Rabbi Sam Trief
How many times in my ten years of writing Shabbat to Shabbat messages have I sat down and wanted to start the message by saying, “It has been a hard week”? Dozens, I am sure. And here we are again. Another hard week.
We pray for a time when our weeks will no longer be heavy, when fear and heartbreak will loosen their grip on our lives. That hope is at the heart of the Aleinu prayer we recite at the close of every service, when we say “Bayom hahu yih’yeh Adonai echad u’shmo echad,” on that day God will be One and God’s Name will be One. It is a vision of a world that is no longer fractured, no longer living in pieces, but whole again. And yet, for now, it seems that we will endure many more hard weeks before that prayer is fully answered.
Sometimes our weeks are hard because of what is happening in the world. Other times, they are hard because we are confronted with painful truths in our own personal lives, truths we must face and somehow learn to carry. There are people who try to bring us down. Sometimes they are strangers. Sometimes, they are those closest to us. There are outside forces and there are intimate struggles. Most often, there is both.
This week, many of us felt the heartbreak of the arson attack on the synagogue in Mississippi, a community that Natan and I actually interviewed at before coming to Sinai. It is a place where dear friends were born and raised, a community that has nurtured Jewish life for generations. And yet, even in that pain, we have witnessed a powerful unification of the Jewish people and a deep desire to step up, to protect one another, and to rebuild.
In the middle of personal crises, we so often find the same pattern. A friend shows up in a way we did not expect. A therapist or a rabbi helps us see a path forward. A voice of compassion reminds us that we are not alone and that healing is possible.
For all the sadness, fear, and pain we are called to endure, there is always, always, a flip side. There are the people who step up. There are the quiet acts of courage. And there is hope, even in places we might least expect it.
We see this now in Iran. The protests unfolding there are powerful because they break the wall of fear, bring the Iranian people together, and permanently weaken the regime’s legitimacy. At the same time, they are deeply dangerous, costing countless lives and carrying the risk of instability or chaos in the absence of a clear path forward. It is a painful reminder that courage and suffering often walk hand in hand.
Our Torah portion gives language to this moment. When Moses first brings words of hope to the Israelites, the Torah tells us that they could not hear him because of ketzar ruach, shortness of spirit. Their pain and exhaustion were so great that they could not yet imagine redemption. They were not faithless. They were overwhelmed. Their spirits were crushed by what they were living through.
And maybe that is exactly where many of us find ourselves right now. We are not without hope. We are simply tired. Our spirits feel short. Our hearts are heavy.
And still, we choose to move forward. We choose to name what hurts. We choose to say it out loud. And then we look for what exists on the other side: the kindness, the courage, the helpers, the rebuilders, the things we might never have noticed, appreciated, or understood had we not been forced to walk through pain.
There is always another side. And it is up to us to look for it, to hold onto it, and to let it shape who we become.
We cannot control others or the world in which we live. But we can choose our response. We can choose who we are. And we can choose how we allow these moments to shape and change us.
And in that choice, we take one more small step toward the world we pray for, the world Aleinu imagines, even in the midst of another hard week.
