Today at CKI we begin a four part series on Death and Dying. This is something that our Torah School parents asked for because they were feeling like they didn’t know enough about Jewish mourning customs or what Jews believe about life after death. Preparing for what will eventually happen to all of us is important, and hard. This week in the Jewish community is especially hard. As our next contributor said elsewhere, we didn’t think the story of Hersh Goldberg-Polin would end this way. It seems so senseless. Some people are sad. Some are enraged. Some are numb. Sarah Tuttle-Singer who writes for the Times of Israel and has a book, Jerusalem Drawn and Quartered, added this to the mix yesterday. She also edited one of my books We are connected across the miles, in our love of writing and Jerusalem but maybe not whiskey. It seems appropriate in our discussion of connections.
Here it is:
We’ve entered the month of Elul, that time when they say God is in the fields. You know, when the Divine isn’t up on some high mountain, far away and untouchable, but right here, in the dirt and the dust, close enough to touch.
But let’s be real—these days, it’s hard to feel that presence. Here in the Holy Land, in our Jewish world, in the world at large… everything feels heavy, chaotic, like the ground is shifting beneath our feet. The grief is suffocating —for our fallen soldiers, for the hostages still held captive, for the murdered whose lives were ripped from the fabric universe. It is all too much.
So what does it even mean, this idea of God being in the fields? Maybe it’s not about some magical fix-it-all solution. Maybe no great force can save us — maybe instead, we save ourselves with a little guidance , a little comfort.
Maybe it’s more like finding a friend who’s there to hang out with you when the weight of everything feels like too much. Someone who’s just there, really there, to listen as you pour out your heart. Someone who doesn’t have all the answers but is willing to sit with you in the mess and just *be*.
And here’s the thing: You don’t even have to believe in God to seek out this presence. Maybe it’s not about some Divine being at all—maybe it’s about finding that comfort within ourselves, that quiet voice inside that says, “I’m here with you. I’ve got you.”
That’s how I’m choosing to see it this Elul. God, or that inner presence, as that friend who walks beside us through the fields, who sits with us under the open sky, who listens to our troubles as we stumble through the tough stuff.
And so, even when the world feels like it’s on fire, even when the news makes my stomach drop, I’m holding on to that image.
I’m wishing you all a Chodesh Tov—a month of finding those moments of connection, of feeling a friend by your side, of knowing that even in the middle of the storm, we’re not alone.
Sarah Tuttle-Singer
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