Sermon given at Temple Oheb Shalom on January 27, 2017
A few short weeks ago, as I sat in a conference room in Chicago, my phone began to buzz incessantly. Eventually I dug in my purse to turn it off, but found to my dismay what all of the noise was about. A swastika had been painted on the sign in front of the HUC campus in Cincinnati. Somehow, in my naïveté, I never imagined such an event would hit so close to home. Then, last week, my friends and I were informed of a bomb threat at the JCC in Cincinnati, where many of my classmates’ children attend preschool, and where their spouses work. Thankfully, everyone was evacuated and was physically okay. Still, the emotional toll remained. On Sunday, it was reported that Withrow High School in Cincinnati had been covered in racist and antisemitic graffiti. I would be lying if I told you that I wasn’t disheartened by these events, that I wasn’t scared, or intimidated by them. And, yet, there is also a part of me that sees light in this seeming darkness. I see a moment where we can struggle to come together to build a better world.
Perhaps ironically, around the time these events took place, we, the Jewish people, began reading of the book of Shemot, the book of Exodus, a story filled to the brim with the great struggle of our people in the face of adversity, the story of a man who stood up, who spoke out, and who sought to connect a people, to find what united them to lead them to freedom.
In a country which day by day becomes more divided, where anti-semitic acts, bomb threats, and divisive rhetoric pervade our society, it is our responsibility to live and act in accordance with Jewish values. Our sacred texts, and our tradition, help us to understand how to respond to our world today. Moses in this week’s parasha, Vaera, as well as in the Parashiyot to come, reminds us that it is our responsibility to speak out, to stand up against injustice, and find a way to connect with one another despite our divisions in order to repair the world.
In Parasha Vaera, in the words I read from the Torah just now, God commands Moses to go to Pharaoh to implore him to allow the Israelites to leave Egypt. Moses’ response is so very human. After first failing to make the Israelites listen to him in the previous verse, Moses says to God, “If the people of Israel won’t listen to me, why then would Pharaoh listen to me?” This statement hits us in the chest. It hits home. We’ve all been in Moses’ position. We’ve seen something unjust and we’ve wanted to speak out, and yet we held back. For who were we to say something? Sometimes we’re scared. Sometimes we simply didn’t have the right words or a partner to help us to speak out.
Moses tells God that he cannot speak to Pharaoh because he has Aral Siphatayim. The literal translation of this phrase means “uncircumcised lips.” But, what in that world does that mean? Our rabbis, like us have also struggled to understand this phrase. It has been translated in a number of ways, but all of our commentators agree that these words relate to Moses’ physical difficulty with speech. Moses, it would seem had a disability. Rashi, the 12th century commentator, argued that Moses had a physical obstruction which made it hard for him to talk. Maimonides, a commentator from 13th century proposed that Moses may have had a speech impediment which would have made it difficult for him to have been heard correctly (Rashi and Rambam on Exodus 6:12). Moses, as we see in this instance, is not only unsure of how he will speak to Pharaoh, and how he will face him, but he is also unsure of his ability based on his own situation. And yet Moses, in the end, still goes before Pharaoh. But he is not alone. God commands Aaron to go with Moses to serve as his brother’s spokesperson.
We like Moses, sometimes have our own metaphorical or physical speech impediments. We struggle to find the right words to confront a situation, to deal with what we see before us, whether it is unjust dealings at work, unkind words spoken about a friend, or hatred we see in our communities, Moses reminds us that we still have the power whether by ourselves or with a partner to speak out. Not only do we have the power, but we have the responsibility, and our responsibility is based in our tradition and in Jewish values.
Now, I want us to think about Moses as a person. Often, we see him as Moshe Rabbeinu, Moses our great rabbi, and we fail to see him as a fallible human being. In Parashat Shemot, the opening portion of the book of Exodus, we meet Moses as an adult. Moses, in this moment, has gone out of the palace of Pharaoh to see his people, the Israelites. He sees an Egyptian beating an Israelite. Not only is this man an Israelite but we are told he is also one of Moses’ אחיו, brothers. In this scene Moses sees the Israelite as part of his people, a people he did not grow up with. He sees this man as his brother, as a human being, and as part of his family. Moses, in his first moment of realization of injustice, strikes the Egyptian dead in a instance of what I can only imagine as pure emotion, and buries the Egyptian in the sand. Moses, in his first real action in the Torah, kills a man in his outrage over injustice, in an effort to stand up for his fellow Israelite, for his brother. In this case, Moses gives us an example of what not to do. Moses reminds us that violence is never the answer. Only after an extensive period of time living in the desert of Midian is Moses ready to meet God at the burning bush, and begin his process to learn how to stand up to the injustices his people face.
In the world in which we live, we are assailed perpetually by the news, facebook, and conversations with friends and family, that sometimes really push us, and evoke intense emotional responses. Even in those moments, when we have the words and are ready to act, sometimes we need to stop and think before we make a move, before we type those words, send that text, or respond in a biting manner. In order to stand up to injustice we have to find our own inner calm despite the raging chaos of emotions inside us.
Moses time and time again returns to face Pharoah. Not only does he cry out to Pharaoh to Let his people go, but he also acts. Moses is persistent in his act of going before Pharaoh. He refuses to back down until justice is restored, until his people are free. In a world of nearly immediate gratification, it is sometimes difficult for us to grasp that we may sometimes need to return again and again, to refuse to stop acting in order to begin to heal the world. Just like Moses, we must not give up hope, but rather continue to act in order to bring about change.
Perhaps Moses’ greatest strength is his ability to bring the Israelites together. Moses, Miriam, Aaron, all of the tribes, stand together, and act together. They are connected to one another. They find value in each others’ stories, their shared experience of bondage, and hope for freedom. Maybe what we have failed at the most in recent months and even years, has been our failure to listen to each other, to the stories we each have to tell of our own bondage, of our views and experiences, our hopes for freedom, no matter how different they are. For, when we really listen, as we are called to do in the Shema, to Hear O Israel, then we begin a process to build relationships with one another. And when we connect and see the humanity in each other’s stories, we truly begin to feel empathy for the person sitting across from us, to see the myriad of ways that we are united, and to begin to lessen our hold on what scares us and what divides us. Our stories, the stories of our tradition, the words we pass on to our children, and our grandchildren, they unite us. We may sit here today in this sanctuary all of us feeling so many very different things, and yet, we do have stories that have the power to bring us together. Moses is a listener. He listens to God. He listens to the people, and he connects with them. He’s heard their stories, and only then does he act.
But what does it mean for us to speak up for injustice or stand up for injustice, and unite together? What issues do we stand for? Well, that’s a good question. Throughout the Tanakh, the Torah, prophets, and writings, we are confronted with God’s call to us to no longer be a stiff necked people, to live as just and righteous lives. in the case of Deuteronomy 11:10-16, in Moses’ parting soliloquy to the people, he reminds us that like God it is our duty to “uphold the cause of the orphan, and the widow, to befriend the stranger in our midst, and to provide them with food and shelter.” He then reminds us why we must do this, saying, “You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Every year we relive the story of Passover. Each year we say we were strangers in a strange land. Moses’ here at the end of his leadership calls us to account for the ways in which we live justly. It is impossible to ignore the clarity of our tradition, a tradition which values the widow, the orphan and the stranger, and calls on us to speak out against injustice through our remembrance of our slavery in Egypt.
In the book of the prophet Zechariah, we have an even more intense call. We are told “do not oppress the widow or the orphan, the stranger or the poor; and do not think evil in your hearts against one another.” Not only are we called to protect the widow, the orphan and the stranger, but we are also told to not think evil in our hearts against one another. There is a connection between standing up for justice and our ability to have empathy for one another, for the person who challenges us the most. Moses and our prophets are clear, it is our moral imperative to live justly, and we can only do so by taking care of each other and finding empathy for the person across from us.
While we are called on to speak out and stand up against injustice, we cannot do so without first taking the time to listen, even when it is difficult, painful, and challenging. If we fail to listen to one another, if we fail to connect, to unite, to really hear each other, then those actions, of the people who hope to frighten and divide us will succeed.
I’m proud to say that the greater Cincinnati community has responded beautifully to the incidents that have occurred in the last few weeks. I’m proud of the Jewish community in Cincinnati which has refused to let hate win. Still, I cannot fail to see the impact these events, and the words that float on the air and in press have on our world today. In a time of uncertainty, Jewish tradition, and Moses’ leadership in particular, helps us to respond to injustice with Jewish values, reminding us that it is our responsibility to speak and to stand up against injustice, and to tell our stories—to find unity in a world so often divided. We all have the ability to emulate Moses’ leadership, whether it is by friends and our colleagues, with our families, and with our fellow congregants, and being open to listen to their stories, whether we feel called on to speak out on behalf of those who are less fortunate than ourselves, or to find a means of joining together with others whose stories are not necessarily our own in order to act, to fight the many injustices that exist in our world. May we be inspired to build bridges, to find common ground, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. As we move forward, may our Jewish values guide our words, and our actions, our hearts, and our hands.
Rabbi Bailey Romano 