Names: King, Heschel, Obama
D'var
Torah: Shemot
January 16, 2009
We are on the eve of a great historical moment in the two hundred thirty-two and a half year story of the world’s greatest democracy, the United States of America.
On Tuesday, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States. If anyone doubts that anyone can become anything in America, they should watch the ceremonies in Washington D.C. on Tuesday.
There is added meaning that soon to be President Obama will take the oath of office the day after we celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King had a dream and dreams come true. In Judaism, we remember great individuals not on the day of their birth but on the day of their death which we call the Yartzheit. This weekend, we observe the Yartzheit of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Professor Heschel escaped Nazi tyranny in 1939, came to America and became one of the leading Jewish theologians of the day. He was professor of Jewish ethics and mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary and became a great voice of social conscience at the forefront of the civil rights crusade. He walked arm in arm with Dr. King in the south. In referring to that historic march Professor Heschel said, "When I marched in Selma, my feet were praying.” (see photo at bottom)
There are singular great individuals like Dr. Heschel and Dr. King but it took millions of great individuals for the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from the Midwest to be elected President of the United States. A night I will never forget was that of the Iowa caucus when an almost exclusively white electorate gave more votes to this young Senator from Illinois than any of the other candidates in the pack. Janie and I listened to one of the most inspiring speeches we had ever heard and from that moment on, we felt that this could truly be possible. The possible became reality.
This Shabbat we begin the second book of the Torah, the book of Shemot. The word Shemot literally means names though we usually refer to it more by its moving content Exodus. A classmate in my doctoral program at Hebrew Union College, the Rev. Bill Kelly, pastor of an African American church in Newark NJ told me that he preached out of the book of Exodus more than any other book of the Bible. I would have thought it would be a book of the New Testament rather than a part of our Hebrew Bible but it was the book that told the story of the Israelite’s slavery in Egypt and their exodus from bondage. The story that we retell each year at the Seder table is the story that resonates most powerfully in the African American church. It was this book that gave grandchildren and great grandchildren of slaves the greatest sense of hope and strength.
I was very moved in reading the reflections this week of a 78 year old African American, grandson of slaves who spent much of his life as a sharecropper in the south, James Presley. He said that for him Obama is like Moses coming to redeem his people. He said, “I’m a church man, And I kind of figured this here is about like it was with Moses with the children of Israel. I never thought one would get there. On that day, when he gets to be president, we’re all going to be rejoicing.” I think by “we’re all,” Mr. Presley means the African American community but I, the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Russian anti-Semitism will be rejoicing too. I will be celebrating for Mr. Presley and for our whole country.
The Hebrew word for Egypt is Mitzrayim. Mitzrayim means a narrow place. We each find ourselves in narrow places at different times of our lives. We can feel the words of the psalmist who said, “From that narrow place I called out to G-d.” The psalmist was fortunate to be able to go on saying “And G-d answered me in a wide open space.”
We find ourselves in a narrow place today. Rising unemployment, economic uncertainty, loss of financial security, our young people deployed in war zones in far away places and ongoing conflict in the Middle East. We too call out from narrow places. We have a dream today of great and inspiring leadership from soon to be President Obama. The kind of leadership I hope for is a president who will make wise and smart decisions, a president who will bring us together rather than divide us, a president who will restore America’s role as the moral leader of the free world, and a president who will inspire the best within us so that we can each contribute to the recovery and prosperity of our country.
We observe the Yartzheit of Professor Heschel, an immigrant to this country which saved him from extermination in Nazi Europe, the birthday of Dr. King, the descendant of those who came to this country on slave ships and the inauguration of the forty-fourth president of the United States of America with a name that has taken some practice to pronounce Barack Obama. As Mr. James Presley said, “we’re all going to be rejoicing. "We’re all" means all Americans. We are a great country where great dreams can be realized.
Shabbat Shalom
