Not All At Once
In Parashat Chayei Sarah, the death of our preeminent Jewish matriarch, Sarah, takes center stage for a short moment. While we get remarkably little information about her actual death and its cause (several sages suggest the stress of the Akedah was the cause of her death), her loss undoes Abraham. He laments, he weeps, he possibly even beats his chest in anguish, and he eventually sets out to memorialize her by buying land and a cave in which to bury her. Interestingly, after he has mourned the loss of his partner, Abraham is spurred to take action in order to secure his family’s future: he charges the senior servant over his household to find a wife for his son, Isaac. Thus continues the story of the covenant.
This image of Abraham as “mourner” who is then compelled to act to secure some semblance of a future calls to mind a recent, short audio-theatre monologue (still a work-in-progress) written by Rebecca S’manga Frank, Avi Amon, and me. In this piece, entitled, not all at once, Rebecca, a Jewish woman of color, weaves together the story of mourning the loss of her African father with the stories of the Black lives lost in America over this past year. Poignantly, the monologue ends with a request for “help”: “help to access the goodness in myself, help to listen, help to make strangers less strange,” etc. This is not a purely rhetorical request, though. Nowadays, the need for help is real. What is more, as we in the Ammud community try to chart a way forward out of a terrible, and at times terrifying election season, it will take all hands in our community to build towards a sense of a better future. I invite everyone to meditate on the themes of the first chapter of this week’s parasha and the themes of the attached monologue and ask “where can I give help, and where do I need help?” May it be so that we will have ample opportunity to come together and fulfill those very needs for each other.
NB: It is recommended that people wear headphones to get the full stereo, sonic experience of the monologue.
