Last weekend, in a five-second nightmare as I rode my bicycle over a potholed road behind my two daughters, I imagined a scenario in which I injured different parts of my body, one by one, as I participated in different sports. After I snapped out of it, I considered committing myself to playing it safe and keeping both feet on solid ground.
As the youngest of three children, the only girl with two older brothers, I learned to resist my fears with considerable force. Was I afraid of big cities or public speaking or asking stupid questions? So I moved to Boston and then to San Francisco, choosing to live in some rough neighborhoods. I sweated my way through speeches and raised my head high as I tried to ask the smartest question I could muster.
And then I smashed into a tree. In mid-January, while sledding with my husband and two daughters, I flew down an ice-covered hill in Kletzsch Park and crashed.
I remember the moments when I felt helpless, descending backwards and looking over my shoulder as I sped toward a big tree. I somehow spun around and hit the tree with my right arm, shattering my distal radius into four fragments.
Three weeks later, still terrified of ice-covered sidewalks but having received permission from my surgeon, I returned to running. Two months later, I mounted my bicycle and gritted my teeth through my fear of falling and fleeting fantasies of broken legs, broken collarbones and a broken back.
Physical fear is almost the easy sort to confront. More challenging are the fears that trigger our emotional responses — fear of failure, fear of being deemed unlovable, fear of being rejected and abandoned.
Often unfounded, fear can inform everything, from the decisions we make about our careers or life pursuits to our personal relationships — how we couple, how we parent, how we treat our co-workers, community members and neighbors — to our government affairs.
Sometimes fear is constructive, of course. It is the voice that keeps us from recklessness. But it can also keep us from discovering life’s secrets and our personal passions. Fear can so twist our perceptions that it can prevent us from seeing clearly. Even on a national and international level, fear has the power to derail interfaith dialogue, cause chaos in Congress and stymie peacemaking efforts.
And fear is a major component of the Passover story, as the Israelites overcame their fears in their journey from bondage to freedom. Having been slaves in Mitzrayim, which literally means “narrow place,” they feared for their lives and they feared the unknown:
According to Exodus 14:11-14, they shouted to Moses, saying, “What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the Wilderness.”
Moses calmed them, saying, “Have no fear.”
According to midrash, as the Jews stood at the Sea of Reeds, panicked by the oncoming Egyptians, they argued. They could turn back to Mitzrayim, where everything was narrow but familiar or they could take a giant risk and choose the future.
One man, Nachshon ben Aminadav, took the first step — but the sea did not split. He continued but the sea rose to touch his ankles, then his waist, then his chest and his neck. Still it did not split. In spite of the natural human impulse to turn the other way and return to dry ground, he continued. As the water tickled his nostrils, the sea split and the Jews rushed in behind him.
Nachshon’s story teaches not only about his faith in God but also provides a model for facing our fears. His options — to succumb to fear or to struggle for freedom — remain our options: Will we allow our fears to control our personal, communal and national decisions or will we choose liberation?
This Passover, as the earth awakens from winter and we shed our layers, I will keep riding my bicycle and ignore my whispering companion in hopes that she will soon leave me in peace. I’m not ready to stop biking or sledding or asking questions that might sound stupid.
As I sit with my family, I will think about the other fears that rule my behavior and will summon Nachshon as I keep stepping away from the narrow places and toward the future.
Chag Pesach sameach. Happy Passover.
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