Spirituality

AN EVEN/NG WITH

NAOMI RAGEN

Torah Portion

Love For Jews, Judaism
Overpowers Loneliness

Author of Sotah, ✓ ephte:s- Daughter & Chains Around the Grass
Syndicated Columnist for The Jerusalem Post and Maariv

TUESDAY, MAY 27' 7:30

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who will always bear fruit."
The prophet proclaimed a profound
truth. Loneliness is the greatest curse that
can be imagined. For what good is ours
even if you have everything, if you have
no one with which to share it? The great-
est
blessing is to have companionship, for
e sedrah (Torah portion) that
you
can endure any hardship, you can
e read this Shabbat
survive any sorrow if you have
contains a terrifying
someone to share it. To be
set of warnings and
alone is surely one of the most
curses. We don't want to read
dreadful curses that there can
that portion loudly; we practi-
be.
cally whisper as we race through
One of the great gifts that
that section of the Bible.
God
has given us is this
God says to the people, "If
capacity
to love, to care about
you are loyal to My ways, you
others.
In
the Book of
will have prosperity and peace,
the warning is
Ecclesiastes,
you will have Me as your friend
sounded,
"Woe
to him that is
RABBI
IRWIN
and companion. I will make
alone,
for
when
he
falls he has
GRONER
My covenant with you. But if
,
not
another
to
pick
him up.'
Special to the
you do not remain loyal to My
To be alone means you have
Jewish News
commandments, you will
no one to relieve your own
encounter terror, trouble, fear,
sadness,
to soothe your hurt,
persecution and suffering."
to
soften
your
anguish.
But that is only
The text continues, 'And if that isn't
half
the
truth.
enough to teach you, you will experience
The other half is that if there is no
exile, starvation, hunger and hatred, fever
one
about whose hurt you care, no one
and sickness. And if that isn't enough to
whom
you want to lift up when he falls,
teach you, I'll do seven times more to
if
there
is no one whose pain adds to
you than this, and I'll give you ..." And
your
sadness
and whose achievements
the list goes on and on. There are very
deepen
your
own
joy, then you are alone.
few passages in all of literature that are
If
we
do
not
enjoy
the blessing of love,
more terrifying than this long list of
we
suffer
the
burden
of loneliness.
threats and curses.
The
Jewish
tradition
understands
Then we come to the haftorah, the
what
a
fearful,
dreadful,
terrifying curse
words of the prophet Jeremiah. And he,
loneliness
can
be,
and
so
it devised a net-
too, pronounces a curse: "Cursed be the
work
of
ways
through
which
a person
man who puts trust in himself and
could
feel
connected
and
not
isolated.
depends upon his own might and turns
The
final
source
of
strength
for us is
his thoughts from the Lord." His pun-
that
we
love
our
people
with
a
warm
and
ishment? "He will be like a tree in the
overpowering
love.
And
this
enables
us
desert; he will not see when the rain
to have a shield against loneliness. How
comes; he will stand alone in the wilder-
can we consider ourselves lonely when
ness, where nothing grows."
we
are part of the household of Israel? A
The prophet declares that the punish-
Jew
who is joined by his deeds, his obser-
ment for evildoing is loneliness; if you
vance
and his hopes to the living body of
trust no one, then no one will trust you.
a
living
people has done as much for
If you make of yourself a god, then you
himself
as
he has done for his people.
will have no God to support you in your
This
love,
this Ahavat Yisrael (love of
distress. The prophet then draws a pic-
all
Israel),
enables
us to have the time-
ture of the reward that the righteous will
honored
Jewish
companionship.
All our
have. "Blessed be the man who puts his
ancestors
are
in
us;
who
can
feel
himself
trust in the Lord, for then the Lord will
alone?
❑
trust him. He will be like a tree planted
by the riverside, which sends its roots out
wide and need not fear when the heat
comes, whose leaves will be many, who
need not worry in the years of drought,
What are some of the actions we
perform that cut us off from "the
Irwin Groner is senior rabbi of
household of Israel"? In what
Congregation Shaarey Zedek. His e-
ways can we work to remedy
mail address is
such isolation?
marshall@shaareyzedek.org

Shabbat Bechukotai:
Leviticus 26•3-27•34;
Jeremiah 16: 19-17 :14 .

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