“Brave Journey,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings
November 22, 2024 | 21 Cheshvan 5785
Welcome to Shabbat Awakening as we move into Shabbat. You can listen to it as a podcast here .
My grandfather whom I knew as Zayde and my grandmother, we called Bubbe arrived to Pittsburgh, PA after horrendous loss. Zayde had lost his wife, murdered by Jew hating locals outside of Odessa and Bubbe had lost her sister who had been married to Zayde. Eventually Zayde married Bubbe. Then, they were called Isaac and Fanny. In their shared grief and trauma, they found a way to the United States. They settled and opened a fresh fruit store on Murray Avenue after years of pushing a cart selling fruit.
My Zayde died when I was five. My Bubbe died a year later. They only spoke Yiddish. I understood my Bubbe when she would bring me to the kitchen, open the top drawer filled with lollipops and instruct me to take one. I obliged. My Zayde always seemed to be sitting in a chair when we visited, smoking one cigarette after the other. As a child, I never really understood his sadness.
I did eventually understand the courage it took to leave their family behind — though they carried the trauma of loss with them— to start a new life in an unknown place. With little resource, they found the will to make a home and to eventually bring two sons into the world. My dad spent his early life in that fruit store. His ability to find the sweetest fruit was legendary in my family growing up.
In the early part of the last century, immigrants, many “tired and poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” arrived to these shores, with the torched beacon as a guiding light to them. Many of us are descendants of their brave journeys. Immigrant stories are our stories.
The patriarch, Abraham, was also an immigrant. He and Sarah, his wife, left home and what he knew toward a path guided by a belief. We know that though God promised him land and that he would be the father of many nations, when we arrive to this week’s Torah portion he had neither. He had loss. Sarah had died and he needed a plot of land to bury her. He had to convince the Hittites to sell him the plot.
Often we focus on Abraham’s response to the offer of the Hittites to provide the land as a gift. Abraham recognized that he was unknown and yet resided on the land with the description ger, גר and toshav, תושב. His humility in the face of his loss informed the story. Yet, so did the response of the Hittites. They called him “the elect of God”. The entire community was involved. The y could have rejected him, refused to offer him a plot, and told him to leave. Instead, they make room. They allow him to purchase the land and the cave for Abraham to bury his wife. It is a moment of healing and transformation. The next verse speaks about Abraham’s new focus on the future to find a wife for his son.
In the ancient telling, the immigrant is honored.
Each immigrant family story has its travails, trauma, and trials. As we consider the American story and the impact of immigrants on our country, let us remember that many who came then and now to these shores carry their own heartache. The kindness they receive and the way they are treated still makes all the difference for healing and transformation for their own chance to breathe free.
Shabbat Shalom! שבת שלום
Rabbi Elaine Zecher
I truly welcome your comments, reflections, and thoughts. Connect with me here.
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