Torah portion: The light of truth

I received an email from a website called Growing Bolder (growingbolder.com) consisting of images of people who have continued to attain wonderful achievements into their later years. These are people in their 80s, 90s and even 100s who are triathletes, surfers, artists, rodeo riders, yogis, writers and more. 

One of them, 94-year-old bodybuilder Dr. Charles Eugster, is quoted as saying: “We have confused illness with the process of aging, which can be thoroughly healthy. Illness is not a necessary part of aging!”

Are these people flukes of nature to have achieved these things? Or is it actually true that people can continue to have full use of their joints, muscles and faculties for as long as they want?

For most of us, it’s true — true as the sun and bright as day. We’re just too busy being stuck in the dark.

In this week’s parsha, Bo, Moses is told by God to visit the hard-hearted Pharaoh once again and unveil the last three plagues. After clearing out No. 8, the locusts, God tells Moses to raise his arms so that a “palpable darkness” can descend on the kingdom. For three days, we are told, the darkness was so thick that “people could not see one another” and “could not get up from where they were” (Exodus 10:23). Yet the Israelites had light in their homes. 

The sun was still in the sky, but a smothering darkness had set in. The Israelites had light, but it couldn’t have been simply from lamps, or everyone else could have followed their example. Rather, this was a sourceless light, like the light created on the first day of creation, prior to the existence of sun, moon and stars. Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, a French medieval rabbi and commentator) says this primordial, hidden light was set aside at creation by God for the use of the righteous in the world to come — and apparently in this world, too, because the Israelites earned it. 

The Israelites had been through hardship and were about to undergo even more, so God gave them a glimpse into the eternal. From there, they could see everything, according to the Kotzker Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, a 19th-century Polish Chasidic rabbi). Light clearly meant spirituality to the Kotzker. The slaves could see from one end of the universe to the other, he said, for redemption had come for them. 

Meanwhile, the Egyptian public was caught up in a spiritual vortex, with two results. First, they could not see one another. They became solely focused on themselves, their own egos and needs, and no longer cared about helping anyone else. Greedy self-interest is the lowest stage of spiritual development. The terror the Egyptians were feeling sent them straight to that childhood place of self-interest and withdrawal. 

The second result was that they became unable to get up and take action. They were stuck. Fear can lead us to give up our normal behaviors and wishes, and to believe that very little is possible. The Egyptians were settling into their new life in the dark and could no longer even imagine anything more.

This brings me back to the Growing Bolder models and how they demonstrate a kind of bravery from which we all can benefit.  While others think life’s wilder options ended decades earlier, they are venturing forth and having the time of their lives. They will not concede defeat and let their prospects atrophy. 

Darkness can be all-encompassing. Fear can grip us and lead us to shut down, give up and back off, forming itself into a problem that can become insurmountable. We can stop going outside, because bad things happen there, and develop a phobia that’s paralyzing. We can stop exercising, because it’s more comfy to stay still and get soft, and our joints can get stuck. We can figure we’re too old to try something new, and never live to see ourselves become what we really wanted to be. 

Or we can light a candle in the darkness and transform the world. 

I think God didn’t actually do anything when Moses raised his hands. The second-most terrible plague we can imagine, shy of actual death, is the gripping fear that something worse is coming. But Moses let the Israelite public in on his charade. The boogie man of fear is actually just a vapor. There’s nothing behind the curtain but fear itself. 

Let God’s light in, and see what you’ve been letting yourself stop considering. Do it today. 

Rabbi Avivah W. Erlick, BCC, is a chaplain in private practice and owner of L.A. Community Chaplaincy Services (LACommunityChaplaincy.com).