Parashat Vayiggash – Lessons from our ancestors in the aftermath of the shootings in Newtown, CT Delivered on Friday, December 21, 2012

After an event like the unimaginable shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary last week, there are so many questions. The most basic spiritual question, and the most difficult one to answer – What is God’s role in these kinds of events where the worst thing possible happens to good people?

My offering this week are some perspectives from the Parasha on this question.

The first perspective comes from an encounter Jacob has with God on his way down to Egypt. Jacob has learned good news – amazing news –that his son Joseph is still alive and has risen up to be second in command to Pharaoh in Egypt. And he and his entire family is on its way to live in Egypt in order to survive the famine in the land of Israel.

But Jacob is afraid.

Egypt is not the friendliest place – and he does not want to leave his home. He also may have heard the stories from his grandfather Abraham – that God had come to him in a night vision and warned that his people would be slaves in a foreign land for 400 years. He must have been wondering whether this was this the beginning of an era of great darkness and suffering for his people.

So, on his way down to Egypt, Jacob too has a night vision. God calls to him and says, “Fear not to go down to Egypt, for . . . I Myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I Myself will also bring you back.”

One perspective – God is with us in these moments of darkness and suffering.

Rev. Kathy Peters in her prayer at the Chester vigil offered this view on inexplicable loss – that although we may never have answers as to why these awful things happen, one thing we can know is that God is with us through it all. Rabbi Harold Kushner in his book “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” explains that God cannot stop bad things from happening. But when we cry out in anger and distress and deep sadness, God is crying with us. God mourns with us and is outraged with us.

As we look back at the events in Newtown last week, we have a number of roles to play. One is to extend our compassion to those who are grieving and to show that we care. An email went out today to the congregation with information on how we are responding at Beth Shalom. We are gathering donations and will send them off as a group to the United Way of Western CT which is funding increased social services in Newtown. You can write your checks to CBSRZ with “Newtown” in the memo line, and we will make one big donation on behalf of all of us.

Also, next Friday night (tonight was too wet) we plan to have 26 luminaries lining the walkway to the synagogue entrance, in memory of the children and adults who were killed. Many communities will be setting out luminaries on Christmas Eve. And we will do it on Shabbat. Please let me or Beth Gottlieb know if you would like to help with this effort. In these ways we show that we are crying alongside our grieving neighbors.
Another perspective we get in this Torah portion asks whether we should be focusing on the past or the future in our response to terrible events.

As you may remember – Joseph comes to be second in command in Egypt and is in charge of rationing out the grain during the seven years of famine. The famine reaches into the land of Canaan, where his family resides. Joseph’s brothers come down to Egypt for grain and don’t recognize Joseph. At first he doesn’t reveal his identity to them, but this week he finally does reveal himself. And as he does so, in a very emotional scene, he forgives his brothers for their past behavior and reassures them that he doesn’t hold a grudge against them for selling him down to Egypt so many years ago.

Joseph says to his brothers,
“Now, do not be distressed or reproach yourselves because you sold me here; it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you. . . . God has sent me ahead of you to ensure your survival on earth, and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. So, it was not you who sent me here, but God. . . .”

· Here Joseph teaches us that we have a choice after experiencing suffering and tragedy in how we want to live our lives and how we want to understand our purpose. We can choose to find meaning, and to let the experience guide us towards something greater – towards a healing for not only ourselves, but for others.
· Joseph sees the big picture. He may still feel his hurt – it would be hard not to. But instead of getting stuck in the past and taking revenge on his brothers or using his experience as an excuse to bitterly retreat from the world –he sees himself as an active partner in God’s plan to save as many lives as possible in the future.

Another role that we can play as a community is to respond to shooting is to allow our outrage and our hurt to motivate us to work to reduce gun violence in our country. Our Social Action Committee met last week and discussed strategies for taking action on the issue of gun control on a local and a national level. If you are interested in being involved in our efforts, please let Andy Schatz, the chair of our SAC know.

I imagine that most people who have survived or witnessed traumatic events find themselves responding in different ways at different times, depending on how we are feeling in the moment.

We see this in Jacob. There are times when he is able to see beyond his own suffering and understand that he has a larger role to play in the life of his family and his people. And there are times when he is overcome with bitterness at the hand that life has dealt him.

When Jacob arrives in Egypt, Joseph introduces his father to the Pharaoh. When Pharaoh asks Jacob, “How many are the years of your life?” Jacob responds, “The years of my sojourn on earth are one hundred and thirty. Few and hard have been the years of my life, nor do they come up to the life spans of my fathers during their sojourns.”

And yet, the rabbis imagine in a midrash that on his way down to Egypt, Jacob does something quite amazing. He cuts down a tree and splits the wood to make the boards that will form the structure of the Mishkan – the Tabernacle. He cuts this wood that his future descendants, the Israelites, will use to build the movable sanctuary in the Sinai desert, after being rescued from 400 years of Egyptian slavery – and he bring these planks down with him to Egypt.

That Jacob cut these boards was testimony to his trust in God, and his dedication to the future. He understood his role in the world, seeing his life as a piece in the puzzle of redemption.

May we all have the strength within us to dedicate ourselves to the future like Jacob and Joseph. May we look through the haze of the tragedy and the pain of this past week and see clearly our role – to cut the boards now that may be built into a future of safety and compassion and peace for everyone’s children. May we help those who are still grieving in Newtown to know that we are with them, and through us, that God is with them. And may God’s tears and God’s outrage work through us to heal this hurting world.