(Inspired by a friend who shared a similar experience on Facebook. I suspect we are not alone.)
THE MORNING OF NOVEMBER 6, 2024 gave me the biggest and most horrific shock of my life.
I won’t go into why, because half the country already knows why, and those processing the same emotions could use fewer words rather than more.
And yet, I do have something to say.
I arrived at my shul later that Wednesday in a state of pounding grief, frustrated anger, existential dread, and profound loathing. This mood was obvious to my rabbi and his wife, but we didn’t talk much about it – what would be the point? Instead, we prepared for the afternoon’s lessons.
How can I tutor Hebrew and Torah, when the world has changed so utterly? I thought. How?
There’s a verse in the Torah, Exodus 24:7, where Moses reads the newly minted Ten Commandments to the Israelites. They reply: “Na’aseh v’nishma” – literally, “We’ll do, and we’ll listen.”
Or, put another way, “We will do what we must, and the understanding of it will follow.”
Torah teachers – even weekly volunteers like me – are links in a chain of tradition first forged almost four thousand years ago. Our people have seen this movie before, in many times and lands, where our future path is uncertain. But we keep walking anyway.
When my students arrived, I put on my best everything’s-fine manner and headed for a country I know and love so well: Hebrew with a Bar Mitzvah candidate, and later, group Torah study with 6th through 8th graders.
And somewhere over the next two hours, my first-person perspective dropped away.
I thought of Rabbi Akiva, and of one of his students who asked him why, when the rabbi sat in a Roman prison cell awaiting execution for teaching Torah, he continued to teach Torah.
“More than the calf must suckle, the cow must nurse,” Rabbi Akiva replied.
We’re Jews, I thought with grim determination. This is what we do.
Going forward? Not there yet, if ever. But at least I know what forward might look like – and what to carry along.