Do you have a family tree? Is your family like mine, with that one relative who's REALLY into genealogy, who loves to figure out which famous people you're related to? What is our fascination with family trees anyway? With plotting ourselves on a big map of extended, distant, often-deceased relatives? I'm sure there are lots of possible explanations, but this week I would like to suggest that it has to do with context. We like realizing that each one of us has a place on a historic timeline, with a great ancestry laid out behind us, and endless possibilities unfolding before us. Right now, we are beginning the Exodus anew. Our Torah portion is the start of the Book of
Exodus, and we are once again introduced to Moses, Pharaoh, those kvetchy Israelites, and the wonders that occurred in the land of Egypt. Every year at the Passover Seder table, we tell ourselves that each Jew is obligated to view him or herself as if s/he was actually redeemed from Egypt. But most of us (thank God) have no idea what it means to be a slave. Most of us have never experienced Divine plagues, and most of us probably have never even been to Egypt! So how do we identify with the ancient Israelites? By seeing our lives in a context, and by realizing that we are links in a chain extending back to the stories we're reading about this week in the Bible.
Everyday life, however, isn't lived with a sense of context, with historical perspective. It generally involves things like taking kids to school, buying sushi for lunch (mmm, sushi...), and DVR-ing your favorite show to watch at some later date. Life is filled with mundane activities, and rarely do we reflect on our family trees or our connection to Biblical slaves. Yet if we could find some time - once a day, once a week, or even once a month or year - to live with perspective, it would truly elevate all of our experiences. The central message of Jewish history is: Be kind to the stranger, the oppressed, and the underdog; because you yourselves were slaves in Egypt. And every, single Jewish educator since Moses has been trying to teach us to internalize that message. Life is about being good to others, and the Jewish proof of that statement is the Exodus.
In the American Jewish World Service's weekly Torah commentary, Rachel Travis wrote this
week, "We learn from the Exodus story that freedom is not an end in and of itself but a gift that must lead to action." Freedom is indeed a gift. But I would also add that the Exodus story is itself a gift to us. It reminds us that there is more to life than our everyday experiences; that we are part of a greater context. The real question is, if you could incorporate these ideas, this family tree, into your everyday life, what would that look like? Something to think about, as we enter the season of New Year's resolutions...Shabbat Shalom!
Photos in this blog post:
1. CC image courtesy of Thomas Duchnicki on Flickr
2. CC image courtesy of joshuapaquin on Flickr
4. CC image courtesy of danagraves on Flickr
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