It may feel like we woke up on Wednesday to find out that the world is burning now. If this election had gone the other way, the other half of the country would be feeling the same way. But this morning, I keep coming back to a midrash on this week’s portion, Lech L’cha, and what type of “burning” we are seeing – and where we go from here.
The portion starts with God telling Abram to “Go forth from your native land…” (Gen. 12:1). In Bereshit Rabbah, Rabbi Isaac raises the question of the nature of Abram’s wandering and says that it is not just a physical wandering, but a spiritual one as well. The crux of Abram’s story is the acceptance of one God, moving away from the polytheistic nations that surrounded it. So Rabbi Isaac shares this parable:
This may be compared to a man who was traveling from place to place when he saw a ‘birah doleket.’ ‘Is it possible that this palace lacks a caretaker?’ he wondered. The owner of the palace looked out and said, ‘I am the owner of the palace.’ Similarly, because our ancestor Abraham said, ‘Is it possible that the world lacks a caretaker?’ the Blessed Holy One looked out and said to him, ‘I am the Sovereign of the Universe.’
‘Birah doleket’ could mean either “a palace in flames” or “a palace full of light.” In one interpretation, Abram sees a world engulfed in fire, and wonders if that means there is no God. In another, Abram sees a world filled with light, and says, “How could something so beautiful have simply come into being?”
Our world – and our country – is worth fighting for. And while I hope I am wrong, I do think that so many of our rights, our safety, and even laws and regulations that we don’t even notice (such as surrounding our health and our climate) are in grave danger. Yet no one went into the voting booth saying, “I am going to make our country and our world worse.” The beauty, and the challenge, of democracy, is that people have a right to make the choice they feel is best for them, their families, and their values. So even if we disagree, we need to make sure that the palace doesn’t burn to the ground, and the only way we do that is understanding both what inspires us and what frightens us – and what inspires and frightens those who may vote differently.
And so even amidst my fear, anxiety, and mourning, I’m choosing action over nihilism, and seeing the beauty in our world over its destruction. For better or for worse, Trump is going to cast a long, long shadow on our history, and yet even if Harris had won, our country would still be nearly evenly divided. That makes it all the more important for all of us to find and create points of light.
Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman is the Founding Director of Sinai and Synapses, an organization that bridges the scientific and religious worlds and is being incubated at Clal – The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and served as Assistant and then Associate Rabbi of Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester. In addition to My Jewish Learning, he’s written for The Huffington Post, Science and Religion Today, and WordPress.com. He lives in Westchester with his wife, Heather Stoltz, a fiber artist, and their daughter and son.