At congregations like my very own, we don’t use our telephones on Shabbat, so we have been unaware that at the time Orli started to recite from the Torah, 1,300 miles away, at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, a person had taken the rabbi and congregants hostage. Later that nite, once we discovered what was nonetheless unfolding, my associate and I whispered to one another, hoping to protect Orli and her sister, Hana, a second longer, to delay the inevitable query we knew we’d be asked: “Will it occur to us?” Orli had requested the identical query the week after Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue was attacked in October 2018. She was afraid that we may very well be bombed. Are we secure at the synagogue?
To those questions, I can supply no concrete reply. I don’t wish to lie, although I’m tempted to easily insist that we might be effective. I informed them that our synagogue is effectively fortified. However, my uncertainty in a time of hate and violence, not in contrast to my uncertainty in the face of sickness, destabilizes me. It’s unsettling to allow your youngsters to know, early on, simply how little or no control you actually have. Vulnerability is at all times jarring; it’s by some means extra horrible when you find yourself meant to be a comforting presence. Plus, I’ve got no good fashion for these queries.
When I was a toddler, I had little problem with my perception of my mother and father’s skill to keep us wholesome. Conversations about concerns have been largely retrospective. We grew up with our Holocaust refugee family who had fled destitution and destruction to deliverance in an American promised land. The previous was horrible, but we have been within the current.
My youngsters, in the meantime, are accustomed to mediports, dwelling fluids, and daily capsule regimens. The ladies intimately know the distinction between minor surgical procedures and major ones. They’ve grown accustomed to our synagogue’s metallic detectors, bag checks, and safety guards; they know by title the everlasting safety officer on the door. Certainly, the officer is aware of Orli’s story effectively. When he noticed us arriving on that Saturday morning for the bat mitzvah, he and my associate, Ian, embraced. They each cried.
In “Beshalach” (“When He Let Go”), the Torah portion learned on Jan. 15, the Israelites have fun with their freedom, then panic in the face of uncertainty. They bitterly complain to Moses, who has led them out of Egypt, that they are concerned about their demise by thirst or hunger, which awaits them in the wilderness. The portion ends with a battle with the Amalekites, a battle, the Torah tells us, that continues from era to era. The Amalekites turn out to be a stand-in for a legendary everlasting enemy, an emblem of any evil that subsequently arises in opposition to the Jewish group.
