It was a dark and stormy morning. Energy was a little low, and the whole day loomed ahead. The student planning to read Torah was out sick, so the plan for morning tefilah, prayer service, was already thrown off. I decided to spend some time that morning in hachana l’tefilah, preparation to pray. Every so often in upper school tefilah, we ask students to start with about ten minutes of reflection on a prompt. The practice is not far from that of the early rabbis, who would meditate for some time before beginning their formal prayer, or from the chasidic masters who would spend time alone in nature aiming to achieve the right frame of mind to reach out to the divine.
This morning, deeply aware of the dark sky, and the stress and low energy that tends to arise at this time of year, I started to think about the darkness the threatens to block out the light, and the light that is ever-present, but often hidden. Reflecting on this week’s parsha, I noted the parallel to the situation of the budding Israelite nation. We begin reading the book of Shemot, Exodus, this week and find the people so mired down in the suffering of slavery that they can hardly cry out for help.
As the book opens, slavery has been in place for about four-hundred years. The situation is getting worse before it gets better, and will be for the next few parshiyot. But there is a glimmer of hope, some fragment of faith that allows a mother to place her infant in a basket, and depend on the cleverness of her daughter, the kindness of strangers, and the grace of God to invest in the future.
This is the prompt I offered the students to reflect on as they prepared for an abbreviated, but focused tefilah, experience.
This dark rainy morning, let’s reflect on what we can’t see but still hope is there. You may recognize the quote below, or you may not. Think about it in whatever way it stikes you today, and reflect in writing or drawing below.
I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining.
I believe in love even when I don’t feel it.
I believe in God even when (He) is silent.
These words, originally found etched in the wall of a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, taken out of context, speak powerfully to both the situation of the ancient Israelite nation in Egypt, to a dreary morning at a dreary time of year, to the seeker questioning what is real in the world, and I’m sure to a host of other situations. I would like to share with you, what some of the students saw and heard in these words this week. They reflect deep thought and feeling and bring me, at least, a ray of hope, a crack in the narrow place that has the potential to break open into freedom. I hope they do the same for you. Shabbat Shalom.