Sermon: Rabbi Rolando Matalon

Who hasn’t felt the emotions displayed in this verse of Psalm 55 in these past months? The terror of death, the fear, the trembling, the horror...

Who will not shake this year upon hearing the words:

It does not get much closer than this.

Death and loss have come to our collective door in ways we have never experienced before.

There but by the grace of God go I. There but by the grace of God go we.

Up to now, we had been spared this level of tragedy and fear.

There has been no war in our soil in the last century and a half, there have been no natural catastrophes in our vicinity that have resulted in such death and devastation as the COVID pandemic. The attacks on September 11 2001 which left almost 3,000 dead were the largest terrorist attacks on United States soil. It was a horrific and shocking time, seared forever in our memory. And yet we have not known persistent and sustained terrorist attacks over the course of years like many other countries have, including Israel.

Now we approach 200,000 persons dead in our country, over 24,000 in New York City.

And it is not just the pandemic. Our fears extend well beyond the pandemic: we are anguished about the growing financial distress- many members of our community and others who have joined our service tonight have already been personally affected, we are anguished about the level of unemployment, the food insecurity and hunger -yes, hunger in America, the apocalyptic scenes of fires burning in the West which is the latest manifestation of the steady, rapid, and seemingly unstoppable advance of climate change.

We are anguished about the racism that remains deeply rooted in our country, we are anguished about the very future of our democracy - who ever imagined? What will happen if the election is contested? We are a country highly polarized, and torn apart. We fear civil unrest and potential chaos. We really fear what will happen in the next few days and weeks regarding the Supreme Court following the death of the great Ruth Bader Ginsberg zt”l. What will happen if the president gets 4 more years?

Everything feels so fragile…

Our present reality and our lives are truly

And look at what our fear and our deep feeling of vulnerability have done to us:

Who has not had sleepless nights? Who has become frozen and paralyzed and who has fled, who has hunkered down and hidden inside their home and who has engaged in denial or self delusion, who has been glued to the breaking news and who has sought to escape into netflix, or into food or into puzzles, who has fallen into profound sadness and who has become depressed, who has become angry, who has become hopeless.

We have all been on edge, and we are trying to hold on as best we can to a sense of control.

We are all afraid, everyone of us. But while fear can distort who we are - as it probably has in these recent months as we’ve become more insecure, or more greedy, or more passive or more angry- we are not our fears, and fear need not define us, nor determine our future.

We are all afraid. But fear is not weakness or cowardice. It all depends on what we do with our fear.

Fear comes into Creation at the very beginning, with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

After they eat the forbidden fruit, they hear the sound of God moving about in the Garden, and they become afraid, so they hide.

And then...

God obviously knew where Adam was. But God wanted Adam himself to become aware of where he was morally and spiritually. It is Adam and Eve’s fear and hiding that leads to God’s radical question, “Where are you?” -- and calls them to self discovery.

We fear and hide too. And the same question is asked of each one of us now: Where are you? Where are you in your life? Where are you in your world? Where are you in your relationships?

Fear can shake us and wake us up, and instill in us the impetus to search and to discover ourselves. Where am I? Who and what am I really hiding from? What truths am I avoiding? Who am I?

From Adam and Eve on, there is a lot of fear in the Torah.

And it is not primarily fear that immobilizes and shuts people off, but fear that ultimately opens people up to new possibilities, to new encounters with their humanity, with their own calling, with their deeper selves and with the other. Fear that is eye opening and that generates new vision. Fear that induces greater awareness and wisdom. Fear that fosters life and transformation.

Look at the story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar and their sons that we just heard:

Fear is at the center.

Rabbi Debra Orenstein comments, “In a sense, Sarah the banisher and Hagar the banished share the same fear. Though differently privileged and provided for, both are afraid that there won’t be enough- not enough love to go around, not enough water to survive, not enough of an inheritance for two sons. The grace God offers is not primarily the provision of “more”. Rather, divine grace affords the vision to discover, to create, and sometimes merely to notice sufficiency.”

Indeed, there is not enough water for Hagar and Ishmael to survive in the desert. Hagar is certain that her son will soon die of thirst. It’s a horrible scene. Hagar is sobbing, terrified. Just at that moment the angel of God appears, and reassures her.

“And then God opens her eyes and she sees a well of water. She goes and fills the skin with water, and she lets her son drink.”

Many commentators agree: the well of water was always there, Hagar had just missed it.

It is only when her panic has pushed her to the limit that Hagar’s eyes are opened. The desperate fear of her son’s death induces vision in Hagar. She is capable of seeing clearly what has been right in front of her the whole time, the well of water that will rescue her son and save his life.

In tomorrow’s Torah reading of the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, fear also plays a central role.

The Torah tells us nothing about what goes on inside of Abraham and Isaac in their 3-day journey to Mount Moriah and during all the preparations for the sacrifice. What are Abraham and Isaac thinking, what are they feeling? We have no clue.

Abraham appears stoically committed to God’s impossible test. Is it at all conceivable he does not fear?

And Isaac? --- He is totally inscrutable, he appears passive and submissive, a willing participant in his own sacrifice. And yet, can you imagine his terror at the sight of the knife as it nears his throat?

Isaac will carry the painful memory of his brutal near death experience for the rest of his life.

A midrash tells us that when Abraham bound his son to the altar, the angels wept. And the tears dropped from their eyes into Isaac’s eyes and were imprinted within his eyes till he became old and his eyes became dim.

Isaac descends from the altar unhurt but he carries the trauma of his near death experience in his eyes.

Aviva Zornberg writes:

“From the moment of the Akedah, a density of seeing gathers into Isaac’s eyes. The vision of the weeping angels has imprinted him with a searing sense of himself and of his world, so that his eyes sear whatever they see.”

Isaac’s gaze is penetrating, it pierces the surface of reality. He has deep awareness and knowledge of things not commonly understood. He lives in the dimension of “What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Isaac’s fear of death and his survival leaves him ultimately with deeper vision and expanded consciousness.

A fascinating detail: the word love appears for the first time in the Torah to describe Isaac’s relationship to Rebecca, his wife.

Out of fear come vision and love. He transforms from being bound and shut off to being wide open.

One final biblical scene of fear.

Shifra and Puah, the midwives in Egypt who defy Pharaoh's murderous decree:

They had Yirat Elohim - they feared God.

Fear of God is a different kind of fear, it is fear that instills in them the courage to act in order to protect and nurture life.

Nahum Sarna in the JPS Torah commentary writes:

“Faced with a conflict between the laws of God and those of the pharaoh, the midwives follow the dictates of conscience. Their defiance of tyranny constitutes history’s first recorded act of civil disobedience in defense of a moral imperative. It is stated that they were actuated by ‘fear of God,’ a phrase frequently associated with moral and ethical behavior. “Fear of God” connotes a conception of God as One who makes moral demands on humankind.”

Yirat Hashem- fear of God, Heschel says, is not fear in the sense of the anticipation of evil or pain. Rather it is the awareness of being in the presence of the transcendent, of the absolute, of the mystery which inspires awe, wonder and humility, and which impels a person to do what is right and good.

My friend, Rabbi Irwin Kula, says ”this is the type of fear that gets our attention, shakes us up and clarifies our vision. It’s holy anxiety. It rearranges our priorities, it realigns what is worth fearing. It is the Rosh Hashanah type of fear that repositions us in relation to everything.”

So yes, we’ve been living in great fear, the fear of COVID and of death, and so many other fears we hadn’t ever experienced before, and which we hadn’t even imagined.

So much is at play at this very moment. Given the sheer heaviness of these times and the gravity of the hour, how can we not fear?

But perhaps we can work with our fear so that we will no longer allow it to bring us down and cause us to hide or flee, but rather harness it to open us up to the questions we need to ask ourselves at this time of year; harness it to open our eyes to that which we have missed and has been all along right in front of us, harness it to become more aware, to expand our vision and our capacity for compassion and love, harness it to reset our priorities, and to do what is right and good and just.

Shanah tovah.