Hear Our Voice

And God remembered his people, and God heard their cries of suffering.

It had been 400 years since God’s children had been enslaved under the rule of Egypt.

And a shepherd tending to his flock, approached an odd sight - a bush that was aflame. Not the strangest site he’d seen that day, but drawn to it he was, nonetheless. It burned seemingly of its own accord but maintained its structure. This shepherd thought to himself, I must turn and look much closer to see if I can discern the power of this moment. It seems to be burning, but it is not consumed. Just as he turned, God called out to Moshe. And Moshe responded, Hineni, here I am in body and soul and spirit.

“YOUR PEOPLE ARE ENSLAVED AND THEY MUST BE FREE” (My people?) I WILL SEND YOU TO FREE THEM. AS I PROMISED (Who’d you promise?), THEY SHALL BE A GREAT NATION IN THE LAND OF CANAAN, IN THE LAND THAT I WILL SHOW YOU. 

And through God’s symbols and portents, Israel left Egypt and headed into the Sinai Desert, embarking upon what would be a 40-year fulfillment of the original “grand replacement theory” –> those who were born into slavery would need to die, so their children and grandchildren born into freedom, could lead.

The sea parted… “And the women dancing with their Timbers followed Miriam as she sang her song. Sing a song to the one who we’ve exalted. Miriam and the women danced and danced the whole night long.”

And as we organized and unwittingly set forth on their long sojourn, not so much as a few days of our new freedom had passed, before, out of nowhere, with no warning or provocation, Amalek attacked Israel acharaychem, from behind. Amalek attacked the weak and infirm, those who had fallen behind, the simplest of targets, and so the Israelites too were weak. Acharaychem from the Hebrew word for responsibility. And this was a lesson learned quickly even as we knew there would be more enemies to come. Don’t let the weakest fall behind – its inhumane to them and bad policy for the people as a whole.

We did indeed eventually enter the land of Canaan after 40 years, invaders and occupiers like so many others throughout the world, and we made our home in this place to be led by judges, and prophets, and kings. Losing land and regaining land, suffering catastrophic destruction in the north, and then eventually in the south, taken into exile into Babylonia, a place so far away from Jerusalem, where indeed the synagogue was born. We returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt our Temple, which lasted another 500 years, but in 70 CE, we lost our home for the last time, and in 132 CE, we lost our hope that we would ever truly return.

We were dispersed to every corner of the world, finding ourselves in Spain and Portugal, throughout northern Africa, well north into eastern Europe as far as Siberia, into the south as far as India and South Africa, some even made it to Australia. Wherever we went, we were appreciated for so much, until we weren’t. With diamonds sown into our coat liners, and cash in multiple denominations hidden away for the moment we would have to leave again, our portable identity was crucially honed for the next boot to drop. Wherever we lived, we became expert at being on the move, for it was the only way we could survive. Our denial of the truth of their theologies got us into so much trouble (not that we promoted it, but our surviving and thriving just seemed to perturb them to no end). Wherever we went, another disputation. 1000 pogroms led us and the world to the most grotesque one of all – their Final Solution. A solution that would never even have occurred to them without all those that came before it. For Hitler was the most unoriginal thinker in 1000 years. What he lacked in originality, he made up for in scaling management. And we know how that turned out, 10% of Polish Jews survive. Line up ten bubbes (Jewish grandmas), leave only one standing. That’s what Hitler did.

And so we tempest-tossed, bereft humans, were always forced to go “someplace else” (the world to come or the country next door if we were lucky). From 1880-1920, we poured into the United States. Until Ellis Island and Galveston Island and London and Paris and Sydney (the list goes on) were closed and we were stuck in cauldrons of fire. When it finally subsided, with one out of three of we European Jews still standing, we waited another couple of years as displaced people. “Displaced” didn’t really properly describe it but so be it. We would have been happy to have been “ethnically cleansed” from our DP camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy, which months earlier had been much different kinds of “holding pens.” At least our caretakers were much nicer, and they fed us hotdogs. But even knowing the horrors we had faced, seeing the photos taken by our liberators, there were no Allied countries willing to take us in…except one – this brand new, officially recognized, already on the defense, Jewish state of Israel. So that’s where we went.