Dear Friends:
I wanted once again to update you as I recover from my surgery of January 10.
This past Friday I went for my three week checkup and my surgeon said my recovery is on schedule or even a bit ahead. Having said that, he cautioned me not to expect to be at my full pre-surgery baseline until six weeks post-op and that full recovery takes as long as a year.
This past week I held my first drop-in hours since my surgery and I plan to hold them again tomorrow from 2 to 4 pm. However, as you probably know, an ice storm is predicted tonight into tomorrow morning. As you also probably know, weather predictions for our area are as often wrong as they are correct, but if our roads and parking lots are covered in ice tomorrow afternoon, I won’t be holding my drop-in hours. If you’d like to see me and are unsure, drop me an email at rabbi@kehilatshalom.org.
I’m also planning on restarting my Thursday night adult education classes tomorrow night. We’ll be resuming our study of Pirkei Avot, the Mishnah tractate which contains maxims for living a good and moral life. You can attend even if you have not participated before. The text of Pirkei Avot with translation is available here and we left off our study about a month ago here. Video recordings of the four previous classes are available here.
Next Shabbat, February 15, we read Parashat Yitro which contains the revelation at Mt. Sinai. I read from this parasha and chanted this Haftarah for my Bar Mitzvah on January 27, 1973, and my father z”l did the same for his Bar Mitzvah in 1942. Keleigh and I will be sponsoring the Kiddush that morning and I will be holding a Kiddush Konversation with the subject simply of “Ask the Rabbi.”
I have had a number of conversations in person or via email/text/phone with a number of congregants over the past couple of weeks about various things that are going on in our area, our country, and the world. Next Shabbat’s Kiddush Konversation would be a good opportunity to discuss some of these issues.
Having said that, I want to share a quick thought. There is a famous quote from Rabbi Nachman of Breslov which has become a popular song: “the entire world is a very narrow bridge, but the most important thing is never to be afraid.”
In the movie “After Earth”, Will Smith’s lead character Cypher Raige tells his son Kitai (played by his real-life son Jaden Smith): “The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. Do not misunderstand me, danger is very real but fear is a choice.”
I’m not certain that the screenwriters M. Night Shyamalan and Gary Whitta intended this as a midrash on Rabbi Nachman’s statement but it seems to me that it perfectly expresses what Rabbi Nachman said. We cannot always control what happens to us, to our neighbors, or to anyone else, but we can always control how we react. If we let fear take over, we either become paralyzed and unable to act or else we panic and act in unproductive and unhelpful ways. (It seems to me that this is precisely what our ancestors did in this week’s Parasha until Nachson ben Aminadav strove bravely into the Red Sea.) The dangers of the current situation are very real, but fear is a choice. As someone who had relatives in the Partisans during the Second World War, I choose never to be afraid.
As always, if I can do anything for you or you need to talk, please contact me at rabbi@kehilatshalom.org or 301-977-0768 rather than through the synagogue office. I am happy to meet you at the synagogue by appointment; if you want to speak with me it’s best to make an appointment rather than assuming I will be there when you stop by.
Additionally, if you know of a Kehilat Shalom congregant or another member of our Jewish community who could use a phone call, please let me know.
L’shalom,
Rabbi Charles L. Arian
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