Facing Down Your Fears

By Rabbi Paul Kipnes

 

What a world we live in!?! Pogrom in Amsterdam. War in the Middle East. A pivotal election that left some elated and others heartbroken. Financial fears. Mental health worries. Antisemitism. Concerns for our children and our parents. Worries about ourselves. Whenever far-reaching changes are on the horizon, we worry about what might be.

Thousands of years ago, facing his own fears, the author of the Psalms, our Biblical ancestor, worried too. Like us, the Psalmist cried out (Ps. 121): Esa einai el heharim, mei-ayin yavo ezri? I lift up my eyes to the mountains, from where will come my help? Yes, he recognized, these are challenging times for so many of us. So easy to become despondent, demoralized, dismayed. To feel like there is no hope.

The Psalmist refused to be frozen in his fear. He knew, in his kishkes (his guts) that he was not alone. His answer was simple: Ezri mei-eem Adonai, oseh shamayim va’aretz. My help will come from God, Maker of heaven and earth. (Listen to Jewish Composer Dan Nichol’s setting of this sentiment.) Yes, the future feels dark, he sensed. Yes, we worry, he knew. But God implanted within us the seed of our salvation: hope. We Jews, in the face of fear, cling to hope.

Rebecca Slonit wrote, “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from [what you fear]… To hope is to give yourself to the future – and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable.”

Noah and his wife Na’ama, facing down fear, took that axe of hope and built an ark. It wasn’t quick; it took quite a long time. Yet they persevered. And then, instead of letting exhaustion get the better of them, Noah and Na’ama continued on, bringing in the animals two by two, filling the ark for the future. When we feel fear – for whatever reason – refuse to despair. Instead let’s recommit ourselves to be like Noah and Na’ama: We will reclaim and redeem our lives, and our world, two by two, by taking two hopeful acts each day…

Remember, most everyone, everywhere, is looking out at our country and the world, and for their own reasons (some similar to yours, some very, very different), is feeling some combination of worry and weariness, anxiousness and anticipation. There are plenty of reasons for that.
Still feeling like there is no hope? Watch this video in which I remind you about the Jewish secret to finding hope. (It begins with the awareness that hopelessness is not a Jewish notion, as the word does not even exist in the Jewish lexicon.) And we will do what Jews and Jewish families always do. We will hold hands, feel the Presence of a Power greater than one individual, and together, we will swing that axe of hope and find a way through. Take a look, and let’s talk.