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JEWISH EXPONENT
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



T orah P ortion
CAN DL E L IGHTIN G
What We Carry With Us
BY RABBI ERIC YANOFF
Parshat Beshallach
TOO MANY TIMES over the
past nearly two years, I have
been asked to expand my role
as rabbi and assume the impos-
sible role of prophet: When will
this all be over? When will life
return to normal? What will
normal feel like? What will never
return? What will we learn?
What will we mourn? What will
we celebrate?
Admittedly, there
is something attractive, even
therapeutic, about the mental
exercise of floating above
our sense of crisis during the
pandemic, to ask and speculate
about the meta lessons we will
glean from COVID. People are
desperate for a way out, but
in the meantime, such specu-
lation is an intellectual form
of escapism: If we can imagine
a time of redemption from our
difficulties, perhaps it makes
it feel like such redemption is
attainable. On a grand scale, in several
places, our greatest rabbis
remind us that it is forbidden
by Jewish tradition to calculate
the time of a future Messianic
redemption; in an act of irony
and chutzpah, many of them
stress this warning just before
they cite verses from the Book
Jan. 14
Jan. 21
of Daniel and other eschatolog-
ical texts that hint at an answer
to such calculations. But in this
time, when people hunger for
some hope for a better, more
redemptive time, I prefer to
learn by looking backward, to
chart our path forward.

Indeed, my great-aunt
Shulamith Elster, z”l, a brilliant
Jewish educator, encour-
aged me in my decision to
become a rabbi: At the time,
I had taken the coursework
to apply to medical school,
but all of my extracurricular
activities, summer experiences
and work experience were in
Jewish education and commu-
nity-building. Aunt Shulamith
said, “Eric, sometimes to know
our future course, we can look
backward, see the path we’ve
walked thus far — and the path
ahead becomes clear, because
we’re already on it.” (She was
right. I’m writing for the Jewish
Exponent right now and not for
The New England Journal of
Medicine.) With this in mind, I found
a midrash on this week’s
Parshat Beshallach partic-
ularly moving: Drawing on
a verse early in the Torah
portion (Exodus 13:19), we are
reminded that Moses took it
upon himself to fulfill Joseph’s
dying wish from generations
earlier, that his coffin (aron,
in Hebrew) be carried out of
Egypt at the time of redemp-
tion, to be buried in Israel.

The midrash imagines this
aron carried through the wilder-
ness, side-by-side with the ark
(also aron) that contained the
words of the Covenant after
the gathering at Mount Sinai.

When asked, “What are these
two Arks (aronot, the plural)?”
— the answer was, “This ark
carries of our honored dead
– and this ark carries Eternal
Life [literally, ‘the Life of the
Worlds,’ the key to eternality,
i.e., the Torah]” (Mekhilta
d’Rabbi Ishmael 13:19).

What was so important that
it fueled the redemption? What
did we carry in those arks that
redeemed us so? We carried:
Joseph. A symbol of innova-
tion, of chutzpadik insistence on
surviving and thriving, against
all odds, left for dead, rising
from the darkness of impris-
onment to the highest levels
of pre-eminence in a country
not his own — all the while
yearning for that homeland and
that sense of family; and
The Ten Commandments
(The Torah). The living,
evolving guidelines on how
to construct (and if need be,
reconstruct) a society based on
eternal values and traditions.

But stowed in the Ark
of the Covenant were two
other contents:
The shattered fragments
of the first tablets. God asked
Moses to gather up those
broken tablets. We carry our
brokenness with us, into the
wilderness, and toward redemp-
tion ahead.

A sampling of the manna
provided in the wilderness.

God does not leave us hungry;
we must remember that there
are miracles that make our
survival possible.

These four ingredients,
perhaps, serve as an indicator
for how (God-willing) we
may emerge from our current
travails: We will carry our dead.

The overwhelming sense of
loss, and the inspiration of
those who have come before
us, will be a burden, worthy of
its own aron;
We will rely on timeless
guidelines and values. We may
be navigating uncharted waters,
but thanks to our timeless
wisdom, we know when we’re
on the right track;
We will mourn and recall
our brokenness, when we
failed, when we were vulnerable
and unsure. That fragility, too,
will inform our course; and
We will know and honor
and recall the miracles and
caregiving that brought us
forth. The experts, the hard
beyond the lockdown state of
2020. The women do not even
go out for groceries.

Leib has only seen her
Florida-based parents once in
the past 20 months. She has
not seen her other daughter,
who lives in California, since
the beginning of the pandemic.

A third daughter who lives
nearby can’t come inside due to
omicron. They talk to her from
a distance.

O ver Z oom, L eib st i l l
attends Shabbat services with
her congregation and a challah-
making hang out with other
women. Her daughter has
virtual get-togethers with her
friends. But Zoom is still not real life.

“It’s not the same as getting a
hug from somebody,” Leib said.

For Jewish Philadelphians,
like other Americans, there is
no end in sight.

The “light at the end of the
tunnel” rallying cry, shouted
throughout the reopening
process, at the arrival of the
vaccine and then, at least before
delta, in anticipation of July 4,
2021, is no longer spoken very
often, if at all.

“We’re going to have to
make decisions based on our
risk understanding, our risk
overall and our risk tolerance,”
Moonaz said. l
COVID Continued from Page 7
their people are; they just can’t
see them.

Both women are immuno-
compromised. Every week, they
get subcutaneous immunoglob-
ulins, which, as Leib explained
it, “is supposed to give you the
immune system that you can’t
generate yourself.”
If one of them gets COVID,
they would probably get
“extremely sick,” Leib said.

So instead of going back out,
they have not proceeded much
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4:41 p.m.

4:49 p.m.

work, the risks taken by those
on the front lines and those
more unsung, the vaccines and
other medications developed,
the small stories of love and the
grand gestures of sacrifice — we
will carry them all.

I cannot know, any more
than any of us, what is to come,
and when we will see better
times; indeed, our parshah
reminds us that redemption
is not a straight path (Exodus
13:18). May we carry our lessons
with honor, with compassion
for one another, and with hope
for better times, soon ahead.

Shabbat Shalom. l
Rabbi Eric Yanoff is a rabbi at
Adath Israel in Merion Station and
immediate past co-president of
the Board of Rabbis of Greater
Philadelphia. The Board of Rabbis
is proud to provide diverse
perspectives on Torah commentary
for the Jewish Exponent. The
opinions expressed in this column
are the author’s own and do not
reflect the view of the Board of
Rabbis. The best
of the
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