Sermons & Stories

Shabbat Shalom!

We have a lot of chutzpah, our people. A close reading of chapter 12 of Exodus shows us that we have the audacity to create a festival of freedom before we are even free. And then, even after we receive the Torah, we’re a mess – rebelling against God and Moses, wandering 40 years in the desert. We conquer a land through genocide… we’re led by Kings that consistently go against God, ultimately we’re conquered by Babylon and then Greece and then Rome. And yet we don’t shy away from celebrating Pesach each year. We don’t shy away from recognizing the times when we fall short.

This week’s Torah portion is the perfect example. In parshat Chukat, the unthinkable happens. Moses, God’s faithful servant, the humblest man to ever walk the earth, the one who speaks to God panim-el-panim – face-to-face with God, is suddenly prohibited from entering the Promised Land. We’ll get there; Moshe Rabbeinu, our great teacher, will not.

We don’t cover it up and we don’t ignore it. We struggle with it. We try to understand. And we recognize that while the Torah might end with Moses, our story does not. Our story is bigger than one person. It’s bigger than one generation. Our story never ends.

Since the story never ends, we found ways to celebrate Passover in every age – not to remember the moment, but to remember the principle. At Seder each year we say – this year we are slaves. We say – in every generation we are supposed to see our liberation from slavery. This is why we had the chutzpah to celebrate a festival of freedom during Roman oppression and Christian oppression and Muslim oppression and Nazi oppression. We’re not just celebrating freedom – in those moments, we’re longing for freedom. We are celebrating the promise that all people should be free. And yet we also had the chutzpah to celebrate a festival of freedom during those times of plenty when we were being served by slaves.

Part of the power of Judaism is our honesty. We don’t just celebrate Passover and Chanukah and Purim – the times we won. We also fast on Tisha B’Av and Tzom Gedaliah. We read and study the Torah, the entire thing, each and every year – which details as many, if not more, failures than successes. We understand that our history is messy, our human leaders and possibly even our God are deeply flawed, and because of that honesty we have the chutzpah to think that we can improve, that we can do better, that our imperfect world can be better because of us.

This is what I think about when I think about Juneteenth - this brand new National Holiday. The joy of freedom that had to be enforced – when U.S. Major General Gordon Granger not only read out the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston, he brought the troops to make sure it’s words were heeded. It is a moment that is worthy of celebration – perhaps not as miraculous as ten plagues and the parting of the sea, but no less a miracle after hundreds of years of slavery and a devastating Civil War.

Many people talk about justice and the arc of history, but in Jewish tradition, we know that there are no guarantees. The Civil War did not have to end the way that it did. That’s Jewish honesty. The Jewish history I just described should cause fear and trembling to anyone who might think that freedom and dignity for all is a given. Juneteenth celebrates the end of slavery, not universal human rights for all. The Jim Crow era wasn’t as bad as slavery, but saying that something isn’t as bad as chattel slavery as it existed in the American South only goes so far.

After Civil Rights legislation was passed in the 1960s, it’s not like everyone who desperately fought to uphold Jim Crow suddenly changed their views. And when we take a look at the world today, we’re in a much better place, but discrimination and inequality in jobs, housing, and treatment persist today. We are not and have never lived in a perfect country. But what do we do as Jews? We read and we understand our flaws and our challenges and our difficulties. We learn we struggle with the realities of our history – our Jewish history and our American History. And we aspire to be even better than we are today.

There’s a reason why Rabbi Sandra Lawson writes:

“The holiday of Juneteenth is a celebration of African-American freedom from slavery. We are celebrating what it means to live freely in the United States and we also must remember that for many of us freedom is a journey. The fight for freedom for all is not over. There is still work to be done.”

https://forward.com/opinion/426055/juneteenth-offers-us-a-day-for-celebration-reflection-and-healing/

And even though there will always be more work that has to be done, just like Passover, Juneteenth is something we as Jews and we as Americans need to have the chutzpah to celebrate because we can improve; we can do better. Our imperfect world can be better because of us.

Happy Juneteenth and Shabbat Shalom!