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Welcome to the Torah portion Bo
This newletter focuses on how difficult it is to make the journey to freedom because of fear. We begin by acknowledging we can't know the future. This week, I encourage you to click on the additional reading link for an excerpt from a striking essay on Roosevelt's Freedom from Fear from 1943.
              
                                                       Michael (mjstrassfeld@gmail.com)
Intention/kavanah for the week:
ve-anahnu lo neida mah na’avod et Adonai ad bo’anu shama
We shall not know with what we are to worship God until we arrive there. (Ex. 10:26).

   The context of this verse is the escalating negotiations between Pharaoh and Moses. Yet the verse describes a deeper truth—we don’t know what we will need to do in the future until we “arrive” there. As much as we plan for the future whether it is a vacation or retirement, we don’t know what the next moment will bring, let alone that which will occur in the years to come. There is a freedom in accepting we can’t know everything and some things are unknowable. We can still move forward on our life’s journey. This doesn’t mean you should go in unprepared for a meeting. It does mean that creating stories about what might happen at the meeting or at work is a distraction from what is happening right now. Resting in unknowing gives us a greater flexibility to respond to what actually does occur. We approach life without preconceived notions or a sense of how things should be. Instead, we have faith that we will figure it out when we get there.
   The practice this week is resting in unknowing. Let anxieties and “what ifs” not dominate your thoughts. Cut down on the elaborate rehearsals of what your response will be to the ways other may criticize you. Pay attention to when you begin to create scenarios of future glory or failure.

 And simply stop the story in midsentence. Rest in unknowing.
 
Kol ha'olam kulo gesher tzar me’od v'ha-ikar lo l'faheid klal
 
The whole world is a very narrow bridge, but the important thing is not to fear at all.
                       R Nahman of Bratzlav
 
It struck me that it is unrealistic not to “fear at all.” I would rather understand it as don’t be afraid of the “klal”—the common wisdom that tells you “things can’t change” “there’s a reason we always have done it that way” ---all the things that everybody “knows” are true. It is hard work to leave Egypt or to move ahead when the road is not clear. Too often it is fear of change or of failure that keeps us from seeing the narrow bridge that can carry us across the chasm of what is to what could be. 
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To listen to the song

A word of Torah:
Journeying into freedom and the Four Children of the Passover Haggadah

            When we are the wise child, we know what is. We look at the world and see it as teeming with blessings, a garden filled with delights for the senses. We see humans created not to be alone but rather blessed with relationships of friendship and love, with the gift of eternity and naches through children. We are wise enough not to take the blessings of the world for granted.

            When we are the wicked child, we have a critical view of the world. Without denying the blessings, we see that all of life is not blessings and we respond to that reality with challenge or even anger. Despite the notion in the tradition that God is both oseh shalom u-borei et ha-kol, “the maker of peace and the creator of all things,” it is the evil that stands out.

            When we are the simple child, we see both the good and evil. We respond neither with anger nor despair to the human fate. Instead, we affirm all of life by saying amen to the world. A sense of blessing comes from accepting the world in all its parts. We do not seek to reconcile the complexities of human experience. We understand that the key to life and feeling blessed is to be aware of all that life has to offer. It is with that response that life is fully lived.

            When we are the child who does not know how to ask, we remain silent. We are silent first of all because in that silence we can hear the rhythm of the world, the beating of the heart, and the voice that goes forth every day from Sinai calling to all those lost and wandering in the deserts of our own creation.
            However, we are also silent because we understand the limits of what can be known. Bernie Glassman, a Zen teacher, writes: “Yet, we still want to know. In some way we can’t help it—we’re human. As part of being human, we believe that the reason we’re not happy or not successful is that somewhere in the world there is a piece of knowledge we haven’t acquired yet. If we can find it with the help of the right book, the right religion, the right teacher, or the right job, we’ll be happy and successful.”

            Instead we have come to a place where the questions no longer matter. Coming to a place of unknowing, we are freed from a striving for that which cannot be attained. Instead, we can focus on living a life that is fully alive to every moment--whatever that moment may bring. Freed from striving for “wisdom,” we can focus on bringing peace and healing to the world. This is a life aware of all the blessings filling the world and most of all aware of the blessing—the gift of life itself.
            
Click here for additional readings
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