Refugees In Search of Shelter: B’shalach

Refugees In Search of Shelter:  B’shalach

D’var Torah for Parashat B’shalach (Ex. 13:17—17:16)

by Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

January 22, 2016

Shabbat Shirah

We are all refugees.  This country was founded by refugees seeking religious and political freedom.  Israel was founded by refugees, resulting in a war that in turn caused upwards of 1.5 million refugees—as many Jews left Arab countries to resettle in Israel as did Arabs who left their homes, in search of safety or—as they were told—to prepare for an eventual victorious return.

People don’t leave their homeland because they were happy there. Some leave because of curiosity.  What lies just beyond the horizon has intrigued us from the earliest days of our existence as a living species.  Some leave on a quest for answers to unfathomable mysteries. However, most leave their birthplace, their homeland and their family only when conditions there become untenable.  

From the earliest days of humanity, hunger and the primeval need to forage for food and sustainability resulted in mass migrations.  The hand of God was often seen in such events.  The Biblical story of the Tower of Babel is one attempt to explain this phenomenon, this spreading of humanity over the entire world.

Even Abraham’s journey to Canaan is precipitated by God’s call to go forth, to leave the old homeland, to head out for some mysterious place, as yet unnamed, which God would reveal to Abraham in due time.

For the early Rabbis, however, there is an additional reason why Abraham undertook this journey: In Ur, an ancient city-state of the Chaldeans, Abraham was persecuted for his religious beliefs.

Four hundred years later, the Jews of the Exodus left for similar reasons. Enslavement and attempted genocide mandated that they depart.  Inspired by Moses, Aaron and Miriam, the Hebrews left en masse, half a million men, women and children.  An important part of Egyptian economy, their departure left Egypt a shambles, its economy a ruin, an empire doomed to oblivion.

But at the same time, a new culture was born.  One could say that modern Western Civilization was actually born on the day that the sea parted to give birth to the Jewish People.

Miracles occur for a reason, but also for a purpose.  God’s hand, we know, is powerful. It is also slow to reveal itself; but once it does, with all its power and glory, it comes not only to save and redeem, but also to teach a lasting ethic and moral.

Abraham’s journey from his homeland to Canaan may have been triggered by persecution.  As he prepared for a hasty departure, he may have wondered why it was so, what was it about his belief in God that could and did elicit so much hatred. 

What he learned along the way, however, was a lesson far greater than he had anticipated.  He understood that from that moment on, from his first step out the door, there would be new purpose to his life.  To commit to this vision meant to embrace it along with all its possible consequences.

The existence of one God may have come to Abraham as a sudden revelation.  His understanding of God’s purpose, however, was more of an evolution.  With each subsequent step, Abraham came to understand that God was not only The Creator, but also the source and model of justice, mercy and compassion.

The departure of the Hebrew nation from Egypt was yet another part of this journey.  This time, however, it wasn’t only true for one individual, but rather for an entire people. And one more difference:  this time, the people knew where they were going—they only needed a guide to show them how to get there. 

This guide they were looking for was Moses.  This was Moses, a cultural misfit who saw himself estranged both from his birth people and from his adoptive culture. This was Moses, whose righteous passion was inflamed by the injustice and abuse that he saw around him; who, with each step that he took, understood that his life’s mission wasn’t over with the Exodus. Far from that.  Beyond the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea, beyond the great outburst of faith and gratitude to God that became known as the Song of Moses, in fact on this side of history, now stood before him an assembly of men, women and children who looked up to him as once, in his earlier and simpler, shepherding days, the sheep had looked up to him.  Where to now, O faithful shepherd? Show us the way, point us in the right direction.  Lead us there.  Bring us to shelter, food and water.  Take us home.

It was a tough task, Moses realized.  B’nai Israel—the Children of Israel, as they were known then--were a people steeped in superstition, too weary at the end of a long day to think about what God wanted of them.  This newborn people would have to explore for themselves and find new meaning and purpose for their life.  Until now they were slaves; they did as they were told.  Now, they would have to take charge of their lives and destiny.

For the next forty years, Moses would teach them about God’s intents and purposes. To walk in God’s ways, the people would learn, means more than offering sacrifice, more even than uttering prayers.  As Abraham understood at the very beginning of his journey, the belief in one God carries a purpose and a mandate for life with it.  It means that, like God, so too we must be fair and compassionate.  That we must free the captive and liberate the enslaved.  That we must hear and remember the plight of the homeless and give them shelter.

We are, after all—all of us—refugees. Whether we left on a quest for answers or in search of more fertile fields, whether we left because of persecution or were driven by some other anguish, we are all on a journey, all of us seeking a Promised Land.

Lucky for us, we already have a roadmap. We only have to study it, then join hands and step forward together.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman

Light And Life: The Eternal Lessons of the Exodus

Light And Life: The Eternal Lessons of the Exodus

D’var Torah for Parashat Bo

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

This week’s Torah portion, Bo (“Come In”, Exodus 10:1—13:16), recounts the last three plagues inflicted on Egypt.  It also includes instructions for celebrating the Passover, both the first one and for all subsequent generations.

The Ten Plagues are pivotal in the awakening of Jewish thinking.  They are majestic and universal; they are as much visual as visceral.  Together with the Parting of the Red Sea, they form bookends to the dramatic emergence of the Jewish People into history. No longer subjugated to other peoples and their cultures, from this point and into the unforeseeable future, the Jews would play a prominent role in the evolution of civilization.

There have been many attempts to explain the process and logic of the Ten Plagues. Interpretations range from a natural progression of cataclysmic events, to the plagues as proof of the superiority of the one Jewish God—The One Who Was, Is And Shall Be—over all Egyptian deities.  At the top of their hierarchy of gods, Egyptians worshipped Ra, the sun god.  But there ancient Egypt’s theology stopped. Egyptian thought could not conceive of anything greater than the power of the sun.

Jewish thinking goes beyond the limits placed by physical perception.  For Jews, the sun is definitely not the epitome of the God’s presence. Beyond the sun is God. God, in fact, is the very Creator of the sun, the One who gave it its place in the eternal spinning of the galaxies, the One who gave it a role: to bring light, warmth and fruition to the earth and all its being.

Through the first eight plagues inflicted on Egypt, one can perceive God’s work through nature and the natural realm.  All eight are enormous ecological disasters; they affect the environment, they wreak havoc on human health as well as the wellbeing of animals. The last two plagues, however, represent God’s power as coming from somewhere beyond nature. No explanation based on natural order can account for Darkness and for the Death of the Firstborn. 

It wasn’t only that the darkness was so thick that you couldn’t see a fellow human being standing right next to you.  Rather, it was the fact that, unlike Egypt, for Israel there was light.  A distinguishable boundary existed between the two, a clear line drawn between darkness and light. 

This was no magic trick or fantastic illusion.  On one side of the line there was absolute absence of light, darkness as complete as it was thick.  On the other, the sunlight was as brilliant and vivid as ever. 

With the tenth and final plague, a similar boundary was drawn between Egyptian and Jewish first-born males. A thick line of blood separated between the two peoples.  In one, there was death; in the other, there was life.  This was no arbitrary division.  Every first-born—from Pharaoh’s own son down to the lowliest slave—was either killed or redeemed, depending on which side of that line that person happened to be.

The symbolic meaning of the death of Egypt’s first-born males isn’t hard to understand.  It’s the cutting off of the possibility of future existence.  Pharaoh knew that.  He had tried to do exactly the same thing to the Jews when he ordered that all Jewish newborn males be thrown into the Nile.  Now he saw it happening to his own people, on a scale he didn’t even begin to imagine.  The first-born represents stability, continuity of family, legacy and tradition.  Too late, Pharaoh realized the consequence of his folly.  Without a future, he now understood, Egypt was doomed.  A new age had begun, and Egypt would never again play a major part in it.  Ra, Egypt’s sun, sank below the horizon, buried forever in desert dunes.

For the nascent Israelite people, however, the door to the future was thrown wide open.  It isn’t only that all Jewish first-born males were spared.  That in itself would have been sufficient—“dayeinu,” in the words of the Haggadah.  But along with this redemption came a mission and a purpose.  No fewer than three times in this portion does God instruct the Israelites to teach their children, for all eternity, the lessons of this redemption.

This message seems to be key to our survival, the reason and purpose of our continued existence.

There are two parts to this teaching.  First is the understanding that God’s existence cannot be explained merely through laws of physics and nature.  God’s power comes from somewhere above and beyond nature.  Second is our obligation to teach this lesson to each successive generation that follows us.

 Our existence, some three thousand years after the Exodus, is proof both of God’s power and of our resolve to play the vital role God had intended for us.

Not long ago, a child in our religious school asked me a pertinent question.  “Rabbi,” he asked, “how do we know that God hears our prayers?”

I looked into the child’s inquisitive eyes, I saw his pure soul, and I answered him: “Because you are here today.”

There can be no better proof than this.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman