Blog

We (your rabbis) met in Jerusalem in the summer of 2001.  It was a wonderful time to be young, to be embarking on new careers, to be in love.  It was also a frightening time to live in Israel, right in the middle of the Palestinian uprising known as the second Intifada, what Israelis simply referred to as the Matzav, the situation.  Almost 20 years later, one can look back and see the reasons for the uprising, perhaps find who to blame and how it started, but when we were living there in the moment, without the rational lens of historical perspective, it was just terrifying.  People were dying, randomly, everywhere.  The most popular targets for suicide bombers were places where people congregated in groups-cafes, bars, grocery stores-so nowhere felt safe.  On those rare times when you had to go out, everyone around you seemed suspicious; that man with his hat pulled over his eyes, that seemingly innocent young girl, anyone could have been a suicide bomber and was a source of danger.

These past weeks, we, and our colleagues who were also studying in Israel during that time, have found ourselves thinking of how eerily similar this time feels to living in the Matzav.  The emptiness of the streets, the paranoia, the commands to stay inside during the most beautiful time of the year to be out.  The sense of feeling like every day could be deeply significant and should be lived as our last, yet in actuality were kind of boring and filled with busywork. 

We may not be in a war with a visible enemy, yet we are all in that space now.  Without the benefit of hindsight to know how we’ll fare, how our loved ones and our city and our country will be, it is scary, and strange, and stressful.  Months or years from now we’ll be able to look back and perhaps pinpoint how it all went wrong, where mistakes were made and where the victories were found, but now we’re just right in the middle of it.  Fitting, then, that this week’s Torah portion is one of several that begin with the phrase Chol ha-Moeid, meaning “in the middle of that Time.”  Specifically, this one refers to Passover, but we are undoubtedly in the middle of a unique period of time.  And when we’re in the middle of it, where there’s no way to see what comes next, it is hard to find perspective.

But we remember that there’s something important about being in the middle of things.  Where there’s a beginning and a middle, there is also an end.  And while we don’t know when that is, with patience and with strength, we know that we can hold on.  This time will end, even if the end isn’t plainly in sight.

This past November, when we were in Israel with our group from TI, there was a moment when we passed a small memorial to a site where there had been a suicide bomb during the Matzav.  We didn’t alert the group to it, just took a moment to ourselves to say a prayer for those whose lives were lost, and then to look at each other, and to remember that time and how far we’d come.  The site was so small, amidst a bustling marketplace filled with life, that no one even noticed it was there.  It hadn’t been forgotten, yet life had gone on; that chapter ended and a new one started. 

We too will make it through this in between time, friends.  Until then, we wish you strength and the ability to find joy and meaning in the days ahead.