top of page
Buscar

Crossing the Sea

I have just read one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. A small volume, written by the Jewish Brazilian author Noemi Jaffe, describing the year of avelut—bereavement—after her mother's death.[i] One of those rare books that makes you cry, laugh and even laugh while crying as you read. In one passage about her grief, she writes:

“I don't want to feel better, at least not yet, because it means the possibility of integrating the living memory of her touch, of her face, of the hole of her absence, into my daily life. I don't want that to happen. I want to continue having, even with my routine almost back to normal, intervals of concentration on the pain and the physical memory of her presence.”

 

In some ways, this is how we are living after October 2023. We have our routines, our normal lives, but sometimes we simply need to pause and concentrate on the pain, sadness, fear and anger that we carry within us. There's a sense of guilt in not doing so, as if moving on would somehow erase what happened – and what continues to happen still.

 

We have been carrying pain, a very specific pain – loss. We lost the ability to be carelessly happy, because there is a heavy dark cloud hanging over us, weighing on our shoulders. We are mourning, even those of us who didn't lose someone dear or near us. We are mourning the people we were before October 2023 – we are carrying dog tags, yellow ribbons, or even just the shadow of what happened and what we became. We seem unable to overcome the paradox of life and death as Noemi expresses: “I refuse to hear or even say to myself the famous phrase 'Life goes on'. In a certain sense, it doesn't go on. Despite the imponderability of time, something stops and stays there on the wall where the painting is missing.”

 

Today is a very special Shabbat: a baby blessing awaits us; we gather for Yizkor service to remember our dear ones who have died; and on this Seventh day of Pesach, we have just read Shirat haYam, the Song of the Sea. We crossed those waters together. Yet as we read during our sedarim – our Passover dinners – in our Liberal Haggadah: “When Israel stood at the edge of the sea, each one said: ‘I will not be the first to enter...’” They knew they had to continue, but behind them lay empty walls, abandoned homes, the bones of loved ones, their history. They felt bereavement for a time that was no more – even though it was a time of hardship and suffering, it was the life they once knew. Then, “While they stood there deliberating, Nachshon ben Amminadav leapt first into the Sea and plunged into its waves.” Through hope, they parted the waters. Here again, the paradox: bereavement alongside hope.

 

Life goes on. They cross the sea, as we now must cross our own. They walk forward and witness the Egyptians dead, understanding that their freedom came at the cost of others' suffering. There was no easy path then, just as there is none now. When human beings – each made in the image of God – perish like this, all humanity suffers. As progressive Jews, we carry the deaths of our people, yet we also see and mourn the deaths of other innocent souls dragged into this shadow, beneath the heavy dark cloud hanging over us all. To be a progressive Jew is to live within this paradox.

 

Noemi writes: “’Life goes on.’ But what is life? As if life were that-which-happens-outside-of-death. But it's not like that. Life goes on, of course, but now with death, …, and not despite or beyond it.” And so we carry on, paradoxically, with both life and death, with pain and yellow ribbons, with bereavement and hope intertwined.

 

But we cannot remain on this side of the sea. We must find strength and courage; we must continue marching and fighting. Though we've crossed the waters together, the wilderness still stretches before us on our journey toward the Promised Land. This remains our goal. “We are going to dance again,” as Israelis have been saying. And so Moses sings the song of the sea, while Miriam takes up her timbrel and calls to the other women with dance and song. Mitzraim – Egypt – will forever remain an empty space on the wall, a collective memory of suffering. Yet on the far shore, there is dancing, there is strength, and there stretches before us the long path of healing yet to be traversed.

 

For us, today, this long journey begins with celebrating new life. Yet in this paradox of life and death, we find the juxtaposition of communal and personal grief. Our path continues as we remember those who are no longer with us. They live on in our bodies and our memories – we can feel them like a thin film of air embracing us. They have become a gentle brush against our consciousness. This is what grief should ultimately become: not a heavy dark cloud, but a light, embracing memory. As Noemi writes, “What remains of someone, through the eyes of those who remain, is exactly that, love.” Though there is death, hope springs forth in new lives.

 

As the poet Alden Solovy wrote for Pesach this year: [ii] 

 

“Our story is not complete.

Oh no.

There will be more highs

And lows,

But the ending,

Oh my,

Will be tremendous.

This is faith.

Faith knows

That our story is not complete,

And the ending

Is beyond

All our hopes

For joy and wonder.”

 

It is time to cross the sea. Time to find the courage to march forward. Time to gather our strength and face these adversities. We are no longer in Egypt, yet we wander still through the desert. We must save those who remained behind in Mitzraim, though we cannot return there ourselves. We cannot remain there. Herein lies yet another paradox.

 

Today, as we celebrate new life within these synagogue walls, as we remember with abiding love those no longer beside us, we must choose to follow Miriam's example: to take up our timbrels and lead our people with dance and song. And together, we shall reach our Promised Land.

 

 

 



 


[i] Noemi Jaffe, Lili - Novela de Um Luto (São Paulo, Brazil: Companhia das Letras, 2021).

Comments

bottom of page