The Darkest Valley

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Hebrew Word of the Day tarbut(culture) Hear Translation » January 23, 2012 "Even though I walk through the darkest valley I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me." — Psalm 23:4 One of the great privileges I have as founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is to meet and work with some of the most outstanding leaders in the Christian and Jewish communities. And among those leaders is a man I consider to be a modern-day Jewish hero – Natan Sharansky. Mr. Sharansky is the head of the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI), a partner organization of The Fellowship that facilitates aliyah (immigration to Israel) for Jews from around the world. Beyond this, Sharansky is a bold and persuasive defender of Israel, and a champion of freedom who speaks all the more eloquently in its defense because he was deprived of his own freedom for so long. You see, in 1977, Mr. Sharansky, a Jew living in Ukraine (which was then under Soviet rule), was arrested by the Soviet secret police, the KGB, on a false charge of espionage for his role in pressuring Communist authorities to allow Soviet Jews the right to immigrate to Israel. (Mr. Sharansky had applied for his own exit visa in 1973 and been denied). He was later convicted and placed in a Soviet prison, where he spent nine long years. Confined to a “punishment cell,” a damp, cold, concrete room barely larger than an oversized box, Mr. Sharansky, indeed, walked “through the darkest valley.” What helped him through this dark time was a small book of Psalms that his wife had given to him days before he was arrested. Said Mr. Sharansky, “This Psalm book was with her [his wife] for the whole year, and now, she felt that the time had come to send it to me. I had really no time to try to read the small Hebrew letters, and my Hebrew was not good enough to understand what was written…but after I was arrested and everything was confiscated, I remembered what she wrote – [that] the time has come to send this book to you.” Mr. Sharansky fought to get this tiny book of Psalms back from his captors, and after three years, he finally succeeded. He began reading the Psalms when he came across the words of Psalm 23:4: “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” “They are small words, short words, [but] I understood all of them, and it was very powerful,” he recalled. “It was as if God, the Jewish people, my wife, the State of Israel, all together came to me to say, ‘Don’t be afraid, we are with you.’ And that was a huge encouragement.” Small words, short words, yes. Yet, powerful enough words to sustain a man through imprisonment and isolation. And powerful enough to sustain whatever dark valleys you may be walking through today, whether it’s unemployment, financial losses, sickness, or broken relationships. God is with you in your “darkest valley,” offering you His comfort, His presence, and His peace. With prayers for shalom, peace, Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein President