SPEAKING TRUTH – MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS SHABBAT
When do we call out? When do we shout about what upsets us?
I had a week of real highs and lows. A week of trips away with our children, quality time and then a small health scare come the run up to Shabbat.
It is a live question in our Parsha of when we shout. The Israelites were enslaved for some 400 years (depending on the account you rely on). A people enslaved for a significant period before they raised the strength to advocate for their freedom.
This week I think of a variety of peoples who are shouting for their freedom and livelihoods:
Our nurses and frontline workers who are shouting with all they have for a living wage and for very survival of our NHS and the arms of the state they serve. SOLIDARITY!
Our brothers and sisters in Israel (I hope to write about this more next week) who are standing to challenge Israel’s unprecedented lurch to the right. On this we must raise our voices.
Those who continue to hold the front line against a tyrannical Russia on the borders of Ukraine.
2023 will be a year of resistance on so many levels.
And yet, our people, the proto-Jews, our Israelite tribe waited more than 2 generations in abject slavery before raising up the call to oppose, for freedom.
A question is raised here: when do speak up?
I am marking this shabbat JAMI’s Mental Health Awareness Shabbat and as someone who is more aware in this time of my life of the highs and lows of my own mental health and some of the vigilance that I need to keep in order that I stay well, it seems important to raise the flag, loud and proud to talk of our own struggles and journeys.
Reb Elimelech of Lizhensk, the Noam Elimelech teaches of two people who have never met before who feel connected, in love, some kind of cosmic bond. We have perhaps been there, not necessarily in love relationships but also with that person you meet and just ‘click with’. He says this ready-made bond exists because these people sat next to one another in another world, in Gan Eden, the garden of Eden. In the cosmic sphere these people were ‘best buds’.
And then the Noam Elimelech (Hassidic rabbis are often known by the names of their most famous book), says that speech or prayer is like this too. When we speak true words of prayer, or words of truth, these words have a strength as if they belong to a holy realm beyond our sphere or comprehension.
I was studying with a student this week and we spoke about saying what was really going on to people around us. They said: “I was surprised by their reaction, I thought they would be upset”. When we utter words from our deepest self, however difficult it is to utter those words, when we say how we feel and what we need, sometimes, hopefully more often than not, those around us too can respond in truth for the power those words carry.
This Mental Health Shabbat let us be people in experiment of sharing our deepest truths with those around us, say how you feel. My challenge is to surrender some of the fluff and pretence and focus on finding and sharing your truth. With God’s blessing and together we can build a healthier and stronger community and society.
WISHING EVERYONE A GOOD & HEALTHY SHABBAT SHALOM x
