B’reisheet
In their book, What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Old, Richard Leider and David Shapiro cite this lovely message: “There’s a reason your windshield is bigger than your rear-view mirror; where you’re headed is more important than what you’ve left behind.”
The authors then conclude that “for many people in later life, it’s all about that mirror.” So, this Shabbat we come to the first portion of Torah, B’reisheet and we begin again.
Few portions are quoted more than this one for we have creation’s two stories as well as the challenges presented to us in Chapter 3 and the moral questions of Cain and Abel.
However, this year, in thinking about this portion I wanted to suggest that there is another message here that speaks to each of us as we age. There is a tendency for many to focus on that rear-view mirror, on what was. After all, there is some sense of security and familiarity with where we have come from. The present, and maybe the future seems, at times, daunting.
Just try mastering computer skills, medical portals and A.I.
The crises that meet us all too often involve aspects of loss, and they continue to raise significant questions about where we are in life and so all too often, we are content to rest in what was.
Yet, Judaism teaches us another lesson and that lesson leaps out from the pages of the portion. We honor the past, celebrate often where we have come from, but we are also told from tradition to not fear tomorrow. Let me suggest that a message for us from this portion is that very message of creation. Do not fear to begin again.
The new life stages that we encounter in this era of longevity present us with unique opportunities to chart new phases of life. Yes, the challenges of health and finances impact this idea, however, the message of personal creation, of beginning new stages of life, this invitation is always there for us.
This is often a time of great transition for many of us. We may assume new outward identities due to life changes. Again, we are given the choice to meet those new challenges. Some people retreat and others move forward.
This portion asks us to not to fear to begin again, to create new ways of living that speak to our own hopes and dreams and skills and circumstances.
As we all know, we live now in very challenging times. The levels of anxiety from events at home and abroad make it very easy to only look to the past. But we are all moving, each day, to our own future. None of us know what that future will be.
This Torah portion, I believe, reminds us that Judaism underscores the belief that we are free to create who we wish to be. Let us carry the past with us as a sacred memory, to learn from it, to honor it but not to dwell in it.
We have been given this most precious gift of life and it is good. Our future awaits, as do the portions of Torah that now begin again. Let us try to be like these portions which we read again every week, and, hopefully, create new meaning, for we are not the same as we were.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Richard F. Address
Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, is the Founder and Director of www.jewishsacredaging.com. Rabbi Address served for over three decades on staff of the Union for Reform Judaism; first as a Regional Director and then, beginning in 1997, as Founder and Director of the URJ’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as a specialist and consultant for the North American Reform Movement in the areas of family related programming. Rabbi Address was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1972 and began his rabbinic career in Los Angeles congregations. He also served as a part time rabbi for Beth Hillel in Carmel, NJ while regional director and, after his URJ tenure, served as senior rabbi of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, NJ from 2011-2014.
A great message, Richard, one personally
Meaningful as I look beyond the major surgery next month to a life more limited socially and to an extent physically: I am now encouraged to expand my windshield view of the future. Thanks