T’var Torah – November 22

I hope this finds you all well.

I was once watching a documentary about the service academies.[1] It focused on everything from the military training to the academics to cadet/midshipmen life, and everything in between.

One scene I’ll always remember is the admissions process where a group of civilian professors and military professors decide on who they want to admit into next year’s class. They carefully go through each packet: GPA, extracurricular activities, sports…and letters of recommendation.

One of the applicant’s references (a teacher or a coach) writes in his letter of recommendation that he has so much confidence in the applicant as being a man of character that he would trust him to date his daughter! Wow! Think about that for a minute. After the initial laughs and chuckles, it’s honestly hard to think of a more impressive vote of confidence that a middle-aged person can have for a teenager.

Trust is one of the most sacred words in the human experience. It is the intertwining and confluence of responsibility, power, humility, confidence, secrecy, openness, intimacy, knowledge, awareness, strength, and vulnerability, all wrapped up into one.

Perhaps there are few better examples of trust than in this week’s parsha of Chayei Sarah*. After the death of his beloved wife Sarah, Abraham tasks the head of his household to go to his family’s lands and find a wife for his son Issac.[2] The amount of responsibility that he is placing in his servant is enormous. He is literally entrusting not only the future of his family, but indeed the future of the Jewish people, into the hands of this servant. Well, the servant meets Rebecca and the rest, as we say, is history.

Hopefully, the beautiful and heartfelt story of Abraham and his servant can make us all take stock of our lives and relationships. What does trust look like to you? Who do you trust in your life and what do you trust them with? How do you safeguard this trust?

Bizrat HaShem, with God’s love and guidance, may we treat trust as the holy gift that it is, never to be given out freely and recklessly, nor to withhold it from those who have earned and truly deserve it.

Wishing you a Good Shabbos and a great weekend.

Bivrakha

From the desk of: Rabbi Aaron Stucker-Rozovsky

Beth El Congregation | 520 Fairmont Ave, Winchester, VA 22601

(540) 667-1889 (office)