A Drash to End בראשית and 2023.
I am, by all accounts, neither the most nor the least religious/ observant/ spiritual/ culturally connected person I know. But I’m trying to keep integrating it into my life.
I say that knowing that my family will never be the same, families the world over will never be the same, that there are people we have lost that we will never have again.
This week’s parsha was my Bar Mitzvah (yes I had a Bar Mitzvah, in 2016) parsha, Vayechi- He lived. It is about the passing of the last forefather and a transitional time for our people. Personally, that’s a really big summary of 2023 because I lost the three remaining grandparents I grew up with. The whole year was a roller coaster outside of that, including the death of a friend and more mass global traumas and other big and small things, good and bad, but that cannot be downplayed the way I had to downplay it for school and work. Straight As, but I don’t know if it was entirely worth missing out on sitting Shiva with my family and seeing them more when we were here. Regardless, we had plenty of time together and it also never would’ve been enough.
The values of this Parsha include healing from hardship, reconciliation, grief, learning, and looking out for others. I had to do all of those things this year, but I also got to do all those things this year. As the modern-day Navi Stephen Sondheim said (half joking),: “[Children] can only grow from something you love to something you lose” I wouldn’t be grieving if I didn’t care.
Regarding learning/teaching. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t have a big, happy family or a ton of friends right now, but teaching is the thing that has been the gift this year besides the people I do still have close to me.
My students were a huge reason I was able to keep going this year and the main reason why I didn’t leave. I don’t have kids to pass things onto yet. I do have students. And they teach me so much too. Community is important to have.
This Parsha is supposed to have a glimmer of hope that the family got back together one last time, heard his final words and blessings before his burial, and that there’s a new generation to carry on the legacy. We know, of course, what came next back then. We don’t know now.
This year was, without a doubt, difficult; and yet, like everything else in life, this year has an end. Things will continue to change. That is the only thing I know for certain.
This is the end of a chapter. I pray that it’s not the end of the whole story. Going into the last Shabbat of 2023, followed by 2024- we all deserve rest, freedom, and peace. IY”H, soon by us all.
Shabbat Shalom.
