Back to the Ballot

October 23, 2026/12 Cheshvan 5787/Shabbat Lech Lecha

Hevre/Friends,

In his weekly reflection, Rabbi Zohar Atkins points to a heartbreaking line in Parashat Lech Lecha. Hagar has fled Sarai's mistreatment. An angel finds her by a spring in the wilderness and asks:

הָגָ֞ר שִׁפְחַ֥ת שָׂרַ֛י אֵֽי־מִזֶּ֥ה בָ֖את וְאָ֣נָה תֵלֵ֑כִי וַתֹּ֕אמֶר מִפְּנֵי֙ שָׂרַ֣י גְּבִרְתִּ֔י אָנֹכִ֖י בֹּרַֽחַת׃"Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?" And she said, "I am running away from my mistress Sarai."

She answers only half the question. She knows where she has been. She does not know where she is going.

The portion opens the same way:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ׃God said to Abram, "Go forth from your native land and from your father's house to the land that I will show you."

Here too, the point of departure is clear. The destination, though promised, goes unnamed.

These verses carry the restless anxiety so many of us feel as Israel and the United States head into consequential elections. I don't know anyone who isn't desperate to leave behind these painful, frightening years that have reshaped the ethos of each of these countries. But to go where, exactly?

It is tragically easy to name what has gone wrong. It is far harder to imagine, with the tools and leaders before us, how to set it right. Many can say with certainty who they do NOT want leading their country. Many cannot name who they DO with the same conviction.

Conventional wisdom says that when we are lost, literally or figuratively, we find our way by charting a path out. Jewish wisdom teaches the opposite: we find it by tracing our way back.

As fall gives way to winter, the echoes of the shofar and the melodies of the High Holy Days grow fainter. But our tradition's daily call to teshuvah, to return, to fulfill our noblest potential, is as loud as ever. The path to a more righteous tomorrow begins not by "moving on" from yesterday's failures, but by returning to them, reexamining them, repairing them. The way out isn't always forward. Sometimes it's back.

What does that mean for Israelis and Americans heading to the polls? It means that choosing who will carry us into the future, and what that future should look like, requires going back: to the origins of who we are, our beliefs, our values, our sense of purpose, and those of the countries we call home. It means not merely reacting to today's crises, but grounding ourselves in the moral and spiritual foundations of the world we are privileged, and accountable, to build. It means returning to mistakes and aggressions, other’s and our own, and learning from them before stepping ahead. We cannot declare who we wish to be without reckoning honestly with who we have been, and who we are. God's summons to Abram said as much: Lech Lecha. Go to yourself.

The same paradox holds for joy, as I was blessed to teach at the naming of my newest great-niece this week. A Hebrew name shapes not only a child's social identity but her spiritual and communal one. Choosing it is a thrilling, weighty act. Names carry memories of those we have loved. They encode our hopes for those we love now. And the middle letters of נשמה (neshamah, soul), ש and מ, spell שם (shem), name. A name holds the essence of a soul we think of as divine, holy, and pure.

But the teaching goes deeper. As Rabbi David Hartman z"l explained, a Hebrew name doesn't only sanctify a birth within the community; it plants a child firmly in our people's history, our ongoing life, and our destiny. Elie Wiesel taught that only a person with a past has the power to build a future. When we know who we are, who we have been, the values and ideals of the people from whom we come, we can recognize who we ourselves have the capacity, and the responsibility, to become. That is the gift parents give a child in naming them, a gift no less precious to the communities and societies in which they will grow.

The stakes of Israel's election, at this perilous moment for Jews in Israel and around the world, cannot be overstated. America's midterms, too, could further fray, or begin to reweave, the moral and cultural fabric that has held Americans together. As voters look toward the future they hope will carry them beyond these troubled times, and choose who will lead them there, may they first look back: at who they know themselves to be, at the virtues they must reclaim, and at the vices it is long past time to renounce.

Lech Lecha. Going back to yourself is the first step forward.

Shabbat Shalom,

Dini