7/8 February 2025, 10 Sh’vat 5785

“If a tree falls in the forest there are other trees listening”
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben.”

I don’t usually begin a weekly message by quoting from last week’s parasha (Torah portion) but there is a good reason for this. We are marking Mental Health Awareness Shabbat this week – in alliance with JAMI we are highlighting and amplifying the responsibility of each of us and the Jewish community to be mindful, sensitive to and connected with each other. Everyone is, we now know, on a spectrum of psychic health and capacity to manage our emotions and anxiety. Some of us more fragile than others but all of us have an understanding now, thanks to organisations like JAMI, that we all have the capacity to fragment and unravel. Some have lost beloved family to this the most pernicious of illnesses because it is so much harder to identify and treat. And sometimes the worst of the symptoms is not being able to share them.

Last week’s portion describes the plague of darkness, the penultimate plague in its profundity. And this darkness was more than a night’s sky.

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהוָ֜ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֗ה נְטֵ֤ה יָֽדְךָ֙ עַל־הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וִ֥יהִי חֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־אֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם וְיָמֵ֖שׁ חֹֽשֶׁךְ׃

21: The Eternal said to Moses, “Hold out your arm toward the sky that there may be darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be touched.”

לֹֽא־רָא֞וּ אִ֣ישׁ אֶת־אָחִ֗יו וְלֹא־קָ֛מוּ אִ֥ישׁ מִתַּחְתָּ֖יו שְׁלֹ֣שֶׁת יָמִ֑ים וּֽלְכָל־בְּנֵ֧י יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל הָ֥יָה א֖וֹר בְּמוֹשְׁבֹתָֽם׃

23: People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was; but all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings.

This was an extra special kind of darkness – so thick that it was palpable. It kept you from seeing or reaching out to your neighbour, even when they were standing right next to you. It was a darkness that held you paralysed in your place, enveloping and incapacitating. Rabbi Harold Kushner said this darkness meant people couldn’t see or “feel the pain of their afflicted neighbours.” This is the darkness of isolation.

This week’s portion echoes this with now the Hebrew, the Israelites paralysed with fear and the lack of trust or vision that things could be better. ‘Did we not say to you in Egypt, “Leave us alone and let us serve the Egyptians? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”’

Sometimes Torah’s prescience dazzles. We will let its words speak to us now. So this Shabbat morning, we will have a Service for the Soul culminating with a Tu B’Shevat Seder that connects trees and mental health. We will speak to and about this plague of isolation and darkness – metaphorical and literal. What prevents connection and what creates paralysis for us and those we may love? What tools does our Jewish community offer? What ritual, what awareness, what relationships strengthen us? I am so pleased we will be supporting JAMI (Mental Health for our Community) and hearing from members who work with them.

Shabbat Shalom Rebecca