January 31, 2025
On Resilience: A Note from Rabbi Laurie
These past two weeks have been—to state the obvious—overwhelming, dizzying, depressing, enraging, and confusing. I intended to write sooner, but I could not keep up. Just when I thought I would write about one executive order, the president issued another equally terrible order.
I want to reach out to the transgender members of our community, and to our members who have transgender kids. The cruelty of the president's executive order was immoral. Our community will stand beside you in this climate of hostility and dehumanization as we fight for love and justice for everyone.
We are reading the Book of Exodus in our weekly Torah cycle. It’s hard not to compare our nation to ancient Egypt. While we are certainly not experiencing the slavery of our ancestors, my dear friend and colleague, Rabbi Seth Goldstein, draws interesting parallels between our two societies at this time. (See his commentary on Jewish life on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok.)
Last week, in Parashat Vaera, we read that the children of Israel suffered from a kotzer ruach, which can be translated as a shortness or impatience of spirit. The term evokes a sense of powerlessness and despair. The Israelites are so fearful and distressed that they cannot see beyond the moment to new possibilities.
I suspect that the rash of executive orders was designed to cultivate a kotzer ruach in many of us. When we are hopeless, we turn inwards and send ourselves into internal exile.
At Gesher, as I told the story of the midwives who saved the Israelite babies, I realized then that we need to lift up the courageous acts of resistance in our own society. And so I talked about Bishop Marianne Edgar Budde’s sermon at Washington Cathedral, when she asked the president to have mercy on LGBTQ communities and immigrants.
She made me wonder what courageous acts—small or large—that each of us can do. Our opportunities for resistance will be different from those of the midwives or the Bishop, but I know that each of us can do something so we do not allow a kotzer ruach to take hold.
At our community retreat, our theme was resilience. Now is the time to focus on creating resilience within ourselves and in our community. With that in mind, I would like to share the advice of Asli Aydintasbas, a Turkish journalist and political commentator. She lived through the rise of authoritarianism in Turkey and writes, “The answer to political defeat is not to disconnect, but to organize. You can take a couple of days or weeks off, commiserate with friends and mute Elon Musk on X — or erase the app altogether. But in the end, the best way to develop emotional resilience is greater engagement.”
As we move into Shabbat, let’s focus on developing our own emotional resilience by engaging in the world around us. We do not know what will come, but we do know that we need each other. We need to build strong communities and turn outwards.
November 11, 2024
November/December E-News - On Coping With Fear
During rabbinical school I did a chaplaincy internship at a hospital in West Philadelphia. Night after night, my pager would wake me and I would scurry to the trauma bay. I had never seen so much blood before, not only from car accidents, but from shootings and stabbings.
I was not prepared for this. I did not believe that I could call a family to tell them to come to the hospital or that I would not know how to comfort them when they arrived. I dreaded walking into the trauma bay. I dreaded accompanying the doctors when they told a parent that their child had been killed.
The fear I have experienced this past week after the election feels similar. While the analogy is imperfect, I learned a couple things that summer that might be useful at this time. The first is that we can be a kind presence to others in the face of grief, loss, and violence--even if we are not prepared. Our capacity to hold pain expands; we do have the inner strength to meet the moment.
The second is that words often fail us, but they are less important than our willingness to be a witness to the cruelty of the world. Often I felt powerless. But my willingness to accompany someone else mattered. It could not change an outcome, but it did create a deep connection to another person, even if temporary.
When I walked down the fluorescent hallways in the middle of the night, I would sing Kol Ha-Olam Kulo: "Kol ha'olam kulo, gesher tzar me'od, v'hayikar lo lefached klal. -- The whole world is a narrow bridge. The important thing is to have no fear at all." The song comforted me. It gave me courage to keep walking, to ground myself, and to walk into unknown places.
The song, as lovely as it is, begs the question: How could we not be afraid?. The words come from Rabbi Nachman of Bratslov's book, Likkutei Moharan. They are slightly different from the original text, however. Instead of lefached, meaning fear, the text says yitpached, in the reflexive - not to make oneself afraid. We spend much time worrying: What will happen? What will we lose? What will our nation look like six or twelve months from now?
Last week, one of my teachers led a call for Reconstructionist rabbis. She introduced us to the author, Daniel Hunter. From there I found his article, "10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won." It may or may not speak to you. But one line is particularly important for all of us: "...Good psychology is good social change." Feeling fear is normal and appropriate. Making ourselves afraid is also normal and appropriate. But we would do well to ground ourselves so we do not become paralyzed by fear. We can meet this moment. Tending to our fear is the first step.