[Previous sermon: "Dor L'Dor - Multi-generational Shabbat - Parashat Shemini"] [Next sermon: "Shabbat - Chol Hamoed Pesach - April 9, 2004"]
Shabbat Bo - January 30, 2004
(based on an essay by Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin) Those who grew up on the old Union Haggadah might remember that you passed over the contents of this week's parashah. In that telling of our exodus story, there is no recounting of 10 plagues God wrought on Egypt, and no drops of wine spilled out on the plate. In many ways, the classical Reform Judaism of the generation of the Union Haggadah created a religion of civility. And civility meant no anger and no violence. And for the Seder table, it meant no plagues. Nowadays, it seems that the plague sequence is central to our recounting of our history. In family-style Haggadot we are even encouraged to make this part of the Seder a lighthearted game with our children - buying plastic locusts and frogs and cows to bring the plagues alive.
We sing the song about the tzphardeah, the frog that the Midrash tells us broke apart into thousands of frogs that jumped on Pharoah's bed and onto Pharaoh's head. Its downright silly and functions as an avoidance mechanism similar to the Union Haggadah's omission altogether. But there is no escaping the gravity and the violence of the punishments that Egyptians suffered prior to our people's redemption. Even if the plagues begin as annoyances, mere pranks and practical jokes on the Egyptians to reduce them to humility, they increase in intensity and ultimately end tragically. From blood to frogs to lice... culminating in the deaths of the first born in all Egypt, ki ayn bayit asher ayn sham met, until there wasn't a house where there was not one dead. If the plagues are truly in ascending order of gravity, the penultimate plague is most curious: the plague darkness. We read in our parasha this Shabbat, "And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days; they saw not one another... but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings. U-l'chol b'nai Yisrael haya or b'moshvotam." (Exodus 10:22)
What was so awful about the darkness? It doesn't seem that bad when we put on dark sunglasses at our Seder re-enactments. Nahum Sarna, in his commentary on Exodus, notices that in God's command to Moses, the darkness was to be tangible, concluding that the Torah was describing that a severe heat wave blew into Egypt, kicking up a thick layer of dust and particles so as to cover up the sun. The sun was, of course for Egyptians, their God, now eclipsed at the behest of the Israelite God. This alludes to a deeper darkness: a darkness of the soul, and explains why the people couldn't see one another. According to the rabbis, this is the worst kind of darkness, the one which prevents us connecting with others. Their discussion of this subject begins with a debate about when night ends and day begins. Some of the rabbis thought day begins when there is enough light to distinguish between blue and purple, the color of the sky and the color of royalty. And there were other rabbis who insisted that night has passed only when you are able to see the face of your brother, your sister, or your friend. So really, we are not talking about a darkness of the eyes. There is a darkness which can descend on the soul, and it is the most devastating kind of darkness. In fact, the Midrash says that the darkness of the plague was leftover from the primordial darkness of the age of tohu va'vohu.
In other words, the darkness that separated the people from each other, which prevented them from seeing into each other's souls, was a remnant of the darkness that stretched forth before God uttered the words, "Yehi or! Let there be light." when all creation began. And so we learn by extension that our indifference, our inability to see each other, to reach out and establish a bond or a connection, is a reversal of the divine light with which God created us. While the Egyptians were immobilized by the darkness, "U-l'chol b'nai Yisrael haya or b'moshvotam. the children of Israel had light in their houses." While the act of oppression had blinded the Egyptians to their behavior and cut them off from the pain of the Israelites so they could perpetuate the injustice of slavery, the Israelites were endowed with a hyper-awareness. They alone could see the systemic immorality of their societyand learned to transcend it by nurturing their own light. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail, "I had never been truly in solitary confinement; God's companionship does not stop at the door of a jail cell. I don't know whether the sun was shining at that moment. But I do know that once again I could see the light."
The Hasidic master Israel of Rizhin taught that the jewels which lit the Israelite homes were our traditions, our sacred texts, the way we mark the rhythms and cycles of life, the melodies we sing of our history. At times, if we let them, these jewels can sit on a shelf and get covered over with dust. For us, the task is to make moshvoteinu, our homes, places of light. The Jews of our generation must resist the temptation to allow Jewish life only to glow in the public places: here in the synagogue, at the JCC or the Associated. Our tables, our living rooms, our bedrooms must be places where the jewels of our tradition are allowed to shine. We do this by making our homes moral agents where Jewish values counter those of popular culture and mass media, where the discussions between parents and children go beyond how to be socially connected, successful in school and independent. Jewish homes must teach social consciousness, shared and responsible success, and service to community. Our homes are where we must push our children to ask questions that go beyond the self and even beyond the family, where we seek to cultivate in them the ability to see others, to value their connection to our people, to feel their sacred responsibilities to our world. This is what the Midrash also teaches. B'moshvotam, their dwelling places can mean that the light was in the homes of the Israelite people. It can also mean wherever an Israelite dwelled. The Midrash imagines this to mean that wherever an Israelite went, light accompanied him and illumined that which he encountered.
What does this mean to us? It means reclaiming the best part of our classical Reform roots- by understanding that we Jews have a mission to bring light to the world. To take the light from our tradition to illumine our homes and to shine that light into the world as well. Jews have always been counter-cultural. Back in the early twelfth century one Christian theologian castigated our people saying, "The Jews refuse to change with the times." In truth, this has been the secret of our vitality. We have survived all these centuries because when we have encountered values that are not "us" we have refused to get with the program. In the past we have said "No" to the easy way, when it compromised our souls. The plague of darkness reminds us today, that to be a Jew means to carry light into the dark places. Menachem Mendl of Kotsk, another Hasidic teacher teaches that the light that came to Israelite homes was or haganuz, the same light that God separated out for the righteous in the world to come. The light with which God began creating the world. Not a light for the eyes, but light for the soul. It is the same light that shone through the window of Noah's ark as the first sign that the world was redeemed. Moses saw this light flickering in the bush at the dawn of the redemption from Egypt and again on Mount Sinai as the Torah is revealed. This light is the light of the Ner Tamid which burned the in the Tabernacle and then in the ancient Temples in Jerusalem. The light that was rekindled by the Maccabees after it had been extinguished by men with darkened souls.
In every generation, we are called to find that light. One tradition says there are 36 people who see that light. Israel of Rizhin taught that each of us, b'nai Yisrael, has a spark of the or ganuz, the hidden light. But we must make a dwelling place, a moshav for that light to shine, in our homes and in our world. In gematria, the numerical difference between the word or, light and the word ra'ah or to see, is one. It only takes one person to help another see light. But it will take each one of us, to give light to the world.
Kein Yehi Razon.
