Within Each Season Is Everything
אדם בחייו אין לו זמן שיהיה לו
.זמן לכל
ואין לו עת שתהיה לו עת
.לכל חפץ. קהלת לא צדק כשאמר כך
A person doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.
This opening stanza of Yehuda Amichai’s famous poem A Man in His Life captures much of what I was feeling last Thursday night, as Israel’s preemptive attack on Iran began. My parents and I were sitting in the Sanctuary listening to the stunning music of the Bicentennial concert and eagerly awaiting the Shabbat of my daughter’s bat mitzvah the next day. So many emotions were running through my head and heart: fear for what was to come in a war between Israel and Iran, worry for my friends and our partners in Israel, sadness that the unbounded joy that I was expecting to feel over Shabbat would now be restricted, and concern that my daughter will have to carry those burdens in an already harsh world.
אדם צריך לשנא ולאהב בבת אחת
באותן עיניים לבכות ובאותן עיניים לצחוק
באותן ידים לזרוק אבנים
,ובאותן ידים לאסוף אותן
.לעשות אהבה במלחמה ומלחמה באהבה
A person needs to love and hate in the same instant,
to laugh and cry with one and the same eyes,
with one and the same hands to throw stones,
and with one and the same hands to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
Indeed, the same eyes that watched in amazement as my little girl ascended the bimah, were the same eyes that—before and after Shabbat—read WhatsApp messages from my friends in Israel—learning that they were safe, even as they shared that they’d had hardly any sleep, or that a missile had come close to their home. The same heart that was bursting with joy at witnessing the strength, grace, and beauty with which Sivan led the service, was the same broken heart wondering if this cycle of violence and war will ever end. There is not a season for everything. Within each season is everything.
Living in a community teaches us that within one day there are deaths and births. There is learning and praying, song and silence, gratitude and elation…and yes, complaining. There are young and old, new and seasoned, there is struggle and there is acceptance—being happy with one’s lot. There is illness and there is healing. Nothing lives in isolation. It is the messiness of life and of love and of family and of community.
I wish the world weren’t in such a hard place. I wish that all our friends and family in Israel could get a good night’s sleep and would never again have to worry for their safety. I wish Palestinians in Gaza weren’t at risk of being shot when waiting in line for food and would never be hungry or without homes ever again. I wish that it would be safe to own a Jewish grocery store in Boston, to gather in Boulder in solidarity with the 53 hostages in Gaza, and work for the Israeli Embassy in DC. I wish Senator Padilla and our own city comptroller Brad Lander would not be senselessly arrested; and that we wouldn’t live in such a culture of guns and of political polarization; and that elected officials wouldn’t be assassinated in their homes. I wish we had visionary leadership in our country, in Israel, and in the world—a leadership that would step out of its narcissism and callousness to demand and usher in a world of justice and peace. I have so many prayers and hopes for this world of ours, and in my most fragile moments, I feel a lot of despair. And then the faith in me wells up like a mighty spring and I can feel hope.
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes
“A religious person is someone who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”
Religious life and community is not meant to simplify our experience. It is meant to hold the complexity and often paradox of living with love, with faith, and also with defiance; to be vulnerable and audacious human beings, while holding God’s perspective simultaneously; to live both in what is and what ought to be. There is no other community in which I would want my daughter to ascend as a bat mitzvah to truly understand the purpose of this season.
Thank you for that gift.
Shabbat Shalom.
Rabbi Felicia Sol