Jacob tried to flee from his estranged brother. Did he fear more the battle, or the potential reconciliation? What happens when victimhood is built into our self-definition? What do we lose when we stay at the table, and what might we gain?

What will it take for us to understand that there is no future until we see one another?

Vayishlah 5785

There is a teaching in Pirkei Avot that says that the mouth of the well was made during the first Shabbat of creation. We have long accepted it to be Miriam's well, but what if it's the well from this week's parsha - the one Jacob encounters after his dream, and where he meets Rachel for the first time? If it's that well, then maybe we, like Jacob, have to find the well, roll off the stone, and discover what exists underneath. 

Who is Isaac? The man perpetually trapped by his father’s story, still bound to the altar, forever defined by the core trauma of his life. What will it take to break free? For the once bound to become unbound?

Source sheet: https://ikar.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Isaac_-Bound-and-Unbound-1.pdf

After a life of heartache, two estranged brothers affirmed each other’s humanity,

and rediscovered their own. We, too, can make that choice. Let us push back on the encroaching darkness as a force for good—a light force—that counters the cruelty, racism, and violence poisoning our culture with compassion, tender presence, and forgiveness. This is what solidarity looks like.

Loving your neighbor, who is like you, whose identity you share, is not enough. You must stretch the boundaries of love to wrap into its embrace the stranger, the people in our society who are furthest away from power. To counter the frenzy of rhetoric and the aspirations of policy that demonize these human beings, we need to love them fiercely. We need to love them fully. 

Now we must learn the lesson our ancestor Avram learned:

one day our dreams will be realized. Just not today. And not tomorrow.

And maybe not for many years. But just as hope doesn’t die, dreams don’t die.

The dream we share for America didn’t die because our dream—

the dream of a just and merciful multiracial democracy in which all people live in dignity—

that dream is the right dream. It is the only future…

it’s just now clear that it will take much longer to achieve than any of us had hoped.

There’s an eerie resonance between the Noah narrative and this week. What does Noah's Flood teach us about navigating chaos and coming once more to land?

After the death of a beloved child in our community to suicide, we reaffirm our commitment to combatting shame with tenderhearted love, to meeting one another in the dark, to never giving up on each other. May Benjamin Ellis’s memory be a blessing.