The Talmud is our sacred compendium of the Jewish oral tradition that encapsulates some of the greatest wisdom in all of our vast literature. I love that the Talmud is not so much a book of our ancestors’ answers as it is a collection of their questions. With all its great wisdom and deep questioning, the Talmud pointedly reminds us that we should “Teach our tongue to say ‘I don’t know’” (Berachot 4a). In addition, repeatedly throughout our Torah Moses and other leaders repeat the phrase “anachnu lo neyda” (“we just don’t know), and our special Tachanun prayers also include the same phrase “va’anachnu lo neyda,” emphasizing an acceptance of life’s unpredictability. Everywhere in our sacred text, our tradition repeatedly reminds us that we, as Jews, have always lived with some uncertainty.
When Adam and I became parents to Ruby last winter, there were so many times when we had to make peace with the fact that we might not know exactly what to do in every parenting moment (as so many of you may also remember!). Now that Ruby can walk and talk and ask us her own questions, there are moments when we giddily explain to her how things work and others when we have to tell her that we just don’t know the answer to her question but that we can try to figure it out together. With ongoing news unfolding daily about the new Delta variant of the coronavirus, even our scientists and leaders are looking to us and saying we can surmise the best route to take (and we should, indeed, listen to the science) but we still don’t exactly know everything we want to know about this virus and that time, patience, caution, care, and ongoing research will help us all get back to a space of relative normalcy.
While there can be much fear and discomfort in the uncertainty of not knowing, there can also be a peace and a release and an authenticity in accepting that we can’t know everything. When we embrace that there are things we might not know, we open ourselves to learning and listening. When we don’t have all the answers, we can still show up with optimism, purpose, hope, and with great care for the well-being of others and ourselves. May we find continued joy in our shared search for meaning, may we always be open to listening to the science and wisdom of our time and of our timeless tradition, and may we find comfort together in the great not-knowing.
— Cantor Emma Lutz