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January 17, 2025 - 17 Tevet 5785 Parashat Shemot - Making A Difference on MLK Day
Dear Friends, Thanks very much to Beryl & Harold Steinbach for hosting our first Havdalah At Home last Saturday evening. We had a great turn-out, met some wonderful people, and had a lovely evening. I was also delighted to see some of the people, who I had met on Saturday, on Zoom on Monday for the first session of the Biblical Smackdowns class. We are looking to hold another event in a few weeks, so please let Craig or me know if you would like to host one. If you missed my first Biblical Smackdown class, I would love for you to attend the next. This coming Monday evening, the next match-up will feature the Levites vs the Idolaters. While Moses received the Mitzvot from God, the Israelites built a Golden Calf to worship. We’ll explore who was responsible for the Golden Calf and if the punishment fit the crime. It should be another lively study and conversation, so please join us on Monday evening at 7:30PM over Zoom. We would also like to thank Ed & Doris Cohen for sponsoring this Shabbat’s Kiddush luncheon in honor and memory of their late fathers. Honoring one's father, and/or mother, is a Mitzvah, so please join us at the Kiddush table to share in Doris and Ed’s Mitzvot and consider sponsoring a Kiddush to honor or celebrate a person or event. Even though I was only 8 years old, I definitely wanted to sleep late. It was Monday, January 16, 1989, and we had the day off of school for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. But, there were my parents, waking my brother Adam and I up at something like 5:30 in the morning because we had something important to do. Though our schools were not in session, in the neighboring district where my father served as a congregational rabbi, the holiday was not observed, and it was a regular school day just like any other. Tired, cranky, and cold despite being bundled up, my brother and I were all but literally dragged to Council Rock High School. We were there to protest the school's refusal to close in recognition of MLK Day as a holiday, and that is just what we did. With signs and songs and a boisterous group gathered there, we would have made Abraham Joshua Heschel, the 20th century rabbi and staunch civil rights activist, very proud. When Heschel returned from marching with MLK and so many others from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, he wrote, "For many of us, the march...was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying." As our crowd continued to grow, chanting and singing, with our voices and our legs, I looked up to see Mrs. Tickel, my 3rd grade teacher that year, still to this day among the best and most favorite teachers I ever had. She was proud of me. I was proud of her, moved by her choice to spend her day off from her work to be part of something important, something beyond her: God's work. I'll never forget joining in with her to sing "We Shall Overcome" as loudly as we possibly could, against the backdrop of noisy buses piling into the entrance one at a time. On that cold January morning in 1989, despite my initial, cranky misgivings, I eventually came to understand what it meant to pray with my legs. For the following year, Council Rock voted to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and closed their schools on January 15, 1990, on exactly what would have been MLK's 61st birthday. We had won. We had made a real difference. And, the prayers of our legs, lungs, hearts, and souls were answered. This week we begin Sh'mot, or Exodus, the second book of Torah. Though Genesis concludes with family reunions and hope engendered by the presence of Joseph in Egypt, Exodus 1:8 informs us: "A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph." How could it be, our Sages wonder, that the new Pharaoh did not know who Joseph was or how he helped make Egypt a superpower? Especially in a civilization known for outstanding record-keeping, how could this be true? The answer they give is that of course the Pharaoh knew who Joseph was, but in his actions and his worldview, he chose to turn his back on Joseph, to willingly ignore all that Joseph did and contributed to the nation's wealth and prosperity. That is how he was able to move towards cruelty, to enslave the burgeoning Israelite people, to decree that newborn baby boys be thrown into the Nile River to drown. Sometimes, I worry that we are like this Pharaoh, forsaking or taking for granted the contributions of those who came before us, forgetting that the greatest reason we are able to see and do so much is because we stand on the shoulders of giants. Observances like MLK Day, Veterans' Day, Memorial Day should not be merely excuses for long weekends, vacations, or huge retail and car sales. They are opportunities to honor the legacies of those who dedicated the precious gifts of their lives to make the world we inherited from them a little bit better for everyone in it. This coming Monday, while I may not be waking up quite as early as I did some 36 years ago, my family will be honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr by doing good in our community, by pursuing social justice in even the seemingly smallest of ways. Our Caleb will turn 8 the day before and I hope and pray that he will be moved and inspired by what we do together to strengthen our community and that he will carry that with him all the days of his life. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Joshua Strom
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