Rabbi Daniel Siegel – Head of Jewish Life

Heaven’s gate

There are about a hundred of us in a room. Some of us are fixed upon beckoning eyes, in a photograph, from which we cannot turn away. Others are reading a news article wondering if, in truth, it is speaking of our world. Some stand alone, silenced by the words of a poem screaming out to them. Still others are chatting, making new acquaintances or engaged in earnest discussion or debate. Then there are a select few who are noticeably cheery, smiling, laughing, embracing old friends and enthusiastically making new ones.

We all proceed to the larger room, where these select few approach the podium, one after the other, and usher us into a dark world, only to emerge at the (other) end with the positive aura of a life of helplessness vanquished by hope and despair transformed into triumph.

In this week’s parashah, (VaYeitse – “He sets out”) Ya’akov (the patriarch Jacob), the first refugee of our people, is seeking a new life. Hoping to find a place to sleep, bread to eat and clothes to wear, he finds a resting place upon the road and in his dreams is awakened to the Gate of Heaven. Ya’akov’s very life is defined in this moment – is this a gate that would welcome him in or shut him out?

Like Ya’akov, the select few who brought us into their world that night encountered gates, doors, borders and boundaries. They were for them, as they were for Ya’akov, a beginning rather than an end. Being those beseeching eyes which transfixed us, the subject of a news item beyond our ken, or the poem itself that cries out to us from another realm, they made entry from closure and found a heaven beyond hell.

We hope you will read the reflections of students, teachers and parents, who participated in our Emanuel Evening of Refugee Voices, appearing this week in Ma Nishma.