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From Dark Shadows

Shabbat Vayetze:
Genesis 28:10-32:3;
Hosea 12:13-14:10.

day They can express grati-
acob, for the first
tude
then, but theirs is not the
time in his life,
assurance
that remains when
had left his
all
else
is
gone.
parental roof. Taking the
An Austrian playwright
wanderer's staff in his
once
declared: "We know of
hand, he was journeying
some very religious people
to a doubtful haven of
who came to doubt God when
refuge.
a great misfortune befell
Rabbi Irwin
How dark everything
them, but we have never yet
Groner
seemed to him is
seen anyone who lost his faith
Special to the
expressed by the words of
becatise an undeserved for-
Jewish News
the Midrash,"The whole
tune fell to his lot:'
world became like a wall
In the story of Jacob's dream, we
before him." Troubles closed in on him
learn that to pray in the dark means
from every side.
Jacob, reclining on a hard stone, was we-are saddened but not broken by
life's afflictions. What should one pray
in.a state of profound anxiety about
for at such a time?
the future. And yet, in the midst of his
First, for strength. We can draw out
distress, he found faith and saw "the
of our depths powers untapped and
Gate of Heaven."
sometimes even unknown. We are
Jacob is each of us. Who in his per-
stronger than we think. We can mobi-
sonal life- has not known sorrow or
lize our deepest reserves rather than
frustration? Upon whom has eventide
surrender to self pity.
not cast its shadows? Who has not
Second, we pray for the capacity to
lived for a period in the midst of dark-
transform
our sorrow into sources of
ness?
-
greater sensitivity and helpfulness.
Upon every life there: Some make of sorrow a prison and
enclose themselves within it. Our sor-
will come a time
rows should become a bridge to the
pain of others, enabling us to grow in
when the shadows
understanding and humanity. We
should pray for the breadth of view
will lengthen and the
that will redeem our grief of anger
darkness will gather.
and cleank it of rebellion.
Upon every life there will come a
Blessed is he who has
time when the shadows will lengthen
and the darkness will gather. Blessed
taught himself to
is he who has taught himself to pray
pray in the dark.
in the dark. In the midst of travail, he
will find faith; and he will be granted
wisdom and compassion.
- Centuries later, when the Jewish
Out of his pain, he may yet see, as
people witnessed the destruction of
their Sanctuary, the desolation of their did Jacob, a glimpse of future great-
ness. ❑
land and the death of their dear ones,
they too became exiles, and endured
Irwin Groner is rabbi emeritus of Congre-
that fate for a millennium. But the last
gation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield.
word was not futility. In the darkness,
they built synagogues; they studied
Torah; they clung to belief. How
Conversations
strange it must have seemed to those
The Jewish people have often
who reckoned only with events and
been called dreamers. Point to
circumstances that a people who can
some accomplishments that
pray at eventide would never be
came about because we had the
defeated.
faith to "dream."
There are people who can only pray
in the noon brightness of the sunlit

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