In the Biblical story of the Exodus, the Israelites had to leave Egypt quickly. They grabbed their dough before it had a chance to rise. That haste, that sudden demand to leave behind the life they had been living, is memorialized in the flat bread – matzah – that Jews to this day eat during the spring festival of Passover.
Having your college careers interrupted, being so suddenly separated from friends, teachers, mentors; having to leave your college home so quickly – how has that sudden pivot affected all of you?
And to follow that Biblical narrative, you, like the Israelites, are now in the wilderness. Probably wondering – where do we go from here? Before the virus you certainly had concerns, worries, questions about life and the future. Now you’re faced with a whole new kind of uncertainty. For some older folks the most vivid collective memory of such sudden disruption was the U.S. entering WWII; my own father scrambled to finish up high school early to enlist in the navy. College would have to wait.
But it came, four years later; and law school too; and a family; and a life. But at the point where he found himself suddenly in uniform, among strangers, on a boat in Hawaii, he couldn’t have imagined all that.
As much as we like to plan, feel in control, it’s useful to get used to the idea that a life journey runs into MANY blind corners that require many sudden and unplanned shifts. Remember the promising young Joseph with the technicolor dream-coat, thrown in a pit by his brothers? How must he have felt suddenly stripped of the coat-of-promise, of his dreams, taken down to Egypt by strangers, sold into slavery. At what point did he perhaps figure out, “This is going to require a serious re-calibrating of expectations”?
But hey, all the stories I’ve invoked here have happy endings. Turns out people with flexibility – the word I like is nimble – can figure out how to navigate some pretty brutal twists and turns.
We’re all facing big and unexpected challenges, one very big change of plans. But I have faith in you all. We’ll get through this, and, god-willing, it will be part of the story that we’ll pass on to future generations, that they may remember and learn lessons for their own lives. Welcome to the wide-open spaces of uncertainty. Let’s choose to be grateful – even eating flat bread, even experiencing “college interrupted” – it doesn’t mean life itself is suspended. We’re still on the road. The 40 years of wandering that, according to the story, the Israelites subsequently settle into – well, that’s their “new normal”. We, like them, are on a new path.
Rabbi Shosh Dworsky
Associate Chaplain for Jewish and Interfaith Life
April 16, 2020