A message from Rabbi Sara Abrams
Two years ago at this time, I had just returned from Italy and five days in the “eternal city of Rome.” Upon arriving home– in spite of the jetlag– I was still awed by the ancient city and the stories both hidden and revealed within its midst.
On every walk on my tour, we encountered remnants of a distant past that pronounces itself in this very present, whether the four basilicas, the Vatican and its structures, the Temple of Mars, or the Coliseum, Parthenon and so many others, I found myself thinking about how in Rome, one cannot escape the past, but instead must learn to live with it and honor it.
I wondered how today’s citizens of Rome can successfully build into the future when the past so clearly overpowers the city. I learned from our guide that new transportation pathways cannot be built because they will destroy ancient ruins. This means that there are only two trains for a city of 3 million. How frustrating on a daily basis can these altars to the past be?! It made me think of my own background and ask, how do we, as Jews, also an ancient people with roots into an ancient time, create new pathways and understandings even when the inheritances of our ancestors may dominate our thoughts and orientations?
As with my years in Jerusalem, I felt magnetized toward the ancient stones and the stories they tell, and yet I yearn to lean into the future and its possibilities. Can we take the ancient stones and stories into the present, or must we leave them behind? Each one of us must look at these questions for ourselves and our personal histories as well as our collective ones. What must be discarded? What is light enough to be picked up and packed in our metaphoric carry- on bag?
At TBT we are asking those questions as well, as we prepare for the future, continue and finalize the search for a settled rabbi, and think about what is most important for us right now, and how we can build for the future even when the shifting sands of our culture move beneath our feet.
In our lives now, many of us are asking ourselves what we can let go of and what we can build, what is weighing us down and what lightens us up? Are we preventing new learning because of our ties to the past? Are we bound so tightly that our spirit feels it can’t soar? If so, we can give ourselves permission to examine these tensions.
Leviticus 26 tells us, “You shall eat old grain long stored, and you shall have to clear out the old to make room for the new” (26:10). Whether in Rome or Bend, my prayer for all of us right now is to digest the past and eat the old grain, not in order to preserve its ancient form, but rather to create space for the new, which is the mystery of the unknown, flowing towards us if we are courageous enough to open our hearts to receive it!
B’virkat Shalom,
Rabbi Sara