Today,
thousands of people will converge on Washington, DC to celebrate the
inauguration of the 45th president of the United States. Tomorrow, shabbat,
Washington will again be flooded with people arriving for The Women’s March on
Washington. The Mission & Vision statement[1] of the Women’s March explains its purpose: “In the
spirit of democracy and honoring the champions of human rights, dignity, and
justice who have come before us, we join in diversity to show our presence in
numbers too great to ignore,” to “send a bold message to our new government on
their first day in office, and to the world that women's rights are human
rights.” Further: “We stand together in solidarity with our partners and
children for the protection of our rights, our safety, our health, and our
families - recognizing that our vibrant and diverse communities are the
strength of our country.”
The Women’s March
on
Washington was organized because so many people are terrified of what the Trump
presidency may hold for America and do to the fragile democracy we far too
often take for granted. Abraham Lincoln famously warned, “American will never
be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be
because we destroyed ourselves.”
on
Washington was organized because so many people are terrified of what the Trump
presidency may hold for America and do to the fragile democracy we far too
often take for granted. Abraham Lincoln famously warned, “American will never
be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be
because we destroyed ourselves.”
Freedom is the banner theme of Parshat Shemot, the first portion in the Book of Exodus, the beginning of our epic
story of redemption from slavery in Egypt. It is a story we return to again and
again for wisdom, insight, and inspiration. Our lives revolve around the quest
for freedom and redemption, our falling away from them and into various dark
pits of pain and even despair, and our renewed efforts to rise up and overcome.
Pursuing, losing, regaining, and maintaining freedom is a roller coaster ride
of the ups and downs, turns and twists, gut-wrenching descents, and
exhilarating ascents.
The underlying purpose of the Women’s March on Washington is to galvanize those who
fear that the incoming administration will either erode or outright destroy the
freedoms we hold dear, and to send an unequivocal message that we will not
permit that to happen. For many coming to Washington tomorrow, the underlying
agenda includes: protecting and improving the global environment, protecting
and uplifting those living in poverty, bridging the abyss between ethnic and
racial groups, ensuring that all Americans have access to decent medical care
and that women have control over their own bodies, increasing access to voting
and eliminate cynical attempts at voter suppression, instituting campaign
finance reform, and so much more.
How can the story of the Exodus shed
light on the situation in which we find ourselves?
Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twerski of
Chernobyl[2] looks at the story of the Exodus from an expansive
perspective, broad enough to encompass far more than the purported historical
escape of the Hebrews from the clutches of Pharaoh. He pinpoints what
undergirds the story and propels it beyond a moment in history into every
moment of time, beyond one experience in our past into every experience of our
lives. In Me’or Einayim, he writes:
We all know the secret meaning of our
exile in Egypt: דעת (mindfulness/knowing) itself was in exile. We knew nothing
of the Creator or God’s Torah. In the generation of the Flood people said: מַה-שַּׁדַּי
כִּי-נַעַבְדֶנּוּ What is God that we should serve Him? (Job 21:15) Even though Torah hadn’t
yet been given in the generations before the Flood, it existed in this world as
the power of the Maker within the made. It had not yet been garbed in specific
worldly forms, such as it would have after being given. But there were certain
select individuals who fulfilled Torah just as it exists above, having come to
grasp it through their own expanded minds. They understood its true inner
essence as it was before it was given. Such people were Methusaleh, Enoch, and
Adam, who were all students of Torah. But at the time of the Flood, humans were
so wicked that they cut both world and Torah off from their connection to the
Creator. Both world and Torah were separated from their Root; that is why the
Flood came to destroy the world.
Where was Torah cast down at that
time? It fell into the shell of Egypt. That is mindfulness/knowing in exile,
for the Torah represents mindfulness/knowing. And this is why Israel had to go
down into Egypt, to raise up fallen Torah…
Before there was the Written Torah
(the words in the scroll we study and revere), there was primordial Torah.
Before God revealed Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai (“garbed in specific worldly forms”), there was
Torah with which God created the world: wisdom and the inherent potential of
everything in Creation (“the power of the Maker within the made”). Before there
was an established set of laws—expressed (“garbed”) as mitzvot— there was
wisdom and potential. But few people grasped this and thought, behaved, and
lived accordingly. The Chernobler rebbe identifies for us only three:
Methusaleh, Enoch, and Adam—each of whom has special resonance in Jewish
mysticism—operated according to the insights of wisdom. Everyone else, cut off
from the Torah of wisdom and the potential for goodness, behaved wickedly and
violence flourished.
This, then, is the root meaning of
Exile, which goes far beyond the story of Israel in Egypt. It is separation
from knowing, from mindfulness, from wisdom and insight. It is the lack of a
foundation of goodness and decency, an attitude of kindness and compassion,
that underlies one’s behavior and choices
even before someone dictates the laws of what is permitted and what is not,
what is required and what is not. Exile is not a social or political state of
being; it is a spiritual state of mind. This is a wide and expansive
understanding of Exile: it speaks to universal concerns about the human
condition and human behavior, with immediate implications for hard social and
political reality of our lives and current situation.
Reading the Chernobler’s words, I wonder if he is telling us that if we
were to tap into the universal wisdom of primordial Torah—the Torah of wisdom,
of decency, compassion, and righteousness—we would not be in spiritual Exile
and need countless laws to regulate our behavior. Or perhaps he is suggesting
that all the formal laws in the world (religious or secular) cannot create the
society we would want until we achieve the Exodus from Exile and achieve
mindfulness and knowing, wisdom and compassion.
This thought brings me back to the
events unfolding around us, all of which is happening in a climate of “ethics are dead,” dramatically illustrated but the
House Republicans’ middle-of-the-night surreptitious attempt to gut the
independent ethics committee—their very first act. The “swamp” that
President-elect Trump vowed to drain is now being filled with a fire hose to
float the yachts sailing to Washington, piloted by the bevy of billionaires he
and Mike Pence have tapped to run the country. For days we have watched the
confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill in which it is being revealed that
nominees for the cabinet of the incoming administration are riddled with
improprieties and failures to conform to rules and standards of their
positions, are hiding information from those in the Senate entrusted with
vetting them on our behalf, and hold in contempt the very institutions and
departments they have been tapped to head.
Where is the Torah that comes before
the Torah?
© Rabbi Amy
Scheinerman
[2] Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twerski of Chernobyl (1730–1787)
initiated the Chernobyl Hasidic dynasty. He was the student of Dov Baer, the
Maggid of Mezeritch and his Uncle Nachum, both of whom were disciples of the
Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism. Twerski was the founder of the
Chernobyl Hasidic dynasty, and published one of the first books of Hasidic
thought.
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