I was still at home sick this week. A sympathetic congregant read this to the community in my absence. January 25, 2025.

I had almost forgotten. The mood swings. The chaos. The sheer exhaustion of it all. Every day a new outrage, sometimes several per day. Every interaction undergirded with distrust, every encounter threaded through with unspoken questions. What’s really going on? Is the situation what I think it is? Does this person see the humanity in the person they are talking to?

I am speaking, of course, of the ever-tightening vise of the ten plagues, as it plays out against the backdrop of an already unsettled people. What did you think I meant?

Our parsha gives us an almost shockingly relevant description of the moment—theirs and ours—with the words קֹּצֶר רוּחַ (kotzer ruach). This colorful phrase can be translated variously as shortness of breath, anguished spirit, diminished patience. It comes up in chapter 6 verse 9, as Moses comes to the Israelites to try to rally them. God has remembered the covenant with their ancestors and is poised to deliver them (us) from this misery. 

וְלֹא שָׁמְעוּ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָה קָשָׁה
And they did not hear Moses because of kotzer ruach and hard labor

Rashi takes kotzer ruach quite literally, as shortness of wind. After all, when we are experiencing unimaginable stress, it can start to feel like a labor even to breathe. Ibn Ezra leans into the impatience of it, noting that the years of servitude and worsening conditions have taken their toll on the Israelites. Exile and backbreaking work have made them desperately impatient for relief. Chizkuni poignantly says that the Pharaoh has even caused the Israelites to forget their dreams. The midrashic literature even suggests that the Israelites are so downtrodden, they get caught up in idolatry. Unable to endure the conditions they face, they numb themselves with the easy answers of false gods. In this state of emotional, physical, and spiritual exhaustion, the Israelites have nothing left for Moses. Even when he brings good news they are too empty to take it in.

If you have been too depleted to read the newspaper, or if you have been doomscrolling to the point of oblivion, or if you have been unable to sleep because of the huge number of upsetting things happening here, in Israel, and around the world; I would suggest that the diagnosis is probably kotzer ruach. The truth is, like the many viruses floating around including the one that has knocked me out, kotzer ruach is practically epidemic right now.

And when we are compromised in our own spirits, when taking a deep breath feels impossible, when the constant assault of unsettling news takes root in us, it’s hard to jolt ourselves out of the space of narrowness and distress. The rut becomes a pattern and the pattern takes on the air of inevitability. 

Similarly, the interplay in Parshat Vaera between Moses and Aaron on the one side, and the Pharaoh on the other, feels like a pattern that has taken on the air of inevitability. As each of the Ten Catastrophes unfolds, it’s with a sense that both sides are playing their parts, locked in a cycle of what Phil has taught me to call the repetition compulsion. Moses and Aaron approach the king asking for the Israelites to be released. The Pharaoh responds ranging from maybe to no, sometimes teasing the Israelite brothers with the prospect of success, only to pull the rug out from underneath them. And in between, the Pharaoh’s heart occasionally softens almost enough to relent, only to harden and return to resoluteness. Even as things go more and more badly for Pharaoh and the Egyptians—and of course we know they are going to get unthinkably worse—the king tightens his grip on power against any and all opposition. There is a whiff of kotzer ruach even in the Pharaoh, and no wonder: As Rabbi Lewis taught us last week, there’s a little bit of both sides in each of us. When we are overly committed to our own point of view, or even overly committed to our own misery, this is a reflection of the Pharaoh in us. 

So what’s the antidote to this soreness of spirit? I can’t claim that there is one answer for everyone, but an experience I had this week reminded me of what it often is for me. This week, my Hebrew College cohort and I eased our way into going back to school for the semester with a seminar which, among other things, exposed us to several guest speakers. (Speaking of exposure, I attended online so as not to share my lovely germs.) One set of guest speakers gave us each the chance to talk about how we’d chosen the rabbinate, and when it was my turn, I talked about the feeling that characterized my 20s and 30s: a longing to come home to my people. As I said this, I watched our guest speakers’ faces soften in recognition. This same longing was what had brought them together as a couple decades ago, and what had inspired them to get deeply involved in the Jewish community. 

And the sense of purpose and belonging that ensued from that original choice—for them as for me—has been an ongoing source of broadness of spirit, the very opposite of kotzer ruach. 

In these times of near-constant anxiety and distress over the state of the world, being tucked into our Jewish community offers respite from the feeling of being squeezed from so many sides. There’s no substitute. 

Being stuck at home, sick for the past 10 days, the truth is that I’ve been able to do much of my job remotely: I’ve kept up with most of the messages and moved various projects along, even prepared “self-driving” Torah study plans so that the group could continue to learn in my absence. Staff and congregants have gone to extra trouble to make sure that I was well cared for and included in conversations that I needed to be included in. Still what’s been missing for me is being in the synagogue, near my community. 

The work that we do here congregationally strengthens us through simple proximity and a commitment to shared values. In a world that seems to be in constant crisis, we can resist kotzer ruach by building community together and by caring for one another. We can make it a point to reach out to those for whom coming into the synagogue is not easy, due to health or mobility or geography. And we can  make every effort simply to keep close.

We cannot change the big sweep of history, but we can ride the waves together and derive strength from that. Shabbat shalom!