בס''ד
Hol haMoed Pesah
18 Nisan, 5773
March 29, 2013
3rd
Day of the Omer
Consider a Jew.
Said Jew walks
into a Jewish space – a synagogue, or some such institution. While in the
aforementioned space, our Jew has an interaction of the worst sort: another
Jew, either through word or action, invalidates or demeans the Judaism of Jew
#1. Perhaps the insult was intended, perhaps it was simply thoughtless – it
does not matter. Our traumatized first Jew leaves, bearing bitterness that may
last a lifetime.
Every Jew I know
has had this experience. Every single one. It has happened to me many times. I
have nursed my full share of resentment.
But I believe
that I, and many others, made a mistake: we let other people write the story of
our Judaism. To place the quality of one’s personal experience of Judaism into the hands of other people’s idiosyncrasies and mistakes is to invite
misery. If our rejection defines our Judaism, we have not seen the
fundamental freedom of the Exodus, and have not been personally redeemed.
Moshe said more
than, “Let my people go.” The whole sentence goes, “So says HaShem, the God of
Israel, ‘Let My people go so that they
will celebrate Me in the desert.’” (Shemot 5:1, italics mine). And
Pharoah’s response: “Who is this ‘HaShem’ that I should listen to his voice, to
let the people go.” (5:2)
The freedom of
Passover is more than, “Let My people go;” it is, “Let My people go so that” – so that they may celebrate as
they see fit, so that they may self-determine, so that they may write their own
stories.
To accede to
religious rejection is to give Pharoah’s voice primacy. Hurt though we may be, to never cross the threshold of Jewish life again is to acknowledge that all the power lies with
him, and none with us.
And the funny
thing is that, when one moves past moments of rejection and engages Judaism and
Jewish life on one’s own terms, Pharoah’s voice sounds…well, a lot less like
Pharoah. Rejection and invalidation have less sting, less bite. We see that
rejecting voice as that of a flawed human, just like we are, and not as a
monolithic entity. We even see how we might have misinterpreted those moments
as rejection – sometimes Pharoah’s voice actually comes from within.
God does not
reject. The Holy One is always waiting for us. It’s just that sometimes we get in each
other’s way on the path to divinity. No matter what’s been said to us, let us
remember that each of us left Egypt, free.
For an extraordinary example of a refusal to accede to religious freedom, read the story of the Women of the Wall.
