BO 5772

FROM FATE TO DESTINY

So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh and he said to them, “Go worship the lord your God. Who are the ones to go? Moses replied, “We will go, young and old; we will go with our sons and daughters, our flocks and herds, for we must observe the Lord’s Festival.” [Exodus 10: 8, 9]

Even as we were all enslaved (lit. in service) to you, so will we be in service to our God. (Lekach Tov, a Midrashic Source

According to this Midrash, Moses told Pharaoh that under your heavy hand our fate has been oppression and enslavement. We will, however, depart from Egypt as one people, as a total collective to fulfill our destiny at Sinai. There we will be defined as a community that perceives its present and future as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” thereby affirming God’s presence in our individual and communal lives.

The goal at Sinai was to unite Am Yisrael in the worship of God. Yet historically and to this very day we have never been of one mind on how to achieve the goal of unity for Service to God. Each group or sect has consistently insisted it is its approach that truly conforms to God’s will. Yet there are areas of unity. Prayers on behalf of a sick person always identify him/her as “among all the sick of Israel." We extend condolences to mourners as being "among all the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem." There is a common acceptance of shared responsibility that undergirds our commitment to tzedakah and collective action in the field of welfare, charity and deeds of loving kindness.

We, also, share a liturgical calendar thereby assuring that all of Jewry celebrates Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Pesach on the same days, and we all accept that Saturday is our “Sabbath.” There are, to be sure, significant variations in the manner in which we celebrate these sacred times and in the nature of the limitations placed on our behavior during these sanctified days. This is obviously also true with regard to other areas of religious behavior from diet to dress to standards of modesty, etc. Haredi standards of Tze'ni'ut or modesty in behavior and in dress that forbids men not only touching women but even gazing at them is foreign and benighted to most Jews.

Thus the “mehadrin” buses that serve the Haredi community in which men sit in the front and women in the back, have been ruled illegal by the Israeli Supreme Court. Signs are now posted in every bus that passengers in public buses are free to sit wherever they wish. Women who prefer to sit in the back are free to do so, but women who choose to sit in the front section may not be evicted or hassled or subjected to any negative behavior.

Recent ugly incidents and demonstrations by extremists within the Haredi community have embarrassed most of its members and enraged the overall Israeli public.  The fundamentalists, in their insistence that they are the true Jews, leave many of us cold and angry. Yet even as we insist that they not dismiss our Jewish credentials, we dare not read them outside of the Jewish community.

I suspect that even in Moses’ day there may well have been Jews with different perceptions of what was expected of them as descendants of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. Moses, however, was emphatically clear that all Jews shared both the fate of enslavement and the destiny of Sinai. The legacy of this shared destiny is a challenge not to deny any group's membership in Am Yisrael. Our task is to work harder to determine areas of accommodation and to create a climate of mutual acceptance. Hopefully we will find ways to welcome and celebrate every Jew’s inclusion in our timeless and timely covenant of destiny.

From the holy city of Jerusalem, Rae joins me in wishing all a Shabbat shalom u’mevorach, a Shabbat of peace and of blessing and fulfilling.

Rabbi Arnold M. Goodman
Senior Rabbinic Scholar
Ahavath Achim Synagogue
Atlanta, Georgia 30327
January 26, 2012
2 Shevat 5772