Another Midrash states that the light the Israelites did perceive was the Or HaGanuz, or hidden light, created on the very first day – and subsequently only accessible to the righteous, to the caring. In fact, they, too, could not see with their eyes, but they could see with their heart, and they helped each other through the darkness. These were the remaining ones who wrote primitive graffiti in blood on the lintels of their own homes, standing for a kingdom of justice, thereby averting the Destroyer from losing their first-born to history. This was no longer the time for the intoxicating brew.
The Bread of Haste
Even those Israelites so redeemed, even the ones who ate their very first paschal offering with loins girded and sandals on their feet, eating the “bread of haste,” even they harbored souls fermented by a slave mentality, a noxious brew, cultivated over centuries, inuring them to the evil visited upon them. “Was it for a shortage of graves that we left Egypt?” crowed the doubters at the bank of the Reed Sea. It took 40 years — the passage of a generation — until the Israelites broke the cycle of this addiction to the fermentation of the soul.
Are We Too Busy?
It takes a lifetime for us, too. We think we’re too busy to care, but in truth it’s a question of priorities. With the return of the hurricane season this week, I am reminded that even this writer gave perhaps a few too many fiery indictments of the human elements responsible for the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. But what — really — has he done? Not much, in truth. He and his family loaded the Camry full of old clothes and drove them downtown on Labor Day. For a brief moment, he did what he could, cajoled his congregation to do something about it, and lit a Kol Nidrei bonfire under their feet, but life intervened even for him.
So, when he heard about the opportunity — provided by the Southern California Board of Rabbis and the Jewish Federation — to actually go to the Gulf region and personally help rebuild from Katrina, he embraced his guilt and sprang to action. The rabbis say, “When an opportunity for a Mitzvah comes to your hands, don’t let it ferment.” Well, Katrina turned into a deep, dark malt — pleasant tasting to the conscience, but desensitizing to the soul. Must remove the chametz from this house.
What About Meaning?
Must mean it when one says “Let all who are hungry come and eat.” Must mean it when we say, three times daily, “repairing the world with a divine force.” Must spring to action when someone’s eyes tell one of deeper troubles than normal. Must not turn the page, turn a blind eye, turn the perception of pain into a patina of excuses.
Darfur. New Orleans. Jerusalem. Los Angeles. So many places with so much pain. It’s too much for one person to respond. But not too much for a community.
Next month in the Gulf Coast. Next year in Jerusalem. Next year may a few more people than this year sit under their own vine and fig tree, terrorized by no one and nothing. Thanks to our lean souls.
Jason van Leeuwen is the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Tikvah, Westchester.
