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Admittedly, I don’t remember the last time Shabbat and Halloween fell on the same night.  I do know though that I’ve always been interested in what different synagogues do with this confluence.

Some synagogues are doing nothing.

Some rabbis are using it as an occasion for telling a Jewish tale of the supernatural, or a version of “The Golem of Prague” in place of the D’var Torah.  Will we be one?  Come to services tonight to find out!

Still other synagogues are taking the opportunity include fun size treats in their Oneg Shabbat.  As to whether candy corn will grace our Oneg tables… again, come and see!

With all this effort and creativity – and those are good things of course – we just may have missed the possibility that the scariest thing of all this Shabbat doesn’t lie outside Torah.  It lies within it… dead center.

In the opening verses of Lech L’cha, Abram as he is then known, receives the Divine call to get up and go forth, to a land he has never been to, leaving his birthplace and all that he knows.  God promises to make a great nation of him and his descendants, and his legacy one of great blessing.  But the fact remains, at this moment, he has no idea where he is going, or what his new life will be like.

What could be more frightening than that?!

For any one of us: it’s those shifts … whether they are stark and dramatic like Abram’s, or subtle and less visible to those around us and to ourselves.

Whether it is a shift that has been years in the planning or thrust upon us without warning.

Whether it is a positive, exciting venture, or the last thing we ever wanted.

These shifts and changes – these Lech L’cha moments – have the power to scare us more than any fright mask or garish costume could… because they are with us every day, not just one day out of the year.  And they’re real.

Abraham’s ability to heed God’s call and go forth is remembered as one of his single greatest acts.  It’s how we got started on our way towards becoming a people.  He remains a model of bravery and of what it takes to keep our eyes open for the many ways in which the world needs our help.

He may not be remembered admiringly for everything he said or did.  After all, who among us will be?  For this though?  For these brave steps on an extraordinary journey he is admired and blessed.

He reminds us too that as frightening as the unknown is, there is also great potential to become a blessing there, in those moments when we are called forward to become more than we are.  And those moments are everywhere.

As a dear friend of mine put it when reflecting on Lech L’cha: “Be brave in small ways. Take chances. Make mistakes. We, who are made in God’s image, are gloriously inventive – and that’s what makes us marvelous. It’s amazing how we can enlarge our world, see what we’ve never seen, experience ourselves more deeply, when we bravely “go forth.” In the words of John Shedd, Ships are safe inside the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.’“

May we help each other as we bravely sail forth, each and every day.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Gutterman