This past week we watched as protestors stormed the capital area in Brazil.
Naturally these images conjured up memories of protestors crashing through barricades in Washington.
And now we’re about to observe the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday. Contrary to the practice and spirit of these two incidents, Dr. King preached and modeled creative non-violent protest based upon the actions of Gandhi in India and on a long history of similar nonviolent civil disobedience.
I’d like to feature three women in this week’s Torah portion who stage creative nonviolent protests, possibly among the earliest examples I can think of for this type of social and political change-making.
We read this week about Shifra and Puah, and Yoheved.
Pharaoh instructs Shifra and Puah, who are midwives, to kill baby boys and allow baby girls to live. Pharaoh believes his plan will eliminate the perceived threat of the Israelites to Egypt.
In response, the midwives do the exact opposite. Pharaoh scolds them for their behavior but God protects them and their families.
Our commentary explains, Pharaoh assumed the only threat to his power would be physical resistance by Israelite males. He could not conceive of the power of spiritual resistance, exemplified by the role women play in the Exodus narrative.(Etz Hayim, p. 320)
What a contrast to the Chanukah story we retold again this year just a few weeks ago. At that time, it was necessary to take up arms against the Syrian-Greek overlords.
But Shifra and Puah show us another way of fighting back. They act on their own conscience, without God’s instruction.
They take a big risk to defy Pharaoh, and they take this risk long before Moses and Aaron stand before the same Pharaoh and ask him to allow the people to leave.
In fact, without his mother Yoheved’s courage and non-violent protest Moses would not have survived to hear God’s call and return to Egypt. Like the midwives, Yoheved sees blessing and potential in the young life of her newborn son. Seforno explains she sees he is a beautiful child and knows in her heart God has also given him a good heart as well. And our ancestors teach when Moses was born the whole house filled with light. Clearly, there is hope in that moment, there is faith, courage, strength and a willingness to fight for life.
The trend over the past many years to dedicate MLK Day as a day of service can be traced in a direct line back to these ancient moments of creative civil disobedience. We might think of community service as simply the goodness of giving and creating strong relationships, friendships, and warmth of compassion between people of all backgrounds.
But I believe, and I think Shifra, Puah, Yoheved, Gandhi, MLK, suffragettes, and others throughout history teach us community service, while not a protest activity per se, does in fact serve as a force of change. Service is a counter-cultural activity. Against the trend of focusing on the self that often is magnified in the media, service means we recognize it’s not about us. When we volunteer for others we’re not expecting a reward in return, no matter how many hours we put in. When we serve others we’re taking up our most precious resource – that is time—away from potentially easier and more convenient activities to recognize and respond to needs we may have not realized even existed or the extent to which they exist and persist.
Maimonides, the Rambam, reacts to the famous words of the Mishnah, the world stands on 3 things, Torah, Avodah/Prayer, and Gemilut Hasadim – acts of lovingkindness.
It is saying that with wisdom, and that is the Torah; and with enhancement of [good] traits, and that is acts of lovingkindness; and with the fulfillment of commandments, and that is the sacrifices [referred to in the mishnah as service] - there will be a continuous refinement of the world and ordering of its existence in the most complete way.
When we engage in volunteering, in service to others, we are doing all 3 things the Rabbis say are the pillars of building a world of holiness and blessing. We’re studying Torah, the Torah of people, issues, and raising our awareness. As the Jerusalem Talmud explains, those occupied with the needs of the community are by doing so occupying themselves with the study of Torah. And when we serve we’re praying, as Frederick Douglass and later Rabbi Heschel said, we’re praying with our feet – fulfilling the latent promise of the mitzvot in the real world and in real time, and clearly we’re doing deeds of lovingkindness.
May we continue to take inspiration from the example of Dr. King and all others who have come before us to demonstrate the power of creative protest in all its forms, all the way back to Shifra, Puah, Yocheved, Miryam, and Tziporah who all stand before the leaders of Egypt, even our God, to protect and promote life at the risk of their own lives. May their courage be our courage today.
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