The traumatic effects of hatred are all around us. 

Killings, bomb threats, acts of violence and hateful rhetoric motivated by the evils of racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim hatred, anti-immigrant hatred, prejudice and every other form of hatred abound.  

The current atmosphere of political and ideological disagreement seems to foster even more meanness of spirit, more impatience, more misunderstanding, more lies, more stereotypes. Anxiety and a sense of desperation surround us. Anger, sadness, mournful acceptance of a new status quo threaten to overwhelm us. 

Our great challenge today, as throughout history, is not to despair.

This week, as is so often the case, the Torah offers us another way. Parashat Chayei Sarah, Genesis 23:1-25:18, arrives just in time to rescue us from our despair. After all, the previous chapters of Torah were overflowing with potentially depressing news. 

A father, Abraham, willingly took his son Isaac to the top of a mountain to prepare to offer him upon an altar. The same father willingly allowed his other son, Ishmael, to be cast into the wilderness along with his mother, Hagar. 

Two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, have been destroyed by God  along with their wicked residents because the evil in their midst is too great to correct.  

This week, the Torah reminds us that trauma and loss are not merely global; they are personal. The Torah portion begins with the death of Sarah, the matriarch of our Jewish family who has lived a full life and presumably dies peacefully. But in a world filled with trauma, personal and universal, one might easily be overcome by the tragedy. 

Is the world only about alienation, evil, hatred, killing, sorrow and loss? Where is justice? Where is compassion? Where is peace? Where is God?

The human response of our Torah family offers us all a path to calm and peace: Abraham is resolute in caring for the details of Sarah’s burial, engaging his broken spirit in obtaining a burial place for her and, presumably, arranging to mourn properly with his family and friends. He then turns to the future, helping Isaac find a wife. Rebecca comes to meet her future husband, Isaac, and in a lyrical moment, they fall in love. Even the midrashic imagination of the rabbis chimes in, suggesting that Isaac lovingly brings her home to Sarah’s tent in a moment of tender symbolic love connecting the generations.

The lesson is simple. The simple acts of survival, of going on, of picking ourselves up despite how hard it may be, of believing in hope, in trusting one another – all these and more will carry us through the dark night of our souls.  

Faith and love are our best response to fear and hate. Pain, loss, sadness and alienation are inevitable in our journeys through life and this world, but they need not be traumatic. Great tragedy need not completely derail us. Out of the depths of terror, we can arise with a deep faith in God, in humanity, in the future, in one another. 

We must turn toward one another, not away. We must love more, not less. We must care more and be more compassionate. And we must rededicate ourselves to creating the world in which we wish to live. 

Rabbi James Bennett serves Congregation Shaare Emeth and is a member of the St. Louis Rabbinical Association, which coordinates the weekly d’var Torah for the Jewish Light.