Parshat Beshalach 2007
Joshua Berkenwald Senior Sermon
The story of yetziat mitzrayim, of the Israelites’ leaving Egypt, is a story of freedom. But not in the sense that we usually think of it. It wasn’t that they got freedom of speech, or freedom of the press, or even freedom of religion. What our ancestors gained was something more fundamental. Freedom is an attitude. When the Israelites left Egypt, they became aware that they could take charge of their own path. Being in a relationship with God meant that they would now face the consequences of their actions. In their state of bondage, the Israelites cannot imagine the possibility that life can be lived from outside the shadow of the taskmasters’ whips, that things can be better, that the world can be different than it is. Because when you are a slave, you have no choice but to follow the commands you are given. Failure to comply brings the crack of the whip – or worse! What will it mean for the Israelites to leave Egypt? It will mean that they will be able to take charge over their own fate. Without the threat of the whip on their shoulders, they will now be able to choose their own path – and bear the consequences of that choice. Their escape from slavery will mark their entry into the pages of history. They will be able to dream, to imagine a world that is better than what they see around them. This is central to Judaism. We, the Jews, the children of Israel, former slaves, are now free. The most important line in the Pesach seder is “b’chol dor vador chayav adam lir’ot et atzmo k’ilu hu yatza mimitzrayim” – In every generation, each of us is obligated to see ourselves as if we personally went out of Egypt.” That is our challenge every year – to find our part in the story, our place among the multitude that left hastily in the middle of the night. But it is not just once a year during the seder that we try to connect to the Exodus. Yetziat mitzrayim is something that we have the opportunity to experience every day. Az Yashir, the song that Moshe sang with the children of Israel after crossing the Sea of Reeds, which we will chant tomorrow morning in the Torah reading, is sung in the opening hymns of daily prayers. In the third paragraph of the Shema we say ani adonai eloheichem asher hotzeiti etchem me’eretz mitzrayim lihyot lachem lelohim, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be Your God. In the Kiddush over wine, we describe Shabbat as zecher litziat mitzrayim, a remembrance of the exodus from Egypt. What is it about yetziat mitzrayim that teaches us to be masters of our own fate? To become players in history? A midrash teaches that the day before the Israelites left Egypt, all of the males were circumcised, from the youngest to the oldest. When they painted the doorposts of their homes so that the angel of death would pass over them when he was smiting the Egyptian first born, it was with both the blood of the pesach lamb as well as the blood of the brit milah. When God saw this, the midrash continues, nitmaleh rachamim al yisrael – God was filled with mercy for Israel. And God said: ‘by merit of the blood of the covenant and the blood of the Pesach offering, you were saved from Egypt.”i It wasn’t God who redeemed them. They redeemed themselves. By performing brit milah in the face of death. By offering the pesach sacrifice that was taboo to their Egyptian neighbors – these were acts of independence that took tremendous courage, and personal risk. And that is why God credited the Israelites with earning their own freedom. But that was just the beginning of the yetziah. The journey out of Egypt took
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Parshat Beshalach 2007
Joshua Berkenwald Senior Sermon
forty years because learning to be responsible does not happen overnight. The key moment in the journey was at Mount Sinai, when God gave Torah to the entire Jewish people. From that moment on, we were responsible. Now don’t confuse receiving the Torah and being commanded with not having freedom. God gave the mitzvot, along with rewards and punishments for obedience and disobedience. But God also gave the freedom to choose whether to obey. And the Israelites certainly exercised that choice. Sometimes they chose wisely. And sometimes they did not choose so wisely. The Golden Calf – not so wise. We understand freedom a bit differently in American society – where we claim to value it above all else. But what does freedom mean? The right to do whatever we want, whenever we want? No rules, no limits. When I reflect on the messages coming in from the larger culture, it seems to me that our worship of freedom has spun out of control. We place so much emphasis on personal autonomy that the bonds that tie communities together are dissolving. When each of us is so focused on our choices, and the things we want, we forget our roles in the greater community and become alienated from one another. Our quest for individuality leaves us lost and disconnected. This is not the freedom of yetziat mitzrayim. Because escaping the yoke of Pharaoh was not about gaining autonomy. We left slavery, but we entered into a relationship with God. Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. The Rabbis understand the recitation of the Shema to be the acceptance of ol malkhut shamayim, the yoke of the kingdom of Heaven. Whenever we choose Judaism, we accept the burden of serving God. And we all decide to be Jewish. We make those decisions daily. The freedom of yetziat mitzrayim is having the choice to live as God’s people – which means working to make God’s vision of what the world could be into reality. In a word, doing mitzvot. Although we give up a bit of autonomy whenever we perform a mitzvah, at the same time, we take charge of our fate. And we say – I am doing something transformative to myself, and to the world. Yetziat Mitzrayim did not just happen long ago. It happens every day. To you and to me. There are some Jews in the world who know, from first-hand experience, what it is like to go from slavery to freedom. Holocaust survivors, Jews from the Former Soviet Union, Jews who fled persecutions in Muslim lands. But most of us have never faced slavery or persecution. We can go wherever we want, live wherever we want, say and do whatever we want. No generation of Jews has been freer than ours. And yet, our generation has the most difficult time relating to freedom. Of placing ourselves in the story of yetziat mitrayim. For us today, Mitzrayim is a state of mind. Whenever we see ourselves as having no choices, as being unable to affect the outcome of the challenges that we face – we are in mitzrayim. Our task is to identify ways in which we are still stuck in mitzrayim, and then take a courageous step forward so that we can experience real freedom. Ironically, what prevents us from fully appreciating our freedom is the fact that, thank God, we have always had it. This makes the central task of the Pesach Seder a particularly difficult one for many of us. Sometimes, though, we hear personal stories that help us connect to yetziat mitzrayim.
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Parshat Beshalach 2007
Joshua Berkenwald Senior Sermon
The story of my zeyda’s escape from Poland at the beginning of World War Two helps me do this. It is a story that bears striking resemblance to the Israelites’ escape from Egypt. It helps me write myself into the story of yetziat mitzrayim. My zeyda, Yisruel Berkenwald, zichro livracha, lived in the city of Lodz. When Nazi soldiers seized his uncle in the street and cut off his beard, he knew that he had to get out of Poland. In November 1939, Yisruel, and two friends gathered up what few supplies and money they had, and set off to the East, to the Soviet Union. When the Israelites finally left Egypt, God decided not to take them the direct route, which would have only taken ten days. So God led the people roundabout, by way of the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds. Yisruel and his friends got to the German checkpoint at night, during a heavy rainstorm. At the checkpoint, they began to encounter other Jews who were also trying to escape into the Soviet Union. After surviving an encounter with a violent SS guard, they managed to cross through the German border station. The Israelites were on their way when God changed their route. He instructed Moses to lead the people to a location facing the sea, where they would be blocked in one three sides. Effectively, they would be stuck at a dead end, with the Egyptians closing in from behind. After my zeyda got through the checkpoint, he found himself in a 5 km no-man’sland between the German border and the Bug River. The Soviets were on the other side of the riverbank, over a bridge. It was into this no-man’s-land that thousands of Jewish refugees were gathering. Some people tried to walk across the bridge, but the guards fired warning shots into the air, since they had strict instructions to not let anybody through. And so, in the cold, wet night, with little water and food, thousands of fleeing Jews huddled, unable to cross the body of water before them, and unsure if and when the Nazis behind them would change their minds about having let them leave Poland The Israelites shouted out to God and complained to Moses. “It is better to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.” Moses tries to reassure the people by saying that God would provide a miracle. But Moses misunderstood what God wanted. God did not want the Israelites to sit back and wait for a miracle. That is what slaves do. God wanted the people to step forward into the unknown. God turned to Moses and said: “Mah titzak elai,” “What are you shouting at me for? “Daber el b’nei Yisrael v’yisau.” Tell the Israelites to move forward.” After six days of waiting, an order came through to the Soviet guards to let the refugees in. The thousands of Jews on the banks of the Bug River were unsure. Maybe it was a trick. They placed the children in front, followed by the women and the elderly, with the men in back. They were hoping that if the Soviets changed their minds, they would not have the heart to shoot at unarmed children. It reminds me of the midrash of Nahshon. Moshe was holding out his staff over the sea, but nothing was happening. So Nahshon stepped forward and entered the Sea. He walked into the water up to his waist, his chest, his neck, his mouth, his nose. And when he could no longer breathe… God turned the sea into dry ground. The waters were split, and the Israelites went into the sea with the waters forming a wall for them “miminam u’mismolam” on their right and on their left. And it worked as well for my zeyde Yisruel, and his friends and fellow Jews.
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Parshat Beshalach 2007
Joshua Berkenwald Senior Sermon
They walked courageously across the bridge as a united people, and the Soviet guards split “miminam u’mismolam,” to the right and the left so that the Jews could pass safely between them. Not a single shot was fired. Having crossed the sea and escaped the Egyptians, the Israelites burst into song, men and women alike, led by Moses and Miriam. When the Jews got to the Russian side, they spontaneously erupted into song. They sang the Socialist Internationale in Russian to the stunned Soviet guards. My grandfather wandered for a long time in exile. For the Israelites, it took forty years before they were ready to enter the Promised Land. It took twelve years for my zeyde Yisruel. In his journeys, he met and fell in love with my grandmother, had my father, and finally, in 1951, he received a visa to come to the Promised Land, America. And here, presented with the opportunity to choose his own path, he chose to recommit himself to God and the Jewish people, and he built a family centered around Jewish values. The similarities between my zeyde’s yetziah from Poland and the Israelites’ yetziah from mitzrayim have overlapped for my entire life. The family story helps me feel a little closer to the experience of leaving Egypt. And it reminds me that the blessing of freedom carries with it an obligation to consider every choice I make to be significant. But I know that my own yetziah, and likely yours, is not going to be from anything that resembles actual slavery. Our yetziah is from “passive enslavement.” From the messages around us that tell us that we don’t matter, that we cannot make a difference. By the overemphasis on personal autonomy that separates us from each other. I hope we can all find a meaningful way to place ourselves in the story of yetziat mitzrayim. Because when we can identify the ways in which we feel trapped, we can then imagine ourselves taking that courageous step forward. And if we can relate to our own lives as if the choices that we make matter, then our choices do matter. Because the freedom of being redeemed from slavery in Egypt came part and parcel with entering into a relationship with God, a relationship based on freely choosing to live out God’s vision of what the world could be. Being a partner with God is the most liberating thing I can imagine. It means that I am committed to imagining a future that is better than the present. It means that I am responsible for bringing God’s vision of a healed world into being. And I have access to that vision because I know what it was like to have been in mitzrayim, and to now be free.
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Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, ch. 28.
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