Rabbi’s Monthly Message

Greetings:

As we enter the month of Adar, it is supposed to be a time of joy. In fact, in tractate Ta’anit 29a the Talmud teaches that “Mi shenichnas Adar, marbim besimchah – When Adar enters, joy increases.” And yet, it is hard to be joyful when there is so much suffering occurring in the world around us. Jen is currently in Minnesota where she is staffing a conference of Jewish educators, and many of my colleagues just returned from Minnesota last week after participating in a multi-faith clergy action of hundreds of rabbis, priests, imams, and ministers pushing back against the recent surge of ICE and CBP agents to the state. As one Minnesota colleague, Rabbi Alex Davis, reflected on the biblical scripture reading of that week, he noted that the plague of darkness is where the parshah ends:

Moses held his arm out toward the sky and a thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. People could not see one another, and for three days no one could move about.

The darkness in Minnesota, he wrote, is palpable. You feel it on your skin and in your soul. Businesses closed down. Employees missing. People dead. As one resident in Minnesota remarked, “If there are criminals among us, we don’t want them in Minnesota. But that’s not most of the people being picked up. They are everyday people contributing to our community. I don’t care if someone works for ICE. But why do they have to be so cruel? Just be humane. An older man was leaving a store. He was just picked up, put in the trunk of a car, and taken away.”

As Rabbi Davis described the darkness of the parshah, he continued, “They didn’t see the other. They didn’t see the pain they were causing. They didn’t see the dehumanizing effect of their oppression. And when darkness descended, the Egyptians couldn’t get up. The darkness was so thick it was disorientating and paralyzing…I know some issues are fraught, divisive, and controversial. But sometimes, it just isn’t so difficult. No one here wants to see an older gentleman, American citizens, taken at gunpoint without a warrant and led outside wearing nothing but his underwear as we saw this week. No one here wants to see a five-year-old wearing a blue bobbled winter hat arrested even though his family had entered this country legally as we saw this week. And people of all political persuasions should be calling it what it is- cruel and outrageous. It’s a moment that demands a response. And we have the words and the wherewithal.”

 This week, we read the next part of the story of our ancestors as we retell the Exodus from Egypt. Undoubtedly, there were Egyptians who did not own slaves and who did not profit from the labor of Israelites. In fact, the Midrash tells stories of Jewish and Egyptian children playing together and living in community. And yet, they were bystanders who were not moved to relieve the suffering of their neighbors. They simply ignored it, content to just get along. But the Torah is the story of an upstander – of Moses – who intervenes because he could not stand to see the suffering of another person and was called into action.

I don’t know how long this darkness will last. It has certainly been longer than three days. But I believe that it will last until we as a community of humans are moved away from being bystanders. If we want to find our way back to the light, we need to be called into action because the status quo is so painful and awful that we simply cannot let it continue. And while I am white and privileged and have little to fear from this immigration enforcement action, my heart is broken and I am deeply worried for my community, for my country, and for the world that we share.

Last week, Jen, Talyah, Kol, and I went to Hartford to see Suffs – a musical about the women’s suffrage movement. In the last song, the main character Alice sings about the work ahead of her and notes that “progress is possible, not guaranteed. So keep marching!” There is work for us to do. But if we want to bring back joy and light to this moment, I believe we need to lean into this week’s portion and the story of our own liberation. Because after the darkness, comes the crossing of the Sea of Reeds and the rest of our miraculous story. The progress we saw as a nation in ancient times was not guaranteed. It was made possible by the upstanders in our community who pushed us forward.

May we be blessed to be upstanders in this moment and to serve in ways that bring joy back to a world plagued with too much darkness.

Kol Tuv (Be Well),

Rabbi James