I Passed Over; Now You Push Forward

Rabbi Stephen F. Moch

April 13, 2008

The focus of Jewish life at this season all points to Passover, or Pesah, as it is called in Hebrew. The name comes from the Hebrew verb, pasah, meaning "passed over". The significance of this idea of "passing over" comes from the Book of Exodus, which recounts how the Israelites were instructed to put the blood of sheep on the lintels of their doors in Egypt. Then the Angel of Death would know to pass over those homes on the mission of taking the life of every first born son in Egypt, the last of the ten plagues.

Those must have been terrifying times and the times went from bad to worse and then to even worse. They lived in the dejection and oppression of slavery, then were expected to perform their task of making bricks with out the needed materials, then their a decree to kill their male children, then this crazy man Moses, challenging the power of Pharaoh and leading them off into the wilderness where they would surely perish, and finally being caught at the shore of the sea, with Pharaoh's forces bearing down on them and no escape.

We too live in frightening and difficult times. We Americans face a continuing war in Iraq. We have had to contend with a rapid increase in the price of food and fuel, a health care system that has grown unaffordable for millions of Americans, that number growing constantly, and coupled with those challenges we have begun to experience the onslaught of a recession that will soon affect all of us here and people all over the globe.

As a rabbi, I see the depth of this crisis very clearly. I talk to congregants and friends who struggle with job loss, declining business, the need to put employees on reduced work weeks in the hope they will not have to fire them, and ultimately hoping they will not loose the business they struggled to build. I do not know what is happening in your neighborhood, but on my street, only two blocks long, seventeen neighbors are loosing their homes to foreclosure. These bad economic times have generated other more personal crises: Relationships of some have broken up over money issues, for others the times have tipped the scales toward a terrifying onslaught of deep, disabling depression. I know people who literally do not know how they will endure a single day more of a life they cannot face, beset by difficulties they cannot bear and see no way around.

How do we respond to the crises that overtake us in life? They invariably do – if not now in this time of economic downturn, then at some other time, because of any number of trials that come our way?

The oncologist has just told you that you have terminal cancer. Your husband, who has been the center of your life, around whose life yours revolves, has told you he is leaving you. Your company just had to close its doors and you no longer have marketable skills, especially at a time when no one is hiring. You will loose your house. The stress has begun to threaten your marriage.

What choices do we have when it comes time to face dead ends in life and the feeling that we have nowhere to hide, no where to flee, no recourse, no last resort?

Religion has a great deal to say about such things. When I look at different faith traditions, I see them falling into two different types of faith as they seek to answer the question of what to do when we reach a dead end in life. First, we can identify the kind of faith that tell us we must "wait on the Lord" for help and salvation. Alternatively, we can point to the kind of faith that demands that we ourselves must act on our own behalf.

Today, I want to push the second kind of faith. The kind that says: "Pray as if everything depends on a Higher Power; but act as if everything depends on you."

Let me first say a few things about the first kind of faith that wants us to wait on the Lord's salvation, the kind of faith I do not believe in. I purposely used the traditional, masculine, power-from-above, authoritarian type word, "Lord," which I otherwise never use. This represents the kind of faith of the anti Zionist Hareidim, or ultra orthodox Jews, who oppose even the notion of the State of Israel, because it symbolizes Jews taking action to determine their divinely promised destiny, when they should wait on the salvation of the Lord to bring the long awaited and still missing messiah. This kind of relationship between us and God reminds me of the kind of relationship between parents and child that one distressed father came to speak to me about this week. The forty-one year old child has come to a dead end in his life and has stopped trying to help himself. Instead, he comes to Mom and Dad to support him each time he looses his job because he has no initiative, or fails to find one because he has given up. But he maintains the great hope that things will be OK as long as Mom and Dad step forward to foot his bills.

When I look at the Bible and rabbinic literature on which I base much of my faith, I see many hints that we must not rely on God to get us out of our messes – at least not solely on God, but rather that we be the one's to act on our own behalf and on behalf of others in need.

In the Passover story of Exodus, God sent the Angel of Death over Egypt. Did God not know where the Hebrews lived? Did God need the marker of blood on the lintel to recognize their homes, or did that represent the expectation that the Israelites had to take some action themselves on their own behalf to protect themselves on that frightening night?

When Moses ascended Mt. Sinai and received the tablets of the Ten Commandments, the Torah says that they were carved and etched by God's own finger. Moses marched down the mountain and promptly smashed those tablets in anger when he saw the Israelites dancing about the golden calf. Later, after Moses calmed God's anger, God renewed the covenant. This time, God instructed Moses to carve the tablets and God would then etch them with the sacred words. This second covenant, the one that would last, had to be a partnership. If Moses had carved the first tablets, he might not have been so quick to smash them.

The Jewish tradition teaches that people were not created to dwell in the perfect world God has created for us, rather God assigned us the task of being shutafim, or partners with God in an ongoing act of creation in a very imperfect world. When I look at a football field, I see two kinds of characters. I see cheerleaders and I see players. God placed us in this world NOT as God's cheerleaders, but to run the plays. God put us here to be doers, to make choices, and to determine our own destiny.

Sure, life often cuts us off at the pass. Yet as God passed over, we learn to push forward, headlong into our troubles and pass through every force that would deny us life, whether external forces like losing a business or internal forces like encountering depression.

The most telling Biblical account that addresses this subject comes in precisely the place during the Exodus, when the Israelites have no apparent options. They find themselves camped at the shore of an expansive sea of reeds with the Egyptian army inexorably bearing down on them, and no escape possible.

I have news for you. Things did not happen the way Orson Wells and Charlton Heston – who died this past week – portrayed them. No, Moses did not split the sea for the Israelites to walk through on dry ground. It did not happen that way at all, at least not according to the rabbis, who looked very closely at the biblical text. Let me quote Exodus 14:10-16.

"Pharaoh approached: The Israelites raised their eyes and behold, Egypt was journeying after them and they became very frightened and cried out to the Eternal One."

Let me point out here that in Hebrew the word for Egypt means narrow straits. "The 'narrow straits' was journeying after them." In other words, Mitzrayim, or Egypt, is a metaphor for, "troubles coming our way."

So what happened? I continue: "They – the people – said to Moses, 'Were there no graves in Egypt that you brought us out here to die in the desert?...It would be better for us to serve Egypt than that we should die in the wilderness.' Moses responded to the people, 'Do not fear! Stand firm and see the salvation of the Eternal One that He will perform for you today; for as you have seen Egypt today, you shall not see them ever again! The Eternal will do battle for you, now you be quiet!' "

Which kind of faith did Moses profess? What kind of faith did he want the people to have, the first kind or the second? He professed the first kind of faith, the kind that waits on the Lord to get us out of our messes.

Now here comes the important part that the rabbis noticed and want us to appreciate. It comes in God's response to Moses' expectation. "The Eternal said to Moses, 'Why do you cry out to Me? Speak to the Israelites that they journey onward! And you, lift up your staff and stretch out your arm over the sea..." - not, say the rabbis, to split the waters, but to point the way forward, when there remained nowhere to go.

The rabbis then construct some wonderful Midrash. They take in which they weave various verses to construct their view of the miracle that occurred. The start with a verse from Psalm 114, "When Israel when forth from Egypt, the house of Jacob from an alien people, Judah was His Sacred One." What does that mean, "Judah was His Sacred one?" Then they find a verse in Leviticus about, the ritual of each tribal head bringing a sacrifice. It says "He brought his sacrifice, Nahshon the son of Aminadav." In Hebrew the verb usually comes first, followed by the subject and then the object. So the sentenced read in a plain way means, "Nahshon the son of Aminadav brought his sacrifice." The rabbis, however say, no, read the Nahshon as the object not the subject. "He brough his sacrifice, and it was Nahshon the son of Aminadav." It was himself.

From this the rabbis surmise the rest of the story. This process of speculating from biblical hints what the rest of the story might have been, surmise that when Moses pointed forward toward the sea, and no one knew what to do, Nahshon, the chief of the tribe of Judah, jumped into the water and began walking forward, with his tribe following behind their chief. When the water reached his nostrils and he was at the point of drowning, but continued forward, despite the fact that there was no where to go, then and only then, the sea split, revealing the way forward to renewed life beyond.

I was fortunate to sing an amazing, life-changing piece of music with the Turtle Creek Chorale at Carnegie Hall in New York called "Sing for the Cure". The Susan B. Komen Foundation commissioned it to address what happens to the woman diagnosed with breast cancer. One glorious piece written for "Sing for the Cure" defiantly called for "Stepping out onto groundless ground." That means going forward when there is seemingly nowhere to go. That is what Nahson did and what so many brave people do, who decide they may be dying, but they are not dead and they are going to live large and loving lives for whatever time they have. We have the choice to give in or to push ahead.

I want to tell you about Jerry, who came to me some years ago on the internet. It is told by a narrator whose name I forgot or never knew. He tells us, "Jerry was the kind of guy you love to hate. He was always in a good mood and always had something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, 'If I were any better, I would be twins!' "

He was a unique manager because he had several waiters who had followed him around from restaurant to restaurant. The reason the waiters followed Jerry was because of his attitude. He was a natural motivator. If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was there, telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.

Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?" Jerry replied, "Each morning, I wake up and say to myself, 'Jerry, you have two choices today. You can choose to be in a good mood or you can choose to be in a bad mood.' I choose to be in a good mood."

"Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be a victim or I can choose to learn from it. I choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I choose the positive side of life."

"Yeah, right, it's not that easy," I protested.

"Yes it is," Jerry said. "Life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. The bottom line: It's your choice how you live life."

I reflected on what Jerry said. Soon thereafter, I left the restaurant industry to start my own business. We lost touch, but I often thought about him when I made a choice about life, instead of reacting to it.

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something you are never supposed to do in a restaurant business. He left the back door open one morning and was held up at gunpoint by three armed robbers.

While trying to open the safe, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found relatively quickly and rushed to the local trauma center.

After eighteen hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body. I saw Jerry about six months after the accident. When I asked him how he was, he replied, "If I were any better, I'd be twins. Wanna see my scars?"

I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place. "The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door," Jerry replied. "Then, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices. I could choose to live, or I could choose to die. I chose to live."

Jerry continued, "The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read, 'He's a dead man.' I knew I needed to take action."

"What did you do?" I asked.

"Well, there was a big, burly nurse shouting questions at me," said Jerry. "She asked if I was allergic to anything. 'Yes,' I replied."

"The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply...I took a deep breath and yelled, 'Bullets!' Over their laughter, I told them, 'I am choosing to live. Operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.' "

Jerry lived, thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day we have the choice to live fully. Attitude, after all, is everything. So "choose life that you may live."

You see, that same choice is available to each one of us. Who among us does not hurt somewhere? Who among us does not have to face painful problems and dead ends?

We can allow these pains and problems, despair and hopelessness to overwhelm us and drown us in darkness...or we can choose otherwise. We can look beyond our hurts and impossible hurdles and channel the energy we would expend in crying and complaining into figuring out how to lick our problem and grow from and beyond our pain.

God says to us, I will pass over and do my part; you have to push forward and do your part, even when it means stepping out onto groundless ground.

There is a legend of one of our sages, who was dispatched on a mission from the land of Israel to Rome. The night before he left, he had a dream in which he was a beggar dressed in rags, sitting before the gates of Rome, and a voice in his dream said, "This is the Messiah, dressed as a beggar." The Rabbi woke from his dream, but could not get the dream out of his mind. He kept thinking about it, and just as he approached the gates of Rome to discharge his mission there, he saw the very beggar of his dream, sitting in rags in the very spot his dream portrayed. The Rabbi approached the man and asked, "Excuse me, but is it true you are the Messiah?" The man nodded, "Yes." Then the rabbi asked, "What are you doing here at the gates of Rome?" The beggar answered, "Waiting!" "The Messiah waiting? In a world so full of pain and hopelessness and hatred and war, in such a world, in the name of God, why are you waiting?" The Messiah answered, "I have been waiting for you, so that I could ask you, 'In such a world, in the name of God, what have you been waiting for?' "

Let us each play our part, even when we have no idea about the rules of the game. When we have nowhere to go, let us be energized by a faith that engages us as players in our own destiny demands that we push forward. The choice remains ours alone.