The Journey Home

The Journey Home

Rabbi Michael L. Feshbach

Temple Anshe Hesed, Erie, PA

Suspended animation isn't restricted to Orlando or Hollywood. It can happen in many places. It can even happen on 1-79, halfway between Meadville and Edinboro, Pennsylvania.

Sometimes I wonder why human beings live in this climate. Then I remember the spring and the summer and the fall.

Sometimes I hear Jews in this area worry about the dangers of a trip to Israel.  And I want to look at them in awe, and ask them if they ever get in a car and drive between December and March. For they are doing something far, far more dangerous than any trip to Israel would be.  (Unless, perhaps, the trip included standing in the middle of Hebron and shouting that you wanted the city back, but that is another story.)

I guess I was pretty shaken up by my drive home a couple of weeks ago. And I didn't even go off the road. Not that I would have noticed if I did.

To me, white out is an archaic term, a remnant of the days before electric typewriters had eraser ribbons as part of the cartridge, and something certainly put out of common usage by word processors . It was not a meteorological phenomenon.

But it is that, as well. And three weeks ago, coming home from the undergraduate Introduction to Judaism class I teach one day a week Spring (sic) Semester at Allegheny College, I hit a white out.

Actually, it wasn't just one. It was several.  And they lasted minutes apiece. Not seconds, as I had experienced before.

A white out is when the snow is so heavy, and the wind so strong to kick up more snow, that you cannot see anything at all. You can't stop, because anyone behind you would not see you. You can't pull over, because you can't see the side of the road. You can't speed up, because, well, you would never have been given a driver's license or passed a psych test in the first place if you are the kind of person who would speed up during a white out. You just have to keep on going, the Energizer Bunny of the Road, slow and steady It keeps snowing and snowing...), hoping the road doesn't curve.

Hoping... and what is that other word for it? Oh yes.  Hoping... and praying. In the white out three weeks ago, I rediscovered petitionary prayer. And at the same moment, I had a theological crisis.

You see, I am not sure how firmly I believe in the notion of a God who intervenes in particular situations. I am com.1nced that the tragedies of life, minor and major, are part of the fabric of the universe, not caused by some being who could have prevented them. In this I follow in the footsteps of Rabbi Harold Kushner, whose When Bad Things Happen to Good People popularized the theology of a limited God. I see God more as a Source of Comfort and Solace, a Font of Creative Energy, an Enabler of Blessing and Growth and Potential, than I do as the Puppet Master of All Destiny. More as the Author of Possibility than the Scribe of Certain Fate. And this theology serves me very well... in my study.

But there are no atheists in a foxhole, it is said. And on that drive three weeks ago, there were no atheists on 1-79. As I had during the years when we were struggling with infertility, as I do when I think of the fragility of my small son (not so small, actually - he weighs 16 lbs. at almost four months), I am not too proud to let my theories interfere with a direct appeal to the Master of the Universe every now and then. Nor am I so ungrateful as to forget to be thankful at the end of a day, or the end of a drive.

I don't know what I accomplish in terms of communication with God at such moments. But I do know that such moments are important.  That they are not to be dismissed even in the comfort of academic thought.   And that more people have such moments than would even admit to actually "belie\1ng" in God.

And so, for now, what I'll do is live with what such moments bring to me: a renewed perspective, a sense of gratitude at being alive, a sense of kinship with those who didn't stay on the road, extended to those whose lives are in pain in any way.

And in the long run, if I can hold on to that outlook just a little longer than I otherwise would have, it will turn out that a whiteout was something different than what I expected it to be. It was a moment when, in fact , I saw with my heart far more clearly than I thought with my head.

May we all meet such moments and come out on the other side, healed, whole... and open to the holiness in life.