If there is anything I am certain of, it is the great uncertainty of this moment in time. This year has shaken us; it has shaken me. We are holding so much right now: an age-defying election on the horizon, our hearts torn asunder after October 7th, the effective start of a regional war in and around our homeland, all of it on top of whatever it is we may be holding in our own hearts.
As our people have done for centuries in times like these, let us turn to our texts and traditions for guidance.
This morning, we heard the opening words of our sacred story: Breisheet bara Elohim et hashamayim v’et haaretz, When God created the heavens and the earth, v’ha’aretz haita tohu vavohu[1] the earth was amorphous and formless or was it wild and waste… or chaos. This tongue twister from our text, tohu vavohu translates in so many ways. Maybe it is best left as is… untranslatable; it’s just tohu vavohu.
When I think about this moment in the story of our nation, which is where I want to focus us this morning, it feels like we’ve been transported back in time to the opening lines of Genesis. Or no, it’s more like we never really left the very beginning. We are all still stuck at verse 2 and impatiently waiting for the verses that follow, for the creation of light and life and Eden.
For what can be more tohu vavohu than a time like this… a time when profound political polarization has become the status quo and conspiracy theories are debated like truth, a time when there have been not just one, but two active assassination attempts on a presidential candidate, a time when terrorism is seemingly celebrated in American streets and universities?
November 5th looms large in our sights, and so does that tenuous time between Election Day and Inauguration Day. As your rabbi, I have asked myself: what could I possibly have to say to you about the upcoming election that you don’t already know or can’t learn better from social scientists and opinion makers? How can I be sure to not add to what some are experiencing as trauma by addressing this election at all?
I certainly have no radical solutions or even unradical ones, but what I believe I can humbly offer in this moment, almost one month to the day of an election that could very well change our lives is an acknowledgement of the anxiety that may be residing in your heart. What I can offer in this moment of moral morass is the reminder that Judaism is transcendent and purposeful, and grounds us in moral meaning making. What I would like to offer is hope.
So, let’s talk about our anxiety. What is at stake? What truths do we need to tell? For some of us, our hearts are breaking, or they are already broken, smashed to bits on the floor. For others, we have become discouraged, detached, and disassociated. It’s all tohu vavahu.
The truth is that the norms of our society are in flux. The rhetoric of disastrous and mean-spirited language has become so normalized that we no longer flinch. Institutions that were built to be independent have become politicized like our supreme court whose ruling on presidential immunity has raised fears about the limits of presidential power and the future of our democracy. How we think of our bodies, specifically women’s bodies has drastically changed with the real threat of a national ban on abortion looming. Meanwhile, just being a Jew in the United States is not as safe as it used to be. For so long, it was the neo-Nazis and white supremacists we feared, but now it is also the far left in real positions of power and influence, and sometimes it’s even the college roommates of our children and grandchildren.
This moment requires us to get grounded in moral clarity. And that’s where this place, this community, the beauty of our long tradition comes in. Judaism offers us a moral frame that transcends party and politics. It helps us recognize the mess of tohu vavohu around us and gives us the moral courage to say when enough is enough, and that it is time to change our ways.
The early, eternal words of Genesis continue: the earth was tohu vavohu and then there was choshech al p’nai t’hom, there was darkness over the face of the deep v’ruach Elohim m’rachefet al pnai hamayim[2] and the spirit of God sweeping over the water.
In the Talmud, there is much discussion about this very moment of creation. What exactly does it mean that darkness lay over the deep and that God’s spirit swept over the water? What darkness, what deep, what water? Maybe it is descriptive. It describes how frightening it is to live in a world where there is a choshech, a darkness that lingers, and a deep, an abyss that threatens to swallow us whole. So many of us have encountered the despair of these days. But then there is also the mayim, the water like a mikvah that cleanses, and God nearby. In the Talmud, Ben Zoma suggests the distance between the upper and lower realms was just three finger lengths apart, and that is where God hovered. He likens it to the distance a dove might hover over her young.[3]
What can this teach us? God, imeinu, our mother, came close to the chaos, the messy building blocks of creation… for creation had not yet begun. This was it, this was the moment. God did not create out of nothing as we’ve sometimes been taught. No, creation sprang forth from the chaos, from the amorphous, formless tohu vavohu. And God made a decision, and spoke: Vayomer Elohim y’hi or vay’hi or[4] and God said let there be light – and there was light. And God saw that it was good.
For us mere mortals today, living out in the divine image, is it possible that we could do the same? Can we cultivate enough courage within us and collectively to come close to the chaos we are living through and create something new from this mess? Can we make us ourselves believe that our words are powerful enough to speak light into being? Like God, can we carve some goodness out of all of this pain and division and fear?
God could have turned away from all of the darkness (and we understand that instinct to turn and hide and run away, don’t we?), but instead the Holy One took the time to pull each strand of light away from the darkness as if rescuing it from being consumed. From the formless, wild, chaotic tohu vavohu, God birthed something new and good.
As Jews, this is how we tell the story of the beginning of our world. Darkness does not consume; instead, it’s our very beginning, our breisheet. What charge then rests in our hands as receivers of this holy teaching? We are charged to be seekers of the light, to peel light away from darkness, and to find the tov, the good.
For some of us, these last few years have challenged the notion that with every generation the world gets better, and that history is an inevitable march towards progress. The truth is that we who have been brought up to believe that the moral arc of the universe is long, but always bends towards justice are just not that sure anymore. We so took this notion for granted that our hands slipped off the wheel. We won Roe, but now women are dying from preventable deaths – dying! In just the last month, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller died after not being able to obtain legal abortion care in Georgia. We thought the U.S.-Israel bond would always be secure, but now there are members of Congress trying to tear that relationship apart. And for all of us as Jews in America who thought we had settled safely into society, this last year has come to shock us as Jew-hatred has risen across our nation.
Our meta-narrative in Torah is all about holding onto hope; there is a promised land. But we need to remember: redemption doesn’t just happen to us. We need to believe and act on the fundamental truth that it is just as much up to us as it is up to the Eternal to keep the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice.
In slavery, it was our voices that began our liberation, our calling out to God that lifted up our plight up to the heavens. It took Moses turning and noticing and leaning into leadership. It was each step we took to cross the parted seas. We could have stayed in place – it is so easy to stay in place, stay in bed, close our eyes - but instead we trudged on knowing that we have a sacred part to play in the unfolding of our story.
We must take these eternal lessons we have learned from Torah and do with them as we have always been taught, which is to apply them to our everyday lives, including the story we are living right here and now in the United States. We must, like our people have done before us, learn to articulate our pain and call out the injustice we see. We must vow to keep moving forward despite the despair of this moment and the tohu vavohu holding us back.
I am your rabbi. I want you to have faith. But I don’t want you to only have faith. I need you to act.
In this time of tohu vavohu, when nothing seems certain, this is precisely the time for us to come close to the chaos, to hover with God, and with chesed to separate the light from the darkness. To see the world through Jewish eyes means partnering with God in the creation of a world of chesed, a world built on light and love and care.
We have built greatness before. In the Torah, Bezalel was chosen to build the Mishkan, our holy space, but first he needed the community's approval. Based on this, we are taught: A ruler is not to be appointed unless the community is first consulted.[5] This is when we are being consulted – right now.
Our texts guide us to engage. They demand: Do not be indifferent.[6] They implore: Do not stand idly by.[7] They scream: Do not hate your neighbor in your heart.[8]
In our country’s most divided moment, after years of civil war, Abraham Lincoln offered this in his second presidential Inaugural Address: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right – as God gives us to see the right – let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation’s wounds,… to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” The president could have used the opportunity to call out his enemies, to diminish the confederacy, but instead he focused on healing and peace. In this most fractured moment, we too require a leader who will rally us towards healing and peace.
While we all would like to be assured that there will be a peaceful transition of power no matter what the results of November 5th are, our recent history should give us pause. America has always been an argument of ideas, and it will always be, but we need to ensure that it remains an argument of ideas, not an argument that allows for and sanctions violence. The specter of January 6th must never happen again. As Lincoln spoke, our nation’s wounds must be bound. To help ensure our democracy stays intact, we must demand that our leaders keep the peace as power is transferred no matter how this election ends.
To what else can we commit to help tame the wild tohu vavohu of this moment?
Part of the work is about being watchful for tactics of authoritarianism in our midst. We must be wary of and disrupt the deliberate spread of disinformation and condemn the scapegoating of vulnerable communities.
Millenia ago, Hillel wisely taught: We should not separate ourselves from our community.[9] As proud Jews, we must raise our voices in the public sphere against antisemitism. And we must stand up against anti-Zionism, and for our brothers and sisters who need our support in the land of Israel. Every candidate, every party deserves our attention on these critical concerns to our community.
For those of us looking for a non-partisan way to ensure fair, safe, and accessible elections, choose to become a poll worker or poll watcher.
And it goes without saying, I hope, that of course, every single one of us votes. It is incumbent upon each of us as Jews and as American citizens to participate in our democratic system. Political participation has long been embedded in who we are. There is no other acceptable option.
And finally, we must pray. In Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Hanina taught that each of us is to pray for the shalom, for the peace and welfare of our government. Rabbi Hanina further adds: for were it not for the fear it inspires, everyone would swallow their neighbor alive.[10] We need good, functioning government to help us live ethical lives. Prayer is necessary for it is our reminder we need to align our thoughts with our actions and our actions with our thoughts. It reminds us that our values have long guided us l’dor vador, from generation to generation, and that we are connected to that which is larger than any one of us.
We who are still stuck at Verse 2 in Genesis must consciously unstick ourselves in order to progress our story. Tohu vavohu and the darkness over the deep threaten us in every generation, but we must keep reading to bring ourselves to the next, needed verses and chapters in our story. For our Torah laid it all out for us so long ago, like a blueprint for our faith, reminding us light is coming, and we get to bring it on, and it will be good. As the psalmist sang, Baerev yalin b’chi v’laboker rina.[11] Weeping may endure for the night, but joy… joy comes in the morning.
God, maker of heaven and earth, who comes close to the chaos and creates anew… God, who like a dove, glides over the water, glide over us and come close to us now. We who are tired from the ugliness of election cycles scarred in searing words of toxicity and pain pray: help us speak decently, live decently, love courageously. Guide us for we are a people of faith; Lead us for we are a people of action. Remind us that though we have trudged through mud and muck before, we will get to the other side. Makor hachayim, Source of Life who separates light from darkness, bless us as we pick up the pen to write ourselves out of verse 2 and into a needed and new beginning, our new breisheet.
Ken yhi ratson. May this be God’s will. Amen.
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