It’s been a long time since I’ve offered a proper drash. We finished the High Holy Days and then came the fall festivals of Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret and they had their particular flavors and demands. And then I left on my journey to Germany and to Israel, which I will tell about some other day. And I came back and was thrown right into the needs of this congregation in a way that didn’t give me the time or space to let my imagination loose the way I like.
But it is the end of the year, the Gregorian year, and reflection is in the air. We are all scanning the top-10 lists of 2022 – the best books, the films, the heroes, the discoveries, the tragedies. Some might say that the turn of the solar year is an artificial marker. But that’s not so; this is the deepest and darkest time of the year; we are gestating, enwombed, awaiting rebirth. We are absorbing the experience of this past year, metabolizing it, hopefully to nourish us as we emerge into the next spring of our lives. This is a cycle we have lived through before, and it is no less meaningful for being familiar.
Meanwhile, in our cycle of Torah, we have arrived at another circling back in the parashah called Vayigash. Like every year at this time, we are in Egypt with Joseph. Joseph, who was thrown into a pit by his brothers and sold into slavery, trafficked to Egypt, bought, imprisoned, released, redeemed, rehabilitated, risen. Joseph is now a grand vizier in Pharaoh’s Egypt, and in this time of famine that he foresaw, his brothers have arrived to find food. In a moment of emotional overwhelm, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, the very ones who sold him into slavery, and he saves them, giving them food and land and bidding them bring their father, Jacob, to live in Egypt.
Joseph’s story has come full circle. All the predictions of his youthful dreams, predictions of his brothers bowing down to him, have all come true. But there is no gloat in Joseph. He insists that it was God moving all the pieces on the board so that ultimately their family could be saved. “I was sent ahead,” says Joseph, l’michyah – “for the sake of life itself.”
And with that, suddenly, everything shifts. A story of individual trauma and triumph gives way to a larger story of life pouring through the details of circumstance. Looking back, every act, every turn of the story, is now imbued with a greater knowingness. Seeds have borne fruit. Everything has led to this reunion and this conclusion. Life has had its way.
Maybe that is the nature of looking back, which we do at this dark time of the year. What seeds are germinating in the dark? What has blossomed? What will blossom? What are the resolutions and surprise reunions that are yet to happen? What stories have reached their seeming conclusion?
For me, looking back over this year, what stands out most is how many individual stories in our community reached their conclusions. The number of people we lost in the Ner Shalom community this year is unprecedented. And we are still in the dark, wondering how their stories will continue in us. I want to name these Ner Shalom members and close friends of our community, and remind us of the beauty and uniqueness of each of them. Maybe remembering them all together, we will feel the flow of life that poured through them and their individual stories, to join the great river of life itself.
Alan Hahn, joyful, barefoot dancer, laughter ringing the rafters.
Robert Allen, doting dad, helpful and sly, vests and hand-rolled cigarettes.
Dori Giller, bright light activist, artist, musician, sweetness and strength in a delicate frame.
Jerry Connell, doctor, fiddler, blue-eyed Buddha.
Rosey Sussman, joyful matriarch, lover of learning, seasoned balaboste.
Mark Bauman, long, lanky dancing ecstatic and anxious seeker.
Eliora Greenwood, gentle healer, colors flowing from gifted fingers.
Ari Elster, tending plants and people, cooking for loved ones, stirring the pot in and out of the kitchen.
Mac McCaffry, archangel Michael in earthly form, expounding, winking, gushing gratitudes.
And if we go one degree of separation further, rippling outward to the parents, siblings, and beloveds of our community members, we see Shirley Magnus and Stevie Mann and Barry Ponneck and Joseph Levine and Ronnie Genser and Stuart Mestelman and Beryle Levine and Hilde Gattmann and Claire Abrams and Buddy Schwartz and Lee Bowden and loved ones that I don’t know about but who touched the lives of the people in this room and in this congregation.
Their stories have reached a conclusion this year, in the way that all of ours one day will. Their stories – filled with love and striving and failure and triumph. Their stories, structured upon the specificity of their lives, but filled with the universal – the struggle to be human, the joy to be Divine.
Their stories have circled about and returned on fancy wild orbits. They have reached their resolutions and their surprise reunions. Life has had its way.
And our heartbreak at the conclusion of their stories is in itself a continuation of their stories. Our heartbreak is the love that they set in motion. We carry that love forward into our own stories, and from there, who knows where?
So we end this year with plenty of tears. Our tears are tribute to these souls – remarkable, each and every one of them. And our tears are tribute to life itself. Because it is not death but life that has had its way.