Shabbat
Shalom. Tonight marks the conclusion of Passover for those of us in
the Reform world and for many in the State of Israel. For the last
week we have celebrated our liberation from Egypt, and hopefully we
have enjoyed time with family, in song, with festive meals and wine.
But in so many ways, liberation is not just a noun or something that
happened to our ancestors in Egypt. It is also an act in motion, a
constant state of being, something to be actively worked on in every
generation. We say at our Passover tables, “B'-chol
dor va-dor, cha-yav a-dam lir-ot, lir-ot et atz-mo k'-i-lu hu, ya-tza
mi-mitz-ra-yim; In every generation, each person must regard himself
or herself as if he or she had come out of Egypt,” but for many
this is figurative. And when it is, we must remind ourselves that it
is our duty as Jews to be a part of the liberation of others who
still struggle to escape Mitzrayim. The narrow places of narrow
minds, the oppression of laws that restrict movements and identities
and loves and societies that discriminate against those that are
different. We work for freedom and equality and justice for the sake
of our Jewish brothers and sisters who are also queer or trans or
black or homeless and who also fear racism and homophobia and
transphobia and classism in addition to antisemitism and who still
feel the weight of Pharaoh's slavery today. And we do this for the
sake of our non-Jewish neighbors who also deserve liberation because
we were slaves and now we are free, because we know the bitterness of
oppression and we know that we would not wish it on anybody.
This
coming week is Yom HaShoa, the Jewish day of memorial for the 6
million lost in the Holocaust. As you may know, I studied genocide
and terrorism in college. The Holocaust was a watershed moment in
history. Before it, we had no international laws to safeguard against
such actions. The word “genocide” and the legal concept of
“crimes against humanity” stem from this atrocity our people
faced. But in sociological terms, the Holocaust is not unique. We
know as Jews, that it was certainly not the first time our people
were nearly wiped out. Our tradition is full of stories that may or
may not be true: the Pharaoh in Egypt, Haman in Shushan, Antiochus in
the Hellenistic-controlled land of Israel. Nearly every holiday we
joke, “This story is the same as all the others: they tried to kill
us, we won, let's eat.” But our history, documented and very real,
also tells these stories. Pogroms and expulsions, forced conversions,
the Inquisition, and ethnic cleansings that remained smaller than
the Holocaust only because the governments carrying them out didn't
bother to occupy other countries first to ensure their ethnic
cleansings would be coordinated.
And
of course, it hasn't just been the Jews either. Before the Holocaust,
the Turks carried out genocide against the Armenians, who still have
not received official acknowledgment or reparations. Every inch of
our country is soaked in the blood of the Native Americans. In my
lifetime, I've witnessed from afar the genocides of Bosnians,
Albanian Kosovars, and Rwandans, and learned about the dirty wars of
Central and South America, where people were simply disappeared by
their governments. And there are countless more such stories from
nearly every culture around the world. Next week is Yom HaShoa, a day
of commemoration for Jews, but back in January we also had
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, where the world mourned with
us. Do you know the day that the Bosnians commemorate the seige of
Sarajevo? That the Rwandans celebrate the end to their quick and
bloody conflict? Any of the dates that the Kosovars have tried to
declare independence from Serbia? I don't even know those dates off
the top of my head, and I have actively studied those dates. We don't
have an International End Genocide Day, and we as a Jewish community
often don't do enough to stand in solidarity with those whose pain we
know so well or work alongside them for their liberation.
This
week's Torah portion, Acherei Mot, contains the description of the
ritual for atonement, which becomes the Yom Kippur ritual in the time
of the Temple. In the ritual, the High Priest “effects atonement
onto it,” which Rashi explains means the priest confesses upon the
goat, and then the goat is sent off into the wilderness to carry away
the sins of the people, and die away from the camp. This is the
origin of the “scapegoat,” a term well known by those who have
studied political violence, and understood by any who have
experienced it. It manifests in different ways, but the outcome is
the same. In the story of the Passover, the Pharaoh was worried about
losing control of his Kingdom, so rather than confront his
insecurities as a ruler or contemplate different modes of governance
that might incorporate the growing Hebrew population, he scapegoated
them and attempted to halve their population through infanticide and
attempted to break their spirits with slavery (which, by the way, is
not unlike the tactics of the cultural genocide the Chinese impose on
Tibet, for example). Hitler want to rise in power and saw the
scapegoat of the Jews an easy way to direct the fear and angry the
poor German population was feeling in the aftermath of World War I in
order to gain their trust and support. Milosevic felt his people were
entitled to more land after the break up of Yugoslavia, so he
scapegoated the Bosnians for being the first to secede. And the
Hebrews, and the Jews of Europe, and the Bosnians, and so many
others, were trapped like goats, forced out of their camps, forced to
carry burdens that were not rightly theirs, forced to their deaths.
Like goats shoved off carrying the sins of others, but not like sheep
to the slaughter, a metaphor that was once often repeated about
Holocaust victims, erasing the memories of the Resistance movement,
and the Partisan fighters, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I don't
know of all the similar stories of resistance from the other
scapegoated cultures, but I am certain they exist.
Over
the course of the next year, we will all find ourselves faced with
opportunities to help others achieve their liberation. We will hear
about injustices around the world or in our backyards. We will learn
about the scapegoating of a new population and the unfair rules meant
to police their identities, a policing that is almost always tied to
a body count, even if those death tolls are in suicides and hate
crimes rather than purposeful government sponsored terrorism. I
implore you, and Jews all over, to be a part of the solution. Rabbi
Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “In a world where terrible crimes are
committed, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” If the
Egyptians had refused to act as slave-masters, how might our story
have turned out? If more righteous gentiles had stepped forward and
spoken out against the early signs of the Nazi regime, what might our
population be today? If the UN had allowed their Peacekeeping troops
to actually interfere in Rwanda, how different might April 1994 have
been for the million Tutsis whose stories we will never know now? Let
us refuse to buy into scapegoating, let us stand in solidarity with
those whose pain we understand too well, let us work toward a
liberated world for all people. And may we find next year a world a
little closer to the messianic age. Amen and Shabbat Shalom.
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