Faith in the Power of
Freedom
Sermon/D’var Torah
for Parashat Ve’eira
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
In this week’s Torah portion, Va’eira, the second portion of the book of Exodus (6:2-9:35), God
takes matters into God’s own hand. In
the first portion, Moses discovers his mission and first delivers God’s message
to Pharaoh. That, however, doesn’t go very well and only results in Pharaoh’s
making life harder for his Hebrew slaves.
It is against this background, that at this point God takes the
lead. “Now I’ll show him who’s boss of
this world,” God basically says.
And with that begins the series of plagues so familiar to us
from countless Seders, from countless drops of wine we remove from our filled
cups, from various depictions in Haggadahs and Hollywood films. Blood, frogs, lice, boils, hail… all the way
to darkness and that most horrible of all, the death of the first-born.
There have been many attempts to explain the plagues. A sequence of natural calamities, one leading
to the next, is one rationale. An
ancient rabbi proposed that the order of the plagues shows progression from the
collective to the personal, from ailments that affect the general population
and environment to those that affect only the Egyptians, and then, specifically,
Pharaoh. It is only when his own son
dies that Pharaoh gets the message.
We are sometimes stupid that way. We don’t get it until we are personally
affected. The famous quote by the
Protestant pastor Martin Niemöller comes to mind: “First they came for the
Socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I
did not speak out—because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not
speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then
they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Maybe it’s fear that blinds us; maybe it’s a weird, even
perverted, optimism that things can and will get better, that bad things only
happen to other people, or that “by the grace of God,” we ourselves might be
spared.
The truth, however, is that once society begins to decay and
collapse, there is no stopping it. Like
a sand castle at the water’s edge, the moats fill with water, the highest
retaining walls crumble, and everything else follows in close order.
Probably the best way to see the Biblical plagues is as the
gradual collapse of the grand empire that Egypt had once been. First its foundations go—the Nile River, the
bearer of life—then all the safeguards that had been so carefully built
up. One by one, the plagues strikes at
the gods that the Egyptians worshipped and believed would protect them. Ultimately, it is Pharaoh himself who is
brought to his knees. The man who
believed himself the earthly embodiment of Ra, the most powerful god of all, is
made to recognize that there is a power far greater than he could even imagine.
Throughout history, there have been many like Pharaoh,
people who thought themselves so grand as to be above the law of morality. They had golden statues crafted in their
image and erected in temples; they commanded taxes, sacrifices of gold, silver
and often, human life. They imposed on
their subjects a single way of thinking and an unquestioned belief system that
precluded any other, thus eliminating any possible challenge to their own
power. Their sense of their own
importance and glory knew no bounds.
Confrontation with another belief was seen as a threat by
these demigods, and they took every precaution to forbid it. A system of spies, a secret police, the
Gestapo, the Inquisition—these are the machinations used by tyrants from time
immemorial to bolster their power and prevent their own downfall. One by one, however, they all meet their
inevitable fate. One by one, their
defense systems crumble, as one plague after another strikes at their economy,
their society, their land forces and naval armadas, their natural reserves, and
finally them in person.
Throughout history, we’ve seen many repetitions of the
Biblical story of the plagues. Society
after society, one civilization after another has fallen by the wayside, victim
of its own arrogance. Yet some people
still fail to get it.
In our own day, we are witnessing a similar clash between
arrogance and its inevitable collapse.
This struggle shows itself in wars and atrocities and all over the
world, taking its toll of thousands of lives every day—not only in Israel or
Paris: Think of the 2000 who were killed
last week in Nigeria by extremist Islamists; or the nearly 200,000 who have
been killed so far in the in the Syrian civil war. The conflict isn’t really between East and
West. Nor is it a struggle between Islam
and Christianity, Islam and Judaism, or Islam with anything else. At the root of it all, this struggle is
deeply embedded within Islam itself. The
struggle is between, on the one hand, those who believe that they possess the
final word on God’s intentions; and, on the other hand, those who believe that
every human being has the freedom to interpret God’s message for him- or
herself, in a more personal way, in a way not dictated by another human being.
As different factions within Islam vie for supremacy, for
the power to tell others how to behave and what to think, one tries to outdo
the other in acts of horror and atrocity.
Each group eagerly claims credit for beheadings, kidnappings and
enslavement, as though power can be measured by the amount of blood on the
sidewalk.
As in ancient Egypt, there is a war going on today, too. It is a war between ignorance and knowledge,
between madness and wisdom. However,
unlike the ancient world, in today’s global world, this war isn’t limited to
only one geographical area; and as weapons get more sophisticated and ever more
powerful, the dangers extend far across oceans and continents. No country or nationality is immune. At its core, the struggle may be
internal. Yet, we are all affected. Terror today knows no boundaries.
In fighting this war, the free world will need to use all
its resources—people, technology, and spirit.
We know that in the end, as in ancient Egypt, cruel tyranny will meet
its downfall. But, unlike the story in
the Bible, this time it won’t be God doing the fighting for us. This war is one that we, people all over the
world who want to be and remain free, must fight.
Yet while waging this war, we must also be careful not to
resort to similar tactics as our enemies.
Terror strikes indiscriminately at the heart of the population, at the
weak and unprotected. We who strive to
live by a higher morality must distinguish between the guilty and the
innocent. Generalizing and profiling
whole populations will lead only to more tragedies and greater turbulence, making it
that much more difficult afterwards to reconstruct our civilization.
Parashat Ve’eira
sets the stage for the emergence of the Hebrew nation from Egyptian
slavery. How sad that throughout
history, all humanity, as it casts off the fetters of slavery, must do so amidst
much turmoil and bloodshed. Then as now,
it sometimes seems that we’ve learned nothing at all from the progress of
history.
And yet, we have learned something. We’ve learned that tyranny never lasts; that
a greater power, be it from heaven or from somewhere deep within our souls,
always emerges to strike one blow after another until the tyrant finally falls,
making freedom possible.
This is the faith that sustained us in ancient times; this
is what will help us overcome terrorism today.
It’s the same faith that helped Moses convince the Israelites, and eventually
Pharaoh too, that tyranny can never last, that a people who’ve tasted freedom
will never again allow themselves to be enslaved. It’s faith in the power of freedom. It served us well in the past and will
continue into the future as well.
Kein y’hi ratzon,
may this be God’s will.
© 2015 by Boaz D. Heilman
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