Shabbat4Ceasefire Workshop: Parshat Bo

“In our tradition leaving Egypt wasn’t an historical event alone. In our tradition, it was a personal and existential leaving as well.

"בְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת עַצְמוֹ\עַצְמָהּ כְאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא\ה מִמִּצְרַיִם”

(In every generation a person must regard themselves as though they personally had gone out of Egypt), Whenever we leave a narrow place, a place of constriction, painful servitude, a place where we are not authentically who we are, that leap taking, that transitioning, is an exodus. A freedom walk.

We all know the song "Let My People Go," an African American spiritual based on the text from Exodus, but the next phrase of Scripture is missing from the song. God says, "Let My people go to worship Me" (Exodus 9:13). Our liberation is connected to God. The Torah is a fascinating story of enslaved people struggling for their freedom. The slaves gain their freedom because God sides with the Israelites over their oppressor, Pharaoh. Then, once the Israelites are free, rules of behavior and laws are created for a new society and social system that underlies freedom for all people. You may be thinking that the Torah does not abolish slavery, and you are right, a fact that has always concerned me. Instead, the Torah lists a series of laws in Parashat Mishpatim on how to protect the slave. Slavery existed during biblical times and still exists today. The Torah gives us laws to protect slaves from abuse and mistreatment; it appears to try to correct some of the pitfalls of slavery. It's as if the Torah cannot imagine a world without slavery. Even though the Torah does not abolish slavery, it sets in motion a series of fundamental laws that will lead people to abolish slavery of their own accord.

In the Torah, liberation begins with and emphasizes a concern for the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized. God sides with the oppressed and marginalized and against the oppressors.

-Rabbi Sandra Lawson

Note on translations:

Through this sheet we will be using the interpretive Kabbalistic understating of the terms “Mitzrayim” (מצרים) usually translated as Egypt, and “Yisrael” (ישראל) usually translated as Israelites.

In Kabbalistic and later Hasidic teachings, these terms are taken to have a broader meaning, based on a literal translation on their etymology in Hebrew:

• Mitzrayim is translated as Narrow Place, specifically, those Dwelling in a Narrow Place.

  • That’s based on a literal translation of “Maitzar Yam” (מיצר-ים) Narrows of the Sea, which is one of the etymologies for the ancient name for Egypt in Semitic languages, referring to the narrow straits of the Nile Delta.

• Yisrael is translated as God Wrestlers, specifically those who Wrestle with Godness, and constantly wrestle to achieve a closer divine knowledge.

  • That’s based on one of the etymologies the Torah gives for the origins of the name Yisrael, referring to Jacob wrestling with “Elohim” Gods and people. It’s also a literal meaning for Yasar El (ישר אל).

“Often, when people begin conversations and they want to say ‘Our community does Judaism like this,’ and others say, ‘Ours does it like that. Ours is different,’ and I want to say, ‘No. Tamid Echad / Always and forever one.’

This oneness goes through history and it goes through Klal Yisroel / all the God wrestlers with whom we feel we share. [It goes through our connection to other religions too,] and the commonality also extends beyond human beings: We share with the birds, we share with the mammals, [with] the chimpanzees (who [have been shown to be able to] learn how to speak to each other in American Sign Language and then pass it on to the next generation). And when I watch the geese and the little goslings down at the lake, they also connect me with the oneness of it all.”

- Reb Zalman schachter-shalomi, “Renewal is not Judaism-lite“, 1998

Rabbi Arthur Green, “Radical Judaism”:

“Being or Y-H-W-H underlies and unifies all that is. ... There is no ultimate duality here, no "God and world," no "God, World, and self," Only one Being and its many faces.

When I refer to ‘God,’ I mean the inner force of existence itself, that of which one might say: ‘Being is.’ I refer to it as the ‘One’ because it is the single unifying substratum of all that is. (18, 19).

“Being is One, and each person is God’s unique image” (153).

Psalm 23 (Free Translation)

You are my shepherd, I am content

You lead me to rest in the sweet grasses - To lie down by the quiet waters

And I am refreshed - You lead me down the right path - The path that unwinds in the pattern of your name

And even if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death - I will not fear - For you are with me

Comforting me with your rod and your staff - Showing me each step

You prepare a table for me - In the midst of my adversity

And moisten my head with oil - Surely my cup is overflowing

And goodness and kindness will follow me - All the days of my life - And in the long days beyond

I will always live in your house.

Norman Fischer, Opening to You: Zen-Inspired translations of the Psalm

Noor Hindi

Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying

Colonizers write about flowers.
I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks
seconds before becoming daisies.
I want to be like those poets who care about the moon.
Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons.
It’s so beautiful, the moon.
They’re so beautiful, the flowers.
I pick flowers for my dead father when I’m sad.
He watches Al Jazeera all day.
I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan.
I know I’m American because when I walk into a room something dies.
Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound.
When I die, I promise to haunt you forever.
One day, I’ll write about the flowers like we own them.

“Kindness”
by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.