Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Casey A. Gosnell Bat Mitzvah
Shabbat Ha-Gadol
April 3, 2004
A Time to Scream
Friends, this is Shabbat Ha-Gadol, the Great Sabbath before Passover. In days of old, rabbis gave sermons only twice a year; this Shabbat was one of those two times. The theme of the sermon was always the preparation and laws for Passover observance.
I'd like to tell you an old Midrash, a rabbinic teaching story, about the beginnings of the exodus experience and then share with you a modern interpretation. The Midrash is as follows. The Egyptian Pharaoh had three advisors. Pharaoh did not know what to do with the Jewish People, who were growing by leaps and bounds. On the one hand, Pharaoh feared them. What if they became too numerous and turned into a fifth column if Egypt were attacked by an outside enemy? On the other hand, the Hebrews were valuable property, a potent workforce. Should he destroy them or not? So Pharaoh turned to his three closest advisors and asked them what they thought. What should he do with the Hebrews?
Bilaam said: "Kill them." Bilaam knew that was what the king wanted to hear, so this is what he told Pharaoh. What happened to Bilaam? He ended up in Midian where he was killed. It is what is known in rabbinic literature as midah k'neged midah - tit-for-tat.
In answer to the Pharaoh's question, Jethro said: "Save them." Pharaoh became angry at that advice and exiled Jethro to Midian, where he became the father-in-law of Moses and one of the heroes of our Bible. The Torah portion which contains the Ten Commandments is named for Jethro. He did good and so he got good - midah k'neged midah, tit-for-tat.
Pharaoh turned to his third advisor, Job. Job did not know what to say. He saw what had happened to Jethro and knew that Pharaoh was not going to listen to any advice that he did not want to hear. So what did Job do? Job kept quiet and, as a result, says the Midrash, Job got boils as a punishment from God.
Now what is the connection between keeping silent and getting boils? Where is the midah k'neged midah - the tit-for-tat, the connection between the act and what the person received? The other two made sense. Jethro tried to save so he was saved; Bilaam tried to kill so he was killed. Job kept silent and he got boils. What is the connection?
One of the great story-tellers of our era, Elie Wiesel, asks why did Job keep quiet? Wiesel says that Job figured - what is the use of speaking out? Pharaoh has already made up his mind; he is going to do whatever he wants, regardless of what I say. Why speak up when it will do no good? So he got boils. What happens when you get boils? You scratch constantly. Does the scratching do any good? Does it relieve the pain? No, and yet you scratch anyway. You do it just because it hurts; you do it because you can't stand it.
And so it should be when you see evil being done to someone else. You ought to scream, shout, protest - not because it will help, not because it will necessarily change anything - but just because you cannot stand the pain. Job kept silent and did not cry out when he witnessed mass murder planned, and he was punished with boils so that he would learn that one must cry out whether it will help or not. It ought to hurt you when someone else is in trouble - that is the message of this Midrash.
I like Wiesel's insight because I think it expresses a basic truth about human life. Human beings have, or ought to have, the capacity to feel for each other, to get involved for each other and, if necessary, to scream for each other. For if we do not, if we always play it safe, if we never get involved, if we do not feel our neighbor's pain, then we are zombies, not human beings.
There is a great Yiddish expression which has almost been lost in our time. When our grandparents got excited about something, and they often did - they were emotional in an expressive generation - they would say zi get mir in laben. It is almost untranslatable - "it gets me here" or "it eats me up."
About how many things can we say zi get mir in laben? Not many. We have become a calm and apathetic generation. I read a report on how few people vote nowadays - and even less in the primaries. What is the main explanation? Cool weather. One analyst said: "Ten degrees can determine an election. People just don't bother going out if it is cold." My friends, in this election year, that is the sin of Job.
I was a college and seminary student in the turbulent 60's. Strikes, demonstrations, riots, students taking over dorms, making demands - perhaps that was too much. Sometimes it was dangerous and destructive. Maybe it is a good thing that that period is over. But has the pendulum swung too far? Perhaps it will soon go back toward the middle; at least I hope so.
Because the Midrash is right. A human being should scream sometimes, not because it will necessarily change things, but because it hurts. There is much to feel hurt about in our world right now - illiteracy, famine, warfare, poverty, unemployment, sick people uncovered by medical insurance. These problems are real and deep; they have not gone away since the 60's - but some of us have. For some reason, it seems to hurt us less now than it used to, and that is too bad.
Perhaps that is what Passover ought to do for us - refresh and revive our jaded spirits, damper our cynicism and our boredom and remind us of the work that remains to be done, by us. Passover reminds us of what maror - the bitter herb - tastes like. It reminds us of how many people in the world are still eating maror or starving. Even if we have made it, even if we are all right, there are many who are still in distress, left behind.
The challenge of Passover is the choice each of us faces of remaining silent on the sidelines, acquiescencing to evil; or getting involved and, in one form or another, confronting that which is wrong. Our Torah text provides us with two more Passover-related examples. Having determined to wipe out the growing Hebrew minority within his borders, Pharaoh spoke to the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, saying: "When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birth stool. If it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live."
It is a horrible order to women who had devoted themselves to helping bring life into the world. Now they are ordered to take the life of a newborn child. And the text reports that the two women would not do it. "They let the boys live." At the risk of their own lives for disobeying the most powerful person in that world, these two righteous Egyptian women adamantly resisted what they knew to be an immoral command. As a result of their resistance to evil, the baby Moses lives.
Although reared in Pharaoh's palace, Moses somehow learns - perhaps in his infancy, when he is being nursed by his own mother - what is right and what is wrong. We read that when he was grown up, Moses "went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their toil. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. So Moses turned this way and that and, seeing no one about, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand."
Moses witnesses a Hebrew slave - probably exhausted, worn down, unable to work as hard or as fast as the taskmaster wanted - being beaten mercilessly. And Moses looks this way and that and, "seeing no one
about" - one gets the impression that Moses wants to be sure that it is safe to intervene; but that is not the way our sages read the text. They say Moses looked this way and that to see if anybody else was going to get involved, would intervene to save the life of this poor slave. When it was clear that there was no one willing to step in, then Moses intervened.
The Talmud instructs us in the name of Rabbi Hillel of the first century, "bamakom she-ayn anasheem, hishtadayl liyot essh - in a place where no one behaves like a human being, you must strive to be human."
So let me share with you one of my very favorite stories, which I haven't told in a long time, one that has nourished me and helped me continue in times when I felt despair, when I feared that my work was futile. It, too, comes from the great story-teller and teacher of our generation, Elie Wiesel.
He says that once a tsadik, a righteous person, came to the wicked city of Sodom. He preached and he picketed and he protested about the evil that they did there, to no avail. People laughed at him, mocked him, ignored him. Finally someone took pity on the tsadik and said: "Don't you see that you are wasting your breath? Don't you see that no one is listening to you?"
And the tsadik said: "You do not understand. When I began, when I first came here, I picketed and I preached and I protested in order to change them. Now I picket and I preach and I protest so they won't change me."
And that is what I ask you to think about on this Great Sabbath. Have we become so accustomed to evil, so inured to inequities that we begin to think that this is the way it is, and this is the way it always was, and this is the way it always will be? I ask you to protest, not for anyone else's sake but for your own sake, so that you will not become hardened, cynical indifferent and think that evil is normal. I ask you to cry out not only for the sake of others, but for your own sake.
Because if we are not pained, if we are not agonized, if we are not hurt when we see evil being done, then what will keep us human? What will keep us humane? What will it say about us if we do not scream?
Bilaam, Jethro, Job - three models. One said "Yes boss, do what you want to do; I'm right behind you." One said "No boss, don't do that; that is not right". And one said nothing at all because he did not want to get involved. The challenge of Passover is - which one are you? Amen
The inspiration for this message came from the writings of Rabbi Jack Riemer.
