Rabbi Howard Morrison

From hurt to hope through healing:

I am elated to be part of this amazing panel and to address our theme for tonight entitled, "from hurt to hope through healing."

Given that the faiths being represented tonight are celebrating respective sacred seasons right now, I want to briefly address our topic from the lens of Passover, a Jewish holiday, which begins in a few days. While the narrative of the holiday speaks to the distinctive Jewish historical experience, it also speaks with a universal message for all people. 

On Passover evening, Jews celebrate a Seder, a prescribed order of ritual events, and retell a story each year from a book called, the Haggadah. The series of tellings in the Haggadah actually takes us through a journey of hurt, hope, and healing.

Part one of the Passover journey is an annual retelling of the "hurt" of Israelite bondage, a period of which lasted for hundreds of years in ancient Egypt. Ultimately, a transition takes us to a place of hope and healing through a combination of food symbols, stories, and prayers. symbolic foods include eating Matza, a flat bread, known in the beginning of the tale as "bread of affliction" but by the end of the experience as "bread of complete freedom." in between, we eat an admixture of chopped apples and nuts called Charoset (sweetness) and white horseradish (marror) to physically taste our going from bitterness to sweetness. The first half of the Seder culminates with a festive meal. Our ancestors achieved their freedom, and we celebrate our freedoms today. The second half of the Seder, after the festive meal, reminds us that our freedoms can be temporary and be removed from time to time. Ultimately, we strive for a Messianic "utopian" freedom for all people and for all time.

It is interesting to note that the Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim, literally means "in distress." When we replay the ancient story of bondage, I ask those gathered with me, "What are the sources and causes of your distress today? How are you hurting? How can you hope to improve your situation? What kinds of healing do you need in your lives? physical? emotional? spiritual?"

Each and everyone of us is hurting from some kind of distress in our lives? What do we need to do to experience our own transformation? Our own individual proverbial Passover story of going from slavery to freedom, from pain to praise? Can we find hope from a belief of God's presence in our lives, which can come from above and/or from within?

Some of us may be hurting from the loneliness and anxiety brought on by two years of the pandemic.

Some of us may be hurting from poor health, economic challenges, physical and/or spiritual challenges.

Some of us may be hurting from the surges in Anti-Semitism, racism, Islamophobia, other forms of bigotry and prejudice.

Some of us may be hurting from war and evil in different parts of our world.

Know that you need not feel alone and isolated. Your own faith community is here to support you. And know that those who believe in multi-faith and multi-cultural initiatives care for all people in our Canadian community.

I conclude with a petitionary prayer for healing which is recited almost every single day, morning, afternoon, and evening in the Jewish liturgy:

"Heal us, God, and we will be healed. Save us, and we will be saved, for You are our praise. Bring complete recovery for all our ailments, for You are God, Sovereign, the faithful and compassionate Healer. Praised are you God, who heals."

May God bless us all! 

Sincerely,

Rabbi Howard Morrison