Matot-Masei 2013/5773
The second half of Unetaneh Tokef, the great prayer and poem
of God as judge, the prayer that helps us to remember how fragile we are but
also that we are not without ways to find hope, this prayer tells a story that
is all to familiar, all too tragic, this week.
Berosh Hashanah yikatevun, uv’Yom Tzom Kippur Yechatemun –
On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.
This past week in our country 19 elite forest firefighters,
members of the’Hotshots’ squad, the names we shared as part of our memorial
prayer moments ago, these individuals died while fighting a fire, a fire that
destroyed 200 homes and compelled some 1,000 people to evacuate. North of Phoenix, the fire has burnt over
8000 acres of land.
And in this tragedy we hear the words, “Mi va’esh”, who by
fire.
We also know of the unrest in Egypt, the unseating of
Mohammed Morsi and a plan to pursue a new direction.
Over the past week, we witnessed pro-Morsi and anti-Morsi
demonstrators clashing in Cairo streets, including a photo of pro-Morsi
citizens holding an opponent down on the front hood of a car with a stone
raised above the head of the man down on the car, angry faces blaring at him
from all around.
And in this moment we hear, “Mi va’skilah…u’mi yitaref,” Who
by stoning and who will be afflicted…”
Amidst this loss and unrest, here and abroad, God speaks to
the Israelites as we get ready to cross into the Holy Land, telling us to
beware of the potential for the inhabitants of the Promised Land to turn us
from the path of faith in our God. Just
when in the Torah story we are feeling so close to the comfort of entering the
Land of our ancestors, once again there is a warning that settlement in the
Land will not be easy, peaceful, that we are in for another tough road as the
road from Egypt has been.
As Seforno teaches, we have to settle the Land in a secure
way so that it will not just be the current generation who can make a life
there, but the next generations as well.(Seforno to 33:53)
Both the firefighters and the protestors across Egypt
embarked on dangerous journeys, the firefighters from walls of flames that
crept up on them despite their excellent training, the Egyptians have been
mourning over victims of the violent clashes over the last several days as they
seek to establish the democracy they want.
We struggle with the mystery of why some areas of the
country and the world experience such extremes of events like forest-fires, of
dictatorships and bloody rebellions against them?
We might ask, why do people choose to live in areas where
there is significant risk of natural disasters, and why do more people not
leave places like Syria, Egypt, or other countries oppressive regimes?
There is a hope planted deep within us that the next day will
be better than today. Whether we call it
a hope or more cynically call it a ‘coping mechanism’, the Israelites think
this way as much as we do today. The
Israelites for 40 years of wandering have mourned their losses, celebrated
victories, complained, rebelled, and returned to faith again. Somehow they keep trudging through the sand
as best they can.
We also develop significant connections with places, and
they become hard to leave. Some do leave
places filled with crisis and intolerance and find life on shores of
freedom. Others, many of whom might like
to leave but cannot, get dragged under the bullets and batons that seek to herd
people like animals rather than celebrating our diversity, knowledge, and
potential.
We may think that God protects us or looks out for us, but
it is not clear to me that we understand God works this way. The Rabbis teach that someone on her way to
do a mitzvah is protected, but that protection only serves in a place where it
is not likely that anything negative will happen. If we put ourselves in a dangerous, unstable,
situation, then the Rabbis suggest we cannot count on an extra layer of
protection.
The firefighters knew there were no guarantees of safety,
and the protestors in Egypt must have known that violence was possible if not
probable. 50 years ago, on the steps of
the Lincoln Memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that ‘unearned suffering
is redemptive’, a message to people who had suffered much racism and
discrimination. If there can be some
redemption, some concrete, or hidden, way that the tragedies of the past week
might bring the world closer to redemption, then maybe we all would feel less
grave and more open to the possibility that there is some order beyond the
disorder, some plan amidst what seems to be chaos, since as individuals we can
never see the whole picture, but we are the ones who feel, the heat of the
fire, the anger of an opponent, the loss of innocence and peace.
Can repentance, soulful prayer, and acts of justice soften
the severity of the decree we face? God
implanted a strong desire in us for life, and so faith amidst crisis, that hope
for a better tomorrow, is inescapable.
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