Instead of Crushed Spirits - Hope
D'var
Torah: Vaera
January 23, 2009
Tuesday was quite an emotional day. Janie has been in the hospital the past twelve days fighting an infection. On Tuesday I sat with Janie in the hospital room watching the inauguration of our forty-fourth President.
From the moment Senator Diane Feinstein began the inaugural ceremonies I was filled with a great deal of emotion. I love the majesty of pomp and ceremony and the inauguration has plenty. As a teenager on, I have always loved the weekly pomp of seeing the Torah taken out of the Ark on Shabbat morning and carried through the congregation. The inaugural ceremony itself is majestic. The peaceful transfer of power that happens every four or eight years has its own majesty. I have a deep love for our country and while it was cold, the sun was shining as if to say warmer days are yet ahead. As I wrote last week, history was happening before our lives. On the steps of the Capitol partially built by slaves, an African American was being sworn is as President. Whatever our political party or philosophy, this was a day for all Americans to be proud. How could one not feel great emotion?
After the oath was taken albeit with a few stumbles and fumbles, we listened to the inaugural address. I found the address expressing some of our greatest Jewish ideals.
At the beginning of the speech, the President spoke to "our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age." The idea of our collective failure has overtones of the Al Het on Yom Kippur, when we confess that we have sinned collectively. Of course there are individuals and institutions and misguided values that led the way to these difficult days. It is far easier to blame this person, this leader or that institution, the message was that we have collectively contributed to the mess we're in. If we collectively got into this mess then we have to join together to collectively get out of it, and so at the conclusion, the President called us to take individual and collective responsibility for our future. Nobel Laureate in economics and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has a far different take. He doesn't see the economic crisis as being a result of our collective failure but "This is, first and foremost, a crisis brought on by a runaway financial industry.... the American public had no idea what was going on." Well, maybe they're both right.
Though the rhetoric did not quite soar as high, there were echoes of President Kennedy's exhortation "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country." The words of the great sage Hillel "If I am only for myself what am I" resonated in the words of the new President as he spoke about "a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves." When I think that I am the greatest, I am really the smallest and when I think I am the center of the universe, that center is a dot so small as to be invisible. It is only when we reach out beyond ourselves and try to connect with that which is greater than ourselves that we invest meaning in our own lives. I told my Confirmation Class Wednesday evening that this quest played a major role in my interest in Judaism as a youth.
Can we and will we respond to the President's challenge? Are we up to a national mobilization of sorts to lift ourselves up or has the recession depressed us to a state of national lethargy?
Our Parsha has G-d appearing to Moses having heard the cries of Israelite slavery. Given that the Israelites were slaves for over 200 years, we can't help but wonder what took the Almighty so long. This is not the only instance where we ask this question. By the time G-d communicates his redemptive intentions to Moses and Moses to the Israelites, we find the Torah's words "But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage." A national depression had surely set in. The people were enslaved by Pharoah and became enslaved to their own misery as well. They felt no hope.
That is what is so great at this moment in American and world history. So many feel so hopeful. Though the President seemed so somber and maybe too much so on Tuesday, he has spent two years preaching hope and change. People throughout these fifty states and in foreign lands have been inspired. We now learn that hope is not something that can be delivered to us by UPS but something we have to carry ourselves to actualize it into real change. Judging by the million and a half who stood for hours on the Mall, those assembled in public places throughout the country and millions more glued to their own TVs even in hospital rooms, we are nowhere near being depressed or harboring broken spirits. I think America is ready to rise to the occasion, make ourselves bigger by finding meaning in something greater than ourselves and giving of ourselves to the cause.
After the Israelites escaped Egyptian bondage, Moses sent twelve spies to reconnoiter the land which they were promised. Ten of the twelve returned and said there is no way we can displace those living there. They are Giants and we are like grasshoppers. Their spirits were surely crushed by their cruel bondage. Only two said they could and they would and they did. For us today, let's hope for just the opposite in ten of twelve Americans feeling hopeful, and willing to take responsibility in our country's brighter tomorrow.
Shabbat Shalom
