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A few years ago, I was discussing "The Conflict" with my father, former Prisoner of Zion, Natan
Sharansky. When he said something along the lines of “when we have peace,” I snapped.
"Let’s stop lying to ourselves,” I spat out. “This will never happen.”
My father paused, and looked at me for a while.
“People also said that the Soviet Union will never collapse and let us emigrate to Israel,” he
finally said. “If we had listened to them, you wouldn’t be alive today.”
These words, and the look in my father’s eyes, stayed with me over the years. I thought of them
whenever I despaired, whenever I felt that reality was immutable. Had my father and his friends
succumbed to such feelings, they wouldn't have even tried to fight for their right to emigrate to
Israel.
And if they hadn’t fought for it, they would have lost the struggle before it had begun.
When we treat present reality as unchangeable, we, ourselves, doom it to remain unchanged.
***
In the past few weeks, I needed this reminder more than ever. Every day, we hear of new losses
even as we still mourn others. New threats materialize on new fronts even as the wounds of
October 7th are ever present in our collective minds and hearts. We know that we have to keep
going, have to keep enduring, have to keep a positive attitude- - but where are we supposed to
find the strength to do so?
“I kept it together for two months,” a friend whose husband has been on reserve duty since
October 7th tells me. “But how can I keep doing it when there’s no way to know when this will
end?”
At this moment in time, our internal resources and resilience remind me of the little jar of oil in the
Hanukkah miracle story. We have been drawing on them well past what we thought was their
capacity.
How much longer can we use them, before they inevitably run out?
How can we hold onto hope when the war keeps going and going, and its end is not in sight?
My father's words all those years ago help me to reframe this question. Instead of asking how
my strength will last, I try to remind myself that the war won't last forever, and that our reality will
change.
The knowledge that a better tomorrow is possible dispels the feeling that my strength must last
forever. It reminds me that I only need to keep on going for a while, before I, we, reach a time
when we can rest. More importantly, this knowledge replenishes my little jar of strength by
giving me the gift of dedication; like my father, I resolve to work towards a better future,
towards the hoped for, prayed for, change.
***
But holding on to this knowledge isn't easy. It's especially hard when we rise each morning to
confront our current reality. Last week I hugged a grieving neighbor as she buried her
beloved nephew. This week we stood together to honor the funerary procession of yet another
neighbor.
So I turn to our sources, I turn to our power of imagination, and I draw on them to help me in this task.
Our sources give me language for my quest by gifting me the concept of a miracle. Biblical
miracles usually require human initiative: in the Torah sources God doesn't usually solve our problems while we passively lean back. When the Israelites cried in terror between Pharaoh and the sea, God
refused to simply save them; He demanded that they start marching into the Red Sea first.
When the son of the Shunammite woman in Kings II died, the prophet Elisha wasn’t around to
revive him. His mother had to seek Elisha out and practically demand a miracle, or else her son
wouldn’t have come back to life.
The first step in these and other miracles was the same. Before the miracle could happen
people had to pursue it, and before they pursued it, they had to believe that it was possible and
within reach.
I, too, have to bring myself to believe in the possibility of a miraculously better
future. I have to find a way to make it real for me, so that my strength will last.
With this goal in mind, I invite you to harness the power of our imagination in making the things
we wish for real for us.
Rationally, we know that achieving them will be difficult. But
imagination can bridge over the sort of rational reservations that can get in the way of us
pursuing miracles.
Please ask yourself what miracle you would like to see happen in reality today. Make sure you imagine this miracle vividly, as if it has already taken place.
How will you feel in the morning after its occurrence?
How will your daily routines be affected by it?
What will other people say?
In conversation with someone or in writing, reflect on this vision of a miracle. Thank it for
changing your life for the better. Alternatively, write an entry in your journal, as if it’s now the
day after the miracle occurred. As you write, be as concrete as possible. Describe sensations,
textures, details. Make the miracle feel real.
When you finish, try to revisit the imagined miracle from time to time in your mind. Hopefully,
it can help reality seem just a little less immutable, give us the strength to endure it, and
even try to change it ourselves.
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