Standing מרחוק

I went through something in my community this past week that my system initially could not hold.

It wasn’t just upsetting. It was disorganizing. I felt myself cycling between anger, grief, clarity, and collapse, unable to stay present with what I was seeing - fear, danger and a frightening lack of moral clarity from people in positions of power. It was hard to witness without either hardening or unraveling. As a therapist, I’m used to helping people build capacity for difficult realities. In that moment, I needed to find the strength to do that myself.

What steadied me was not an answer, but a way of organizing experience. A reminder that there are human and spiritual capacities for holding unbearable complexity without forcing resolution. And once again, I found myself turning back to something I learned years ago in Likutei Halachot, Shiluach HaKen. I am endlessly astonished by how much psychological wisdom is embedded in Torah.

This teaching didn’t remove the pain. But it helped my system settle enough to stay present inside it.

As I am holding all of this, Ron Gvili, the last of the hostages, was buried today. For many of us, this carried a sense of completion. Since October 7, we have been holding our breath, praying, hoping, asking if it could really be possible to bring everyone home. We wanted them all back. We needed them all back.

And truthfully, much of the world did not believe this would happen. It sounded unrealistic, even irrational. What other nation insists on holding hope like that?

And yet, we didn’t let go. And they were all returned. Some to be caressed by their families, some embraced in the loving arms of the earth of eretz Yisrael.

There was something quietly astonishing about that. A sense of shlemut - in the feeling that something unfolded that could not be explained by human effort alone. Of course there were brave people, painful sacrifices, and countless human contributions. But many experienced this as a moment where Hashem’s presence felt close, almost tangible.

At the same time, many of us are living with constant unease. Waking up and checking the news. Wondering what might happen next. Carrying the aftershocks of October 7, an invasion that could have destroyed us, followed by years of war on multiple fronts. Living through periods of tension with Iran that felt, more than once, like they could tip into something catastrophic, and somehow did not. Wondering what is next and when.

Our generation has witnessed moments of narrow escape, unexpected preservation, and survival that often felt like open miracles. And we continue to face fear, grief, instability, and loss that do not dissolve in the presence of gratitude.

The nervous system does not love this kind of complexity. We tend to flip. Either we orient toward awe and reassurance, or we sink into dread and despair, it feels nearly impossible to fully hold both simultaneously. Yet the reality we are living in does not allow for such clean emotional lanes.

This is where a teaching from Likutei Halachot, from Reb Nosson, became very alive for me.

Again and again, the Torah describes moments where someone sees something clearly, and yet experiences it as far away. The word it uses is מֵרָחֹק, from afar.

We see this first with Miriam.

Miriam is six years old. Pharaoh has decreed that all baby boys are to be thrown into the Nile. Amram, the leader of the generation, divorces his wife. Why bring children into a world destined for death? When the people see him do this, they follow.

And this six-year-old girl approaches to her father and says, “You are worse than Pharaoh.” Pharaoh decreed death on the boys. You are preventing even the girls from being born. Pharaoh took away life in this world. You are taking away even their share in the next.

She speaks from prophecy and tells him that if he remarries her mother, a child will be born who will redeem the Jewish people.

And Amram listens.

They remarry publicly. Moshe is born. The house fills with light. For a brief moment, it seems the prophecy is unfolding.

And then the danger returns. They realize the baby cannot be hidden. They place him in the Nile.

Amram turns to Miriam and says, “What happened to your prophecy now?”

She does not argue. She does not explain. There is nothing to say. She does not flee.

The Torah says: וַתֵּתַצַּב אֲחֹתוֹ מֵרָחֹק His sister stood from afar and watched.

Can you imagine the fierce heart of this precious child?

She stands. She watches. She places distance, but she does not turn away.

The Torah gives us a contrast.

When Hagar believes her son is about to die in the desert, she places him under a bush and walks away. She says, “Let me not see the death of the child.” The Torah describes her sitting at a distance, about a bowshot away, and withdrawing her gaze.

This is distance without vision. A response that makes sense under overwhelming terror.

Miriam’s distance is different. It is distance with orientation.

We see this again with Avraham Avinu.

Avraham is promised that his descendants will be like the stars in the sky, and that Yitzchak will be the child through whom this promise is fulfilled. And then he is commanded to bring Yitzchak as an offering.

The Torah says :וַיַּרְא אֶת הַמָּקוֹם מֵרָחֹק He saw the place from afar.

Chazal teach that Avraham saw more than a mountain. He saw the future. He saw the Beit Hamikdash. He saw generations of Jews coming to serve Hashem in that place - his descendants, who he had been told would come from Yitzchak, כי ביצחק יקרא לך זרע.

And he also saw that he was being asked to walk into an impossible contradiction.

He did not resolve it. He did not understand how both could be true. He kept walking.

We know how these stories end. They did not.

What’s striking is that the Torah consistently uses spatial language here. Standing. Seeing. Distance. Orientation.

Modern neuroscience gives us language for something similar. The hippocampus, a structure deeply involved in spatial orientation and memory, helps the brain hold context. When experience can be placed rather than collapsed, perception stays online. We can see and feel at the same time. When this capacity is overwhelmed, systems narrow. We turn away, not because we lack faith, but because we lack capacity. It's more than our brains can hold and digest. If we activate the hippocampus by orienting spatially, we can actually widen our perception and capacity, allowing us to hold more without falling into a trauma response. This skill is being integrated into trauma treatment, having a positive impact on the capacity to process hard experiences. Research shows that greater hippocampal activation in contextual processing tasks after trauma exposure is linked to resilience and lower PTSD symptoms, suggesting that hippocampal-dependent context processing may support healthy regulation after trauma.

I find myself wondering whether this is part of the mechanism behind Brainspotting - how using spatial orientation and gaze may help engage contextual processing, allowing experience to be held rather than overwhelmed. This feels less like a new discovery than a clinical echo of something much older.

Perhaps it is not random that the Torah emphasizes seeing from afar in moments of greatest tension. Distance, in these stories, is not disengagement. It is the space required to stay present without being destroyed by what is seen.

A Brief Practice: Standing From Afar

Take a moment to pause, breathe and settle.

Begin by tuning into something you know, even if it feels far away right now. A place of hope. A sense of direction. A vision of where you are headed that feels meaningful or supportive, even if it’s not fully formed. Let yourself notice it gently.

Now, check in with your body and your inner sense of space. Where would you like to place this hope? Somewhere in the room around you. Trust that your system knows. Imagine placing it there, letting it settle. Allow your eyes to rest in that direction for a moment, seeing it held there, not needing to pull it closer.

When you’re ready, tune into something else. A place of brokenness, pain, despair, or hurt. Something you’ve been carrying in your heart or body. Notice it without forcing anything.

Again, let your system choose where it belongs in your space. Place it in a different part of the room. The right or the left, near or far. Trust the placement.

Once both are settled, let your gaze move gently back and forth between them. At first very slowly, registering the presence of each, then at whatever pace feels supportive. Seeing this one over here. Seeing that one over there. Knowing that each has its own space.

As you do this, notice what happens inside your body. Any shifts in breath, tension, or grounding. Just notice.

When you’re ready, you can let your eyes come back to center, carrying with you whatever feels helpful from this moment.

This is not about minimizing pain. It is about not letting pain erase vision.

In my own experience this week, what helped my system settle was precisely this shift. Not trying to resolve what felt unbearable, but allowing it to exist in space. Letting brokenness be where it is. Letting vision be where it is. And noticing that when they are not forced to compete, something inside can breathe.

This is not an instruction so much as an invitation. A way of thinking about how we might relate to the intensity of our lives.

And there is one more layer to this. The prophets describe redemption not only as a collective event, but as something profoundly personal. In Isaiah, we are told: וְאַתֶּם תְּלֻקְּטוּ לְאַחַד אֶחָד בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל “You will be gathered one by one, O children of Israel.”

Redemption unfolds both nationally and individually. We are living inside the story of our people, and each of us is also living inside our own exile and return. Our own places of constriction. Our own longing for relief, coherence, and wholeness. And ultimately our own redemption.

Chazal teach that during the plague of darkness, many of our people did not survive. Perhaps it was not because they had not seen Hashem’s hand, but because they could not bear the process. They had witnessed miracles, and still could not tolerate the contractions, the back-and-forth, the prolonged uncertainty of redemption unfolding over time. The darkness was a place where hope and despair could no longer be held together.

Perhaps this is part of why our generation is living with both open miracles and profound instability. Not to confuse us, but to stretch our capacity to hold more than one truth at a time. To hold hope, connection and deep emunah, even when facing really painful realities.

Learning to stand from afar does not mean stepping back from life. It means staying oriented inside it. Holding fear without losing memory. Holding gratitude without silencing grief.

Redemption, in that sense, may not arrive all at once. It may appear first in moments when we find ourselves able to see what is broken and what is still unfolding, without turning away from either.

מֵרָחוֹק ה' נִרְאָה לִי, וְאַהֲבַת עוֹלָם אֲהַבְתִּיךְ עַל כֵּן מְשַׁכְתִּיךְ חָסֶד. (ירמיהו לא, ב)