When you’re feeling overwhelmed, the answer is not to stand still

Rabbi Andrea Goldstein, Congregation Shaare Emeth

Published January 29, 2026

More than once over the past few weeks people have shared with me their feelings of despair as the news impacting our Jewish communities, our nation and the world makes its way into our awareness. How are we to integrate the knowledge that in just one week in our country a synagogue was set on fire, our president threatened to invade a NATO ally, and masked ICE agents have continued going door to door seizing, terrorizing and even killing citizen and immigrant alike? It sometimes feels like it is just too much, and we are left exhausted and helpless, hopeless and numb.

In our Torah portion this week, Beshalach, the Israelites also experience these feelings of hopelessness and helplessness. At the beginning of the portion, Pharaoh has allowed the Israelites to leave Egypt, and they begin the journey to Mt. Sinai where they will receive the gift of Torah and enter into the Covenant with God. Not long after their departure, however, Pharaoh has a change of heart and leads his army in pursuit of our ancestors with the hopes of forcing their return to bondage. Soon Moses and the Israelites find themselves trapped on the shore of the Sea of Reeds. They can hear Pharaoh’s army closing in behind them and they see the waters churning in front of them. They feel helpless and despairing because it seems like there is nothing that can be done to change their fate. The Torah notes that the people are overwhelmed by fear as they cry out against Moses, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you have brought us here to die in the desert?” (Ex. 14:11)

Moses responds by telling them not to be afraid, that God will surely continue to deliver them. In the Midrash (Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael, Beshalach 4:1), the Rabbis imagine Moses then engaging in a long drawn-out prayer, beseeching God to save them. God responds to Moses by saying, “My loved ones are drowning in the sea, and the sea is raging, and the foe is pursuing, and you stand and wax long in prayer?” To which Moses replied, “God of the universe, what can I do?” And God replies with the words of Exodus 14:15: “Why are you crying out to Me? Speak to the Israelites and tell them to go forward (yisa-u)!”

The root of the word yisa-u can be understood as leave-taking or journeying. In a spiritual sense, then, God is asking Moses and the Israelites to find enough courage and faith to leave their current emotional states of helplessness and fear in order to move forward into a place of true freedom.

To me, the message here is clear. During times when fear and despair lead us to places where we feel that any act of resistance is futile, God asks that we muster just enough courage and faith to take one step forward, to engage in even one action that is in alignment with what we know to be just and fair and right. Call our representatives. Show up at a rally. Testify in Jefferson City. Make a donation to organizations that live out the Jewish value of caring for the strangers among us.

I am writing these words during the weekend in January where we honor the memory of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and I am remembering his words to the students of Spellman College in 1960. There he said, “If you can’t fly then run. If you can’t run then walk. If you can’t walk then crawl. But whatever you do have to keep moving forward.”

If we have been overwhelmed in recent weeks by feelings of helplessness or despair, may we remember these words of Dr. King, and the teachings of our Torah portion this week. God’s loved ones are drowning in the sea, so let us begin the journey back to courage, faith, and action.