Sermons

Shabbat Shalom

With Purim in our rear-view mirror, we begin to look ahead to Pesach. We celebrate Purim with much joy and merriment. The Jewish community was in grave danger and Mordechai and Queen Esther saved us from destruction. It was one more near miss of our destruction in the long history of Judaism.

Pesach is more of a foundational story. It marks the beginning of the existence of our people. It is true that it is our independence day from Egyptian slavery, but it is also so much more. It is the story of how one family from Caanan grew into a nation and how that nation came to serve God in a way that would be unique in the world. We left the servitude of Egypt so that we might serve God. We were to leave the land of the dead to go to a land filled with milk and honey. But our ancestors never made it to that Promised Land. They could not live with God in freedom. They were all to die in the desert.

This week, we read about the installation of the priests. Aaron, the brother of Moses is anointed as the High Priest who will lead the officiation in the Mishkan, in the newly constructed portable sanctuary that travels with the people through the desert. He is robed in the uniform of his position. And yet, we know that he too will be stripped of those robes and will die with the rest of the people in the desert. Even Aaron will not be permitted to enter the Promised Land.

Also, in this week’s parsha, Tzav, we read the repetition of the rules concerning the sacrifice of animals in the Mishkan. Last week it was the rules that the people had to follow; this week, for the same sacrifices, we read about the rules that the priests were to follow when they offered those same animals. Yet the rules are meant to apply to the Temple in Jerusalem, to the permanent sanctuary in the Promised Land. They are mitzvot to be observed in the very land that the people will not be allowed to enter. If we look ahead to next week’s parsha, when the priests have their first full day on the job in the Mishkan, they will so totally violate the rules that God has given them so that instead of animals, it is humans, the two sons of Aaron who will die instead.

From the very beginning of creation, God has been disappointed with how we human beings have turned out. We are far from perfect creatures. We often don’t listen to what God says to us and then, after we are punished and after we promise to do better, we flail through life and fail in our promises to God. God repeats the laws over and over again, just as God has done these past two weeks, hoping that we will eventually get it right. In spite of our brokenness, God still loves us and patiently waits for us to find our way to heal ourselves where we are broken.

I don’t think that I will surprise anyone here by saying that we too live in broken times. It is impossible to heal all of the world at one time. We have to be patient and do our best to fix all that is wrong with the world. It may be our politics, it may be the environment, it may be our climate; the world demands our attention, and we try our best not to break anything more than what is already damaged.

God has shared with us the owner’s manual for the world. It is our Torah. The rules of the Torah are the rules that will eventually bring all of creation to completion. So, we study Torah. We learn Torah. We discuss Torah and we live Torah in the hope that we can understand what it requires of us to repair the world and to repair ourselves. It is the Torah that is our guide to lead us out of our brokenness to the real promised land, the land of milk and honey, to the land promised to our ancestors, to a land of prosperity and peace.

Which brings me back to our foundational story, the story of Pesach; the story of the festival that we will observe in just a few weeks. It is not just a story of our past. The Exodus is the story of our times as well. Bex Stern-Rosenblatt, from the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem made this comment in her D’var Torah this week: “Pesach feels impossible. How can we possibly prepare to celebrate freedom now? Pharaoh had offered Moses and Aaron various deals, allowing them to venture out of Egypt with just portions of the Israelite nation. Moses and Aaron refused to leave at all until they could leave with everyone. Until they could bring everyone home. Pesach is a celebration of our peoplehood, of God needing each and every one of us, the entire people of Israel, to go out of Egypt to meet God. Exodus tells the story of the men and the women, the babies and the elders. How can Pesach happen without all of us there? 

The worst moments of the Pesach story have become the stop motion animation of our lives. We are still stuck in slavery. Our boys are taken. Those who would kill us are still pursuing us and we are still watching them drown in the sea. How can we think of a land flowing with milk and honey when our vision is still dominated by the Nile turned to blood?”

How will it be possible to observe a festival of freedom when there are Jews who are still not free? How is it to celebrate our leaving Egypt when those who would destroy us are still in pursuit? The rivers have all turned to blood. There are still plagues of hatred, destruction, famine, war, and terror that stalk our streets, and putting more blood on our doorposts will not keep the destroyer away from our doors. Even here in this country we encounter those who wish to drown us and our children in the rivers of this country. Even this country, a paradigm of freedom, has people who would refuse us our right to practice our religion freely.

Today we find ourselves in Egypt once again. The Hebrew word is Mitzrayim – the narrow place, the place of constriction, the place where we are imprisoned and trapped. Once again, we are stuck in that narrow space between death and destruction. This Pesach, like many others in Jewish history, reminds us that freedom from Egypt is not just a one-time event in history, but in every generation, there are those who would wish to enslave us again, to kill our children and assault Jewish women. Every year we plead with Elijah when he comes to our Seder to destroy those who wish to destroy us. Yet, we remain in slavery still waiting for our turn to travel to the promised land.

It is not just our world that is broken, but we too are broken. We too have lost our faith that the world can ever be different from the broken state that we find it in today. We go through life, numbed to the many fractures that need to be mended. There is too much that is broken; we too are broken and there is nothing we can do to repair our own lives let alone the world.

And yet we read the Torah, over and over again. God repeats the laws of sacrifice in our parsha, and we repeat our readings year after year. There is always hope, there is always another chance to do what we must do to find our way to freedom. The freedom that was promised to our ancestors and that is promised to us.

But we can’t find our way to freedom unless we are ALL allowed to make the journey. We can leave no Jew behind. We must demand that our hostages all be free. We must demand that all Jews who live in fear must be free. Not one Jew can be left behind, even the bodies of those killed in this horrible war must all be released so we can bury them with honor and dignity. Not even the bones of Joseph were left behind in Egypt. We will not leave even one Jewish bone behind us as we make our journey to freedom.

Maybe, like our ancestors, we will not make it to the land of promise in our generation, but we will teach it to our children, to all of our children, the wise, the wicked, the simple and even the ones who don’t know what to ask. They too will learn of the paschal sacrifice, the matza and the maror, the bread of freedom and the pain and suffering.

Each Pesach we are given another chance to leave Egypt and go to the Promised Land. Every time we read the Torah, we are given another chance to leave our Egypt and go to the promised land. Every time we fail to live up to our potential, we find ourselves once again trapped in Egypt and so we return to our faith, over and over again, to try, again and again to leave our place of constriction and find our way to the land of plenty and peace.

We can look at our parsha and only see a repeat of what we learned last week. Or we can see this parsha as an opportunity to try and try again to hear the voice of God, to hear the call to live up to our fully human potential to bring kindness and compassion to this world so that everyone can live in peace. Parshat Tzav reminds us that we must never give up. No matter how many times we might fail, there is always hope for the future.

Pesach is coming and we will remember our journey from slavery to freedom. We just celebrated Purim, where we once again dodged the bullet that was meant to destroy us. In every generation we have found our way out of the tight corners and journeyed on to freedom. We made it out in past generations, and we can and will make our way to freedom again.

May God give us the strength, wisdom, and courage to gather our people together at this time of year so that all of us, the old, the young, and captive, can celebrate the blessing of freedom as we say …. Amen and Shabbat Shalom