Opening our ears to HaShem’s messages

For Shabbat, January 16, 2021

Parasha Va’eira

By Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D.

Dr. Michael Mantell

SAN DIEGO — This week’s parasha is tailored to the times in which we are living. Fear of the unknown, “uncertainty,” has spun many into anxiety, depression, and self-destruction. Many have so weakened their sense of hopefulness, that they live with exhaustion, believing nothing can, or will, improve. The events in the nation’s capital last week have beaten down many. How can we see our strife, our fear, our disbelief, today in this week’s Torah reading?

Moshe hears from Hashem that the people would be freed and what do the children of Israel do when Moshe shares this with them? They don’t listen. They don’t believe, according to the Sforno. They were emotionally paralyzed. Rashi on this parasha, teaches us they were under such stress that they could not even take a breath to pause and catch their thinking. They had kotzer ruach, described as shortness of breath, diminishment of their spirit, and fear. Many today suffer with this same spiritual malady, kotzer ruach. Rashi writes, “anyone who experiences stress or narrowness, such a person’s wind or breath is short.” For Rashi, k​otzer ruach i​s a physical condition. When we are stressed or working hard, we don’t have time to breathe deeply. The Jewish people were working hard; they literally didn’t have time to stop and listen to Moshe!

The Ramban says it’s not that the people didn’t believe in Hashem or Moshe, it’s that they didn’t attend to Moshe’s words. They were fully immersed in work. Shortness of breath here also relates to their fear of Pharaoh that he might kill them if he caught them stopping to catch their breathe.

We are creatures of habit. But we can train our thinking to fill our spirit. We can ask ourselves two questions, a) “Where’s the evidence for the belief that I am so strongly and rigidly holding onto? And b) Does my thinking, my belief, my attitude, help me move forward, bringing me greater pleasure in life, helping me achieve my potential?

When we allow ourselves to pause, to catch our breath, to replace uncertainty with curiosity about what’s to come rather than a declarative prediction of what we believe is going to come, we can then expand our spirit, our belief, orech ruach. The children of Israel believed that Hashem was not with them. How could they believe the word of Hashem, that he would save them, when for generations they did not experience Him, did not have a relationship with Him? Go through the sea based on what? Leave their homes for a “promised land” based on what? Perhaps based on the plagues.

The plagues? Yes. Just as we see the phrase, “we are in this together” popping up in social media through COVID19, the dramatically, six, increasingly more severe, plagues in this week’s parasha served to bring our ancestors together. They witnessed Hashem’s power as He says, “Because this time, I am sending all My plagues into your heart and into your servants and into your people, in order that you know that there is none like Me in the entire earth. For if now I had stretched forth My hand, and I had smitten you and your people with pestilence, you would have been annihilated from the earth. But, for this [reason] I have allowed you to stand, in order to show you My strength and in order to declare My name all over the earth.” Sforno tells us, “God reserved the demonstration that He had complete control over all of the phenomena in space.” Perhaps this is what the Israelites needed at that moment to challenge their thinking that all hope was lost. Hashem understands what we need, when we need it, and delivers it at the right moment, in the right way. It is up to us to see it. The parasha teaches us that we are given the correct “medicine” to help us reframe our thinking. We need to witness the plagues to rebuild our orech ruach, to expand our spirit, our belief and to reduce our fear.

Do we need COVID19 to help us look inward, to help us connect our hearts with our minds and to learn what He is trying to teach us about our relationships, about what ultimately matters in our lives? Do we need more pandemics to help us open our hearts to Hashem and hear what He is trying to tell us? Shabbat is also our medicine, our chance to catch our breath. Rabbi Isaac Luria said that on Shabbat, we receive an extra soul. An extra soul and an extra breath, for the Hebrew word for soul, neshama, also means breath. Shabbat is our antidote to our present day k​otzer ruach​. May we all have a day where we remind ourselves to pause, to take a deep breath, and to recognize, to truly believe, that Hashem is here for us.

Shabbat Shalom.

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Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D., prepares a weekly D’var Torah for Young Israel of San Diego, where he and his family are members. They are also active members of Congregation Adat Yeshurun. He may be contacted via michael.mantell@sdjewishworld.com