untangle my feet

This has been a week of highs and lows. The election victories on Tuesday were a big relief, even a cause for revelry. I had begun to fear that Republican gerrymandering had been so successful that it was no longer possible for democrats to even win elections. I am so grateful to everyone who campaigned and worked the polls in PA, NJ, VA, NY, and Cali. 

But the wins have been tempered by the cruel effects of the government shutdown. The starvation tactics we have witnessed in Gaza have come home to roost. To imagine prioritizing remodeling the White House while 42 million Americans can’t afford to eat, is truly the worst of human greed. 

The contours of the week are reflected in this week’s parsha, Vayera, which includes the elation of Sarah Imeinu, when she finds out she will at last bear a child. And the fear of Isaac, who suspects his father is prepared to sacrifice his life, wondering aloud, “I see the wood but where is the ram?” All of it is true at once, in the story and in our lives. 

When we read this parsha, we often focus on the binding of Isaac. But on Rosh Hashanah morning I invited us to linger in Sarah’s ecstatic laughter - her tzokh. 

Literally, the text says (Gen. 18:12), 
וַתִּצְחַ֥ק שָׂרָ֖ה בְּקִרְבָּ֣הּ
 “And Sarah laughed within herself.”

As if to say, Sarah was tickled.

The fact that the text includes the word “ בְּקִרְבָּ֣הּ // inside her” suggests it was embodied, even involuntary. I am picturing a kind of giddiness that bubbles up from the inside. Sarah got the giggles. I know this feeling well. 

In this moment, Sarah invites a kind of levity into her relationship with the Divine. And this inspires Isaac’s name, Yitzhak, derived from Sarah’s tzokh. 

This Shabbat, on the heels of electoral victories worth celebrating, I want to return to the poem I read on Rosh Hashanah and to the intention so many of us set in that moment, to invite in more levity, more laughter, more joy. 

In the words of Hafiz,

“I sometimes forget that 
I was created for joy
My mind is too busy
My heart is too heavy 
Heavy for me to remember 
that I have been 
called to dance
the sacred dance for life
I was created to smile
to love
to be lifted up
and lift others up
O sacred one
Untangle my feet
from all that ensnares
Free my soul 
That we might
Dance
and that our dancing
might be contagious.”

So much ensnares us. Let us not forget we were created for joy. 
Holy One, untangle our feet, that we might dance, 
and that our dancing might be contagious. ​