This past week, after years of silence, I reconnected with my Parisian host father. This was a man who had welcomed me into his family for six months in the spring of 1999 and made an indelible imprint on the person I am today. Interestingly, he hails from the American South, but he moved to Paris in his 20’s and made a life for himself for himself in the City of Love, marrying an elegant and joyful powerhouse of a woman and welcoming two beautiful daughters, aged 4 and 7 at the time that I lived with them.
Despite having lived with two other French families in the six months prior, this was the first time that I felt truly at home, among kindred spirits, living the Parisian life that dealt less with fashion shoots and nightclubs and more with family mealtimes, children’s theater, and trips to the pool, often with one girl riding on my shoulders, the other holding my hand. There were even times when I taught the girls songs from The Sound of Music, and we pranced across bridges, pretending to be in Salzburg, and having the time of our lives.
Over time, a more somber story started to emerge, the story of a marriage in trouble, of ghosts refusing to leave all the airspace to the living, of two individuals unhappy together but terrified of living apart. Things unraveled a bit at the seams, barely noticeably at first, but eventually inescapably. Some of their disagreements centered around whether to raise their girls Jewishly. My host mother’s parents had survived the Nazi Occupation by living under assumed identities during the war, and she wished to distance her children as much as possible from anything that might make them a target of antisemitism. Her husband, a true American southerner, had a more relaxed relationship with his identity and thought she was exaggerating. Their two worlds, the old and the new, had collided, and they eventually separated.
I have kept in close touch with the mother and daughters over the years, but my conversation with my host father this week was wonderful, like a missing piece coming back into the puzzle. I’m about as old now as he was then, no longer a shy college student, and I decided to dig a little deeper, to try to understand some of the family story that, for a time, I was lucky enough to share. He described for me a more painful family past than I had ever imagined. He, too, had lost family in the Shoah: aunts, uncles, and cousins living in Poland, Lithuania, and Russia. Unlike his wife, whose well-integrated family had tried to distance themselves from all things Jewish and saw themselves as entirely French and republican, as their ancestors had been, my host father was raised to value his Jewish history and had wished to share that identity with his children. He had not anticipated the sheer terror this would awaken in his wife and his in-laws, whom he had always considered unflappable. This tension, while not the sole cause of their separation, certainly did not help, though they cared for each other immensely. In some ways, they felt isolated in this struggle, unable to find a way through, to connect with community who could understand their predicament, to transcend all the traumas of their family histories. In 1999, France seemed ready to sweep the 20th century under the rug, but my host parents did not have that luxury. They were survivors from different worlds, trying to give their all to their girls, and they were quickly learning that they had very little left to give to each other.
I had just finished messaging my host father when I sat down to read this week’s Torah portion, Vayak’heil. Perhaps this is why I was struck by one specific element of God’s instructions when calling on the people to build the tabernacle. God asks for them to bring materials and to offer their skills, but only if they are willing and able. Nothing is coerced or demanded. Even so, the members of the tribe understand the importance of what they are doing: building a sacred space for their community, a dwelling for the Divine, a place for people to bring what is weighing them down and feel some of that burden lifted. They bring so many precious metals, fine linens, scented oils, and gemstones that Moses is finally forced to turn them away, for “their efforts had been more than enough for all the tasks to be done.”
Every day, we are faced with new challenges, both individual and collective. Every day, we struggle with our ghosts, our fears, our insecurities. We may feel inadequate at times, overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems in the world. We may be fearful that our efforts will barely make a ripple in the ocean of war, climate change, political upheaval, or even our personal challenges. But maybe, just maybe, it’s enough to do what we can at any given time. No single one of us needs to deliver all the gold and frankincense; no one needs to do all the weaving, the carpentry, the peacemaking, or the protesting. The weight of the world does not need to sit squarely on any one pair of shoulders and is best held when distributed evenly.
We, like the Israelites in the desert, have our share of traumas, our scars, and our fears, and yet the Torah still invites us to come as we are, to be a part of the sacred space in the center of our community as we are able and inclined. It encourages us to help where we can, to bring our talents forward when we feel capable and willing to contribute, to be a part of the beating heart of our community. We do not have to be superheroes. We do not have to sweep our ghosts under the rug in order start afresh and pretend everything is fine, nor are we in any position to tell anyone else how to deal with their traumas, their struggles. We are, however, urged to bring forth our unique gifts and talents to help make a sacred space, a mishkan, to gather community, to heal our hearts, to raise our voices, and to help our souls carry on through the wilderness of uncertainty… And on those occasions when we are simply not up to it, we have a sacred community here to help us heal until that day when we are ready.
Shabbat Shalom!
Rebecca Abbate
