Va'eira: Stuck In The Middle With All of Us

Right now, it feels like our lives are filled with vigils, marches, and memorial services. Before the new year, services were held across the 

country for Eric Garner and Michael Brown, emblazoned with the hashtag-rubric #BlackLivesMatter. In 2015, the new slogan is "Je Suis Charlie" or "Je Suis Juif," commemorating the lethal terrorist attacks on the satirical newspaper in Paris, Charlie Hebdo, and the subsequent attack on a Kosher grocery store which led to the deaths of four more people. Many people wonder, justifiably, where our world is heading. I find it particularly sad when I reflect on how many of the victims seem like innocent casualties of someone else's conflict. And when you read this week's Torah portion, you unfortunately discover that not much has changed.

We are right now squarely in the story of the Exodus, and we're witnessing the first set of plagues raining down on the Egyptians. Blood, frogs, lice, swarms of insects, 

pestilence; all of them are really weapons launched in a battle between two enemies. We sometimes get distracted by the specifics of these larger-than-life plagues, when perhaps we'd do well to refocus our conversation and instead talk about modern equivalents like suicide bombings, anthrax scares, and hostage takings... or drone strikes, racial profiling, and enhanced interrogations. Ultimately, what we're really talking about is a war between two sides, where the top officials make the decisions, send the troops, and issue the threats; but the people who get hurt are the ones stuck in the middle with no place to hide.

Earlier this week, I was reading a Torah commentary out of the Ziegler Rabbinical School in California, written by Janet Sternfield Davis, where she included the line: "This is a contest between God and Pharaoh. This suffering is in service to God's plan. Moses, Aaron, the Israelites, and the Egyptians are [all] caught in the crossfire." 

On one side, the Egyptian people are getting decimated because their idiot leader won't let go of his pride. On the other, the Israelites first get punished by Pharaoh, and then get dragged out into the wilderness, all in the name of God's glory (the Torah's language, not mine). Are modern conflicts really so different? The people who walk into a grocery store, work at a newspaper, or put on a hoodie, are they prepared to suffer the consequences of war? Are they aware of the risks they're assuming? Part of what we commemorate, what we lament, in our vigils is the loss of self-determination. We mourn the absence of safety and concern for human life, and we cry bitterly over the self-righteous, sanctimonious narcissism that allows certain people, fundamentalists on all sides, to punish innocent victims in THEIR war.

Rabbi Menachem Creditor writes beautiful, heart-breaking modern prayers in the face of tragedies that befall us. Last week, he composed yet another impactful piece, which states: "How can Your images, every human being, do such horrid things, hating each other, hurting each other, killing each other?" This is truly our question. How can people ignore the sacred in one another? 

How can they allow hate to consume them so fully as to only see evil in another? To spend so much of their time on this earth plotting destruction, terror, and fear? It mystifies us. Yet it is. It exists. And sadly, it has been a part of human history since God and Pharaoh battled it out thousands of years ago, and even earlier still. But we all have to teach ourselves to see those innocent victims in the middle. We have to recognize that most people, on every side of every issue, are not evil or violent. Hate will only breed more hate, and we've got enough of that already. The vigils and marches will persist, but each of us must work hard to resist the temptation to hate. Rabbi Creditor reminds us, pleads with us, to stand strong through our pain, and to never cease our blessings for that most essential blessing of all: Peace.

Amen.

Photos in this blog post:
1. CC image of courtesy of Quaerite on Wikimedia Commons
2. CC image courtesy of Thomas Good on Wikimedia Commons
3. CC image courtesy of Kosherb on Wikimedia Commons
4. CC image courtesy of Marctasman on Wikimedia Commons