Shabbat Drash - Re'eh - August 11, 2023 - 25 Av 5783
Rabbi Nicki Greninger
(sing)
I went to the doctor.
I went to the mountains.
I looked to the children.
I drank from the fountains.
There’s more than one answer to these questions
Pointing me in a crooked line….
Like everyone else, it seems, I’m on a Barbie high (and can’t stop singing Closer to Fine, by the Indigo Girls, which is sung in the movie). I saw the new Barbie movie with a friend right when it came out, and I saw it again last weekend with my daughter and my dad. I’ll try not to give any spoilers away tonight, but I will say one thing - Go see it!! There is so much to unpack in the movie, not to mention the fact that the creator of Barbie - Ruth Handler - was a Jewish woman from my hometown of Denver, Colorado.
One of the many feminist moves of the movie is to turn Barbie’s story into a “hero’s journey.”
Greta Gerwig - the brilliant director and writer - takes a plastic, fake woman and has her go on an adventure: leaving her home, learning important lessons, and ending up transformed by the experience. At the end of the movie - no spoilers! - Barbie is on the precipice of a new beginning.
The opening of this week’s Torah portion reminds me a bit of the Barbie movie, as Moses and the Israelites stand on the precipice of the Promised Land, and Moses says to the people, on behalf of God: “Re’eh!” “See! This day I set before you blessing and curse.” In other words, you are about to enter a new land, a new moment in the history of this people, and you have a choice about how you want to act.
In this messy and complicated world, will you choose to act in ways that lead to blessing? Or to curses?
Right now we are at a liminal moment in the Jewish calendar, a moment that relates to both Barbie and this Torah portion. Two and a half weeks ago was Tisha B’av - the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, a day when we leaned into despair, and we mourned for all the destruction in the world and the harm caused to the Jewish people. We sank into the pit.
But instead of staying in that dark place, we began to move out of it. You can’t stay flat on your face forever.
There are seven weeks between Tisha B’av and Rosh Hashanah, and those weeks are called the 7 Weeks of Consolation. We are in those 7 weeks of Consolation right now. We do not stay in the place of pain and desolation and despair, even though we may want to. Yes, we look around the world and notice what a mess it has been, what an absolute mess it is in our time, too. (As Barbie discovers!) But in the cycle of Jewish time, we don’t stay in that emotional state for long.
After despair in the Jewish calendar comes comfort, consolation.
Sometimes we can pick ourselves up from that place of despair without help. But most of the time, we can’t do it alone. We need help.
In Jewish tradition, there are prophetic readings for the 7 weeks after Tisha B’av, including Isaiah chapter 40, when God calls out to us, “Nachamu! Nachamu ami! Be comforted! Be comforted, my People!” God is here to comfort us.
And because sometimes we aren’t sure if we believe in God. Or we aren’t sure about our relationship with God, we may encounter the Divine through our relationships with other people… and so, sometimes comfort comes from other people.
Let’s do a short thought experiment. Close your eyes and think of a time when you were really in a dark time in your life. Not a time of clinical depression, but just … a rough time in your life. What gave you comfort? Who gave you comfort? Who reached out their hand and helped walk you through that difficult time? Who helped you feel loved? Who (or what) helped you leave despair behind? (Open your eyes)
We are in the 7 weeks of consolation - of comfort - right now, so it is the perfect time to seek out comfort. Sometimes we seek comfort in prayer, in moments of spirituality, connection to God. Sometimes we find comfort in nature, in music, in art, in a good book. In the loving embrace of a family member or friend.
But comfort isn’t just about feeling better, or feeling good. Comfort helps us move out of the place of darkness and despair, and move toward hope. Move toward action.
Next week we begin the Hebrew month of Elul, which is the month that leads us to Rosh Hashanah. It is customary in the month of Elul for Jews to go through a process of introspection. To look at our lives and ask hard questions:
Who am I?
How have I acted in the world in the last year?
Who do I want to be?
How can I change
so that I can become the person I really, truly want to be?
The person I know deep down I CAN be?
That is the hard work of Elul.
The work that begins where comfort ends.
Because that work is deeply uncomfortable.
It is challenging.
It asks us to change ourselves,
and in doing so, to change the world.
This, friends, is the hero’s journey.
Like Barbie - and so many others in film and literature who go on a hero’s journey - we too are on a hero’s journey. But we don’t go on this journey alone, and we don’t go on this journey once in our lives. We go on this journey every single year, as a Jewish community. We move out of the place of comfort to a place of learning and growth and change. A place of transformation.
The image you see looks like a circle, and you might think that the “hero” ends in the place they began. But in reality, the hero’s journey is more of a spiral.
The hero is not the same person at the end of the journey. They have been transformed, and they are ready to begin a new adventure, a new journey.
As we sing each year at Rosh Hashanah, (sing) “Return again, return again, return to the land of your soul.”
As we look ahead to Elul next week, and Rosh Hashanah just a month after that, it is time to start asking ourselves:
What will we work on this year?
Dismantling patriarchy?
Advancing feminism?
Fighting for democracy in Israel?
Working toward racial justice?
Reproductive freedom?
Reducing global warming?
There is so much pain in the world.
So much that is broken.
It is frighteningly easy to fall into despair.
This Shabbat,
and in these weeks of consolation,
let us seek comfort.
Let us not stay flat on our faces.
Oh God, help us know we are not alone. Help us seek comfort in You, in one another, in a community of those who share our values. And then, like Barbie, may we be moved to change ourselves, so we can then change the world.
(Cantor Korn leads "Nachamu Nachamu" by Elana Arian)
