Liberation and Freedom
I’m heading to St. Louis today to be the Rabbi/Scholar in Residence for the weekend at Shir Hadash, a Reconstructionist Community, and so today, I’m sharing a piece that I wrote for the book The Social Justice Commentary.
Also, today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day which commemorates the victims of the Holocaust and the 78th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Lastly, if you do not know about the ship the St. Louis please read this essay.
Bo: The Exodus Freedom and Welcoming the Stranger
Before entering rabbinical school, I did not spend a lot of time thinking much about God, spirituality, or religion. Instead, I was focused on social justice, Tikkun Olam, and exploring how my Jewish values fit into a larger society. My experiences are shaped by my identity as a queer, Black Jew, with parents who grew up dirt poor in the Jim Crow segregated south. My identity allows me to see our society through the eyes of marginalized people. I also sit on the margins of Jewish life. I am often seen as an outsider in the Jewish world and not authentically Jewish, which gives me an interesting perspective on Judaism and our society.
One of the things I love about Judaism is that we are all connected by the Torah portion of the week. We are simultaneously reading the same text, and our reading gets filtered through the experiences of the times we are currently living in. Throughout the book of Sh' mot, Exodus, we follow the Israelites from slavery to freedom and then redemption. Sh' mot, one could argue, is an entire book about a slave uprising. Much of how I view myself as a Jew, an activist, and a rabbi come from this book.
In Parashat Bo, we are at the climax of Israel's struggle for freedom. Plague after disgusting plague has struck Egypt, and Pharaoh is now willing to let some of the Israelites go free, but not all of them (Exodus 10:10–11). Moses insists that none of the Israelites will go unless all of them can. Moses wants freedom for all, not just a few. He says, "We will go regardless of our social status; we will go with our sons and our daughters..." (Exodus 10:9). In other words," We ain't leavin' anybody behind!"
We all know the song Let My People Go, an African American spiritual based on the text from Exodus, but the next phrase of scripture is missing from the song. God says, "let my people go so they can worship me" (Exodus 9:13). Our liberation is connected to God. The Torah is a fascinating story of an enslaved people struggling for their freedom. The slaves gain their freedom because God sides with the Israelites over their oppressor, Pharaoh. Then, once the Israelites are free, rules of behavior and laws are created for a new society and social system that underlies freedom for all people. You may be thinking that the Torah does not abolish slavery, and you are right, and this has always concerned me. Instead, the Torah lists a series of laws in Mishpatim on how to protect the slave. Slavery existed during biblical times and still exists today. The Torah gives us laws to protect slaves from abuse and mistreatment. The Torah appears to try to correct some of the pitfalls of slavery. It's as if the Torah cannot imagine a world without slavery. Even the Torah does not abolish slavery, it sets in motion a series of fundamental laws that will lead people to abolish slavery on their own accord.
In the Torah, liberation begins with and emphasizes a concern for the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized. God sides with the oppressed and marginalized and against the oppressors.
We need to be free in order to worship God. The founders of the United States created a society based on freedom of religion. The freedom to worship as one wants is built into the fabric of our nation's founding documents. As Jews, we are keenly aware of the need to worship freely. Many Jews fled from pogroms in Europe, and America's open doors offered shelter and opportunity. And when America kept its doors tightly shut as the Nazi regime grew more deadly, we suffered the agony of those who were left to die. Burned in our minds are images like those of the hundreds of refugees on the St. Louis, seeking to escape Hitler and Nazi Germany. The United States and Cuba refused them entrance. Instead of being given a safe haven, America sent them back to Europe, and many perished in the Holocaust.
The Torah repeatedly emphasizes a positive, welcoming approach to the stranger, the immigrant, and the person in need. This attitude is one of the foremost lessons of our exile in Egypt. No less than thirty-six times, the Torah reminds us not to oppress the stranger, often with a companion explanation to remember that we know the heart of the stranger because we were once strangers in the land of Egypt. Such as in Exodus 23:9, the Torah says, "You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.
After World War II, many in the Jewish community witnessed the African American community's civil rights struggles. They realized that not all of us are free in our society, and they worked with the Black community to make life better for all. They wanted America to hold true to its promise of freedom for everyone. Today, many Jews are waking up to the racism experienced by Black and brown people in America. And, as many of us watch police or vigilantes murder unarmed Black people time and time again, we realize that not all of us are yet free.
Yes, many Jews are protesting racism and doing whatever they can to end racism in our society. However, the Jewish community also needs to do some internal work to focus on the racism within. Many Jews who are white treat Black and brown Jews as if we do not belong and are not a real part of the community. Upon entering Jewish spaces or when I meet white Jews for the first time, I am often asked a myriad of questions: When did you convert? Were you born Jewish? Once when I was introduced to a potential parent of an Elon University student who was also Jewish, as the Rabbi, the parent repeatedly asked if I was ordained, as if a nationally ranked university would hire a non-ordained rabbi.
Diversity within the Jewish people is not new. In Parashat Bo, we read:
וְגַם־עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב עָלָ֣ה אִתָּ֑ם וְצֹ֣אן וּבָקָ֔ר מִקְנֶ֖ה כָּבֵ֥ד מְאֹֽד
Moreover, a mixed multitude, erev rav, went up with them and very much livestock, both flocks and herds.
I want to highlight the Hebrew word, וְגַם (v'gam) "and which we can also translate as "and also." The Torah doesn't want us to forget that the people who escaped slavery so long ago in search of freedom were not monolithic. The focus on the livestock and herds reminds us that some in the community were well off enough to own property. Others may have been poor, indicating that those who fled came from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. I often tell the college students I work with to imagine the budding relationships that were happening. Perhaps an Israelite fell in love with an Egyptian. When the Israelites were leaving, the Egyptian threw their lot in with the one they loved and followed Moses into the wilderness. This text is a reminder that we were and always have been a diverse group. A few lines later, the Torah tells us:" There be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you" (Exodus 12:49). When one who has previously been a stranger joins us, that person must be treated as someone born in the land. We are to treat everyone equally.
Each of us is a dynamic and awesome being who, when we live up to our potential, can do amazing things—maybe even become the Moses of our generation. Let us remember that our freedom is connected to God. When we treat others in our community as if they don't belong, we prevent others from worshiping God, and we are not living up to our Jewish values.
Shabbat Shalom
Blessings and safe travels to "The Lou"