Rabbi Sandra Lawson shares the Torah of her own family's Lech Lecha moments and the value of meeting people across difference that she has learned from all of them.
According to the Netziv, the brit is meant as a healing salve. God knows the ways committing acts of violence may leave a permanent scar on those who commit them. Perhaps God is speaking from experience.
As our ancestor Abraham experienced, our most liminal moments also often coincide with moments calling for meaning-making and the rituals that bring us spiritually home. Yet few who flee by forced circumstances arrive with the means that Abraham had to purchase the dignity of sacred space and time.
I imagine the Israelites showing the same expression of confusion and disbelief as those families who realize that they have just lost their homes and that their lives have just been upended: not knowing to whom to turn and where to go because of a system that is not built to support them. At least in the story of the Exodus, God has other plans.
It is incumbent upon us to create spaces for God to come into the world. I would add, if we are not doing everything we can to create structures to house all holy human beings, then we are not doing our part in imitating godliness.
The best way to celebrate the sixth of Sivan might well be to engage in some activity on behalf of the poor or the stranger or in some justice-oriented project or endeavor. That’s what I plan to do.