Dear Friends,
“How are you?”
It’s a simple question, but the answer isn’t always simple. Most of the time, we say “fine” and keep moving. Sometimes we really are fine. Sometimes we don’t have the energy to explain. And sometimes we’ve been asked while someone is already walking away, which doesn’t exactly invite a lengthy response.
But then there are the people who ask and wait. They remember what’s been going on in our lives. They follow up. And when we give our usual answer, they know us well enough to say, “OK, but really?”
Having someone like that makes all the difference.
This week’s Torah portion is Lech L’cha. I love this one. (I know I say that all the time.) But this week is the start of our story as the Jewish people. Abram gets the call to leave his home and set out on this journey to a place he does not yet know. For his faith and courage, he and all his descendants (that’s us!) enter into a relationship with God. That’s an incredibly dramatic beginning. When we look at this story, it’s hard not to get a little lost in that moment. However, what I am really thinking about this week is that God asks Abram to go AND take his household. “Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the wealth that they had amassed, and the persons that they had acquired in Haran; and they set out for the land of Canaan” (Gen. 12:5). While this is the beginning of Abram’s story, there are so many other stories just beginning as well, each belonging to one of the others who got taken along with him. One of those stories belongs to Hagar, an Egyptian woman enslaved in the household of Abram and Sarai.
Later in the portion, when Hagar is pregnant with Abram’s child and after Sarai treats her harshly, she runs away. A divine messenger finds her by a spring in the wilderness and asks where she has come from and where she is going (Gen. 16:6–7). In a story where others have made so many decisions about her life, Hagar gets a chance to speak for herself.
And then she does something remarkable. She gives God a name: El Ro’i, “the God who sees me” (Gen. 16:13). Of all the ways she might describe God in that moment, she chooses this. She has been seen.
Parts of Hagar’s story are deeply troubling, including the messenger’s instruction that she return to the household she fled. I struggle with that part. But I keep coming back to the name she gives God and how much it matters to know that someone has noticed what we are going through.
I think you can spend a great deal of time with people you love and still miss how they’re doing. There is always plenty to talk about: who needs to be where, what’s for dinner, whether anyone remembered to make the appointment. These are necessary conversations. Unfortunately, the logistics of everyday life don’t take care of themselves.
But somewhere in all of that, we can forget to check in. We hear about someone’s day without asking how they felt. We know they’re busy, but we don’t necessarily know they’re overwhelmed. We assume they’ll tell us if something is wrong.
And sometimes we’re the ones making it hard to tell. We say we’re fine because we don’t want to worry anyone or because we’re still trying to figure out what we’re feeling. We hope the people who love us will somehow know what we need, even when we haven’t given them much to work with. I suspect many of us have been on both sides of that conversation.
Feeling seen doesn’t mean someone has all the answers. Often, the people who help us most can listen without immediately trying to fix things. They let us be upset, or uncertain, or less capable than we usually appear. They make it a little easier to say, “Actually, this has been hard, and maybe I’m not quite fine.”
This Shabbat, I am challenging myself to make more time for those conversations. I invite you to join me. Check in with someone you’ve been thinking about. Give a more honest answer when someone asks how you are.
My hope for all of us is that we have people in our lives who ask and wait for the answer, and that we make the time to be those people for someone else.
Shabbat Shalom!
Cantor Rebecca Moses