I don’t have much occasion to go in the backyard during the winter. For starters, January is pretty cold in Chicago, and the dog is perfectly fine if we just let her out the door to do her business and then run back in.

But the other day it was a little warmer, and Phoebe seemed like she would enjoy playing fetch. So I bundled up and took her out.

After a few rounds of catch and release with a stick, my eye noticed a large ice formation on the side of the house—under an outdoor faucet. Channeling my inner Moses, I thought, “How wondrous is this sight.” So I went to look.

Turns out we had a leak that, drip by drip, had built up into quite a large piece of work over the weeks.

Like a lot of homeowners, we have a membership to a service that supposedly vets and rates professionals to come to your house and fix stuff. While we had someone there, I figured they could also repair another outdoor faucet in our side yard that wasn’t working properly. I knew that the expensive plumbing service we’ve used for major repairs in the past would take a week or more to come (they’re popular), and there was an offer from this online outfit to send someone the next day for a good price. So I took it.

Lesson learned (again): You get what you pay for. The guy was nice enough, but he didn’t have the right parts, so he went and found some cheap PVC plastic spout that would take care of the leak and would also fix the other faucet.

Which it did—until the next day, when I arrived home from a walk with the dog to notice a giant puddle forming on our driveway. I went to investigate, and the workman’s cheap fix had exploded. The side yard faucet was now gushing water, and the backyard faucet had sprung a leak too—worse than the original!

I turned off the faucets from the basement to stop the gushing (something the repairman had neglected to do), and then I called the expensive plumber. They’re coming next Thursday. The online outfit gave me a refund when I told them I’d cancel my membership.

As I reflected on this story, I found the words of Gil Fronsdal ringing in my ears. Gil, who I’ve mentioned in this space before, teaches a wonderful short maxim of mindfulness: Don’t make it worse. We may not always be able to make things better, at least not right away. But generally we can try to avoid taking action, in word or deed, that makes it worse. As my case illustrates, good words to live by. Oops.

Now you might say, “Don’t make it worse” seems like a low bar. It’s not exactly the prophet exhorting us to “break every yoke and let the oppressed go free” (Isaiah 58:6). But, shifting into some other registers, I find that it’s often a very high bar indeed. As a partner or a parent, it’s not unusual to find myself trying to discern whether and how best to communicate a thought or feeling: Say the wrong thing at the wrong time, and I can definitely make things worse. The same goes with relationships at work, in friendships, with my neighbors, or as a citizen. And as a (very minor) public figure, it’s a question I think about all the time: Are the words or actions that I’m contemplating going to improve things, or make them worse?

And on a deeper level, this is a two-step I think we do all the time. It’s reflected in the rhythms of Shabbat: Engage in the world for six days, withdraw from the world for one. Or, as my colleague Rabbi Marc Margolius teaches, engage for six minutes or six seconds, withdraw for one. (This is microdosing Shabbat, as Marc says.) This reflects a feature, not a bug, of the human condition: a little higher than my dog, who is constantly engaged with the world; a little lower than the angels, who exist on another plane.

“A person must consider himself as nothing, forgetting himself completely and praying only for the good of the Divine Presence,” teaches the Ba’al Shem Tov. “Then he can attain a level that transcends time – the world of thought, where everything is equal: life and death, ocean and land. This is the meaning of the Zohar: ‘Why do they cry to Me?’ (Exodus 14:15) – ‘to Me’ specifically, for the matter depends upon Atik, that part of the Divine that is beyond all duality and difference.’ The Israelites had to abandon themselves completely and forget their own danger in order to enter the World of Thought, where everything is equal.”

This is a lofty teaching from the Besh”t: If we can withdraw from, or transcend, the physical world, then we might behold the infinitely deeper reality that lies beyond its appearance. That’s what happened when our ancestors crossed the sea.

Yet consider this teaching of Rabbi Kalonymos Kalmish Shapira on the very same words, from two centuries later: “The Blessed Creator cares more about the dignity of the people of Israel than God’s own dignity… And since Moses prayed before the Holy One for God’s honor, God responded, ‘Why do you cry out to me?!’ Which is to say, ‘Why do you cry out to me for my sake? Rather, speak to the children of Israel and tell them to move!’ More than I care about my own dignity, I care about the dignity of my people.”

Rabbi Shapira would seem to push against the Ba’al Shem Tov: In a moment of such dire worldly concerns, God doesn’t want our self-abnegation and transcendence—God wants our action, our very physical engagement with the world.

Both readings are true, of course, and one may be more true than the other depending on the circumstances. Both can be, and probably are, even true simultaneously.

An essential part of our practice is discerning the circumstances in which we find ourselves, determining whether this is a moment for engagement or withdrawal, action or rest, speech or silence. We do this all the time—in our relationships, our work, our citizenship. We aim to hold, simultaneously, in our minds, hearts, and hands, the goal not to do harm and actively repair the world.

This a difficult practice. But it is one we are invited to engage in every cycle of Shabbat and the workweek, in the unceasing flow of moments of engagement and withdrawal, Shabbat and chol. May we be blessed to practice it and manifest it in our lives today.

“Insurance is one of finance’s great gifts to mankind. Through the statistical magic of risk pooling, an individual can obtain peace of mind and protection against devastating loss.”

A perhaps unexpected opening sentence to a Shabbat reflection from yours truly. But the article it comes from, by Wall Street Journal writer Greg Ip, really grabbed my attention. I had always kind of assumed that, if legislators couldn’t figure out how to address climate change, then ultimately the insurance market would do it for us, as the rising risk of disaster got priced into our insurance premiums. Ip shows why that assumption doesn’t actually work out, and I found it illuminating.

Now, of course, I am neither a climate scientist nor an economist. My interest here is more in the social, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of risk. Note Ip’s description of what insurance does: It can help us “obtain peace of mind.” Now he’s speaking my language. (And, incidentally, he’s casually invoking the name of a book by Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman that spent 58 weeks at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list in 1946-47.)

Where does peace of mind come from? For most of us, safety is pretty crucial for that. We want our borders to be safe, our homes to be safe, our schools and vehicles and children to be safe. When something is safe, it means there’s minimal risk associated with it. And when risk is minimized, we generally feel less anxious and more peaceful in our minds. That reality is reflected in the very word insurance, which provides a level of surety. We can feel more sure, more secure, more safe.

Today, though, I feel like we’re living in an age of unsurance: We’re not sure what the next day, or even the next hour, may bring. The weather has changed and will continue to do so. Disasters are striking in places like Asheville, NC, where no one thought a hurricane could wreak the kind of destruction they experienced last fall. The Federal government, under the new administration, is rapidly changing many large sectors of policy–and doing so in a disorderly, chaotic fashion. For me, and perhaps for you, peace of mind feels harder and harder to come by.

With Parashat Bo, we reach the highpoint of the Exodus: the end of the plagues and the moment of liberation after centuries of enslavement. We remember the instructions Moses gives the Israelites: Before the final plague passes through Egypt, the Israelites are to paint lamb’s blood on their doorposts, which will keep out the Angel of Death, and to hold the very first Passover Seder–while they are still slaves in Egypt.

But it’s unclear: Which side of the door is the blood supposed to be painted on? Does God really need a visual reminder to know not to enter a particular home? Commenting on Exodus 13:13, “And the blood shall be a sign for you,” Rashi explains: “It shall be a sign for you, and not for others. From this we may learn that they put the blood only inside their houses.”

This is a significant detail. The blood on the doorpost is not some kind of lock that keeps out the forces of destruction and ensures safety. Rather, as the 13th century French commentator Hizkuni ben Manoah observes, “It is a symbol that you have observed the divine instruction,” that you have been able to live with trust and faith even as the swirl of destruction and uncertainty rages outside. (Gratitude to my brother Aaron for reminding me of this gloss this week.)

We are living in the age of unsurance. And that is certainly something to mourn, because pooling risk through insurance and mitigating risk through wise policies and governance contribute so much to physical, psychological, and spiritual safety. But that doesn’t mean we are out of tools–indeed, we have an enormous array of them. They can be found in our Torah, in our spiritual practices, in our mitzvot–the opportunities to connect with and be supported by the Divine Presence and one another. We’ve been doing that for 3,000 years, and we can do it today.

When I was a kid, in order to become an Eagle Scout you needed to earn 21 merit badges. Of those, some were required and some were elective. I remember my electives included things like ice skating and music (which were, conveniently, things I did anyway outside of Scouting). The required merit badges were things like First Aid (no surprise), Citizenship in the Community, Swimming and Lifesaving.

At Scout camp one summer, somewhere in the study for these last two, I vividly remember fulfilling a requirement that involved jumping into the water with my clothes on. The task was to remove a pair of blue jeans while in the water, tie the legs together, blow air inside, and then tie the waist and wear it around the neck — that is, to create a makeshift life vest. Real-life MacGyver stuff. Of all the activities associated with these merit badges, I found it to be the hardest — and the most memorable.

Looking back, one of the things I most appreciate about that episode was that, like many other activities in Scouting, the lesson was this: You already have what you need, at least a lot of the time. It’s right here, if you can muster the imagination to sense it. Don’t have exactly the piece of rope you need? Take two smaller pieces and put them together with a square knot (if they’re the same thickness) or a sheet bend (if they’re different thicknesses). Down a tentpole? You can make a lean-to. Don’t have bread for French toast? You can make scrambled eggs. And, in the case of swimming with my jeans on: Don’t have a life preserver? Make your pants into one.

This doesn’t work in every situation, of course. There are times when we simply don’t have the necessities, emergencies of the highest order. But what Scouting taught me through these lessons at a young age was an orientation toward resilience, ingenuity, improvisation, faith and trust — that we have more than we might think at first, that there are more possibilities here than meet the eye, that at times of crisis we can access the means of our salvation more readily than we might assume at first blush.

“These are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each one coming with his household.” Commenting on this first verse of the Book of Exodus in his Degel Machane Ephraim, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Ephraim of Sudilkov (1748-1800) offers a powerful teaching about this kind of orientation, which he links to God’s promise to Jacob a few chapters earlier: “I will go down with you to Egypt and I Myself will bring you up” (Gen. 46:4). In both cases, the Degel says, the divine Presence (Shekhinah) is the very means of ascent. “It is like one who wants to go down into a deep pit but is worried what will happen when he wants to come back up. So he takes a ladder with him into the pit. The Shekhinah is the ladder.” Like the jeans life preserver, the means of our salvation — on a spiritual level, at least — are more accessible than we might realize. (Thanks to my colleague Rabbi Sam Feinsmith, who translated and wrote about this teaching in our IJS text study series several years ago.) 

I hesitate to share this teaching in light of the devastation in Southern California this week. So many have lost so much, and, if offered without care, it could land in a way that sounds dismissive. So I want to be clear that my intention in offering this Torah is not at all to minimize the pain and suffering, or to simply preach self-reliance. That is not, I believe, what the Degel is saying, and it’s certainly not what I’m trying to say. 

Rather, I think this Torah might serve as an invitation to those who are suffering, and to all of us who are witnesses and who carry the burdens that are uniquely ours during these dark winter months: to find some quiet amidst the chaos and, in that quiet, sense if we can perceive the presence of a ladder up. The ladder may not reach all the way out, we might perceive just a rung or two — in our own minds and hearts, in the care of friends and loved ones, in the support of caregivers and strangers. But we can give ourselves permission to try to sense the ladder, and in doing so can be agents of our own liberation.

As we say so often, this is why we practice: for moments when life is hardest, when the spiritual struggle is most challenging. As the Degel and the Torah itself remind us, our people drinks from deep, inexhaustible, wells of spiritual strength. Those wells can be available to us — even when we’re treading water with our jeans on. May they provide nourishment and comfort to all those who need them today.