strive to their potential, indeed maximize their potential every single day. The survivors arrived in America started out as superintendents of buildings, and saved up to buy those buildings and enter into real estate ownership and management. They were mail boys on Wall Street, and took over the firms. When the Jewish doctors had quotas here in New York, they opened Mt. Sinai, Brooklyn Jewish, Long Island Jewish and they thrived. When Jewish lawyers and accountants had quotas, they opened their own firms and they thrived. When the Jews were forced out of ancient Israel and taken to Rome, and an arch was established to honor Titus the general who lead the exile, a Jew etched into said monument Am Yisrael Chai L’olam Vaed/the nation of Israel lives eternally.
We are survivors. Joseph acknowledges that G-d watched over every challenge given to him to make him stronger. Abraham rocks the ten tests of faith G-d gives him, Job and Naomi were given challenges of faith, the loss of children, they questioned G-d aloud for all of us to hear, G-d revealed himself latently.
Was life more challenging to me this year than other years? In any given year, there is not much down time, not really. But G-d challenged us collectively, in different ways. He gave me and others who were infected/affected with the coronavirus our individualized dose of the pandemic, customized for each one of us. As He unfolds each year for each one of us individually, no two of us experience the same exact year, not spouses, not parent/children, not friends or siblings. It is our nature, nurture and faith which determine how we react to what is placed in our paths, and determines whether we grow and to what extent.
I miss hugging my mother and father and the casual kisses of hello to sisters and friends. It was a different experience celebrating a seder alone, nights in the sukkah alone under the stars. As I mentioned at the time, it made my connection to HKBh more acute, like when someone is missing one sense, like sight, and it makes hearing and touching more acute. Take away the external light, to better see the stars, celebrating alone, but not lonely, knowing that my children would return soon. The pandemic wrenchingly exposed the loneliness that many in our community and around the world feel unendingly without reprieve, and permitted us to sympathize and empathize with those whom we don’t see, or maybe don’t wish to see…
Hello 2021, we come to you with a fresher, keener eye. We have felt death and disease in almost every family, including neighbor and community family. We couldn’t turn our faces away any more at the closed shops and catering halls, schools and lifeline community centers. We took our community and community resources for granted, and we come to you 2021 with new prisms. Like Lasik surgery, we come to you with new lenses which can see others needs more acutely. Wow, we didn’t know what we were missing when our vision was clouded:
I can see clearly now the rain is gone.
I can see all obstacles in my way.
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind.
It’s gonna be a bright (bright)
Bright (bright) sunshiny day.
There is a collective desire to eradicate, wipe out and forget 2020, goodbye, good riddens, spilled milk. And maybe we need a little distance from it, why G-d brought this to us this year, how were we to grow from it. But this is a year “that will live in infamy,” a worldwide collective trauma. By next year, it will start printing in history books which my grandchildren will study. It is possible for the world to unite against an enemy clearly brought to us by G-d. If we ever wondered what it would be like when Moshiach/Messiah comes and people unite in joy…I have flash thoughts of the footage of soldiers returning to America from overseas after World War II. The allies were victorious and joy and growth were everywhere, but for the axis nations, obviously shamed at their defeat. There hasn’t been a continent or nation unaffected by this virus, defeating Corona is a worldwide joy and relief.
I have high hopes for you 2021. Anne Frank said it best “Where there’s hope, there’s life.” I am told that 2021 in gematria is resh-gimmel-ayin = rega, one moment. What can change in one meaningful moment, what G-d places on earth and the moment we respond to it. K’heref ayin/in a blink of any eye…
Welcome 2021, and he lived, Jacob, to see his sons mature and grow, he provided them with their final blessings of their present identities and future destinies. May it be a secular year of religious spirituality and growth, may we not resume where we were before the pandemic, may we emerge from the pandemic wiser, more sympathetic and united, “he who sows in tears, with joy will he reap.”
Shabbat shalom.
-Suri