Va'era: Free at Last, Free at Last... Not so Fast - Parashat Va'era 5769

Parashat Va’era 5769 – January 24, 2009

Free at Last, Free at Last… Not so Fast.

Freedom is not an event, but rather an unfolding process of reaching toward our highest human potential.

Shabbat Shalom. I wish to begin with a disclaimer: This sermon is not about President Barak Obama. I’m not going to offer you my reflections on the meaning of his inauguration as the 44^th President of the United States, nor am I going to analyze his first few days in office. If you’re like me, you’ve been consuming all sorts of media focusing on our new President. And, there’s really nothing more I can, or should, add at this point. But, I do want to reflect, for a few minutes, on a cultural moment that unfolded this week. And I want us to think about a theme that resonates with this week’s Torah portion.

This week, millions of Americans – and, indeed, perhaps billions of people around the world – gathered to witness an historic moment in American History with the inauguration of our first African American president. There are many reasons why people felt so compelled to be part of this moment, but it seems that perhaps one reason was that the event marks, in the minds of many, a turning point in the struggle for human freedom. The pundits and pollsters – regardless of political affiliation – were asking: does this mean that racism is over? Does this put a close to a chapter in human history? I even heard one commentator state that this event marks the ultimate conclusion of the civil war. Well, I think they all miss the point and they demonstrate little understanding of the meaning of freedom.

To better understand human freedom, I suggest you all turn off your TVs and put down the newspaper and pick up the Torah instead. In fact, I’d like you to pick up a Chumash right now and follow along with me. Please turn to page 316 in the Chumash.

In last week’s Torah portion, God comes to Moses and assigns him the task of asking Pharaoh to let the Israelites go free from their bondage. When Moses and Aaron went to the Pharaoh for the first time, their request incensed the King of Egypt even more and he turned around and put even greater burdens upon the Israelites. Pharaoh ordered that the slaves must gather their own materials for making the bricks, but that their daily quota would not be reduced. So the people confronted Moses and Aaron and lashed out at them for having disturbed the status quo. Moses, then, turns to God and asks (v. 22) “My Lord, why have You done evil to this people, why have You sent me? From the time I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your Name he did evil to the people, but You did not rescue Your people.” Apparently neither the Israelites nor Moses at this point understand how freedom happens. They too think that freedom is an event or a sudden reversal of their condition. In other words, we are slaves now because we have to work so hard… when Pharaoh says we can go we will be free. And Moses is essentially saying to God, why aren’t you setting the Israelites free? What’s the hold up? You sent me Pharaoh; I told him that You want Your people freed, but he said no… I thought this was a done deal. But God understands that freedom isn’t that easy. It isn’t something that can simply be declared or conferred on someone. Freedom isn’t simply the removal of oppression, but rather human freedom and dignity are an evolving process.

God’s reply to Moses demonstrates that God intends to do more than free the Israelites. There is also a pedagogical goal here, (6:1) God says to Moses, “Now you will see what I shall do to Pharaoh, for through a strong hand I will send them out, and with a strong hand will he drive them from his land.” This first encounter with Pharaoh is the set induction to a lesson plan. It’s the teaser – an object lesson meant to draw us to a God intends to teach Moses, the entire Nation of Israel, and indeed also Pharaoh and the Egyptian people, what freedom is and how it is achieved. Let’s turn to the beginning of this week’s parsha on page 318-319. In the opening words of Parashat Va’era, God explains the process of liberation.

First He says, “I am Hashem. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but with my Name Hashem I did not make Myself known to them.” First of all, this statement, on its surface doesn’t seem correct. God’s ineffable four-letter name is found throughout the Book of Genesis. But a name is more than an identifying word; God’s various names reflect different aspects of God’s nature and will. So what He is saying to Moses is, “I am about to reveal a new aspect of myself that your forefathers didn’t know. I am about to reveal myself as the God of redemption and freedom.”

Let’s skip to verse 5. God now explains the process by which the Israelites will be freed. “Moreover, I have heard the groan of the Children of Israel whom Egypt enslaved and I have remembered My covenant. (6) Therefore, say to the Children of Israel: ‘I am Hashem, and I shall take you out from under the burdens of Egypt; I shall rescue you from their service; I shall redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. (7) I shall take you to Me for a people and I shall be a God to you; and you shall know that I am Hashem your God, Who takes you out from under the burdens of Egypt. (8) I shall bring you to the land about which I raised My hand to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and I shall give it to you as a heritage (inheritance) – I am Hashem.”

This is beautiful poetic language with a lot of descriptive words. On the surface it would seem that the repetition and redundancy in God’s speech serves merely as emphasis. But, our sages never read the Torah that way. Every word and phrase is pregnant with unique meaning. According to Misrash Shemot Rabbah, “the Sages ordained four cups to be drunk on the eve of Pesach to correspond with these four expressions…” In this manner, each of the four cups at our Seder table represents a different aspect of deliverance. Let’s look closely again at God’s speech.

“I have heard the groan of the Children of Israel.” Many Hasidic commentators point out that the first step in liberation is to recognize the oppression. In the liberation language of Alcoholics Anonymous, this is the first step toward recovery – recognizing that you are enslaved. When we think about freedom, we have to think about more than physical enslavement (thought there’s still plenty of that going on in our world). There are many things to which we find ourselves enslaved and we don’t even know it. I don’t have to list them… think about all the things in your life or in the lives of those you love that act as prisons. The first step in liberation or recovery is recognizing our captivity for what it is.

The 13^th century Spanish commentator Nachmanides (Ramban), draws our attention to the stages described in verses 6 and 7. The first step is “I will take you out from under the burdens of Egypt.” The first step in to remove the external sources of our bondage. The first step is to put a stop to the outside pressures that imprison us. Perhaps this means putting a stop to self destructive behavior, removing ourselves from an abuse situation, distancing ourselves from destructive people or forces in our lives. But this alone is not enough.

The absence of oppression is not itself freedom. God goes on, “I shall rescue (or deliver) you…” The second step is to begin healing ourselves from the enslavement we have internalized. Those things that oppress us have a way of imprinting themselves in our minds and our behavior. The addictions, dependencies, and abusive relationships in our lives remain an influence upon us even when we distance ourselves from them.

The third stage in freedom is “I shall redeem you…” Ge’ulah in Hebrew is a powerful word. Indeed the language here is that of power and judgment. Ge’ulah is restoration and justice. In the struggle for freedom, this is addressing the causes of oppression – not just for us but for others as well. This is to seek out to correct the sources of oppression. This is to commit ourselves never to return to Egypt.

The fourth step, “I will take you to Me for a people...” teaches us that freedom is not simply the absence of oppression. It isn’t just “freedom from…” but rather “freedom for…” The Jewish concept of freedom is not being left alone to do whatever we want without any commitments. Freedom, God teaches, is the ability to freely assume responsibilities. It is a commitment to pursuing service. It is a pledge to pursue healthy habits of mind and righteous behaviors. It is taking affirmative steps to making our lives and the lives of others better. It is the call to responsibility and spiritual maturity.

These commitments (which we call Mitzvot) lead us toward the Promised Land. “I will bring you to the land…” God says in verse 8, “and I shall give it to you as a heritage.” The culmination and our liberation as individuals and our pursuit of justice and kindness is the liberation of all humanity. It is the God-given inheritance of every human being. It is to unleash our potential as reflections of the Divine and to draw nearer to God.

In this parsha, God teaches us that human liberty is not a moment in time, it is not a ceremony, it is not an event that you can TiVo. Freedom is a continual process… it is the slowly unfolding story of how we as human beings can come to inhabit our true selves. It is the process of reaching toward our fullest potential.

Shabbat Shalom.

Va'yechi: Hazak, Hazak, v'Nit'hazek - Parashat Va-Yehi 5769

Parashat Va-Yehi 5769 – January 10, 2009

Hazak, Hazak, v’Nit’hazek

May we be strong and may we also know that our actions have consequences that our out of our control.

One of our congregants recently engaged me in a lively discussion of the Biblical figure of Joseph. He told me that he didn’t like Joseph because the economic policy that Joseph instituted in Egypt resulted in the coercive nationalization of the economy. He wrote to me in an email “Historically, too much economic power in the hands of government has never worked out well for anyone, and particularly for Jews.” Well, I agree and so I took a closer look at the passage to which he was referring.

If you we look back to the very end of last week’s parsha we see that, after two years of drought, the people had no money with which to purchase the food that Joseph had stockpiled. Apparently, the original economic policy was changed. Back in Parshat Miketz, when Joseph proposes the plan to Pharaoh, he says that he will collect up crops during the 7 years of plenty and store them for the 7 years of famine. The implication is that the crops that the people themselves grew will be redistributed throughout the land. Instead, Joseph sold the people the very food they had grown. When the Egyptian people had spent every last penny they had (47:15), they pleaded with Joseph to release the food lest they all die. Instead of giving it out, Joseph took the people’s livestock as payment. When that ran out, Joseph took the Egyptians’ land in exchange for food. But not only that, he relocated the entire Egyptian population, moving people from the countryside to the cities and from one city to another. And he went a step further; he placed the Egyptian population in a kind of perpetual indentured servitude by imposing on them a 20% tax on any future crops they should grow. In the meantime, Joseph settled his family in the choice region of Goshen. While the Egyptian population was having their land expropriated, the Torah says that Jacob’s sons acquired holdings in the land and they were fertile and increased greatly (47:27). Our friend is right, this goes well beyond the nationalization of the economy; this is really the subjugation of an entire people! He’s right to point out that the state’s power has its dangers. Power can get out of control; and, once extended, power can be difficult to draw back. It is a truism that the exercise of power has unintended consequences.

Now, I want to come to the defense of our patriarch Joseph. I think it is clear in the text that Joseph’s social policies were not for his own personal gain (indeed we never hear that he acquires any of the wealth for himself, only for Pharaoh). And I think it is clear that what Joseph did – while maybe an unprecedented exercise of state power – was (at least to his mind) a necessary response to an intolerable crisis. His motives were pure; his actions were just and moral. After all, he took these measures to save lives! And, indeed, Joseph was revered during his lifetime as the savior of Egypt.

But, one cannot help wonder what the unintended consequences were of Joseph’s policies. One cannot help wonder if Joseph had an exit strategy. That is to say, what did he plan do to when the famine was over? Would he roll back his economic policies? Would the people return to their homes? Would their property be restored? How did the Egyptians feel having their land and livelihood taken away? How did they feel being relocated – essentially becoming refugees within their own country? What did Pharaoh do with all that wealth? The text is silent. But, you and I, having read ahead, know what happens several generations down the road.

Next week we begin the book of Shemot. In the first verses of Exodus we read, “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us.’” Over these intervening years, the Israelites had grown from a tiny clan into a nation. The Egyptians felt threatened and having either forgotten or ignored the debt they owed Joseph for saving Egypt, the Egyptians persecuted and enslaved the Jewish population in an effort to destroy us. They took their vengeance on us and it resulted in generations of torture, murder, and slavery.

This was the unintended consequence of Joseph’s policies. But, please don’t misunderstand me; and I want to make this crystal clear. To say that Egyptian hatred was a consequence is neither to justify it nor to draw a moral equivalence. Was the Egyptian response justified? No! It is never justified to enslave and murder innocent people. Was their a moral equivalence in the Egyptian response? No! There is no moral equivalence between Joseph’s extraordinary steps to save lives and protect his brethren and the genocidal plan of the Egyptians to destroy the entire Israelite nation. Nonetheless, sometimes there are unintended consequences to our actions, especially when we don’t think through their implications. And, whether justified or not, we have to live with the consequences. By subjugating the Egyptian population and radically altering the social and economic order of Egyptian society (even if morally justified at the time) Joseph may very well have planted the seeds of Egyptian hatred.

This week’s Torah portion also has much to teach us about our capacity for shortsightedness. Parashat Vayigash has the distinction of being the only portion in the Torah that begins without a visible break in the text. If you’ve seen the Torah scroll up close, you’ll notice that the text is divided into paragraph-like passages by the use of blank spaces. In the case of Vayehi, however, there are no breaks. Rashi’s very first question about this parsha is “Lamah parsha zo stumah?” “Why is this portion “closed”? And then he offers two explanations based on a play on the word closed (stumah). First, he says, that “after the death of Jacob, the eyes and hearts of Israel were closed to the suffering of enslavement, which the Egyptians were beginning to contemplate.” That is to say that they were blind to the hatred beginning to grow in the hearts of the Egyptians. Alternatively, Rashi says, “the passage is closed because Jacob had wished to reveal the future to his sons, but it was closed off to him.” What Rashi is referring to comes in chapter 49 where we read that Jacob, lying on his deathbed, called his sons together in order to reveal to them their future. However, instead of imparting this information, Jacob proceeds to bless his sons. We never hear Jacob’s premonition. Based on an ancient midrash, the commentators explain that, at that moment, the power of prophesy had departed from Jacob and he was not able to tell them the future.

The future is never certain. We don’t have the advantage of prophesy to know what the outcome will be. But we do have the capacity for discernment and the wisdom to learn from our past. Therefore, in all the difficult decisions in life – when the costs are high – we must be careful to think through the potential consequences of our actions. We must consider the probability for harm, we must take into account the limits of our power, we must have regard for the feelings and reactions of those people who are impacted by our decisions, and we must bear in mind that our actions may have negative consequences that we will have to contend with – even when they feel morally justified at the time. This holds true for individuals, for relationships, for our careers, as well as for organizations, and politics, and even in foreign relations.

When we reach the end of a book in the Chumash, as we did this morning, we have a tradition of rising and declaring “Hazak, Hazak, n’nit’hazek.” The phrase actually derives from the biblical account of a battle (2 Sam 10) in which King David’s entire army found itself surrounded by two enemy forces. His general, Yoav, aware of the deadly situation, lays out the plan for a two-front attack and turns to his lieutenant and says “Hazak v’nit’hazak” – [the entire verse in English is] “be strong! And may we strengthen one another for the sake of our people and the cities of our God; but the Lord will do what He deems right.” (2 Sam 10:12). I think General Yoav sums it up: faced with challenges, we must be strong and resolute; but we must also be prudent and remember that the outcome is not entirely in our control. Hazak, Hazak, V’nithazek - Let us be strong… and let us also pray that we will indeed be strengthened.