Not Knowing

“Look at all of us sitting here. This is how he would have wanted the scenario to end” Shaked Haran tells of the most poignant of moments. Her mother, released from Hamas’s harmful captivity, first learns that her husband has been murdered. She’d been sure he was still alive. When her daughter broke the terrible news to her, her mother, after absorbing the blow, looked at her surviving kids and her family with tears and with might and concluded: “All he wanted was to know that his family is safe and together. And here we are.”

At that moment of strength and clarity, Shaked realized her mother was still her mother. After all, fifty days of dark, airless, brutality could have made it not so. She could have returned as a shell of who she once was. Her mother was still her mother, the mighty Shoshan Haran, and this is how true consolation, coupled with acting to advance their mission, began.

It’s so hard to know what will help. In the wake of an enormous loss, when your pain aches and your sadness numbs your senses, it’s impossible to know what may make things better. Actually you cannot know. But you can recognize, after it’s happened, the soothing words, the wordless gestures, as their relief washes over you. You can know when you’ve just felt a true consolation.

This week’s portions of Torah seek to collect us, to activate us and to ready us for what’s ahead. The weekly portion is all about action. We’d learned how to build the Tabernacle. This week, we actually build it. This is also how we collect (vayakel). From a second scroll we read of spiritual purification to prepare us for Passover. Its outcome is a new heart (Ez. 36:26).

I once heard someone say about surviving grief: your pain doesn’t get smaller, your heart gets bigger. Perhaps this should be front-and-center as we spiritually prepare for Passover: a new heart is a more expansive one. That beats not only when it’s broken, but also when it faces real risks of being hardened by despair. This is when it most needs to pulsate with dignity and hope.

Shaked Haran also taught something profound about not knowing. When you don’t know where your family is, you assume the worst. But you also have an obligation to preserve a best-case outcome. After all, Shaked says, not knowing for certain, admits of the slim possibility of something hopeful. That’s what a bigger heart includes. And that’s the beating-heart of true consolation. May we all come to know it intimately as we prepare to relive our Passover hope-filled story this year.