Blog

My son Ben forwarded a tweet to me this week: “Moses wandered the desert for a shorter time than Dawg fans waited for a natty. Wow.” 

For UGA alumni and Georgia Bulldog fans everywhere, Monday’s long-awaited national championship has been a source of understandable jubilation.  The last time UGA ended its season atop the college football mountain was in 1980 and the enormous, shared sense of relief and release following Monday evening’s game was almost palpable as if a giant pressure valve holding in decades of pent-up anticipation and dashed hopes had finally been opened.  Finally, Dawg fans can take a breath and look forward with joy and satisfaction instead of disappointment!

Now of course, I recognize that not all Sinai members are college football fans and that, of those who are, loyalties lay with universities throughout the country.  In actuality, it is not Georgia’s [awesome] victory over Alabama that informed this column, but rather the significant amount of time it took to achieve it – 41 years!  It is this week in Torah that, after centuries of oppression and pent-up hopes for redemption, the Israelites finally escape from Egypt.  Standing on the shore of the Sea of Reeds, the taste of freedom as real as the saltwater spray falling upon them, would their hopes for liberation again be thwarted?  No!  As the waters part, the Israelites cross at long last to freedom; they emerge victorious over their oppressors and rejoice with song and dance.  And then?  They set out toward Mount Sinai on what they do not yet realize will be 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.  Maybe this time, they will ask for better directions!  Wait… I think I might be conflating the two stories …😊

With all seriousness, though, as we prepare, unbelievably, for yet another all-virtual Shabbat, almost two entire years since the onset of the pandemic, who among us does not know the same emotions – pent-up frustration, pressure and isolation, repeatedly dashed hopes… -- captured above?  Like the Israelites, we stand at the doorway and look out the window and wonder if, when the plague of this Covid variant recedes, we might finally emerge for good!   Let us be hopeful, remain optimistic, and know in our hearts that the oppression of Covid - simply stated – will not be our eternal reality.  The pandemic will part and then, we, too, will cross to freedom and sing with joy as our ancestors did on the shores of the sea.