Philip Roth
Karl Marx
Louis Brandeis
Abbie Hoffman
Jerry Rubin
Lenny Bruce
Alex Polikoff
Benjamin Wolf
Marty Cohen
Bella Abzug
Emma Goldman
Samuel Gompers
Lou Reed
Bob Dylan
George Soros
Leon Trotsky
Bela Kun
Rosa Luxembourg
Yitzchak Rabin
Howard Zinn
Arthur Waskow
Rabbi Robert Marx
Andrew Goodman
Michael Schwerner
Daniel Pearl
What do these names have to do with today's parasha?
Gail delivered a thought provoking d'var two weeks ago. She outlined the social-psychological growth and development of Judah, Jacob's son who gave his name to our religion. She described Judah as a true mensch who emerged from a violent environment. He grew up in a family of hooligans, but he separated himself from them. Once on his own, he learned to take responsibility for his actions, to make personal sacrifices for his family, and generally, to do the right thing. As Hillel says on one foot, the menschlichkeit of Judah is the major tenet of our religion: the golden rule. The golden rule provides a guide for our daily behavior and a standard against which to judge the behavior of others.
Today I would like to take Gail's analysis a little farther by looking at the biography of another important figure in the Torah, and try to gain insight into an issue that has fascinated me for as long as I remember. While we can all aspire to be menschs, some Jews try to go a step further, and fight for justice and righteousness beyond the amount one might predict based on self-interest, or simple menschlichkeit. By going a step further, they not only treat their fellow man as themselves, by not doing harm, but they take on significant personal risk to defend and protect their fellow man.
We can all think of examples of these leaders, in history, in politics, in media, in popular culture, in literature. The list I started with includes some of the names that immediately came to my mind. We can find Jews on the left, on the right, and in the center, putting themselves in danger, or coming forward to state an unpopular position for a cause, sometimes not their own. On the high holidays we say an "al chet" for being "zealots for bad causes". I often observe that one man's "bad cause" is another's fight for justice. This is not a trait of Jews alone; certainly this week celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday reminds us of that. But my belief is that we as Jews are overrepresented in this propensity, and category of leadership.
I say "we as Jews" somewhat ironically. Many of these "Jewish" leaders did not, and would not, self-identify as Jews, nor would they acknowledge that their religious observance, background, or customs contributed to their biographical trajectories. Yet there they are, there we are, doing good works nonetheless. What could possibly be the mechanism that would lead some of us to take stands against self-interest, beyond menschlichkeit, while others rationally choose to take a path of less resistance and to go with the flow.
[One might postulate that fighting for justice is a rational survival strategy for Jews. We fight for others, even when it doesn't directly benefit us so that we will have allies in times tough for the Jews, or to stop intolerance from growing in a society that may one day affect Jews, or because we can empathize with others because we remember what it was like to have hatred leveled against us.
When I lived in Israel in 1988-9 I took a trip to Egypt down the Nile Valley. I visited a place called Elephantine Island. The inhabitants Elephantine Island have lived there since antiquity, surviving despite the many cultures that have conquered Egypt over the past few thousand years, including the Pharaohs, the Greeks, the Romans, the crusaders, the Ottomans, and the Arabs. Each conqueror declared Elephantine Island as part of its empire. With each successive wave of conquerors, the people of Elephantine Island learned the language of their rulers, and never presented a challenge, quietly keeping their own culture throughout the centuries. This seems antithetical to us as Jews, who scream bloody murder when forced to sing a Christmas Carol in school;, the people of Elephantine Island survived throughout the same history as the Jews, without all the problems and oppressions, merely by being pliant, and having Mukuta Metada as their guiding philosophy. It made me think that our so called, "rational approach" of fighting all the time and "speaking truth to power" whenever we get a chance is not the only way to do things. It makes me want to reexamine the reason why some of us behave the way we do.
Today's parasha deals with another Egyptian's approach to power, if you can call him that.] In today's parasha, we learn that Moses was born from the tribe of Levi in Egypt. He was rescued from a fatal decree issued against all Hebrew males by a conspiracy that included his mother, who hides him in a basket; the Pharaoh's daughter, who discovers the basket; and his sister, Miriam, who arranges that their mother perform the task of wet nurse.
The Torah text itself does not give us much to go on to reconstruct Moses' early life. What we do know is that he was raised in the Egyptian court. Rashi tells us that Pharaoh had appointed him overseer of his palace. We are told further in the Midrash that Moses, as soon as he learned of his Jewish origins, left the palace every day to visit his brothers in the labor camps. Pretending that he was assisting the Egyptian taskmasters, he inclined his shoulders and carried the heavy burdens together with his Hebrew brethren. He wept at their pain, mourning, "your tortures hurt me too; I only wish I could die for you."
Another Midrash says that Moses devised a plan to improve the lives of the Hebrew slaves. He came to Pharaoh and stated "I notice that you do not deal wisely with your slaves." "How so?" inquired Pharaoh. "A person who is subjected to incessant labor is bound to perish. You will greatly increase the efficiency of your slaves if you allow them to rest one day a week." "What you say is true," answered Pharaoh. "Arrange that they should rest one day a week." Moses gave orders that slaves should rest every Shabbos.
The next time we meet Moses, he witnesses a cruel beating perpetrated by an Egyptian against a Hebrew. Rashi fills in some of the missing details: The victim was Datan, the husband of Shlomit, daughter of Divri. The Midrash gives us more details. The Egyptian taskmaster was attracted to Shlomit. During the night, he forced Datan to leave his house and then he entered Shlomit's bedroom, tricking her into thinking that he was her husband. When Datan returned, he figured out what had happened to his wife and the Egyptian's culpability. The Egyptian beat Datan the next day to prevent him from reporting what happened the night before to the authorities. It is not clear whether or not Moshe had read the Rashi, but the Midrash says that he perceived the episode and was so angered in his guts that he killed the Egyptian. Rashi tells us that he accomplished this by uttering the divine name. When he learns that others know of his retaliation against the taskmaster, he flees the country.
While in Midyan, he meets some women at a well, and gallantly protects them from the harassment of the local hooligans. These women are part of a priestly Midianite clan, and Moses ends up settling with them and marrying into the clan and becoming a Midianite Priest.
So far his Jewish credentials, at least in the p'shat of the Torah, are not very well established. He was raised as an Egyptian in Pharaoh's household, he murders someone, and marries a gentile, and becomes a priest.
While tending his father-in-laws sheep on a mountain near Chorev, God talks to him directly through a burning bush. God asks Moses to do his bidding vis a vis releasing the Hebrew slaves. He tells Moses that "I have indeed seen the suffering of my people that are in Egypt. I have heard how they cry out because of the harshness of their slave-masters and I am aware of their pain." He wants Moses to go back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go. Moses is reluctant and struggles with God. He doesn't feel qualified, or suitable to the task. He isn't a smooth talker, political leader, or even a member of the Jewish community at this point.
Why did God approach Moses? What made Moses the right man for this task? I believe it is because he had already demonstrated his love of justice and righteousness and his willingness to put himself at personal risk to act to protect God's people. Because Moses had taken a courageous act to protect the people God was interested redeeming, God revealed himself to Moses, and channeled his will through this reluctant leader. As I often observe, "no good deed goes unpunished."
This storyline made me think of something I heard recently. Martin Scorcese made an excellent documentary on Bob Dylan's early life and career. We see Bob as a teenager in Duluth and in college in Minneapolis. He develops a single-minded pursuit to become Woody Guthrie, his hero. He wanted to know how he did what he did, and the way write and sing songs that told of the plight of the little guy, the downtrodden. He travels to a home in New Jersey to meet Woody to learn at his feet, but finds that there is little left of his hero. He settles in New York and soon develops his own style of story telling. If you read at his lyrics closely, they are more poetry than prose, more prophetic vision than hard news reporting. "How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man? The answer is blowing in the wind." It sounds like a zen koan. But somehow these cryptic words vocalized the thoughts and ideas on many people's mind. When asked repeatedly about his role as voice of his generation, Dylan repeatedly denied any responsibility for what he wrote, and for any role as a leader. One got the impression that he was sincere in his denials, that he didn't know what he was doing as he was doing it; it seemed that he was being guided by forces larger and outside of him.
I was left scratching my head. What the heck was he singing about and for, if he didn't see himself as leading a movement for peace and justice? It clearly wasn't about the fame; he ran away from that. I heard a plausible answer near the end of the film. There is an interview with a sound guy who recorded Dylan. He wasn't a famous person, just someone who was there witnessing what Dylan was doing as he did it. He said, "anyone could see that Dylan was channeling the holy spirit." So maybe that was it. Maybe Dylan had encountered God at his own burning bush. Maybe he was given a mission to fulfill His will. Dylan was an unlikely candidate, given his religious observance. He wasn't outwardly Jewishly identified; he dropped his Jewish sounding "Zimmerman" appellation for the goyish "Dylan." But is there really anyone today who questions whether Bob was Jewish, even during his born again phase?
So where am I going with this? I am trying to investigate whether the biography of the early Moses can provide us with an answer to the question raised at the beginning of the d'var. Why are Jews disproportionately represented in causes fighting for righteousness and justice? Moses was selected to be the Jewish leader who dominates of four out of the five books of Moses (note that they are called the Books of Moses, not the Books of Judah), not because he was a pious believer in Adonai, like Abraham was, (I have no idea what who he was praying to as a Midianite Priest by the way) but because he loved righteousness and justice. He was chosen to be God's vehicle for His will, because he had already demonstrated the willingness to act in a way that pleased God.
Every time we say the weekday Shmona Esray we pray "Restore our judges and our leaders as in the earliest times; remove from us sorrow and groan; and reign over us-Adonai alone-with kindness and compassion, and judge us to be worthy. Blessed are you Adonai, Melech ohave Tzedaka u'Mishpat. King who loves righteousness and justice." This prayer provides for me the answer to this riddle. We are the people who penned this prayer and say it several times a day. It is more than wishful thinking, it is mutual promise. If we imitate Adonai by showing our love for righteousness and justice, then he will restore our leaders, as in the days of old. That is, he will give us the power and the insight that he gave our great leaders of the Torah.
Just as God sought out Moses after he had already taken the step to prove himself a suitable servant of God, so we are exhorted to imitate God and to love righteousness and justice. This goes beyond the golden rule. Because we know the King loves righteousness and justice, we Jews are driven to commit acts of selflessness for the sake of repairing the world. And when we do our part; when we take courageous stands and make brave sacrifices, God takes notice of us and channels His will through us. That's how our successes and impact can extend far beyond our own belief in our capacities, and our numbers. We can do amazing things we never knew we could. With a little help from our backer, we can change the world and make it a better, a more just and righteous place to live.
Shabbat Shalom.