And You Shall Be A Blessing
D'var
Torah: Lech Lecha
November 7, 2008
And G-d said to Abram “You shall go forward to the land that I will show you.... and I will bless you and make your name great ... and you shall be a blessing and all of the nations of the world will be blessed through you.” We read these words of the Torah this Shabbat. How contemporary these words sound this week.
Dr. Martin Luther King said in one of his great speeches that he may never make it to the promised land but others will.” This week, America has journeyed forward. I don’t know that we’ve made it yet to the promised land but we’ve taken a great step forward. Whatever our party affiliation or political philosophy, we can all feel great pride that our country has elected an African American as our 44th president of the United States. How far our great country has journeyed from the days of slavery, from the days of segregation, from the days when Blacks could not exercise their right to vote to electing an African American as our president and commander in chief. The Obamas will move into a house the was built with the labor of slaves. That’s how far we have journeyed.
This has been a long and hard campaign. Senator John McCane has long earned the respect and admiration of members of both parties and independents in his principled service in the Senate over the years and in his service and suffering for our country during the difficult years of Viet Nam. Senator Obama made his mark in bringing great hope to young people and their parents and grandparents as well. The comedian Sarah Silverman introduced “The Great Schlep” for Jewish young people to visit their grandparents in ‘Florida and nudge them to vote for this candidate of hope and healing. You can still google the video if you haven’t seen it. I don’t know how much the grandchildren played a role in this but Florida’s Bubbies and Zeides overwhelmingly supported President elect Obama. Reports indicate that some 77% of the Jewish community supported Senator Obama’s candidacy. This is not far off the Jewish vote for Senator Kerry and Vice President Gore in recent elections.
The first appointee of the Obama administration is Rahm Emanuel. Congressman Emanuel is an interesting choice to say the least in that he has a reputation as a tough political partisan in the halls of Congress. It will be interesting how he will carry out the vision of the new president who’s goal is to blend the red States and the blue states into one United States of America. Rahm Emanuel is the son of a Jerusalem born pediatrician who was a member of the right wing Irgun before the founding of the State. It is said that Rahm was named for a fallen fighter of the Irgun. As a child he attended Jewish Day school and during the Persian Gulf War he volunteered as a civilian volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces. He and his wife and children Zecharias, Ilana and Leah belong to a modern Orthodox synagogue in the Chicago area. The other appointee to date David Axelrod has his Jewish roots in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I heard David Gergen mention on CNN yesterday that David Axelrod served as a witness and signed Rahm Emanuel’s Ketubah at his wedding. There has never been any question in my mind that Senator Obama has been and will be a good friend of Israel and the Jewish community as he was known to be in Chicago and Illinois.
“And you shall be a blessing.” We can now all only hope that President elect Obama will be a blessing for America and given America’s leadership in the world, a blessing to the whole world as well. While there are no guarantees and the challenges facing our country and the world are great, I, for one, am hopeful.
This election was marked by the great expressions of hope as much as anything else. At this critical time we need to hope for a better tomorrow. I read this morning of the horrible retail figures for October with the expectation that this will be the worst holiday retail season in many years. The long lines at polling places spoke of this hope. The incredible numbers attending rallies spoke of hope. We are hopeful that America can be a blessing for more and more of its citizens and in the words of Torah, through America, all of the peoples of the world can be blessed. So much of the world wants to look to America as the beacon of hope, liberty, respect for human rights and the shining light of democracy. This was clearly evident in the 200,000 who came out to see candidate Obama in Germany this summer.
As I was driving home on Wednesday, I found myself thinking about what it must be like for an African American child or youth growing up without much hope for their own future now seeing people of color living in the White House. I am happy for those young people and I am hopeful that this new reality can truly have a transformative effect. In response to my e-mail on Tuesday, a number of our members asked me if I thought a Jew could be elected president. The meaning of this moment is that everything is now truly possible in America. Nothing is impossible. For Blacks, Jews, women, and many others, everything is possible.
When G-d called on Abraham to take this long journey, life was not then idyllic for Abraham. Abraham and Sarah met with famine in the land to which they were charged to move. Their own personal dreams of parenthood met with disappointment year after year. There are no guarantees that our hopes will be fulfilled and we can be sure our journey ahead will not be easy, quick or direct. We can count on being disappointed at times with the person in whom so many have placed so much hope. If we believe now that one person will heal all wounds and solve all problems we will surely be disappointed. We elected a new president, not a messiah. I hope the new president will call upon us to join him in giving of ourselves in some way in order to form a more perfect union. For whatever reasons one is so driven to want to be president, there is no question it involves some great personal sacrifices. Our hopes can only be fulfilled if we too are prepared to give in some significant ways.
On Wednesday afternoon, at our Hebrew School prayer service, Rabbi Aronson lead a service that had the theme of patriotism. Interwoven with our traditional prayers were some great quotes from classical American documents and some of our great patriotic songs. The message in this gathering for our children is that it is Jewish for us to love America, to believe in its ideals and to work for the fulfillment of its dreams. America has given so much to our community, more than any other land of our long sojourn. We have received much and so it is incumbent upon us to give as well.
I hope and pray that the words of our Parsha will describe the new era that now begins in our land. “Go forward and you shall be a blessing and all of the peoples of the land will be blessed through you.
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Shabbat Shalom,
