April 2025
Beth Jacob Synagogue | Rabbi Beni Wajnberg

There is a four-letter word that we, the Jewish community, seem to have forgotten at times, or better, especially in these times. This four-letter word is, however, never truly forgotten. 

And, at all times, it is precisely what we need. It is also, lo and behold, free and can be abundant.

Before we get to this word, I want to acknowledge all of the feelings that we have been holding on to for over a year and a half. 

We feel scared, we feel hurt. We feel belittled, diminished, and insignificant. We feel threatened and we feel persecuted. We open the newspaper, we connect to social media, and all that we see validates those very emotions. 
I want to invite you to stop for a moment. Literally, stop for a second, I will wait. I mean it! Stop and take a deep breath of air. You see the air that comes into your lungs and fuels your body? You still have it. But what you have is even more important than breath. For breath is common to all living things, but we human beings have something more important. 
Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who went through hell during the Shoah, observed what our people went through  —  what he was going through  —  and made a remarkable observation. We are always free  —  not in our bodies perhaps, but our minds are always free to search for meaning, for purpose. 

No one can ever steal that from us  —  those were his observations in such horrendous circumstances, in the direst of all straits. He saw people comforting one another, letting go of their comfort for another prisoner. We are, Frankl noted, free to find meaning and purpose. The freedom to have a meaning, a purpose. 

Friends, if you are reading this, if you are breathing and if you are a human being (the likelihood of all of these being true is high!), you are completely free. Free to search for meaning, free to will the life that you wish to live.

We have been traumatized, individually and collectively. 

And we are re-traumatizing ourselves every time that we invite those same feelings back into our minds. To be clear — we have good reason to feel all of those hard emotions. They are real. But just as real is our capacity to find purpose and meaning, not only in opposition, in defense, in response to news cycles. We cannot control our neighbours and their actions, but we have absolute control over our reaction.

We are in the season in which we remember leaving Egypt. 

Mitzrayim in Hebrew, meaning a place of narrowness. And we are to see ourselves as if we had been slaves. We are, to some degree. Egypt is now. Here. Not in a place, but in our hearts. And the goal is to leave Egypt. 

It is time, my holy friends, to let the Pharaohs of fear and trauma lose their strength. Indeed, that would be a great way to honour what our people has gone through: proving that we are resilient. 

Ah, I almost forgot. The powerful four-letter word. The word is hope. Do you know when a little bit of grass dares to grow in the midst of cement? That’s hope. That’s you and I. 

That is a future that we can believe in. Chag Sameach!