Comunidad Hebrea de Guadalajara
What moves us?
Perhaps this question contains one of the most profound mysteries of human nature. If we knew what it is that generates for each of us the need to do things, then we could work with that goal in mind, operating from specific situations with the certainty that our choices will affect others, moving them to action. However, the world does not work that way, and it is extremely difficult to define what it is that makes us decide when and how to act and bring change.
Even when we cannot work on what others will decide, or consider the reasons that make them change, what we can actually do is analyze the different ways in which people move. In other words: whereas it is unlikely that we will someday find the mechanisms that activate our desire for change, for the time being we can at least recognize two clearly defined types of people, depending on what it is that makes them change.
On the one hand, we have reactive people. Reactive are those who usually act as a result of a previous situation, which usually becomes threatening. What scares us makes us react. That would seem an essential part of our biologic constitution, and it is not by chance that, during political campaigns, candidates often lead us to imagine scenes of catastrophe (lack of safety, war, unemployment, etc.), since the fear of all that happening makes us react, often even irrationally. Applying this model to the Jewish field, let us think about all those who promote the practice and belonging to the people of Israel based on anti-Semitism and assimilation. Here we see how people are prompted to act through the presentation of inauspicious and threatening situations, in the hope that those who hear the message will choose to act, even if it is from the perspective of avoiding certain situations, from the reaction to that which we do not want, for us or for our loved ones.
In contrast to those who are moved in reactive terms, we have the proactive. In this case, what makes people change has nothing to do with the fear resulting from difficult situations, but rather with the subjective and personal decision to produce, with their choices, changes in their particular reality. That is, they do not change for fear of possible settings, but rather to the purpose of being the architects of their own destinies. In Gandhi’s words, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” This sort of people expect to embody in their lives the changes they seek to build in society; they do not wait for the potatoes to burn in order to operate the world; to the contrary, they work conscientiously so that those things do not happen.
To reread in the Torah about Abraham’s life is to find ourselves once again before the paradigm of an absolutely proactive man. Our first patriarch made a profound change in his life, not from fear of anti-Semitism or assimilation, nor for fear of catastrophic settings, nor for fear of fear, but rather for love of a path that deepened in time, and of which he felt more and more proud. To reread in the Torah about Abraham’s life allows us to realize that a person’s actions may very well change the history of humanity, and that the path that each one of us chooses to take should be grounded on specific proposals, of searching for better realities and of the desire to leave positive marks after we are gone from this world, instead of waiting around for reality to impose on us certain conditions, so that we finally react (usually late and badly) before what is already happening. While many of us pursue life from behind, Abraham reminds us that the best way to predict the future is building it.
When we again meet the first steps of Abraham’s story on this Shabbat, let us reflect on ourselves and our choices. Are we reactive or proactive? Do we act out of fear or out of love? May God grant us the possibility of knowing who we are, through the reading of Parashat Lech Lecha, and may we assume, above all, the challenge of generating positive and proactive changes in the world, since that is one of the ways in our hands to affirm ourselves as true heirs of the path begun, many years ago, by our patriarch Abraham.
Shabbat Shalom,
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