Exodus and Addiction
“You can’t think your way into right action, but you can act your way into right thinking.”
“Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point.”
Bill Wilson, Alcoholics Anonymous.
This Shabbat morning, Kavana will host a Serenity Shabbat gathering as part of our regular monthly Mussar series. Several Seattle synagogues have hosted this rotating moment to turn our attention to addiction and recovery within Jewish community (with much gratitude to Kavana partner Marla Kaufman, executive director of JAAN, the Jewish Addiction Awareness Network, for initiating the Serenity Shabbat series). Addiction is an issue that affects Jews, but not always one that is easy to talk about. There are a growing number of Jewish organizations and resources addressing addiction, but still work to be done in seeing and supporting people in recovery and those impacted by loved ones struggling with addiction. Please know you can reach out to your rabbis for support as well.
The Torah portion this week, Beshallach, offers deep wisdom when we read it through the lens of addiction and recovery. (For further reflections on the exodus story and addiction, here is one great article. Other excellent Jewish sources on recovery can be found here.)
The Israelites are fleeing from enslavement in Egypt. But with the Egyptians in hot pursuit, and a sea blocking their escape, the people’s voices rise in despair. Moses gives a rousing speech about trust in God: “Have no fear! Stand by, and witness the deliverance which God will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again. God will battle for you, so you just keep quiet” (Exodus 14:13-14).
Moses promises that if the people can surrender their anxiety over to God, they will be held safe and serene. What a reassuring idea! God, though, snaps at Moses: “Why do you cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward [into the sea]” (Exodus 14:15). God tells the people to trust in an active rather than passive way. They are to do something, and through that doing discover their own liberation.
So Moses tells the people to move forward, and prepares his staff to part the waters. Here the Torah moves in big picture grandiosity - the sea splits, the people move through, they burst into dance and song. But of course the details of how a thing happens are always a little more complicated. I once had an economics teacher who drilled home that you can’t go to the grocery store and buy “food”. There’s no aisle with stuff on it simply labeled “food” - you have to buy avocados and bananas. Similarly, when the Torah says the Israelites moved, it glides over the fact that “people” is actually a broad category for many different individuals. And how did the individuals move? Who went first? How did they organize? These are the messy and amazing details behind every mass movement that in retrospect appears unified.
A famous rabbinic midrash explores these details at length (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael 14:22, also in Talmud Sotah 37a). One rabbi suggests that some of the tribes were arguing about who got to go first, an argument of the eager. But the more famous teaching comes from Rabbi Yehudah, who taught that the tribes were hesitant to go first (for clear reasons - they were being asked to walk directly into the sea!) While all the people were debating, one brave leader took the first step.
“Because they stood and deliberated, Nachshon the son of Aminadav leaped into the sea. Of him Scripture writes (Psalms 69:2-3) "Save me, O God, for the waters have reached my soul. I am sinking in the slimy depths and I find no foothold. I have come into the watery depths, and the flood sweeps me away." (Psalms 69:16) "Let the floodwaters not sweep me away, and let the deep not swallow me, and let the mouth of the pit not close over me."
When we hear versions of this story today, usually we hear it this way: Nachshon was the only one brave enough (or trusting enough) to walk into the water, and because of him, the waters split. It is a story about how possibilities open up when we jump into difficult experiences. However, the midrash has a slightly different take:
“At that time Moses waxed long in prayer — whereupon God said to him: My loved ones are drowning in the sea, and the sea is raging, and the foe is pursuing, and you stand and wax long in prayer? To which Moses replied: Sovereign of the universe, what can I do? And God said to him (Exodus 14:16) ‘And you, raise your staff, etc.’”
In other words, it isn’t Nachshon’s action that splits the sea, it is God’s empathy for Nachshon’s suffering and imminent danger. Nachshon’s trust is met with God’s care. It is important that Nachshon is imagined to lament his suffering. Trust is not ignorant of reality. Wise meditation teacher Tara Brach teaches that “Suffering is our call to attention, our call to investigate the truth of our beliefs.” We spend so much of our lives denying or ignoring or avoiding the painful parts of the human condition. When we spend time acknowledging what is hard, where there is pain and sorrow, we have the opportunity to awaken the God aspect within us, av harachaman, the Source of Compassion. And awakening the Source of Compassion is the first step towards true freedom.
Another teaching from Tara Brach helps us understand the inner dynamics of our own exodus stories:
“Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns...We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.”
Marla Kaufman said to me a few months ago that when it comes to addiction “there is no us or them.” It is part of human nature to crave pleasure and avoid pain, and we all have behavioral patterns that exist on the spectrum of addiction. But when those patterns result in harm and we feel out of control, we enter into an inner egypt (lower-case to emphasize a symbolic state, not the historical place or modern state). The only way out is through the turbulent waters of confronting reality, practicing trust and courage and compassion. Openings to inner freedom just may appear.
At our Mussar gathering on Shabbat, we will explore this story more, bringing in song and ritual to open our hearts and enlighten our minds. Although Nachshon provides a role model, the story also clearly emphasizes that it takes a community for each individual to stride towards liberation. All are welcome, whether or not you have a personal connection to addiction.
Wishing you all a Shabbat of trust, compassion, courage, and serenity.
Rabbi Jay LeVine
