Question 11: Must we choose violence?

Two Notes:

1) There’s been a lot of important attention paid to Substack’s Nazi problem since my last writing some months ago. I may find myself leaving this platform in coming weeks, but I haven’t yet had time to investigate good alternatives. Bear with me.

2) Part of why I haven’t done much writing for this in the last few months is because I’ve had the opportunity to publish in other publications, particularly Hey Alma. I look forward to having more occasion to write for my Substack (or wherever I relocate it) this year.

This morning, as an alternative Haftarah for MLK weekend at West End Synagogue, we read the following passage from one of Dr. King’s many powerful speeches, delivered on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in NYC. What follows is a very lightly edited version of my sermon.

Selections from “Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence”

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing -- embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate -- ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate….

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history….

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when "justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

Every year we read the same stories, but every year we come to them differently. There are parts of the Torah I’ve only come to know as an adult, but the Exodus narrative is a story I’ve had in my head since before I can remember. 

When I was a child, my questions about the Exodus narrative were a child’s questions. Why wouldn’t Pharaoh just do what God wanted? Why wouldn’t he be nice? 

As I grew up, my questions grew with me. Why would God send plagues when surely if God was all powerful God could just pluck the Israelites out of Egypt and set them down in the promised land? Why did God harden Pharaoh's heart over and over?

At the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, confronted with a lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus, my questions began to reflect the idea that our ancestors chose to preserve this story as a central arc of our people. Why would we want a God who would harden Pharaoh’s heart? And why would we want a history of enslavement to begin with? 

This year, I have more questions— questions for our time, for this agonizing moment for Israelis and Palestinians, for this terrible moment in the American Jewish community. Did the Egyptians approve of Pharaoh’s actions? How can a people respond to crisis in a justice-driven way when their leaders care only for power? 

As I read the story of the plagues this week, I found myself drawn to passages that invited us into the mind not of Aaron or Moses or Pharaoh or God but rather the average Egyptian.

After the first plague, when the water of the Nile is turned to blood, there’s a single verse, Exodus 7:24,  that tells us how the Egyptian people responded:

“And all the Egyptians had to dig round about the Nile for drinking water, because they could not drink the water of the Nile.”

Of course, we can assume that Pharaoh did not have to do his own digging, that his servants likely had to bring him the water they dug up before they could have any for themselves and their families. Every Egyptian was impacted, but those with less had it much worse.

After the second plague, God doesn’t just remove the frogs from Egypt. Rather, the frogs die where they sit, and in Exodus 8 verse 10 “they piled them up in heaps, till the land stank.” Who piled them up? Again, surely not Pharaoh. And while the land stank by the banks of the Nile Pharaoh was probably up in his palace able to maintain distance from it all.

We hear little directly from the Egyptians for the next few plagues, although they must suffer the greatest impact. While Pharaoh had his servants keep him as comfortable and healthy as possible, the average Egyptian couldn’t say the same. 

Then comes the plague of hail. God warns Pharaoh and tells him exactly what to do, saying in Exodus 9:19: “order your livestock and everything you have in the open brought under shelter; every man and beast that is found outside, not having been brought indoors, shall perish when the hail comes down upon them!’” Some Egyptian nobles bring in their livestock and slaves. Others don’t, and while the aristocracy survives, the poor die. Again, those with the least had the most to lose. 

I can’t help but think about our world and, within our world, Israel and Gaza. 

I probably don’t need to spell this particular allegorical application out, but just to bring you directly into my thinking: The hostages and Israeli civilians are the Hebrews. Hamas is Pharaoh. The Gazans are the Egyptians. The IDF soldiers are Moses and Aaron. And the Israeli government is God. 

The hostages and Israeli civilians beg for release. The Hebrews cry out for deliverance from bondage for themselves and their families. They grieve their losses. They witness the plagues descending with utter terror for their own well-being and that of their loved ones. 

Hamas acts only to preserve its own power. Pharaoh waves away the well-being of everyone but himself, not caring about any collateral damage, and negotiates faint heartedly before too often doubling down on cruelty.

The Gazans are dying under the weight of the IDF’s bombardments. The Egyptians bear the brunt of the plagues, suffering far more than their leader ever could. They have no decision making power and become casualties of their leader’s callousness. 

The IDF soldiers follow orders at great risk to their own lives. Moses and Aaron do as God tells them, battling again and again without shifting the status quo as all around them life for civilians grows bleaker. 

The Israeli government continues to order attacks on a largely civilian population. And God sends plague after plague to a hardened heart as thirst and disease and hunger and fire from the skies bring everyday life to a horrifying standstill. 

This year, when I read the story of the plagues, I weep with worry for our people, and the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King are profoundly resonant. Dr. King spoke in 1967, when the Vietnam War was a divisive issue, with about 50% of Americans in support and the other half favoring withdrawal. It was a risk for him to take the stand that he took, to speak for peace when many feared that an American withdrawal from Vietnam would lead to a domino effect of communism. 

When we speak about Dr. King now, we often gloss over the controversial figure he was in life in favor of the revered figure he’s become in death. But in his life, MLK was not universally beloved. Indeed, according to Stanford’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, both the NYT and the Washington Post “published editorials criticizing the speech [we just read], with the Post noting that King’s speech had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, to his country, and to his people” through a simplistic and flawed view of the situation.” 

But even if much of the American public was not ready to hear it, Dr. King was correct in saying: “We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation.” He was correct in proclaiming “Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing -- embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.” He was correct— prophetic, even— in reminding us that:  “The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history….And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.”

It is nearly always those with the least who bear the greatest cost when those who grasp for power with both hands are afraid to lose it. Enslaved Hebrews and Egyptian peasants in the Exodus. European and North African Jews in the Holocaust. American draftees and villagers in Vietnam. Israeli hostages and Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The story has repeated a thousand times and there have been a thousand cosmic elegies along the way. Cosmic elegies written by those who survive and have a harder and harder time turning away from hate themselves. Those who can’t understand a world with safety for more than one people because they’ve never been safe.

When I was a child faced with the story of the Exodus, I asked why the Israelites were slaves. Now I ask why they could only be freed through such violence. 

There will always be pharaohs. There will always be voices in power who claim to be keeping their people safe when all they are doing is protecting themselves. But there will also always be voices that believe all people can be safe. I think of the non-Jews in the Exodus story who helped us along the way. This week I remember the midwives who refused to kill the Hebrew boys. I remember Batya, Pharaoh's daughter who fished a Hebrew baby from the Nile and offered him safety. I remember Yitro, who saw an Egyptian-looking man and welcomed him into his family. And I remember the mixed multitude who will go up from Egypt with the Israelites. 

It doesn’t have to be us or them, and I draw inspiration from the voices in our text who remind us of that. I also draw inspiration from today’s writers of tomorrow’s history. I draw inspiration from Omdim B’yachad— Standing Together— an Israeli-Palestinian organization that is doing the risky, crucial work of advocating for peace when so many are calling for blood. I draw inspiration from Yad b’Yad, Hand in Hand, a school system that educates Jewish and Arab Israeli children side by side in Hebrew and Arabic. Last week, I joined a webinar with staff from both of these organizations hosted by Reconstructing Judaism, and I found hope in their fierce commitment to cooperation and their calls for peace in this time when so many leaders on both sides of the war are insisting upon continued bloodshed. 

Standing Together operates from a practical understanding of the matzav, the situation— that there are millions of Israelis and millions of Palestinians who call the Holy Land home, that no one is going to go anywhere, and that the only way to security for Jews is security for Arabs and vice versa. 

Their theory of change states: “The path towards change requires a new majority – a broad coalition of diverse communities – Jewish and Arab; Mizrachi and Ashkenazi; Women, Men, and all other genders; secular and religious; rural and urban. To build this coalition, we will identify alternative solutions that serve the majority, correct strategic failures that impede mass political mobilization, and cultivate solidarity between diverse groups.” 

This is where I place my hope. Not in victory but in worldwide fellowship. Not in retaliation but in the creative psalm of peace.

How might the Exodus have gone differently if the Hebrews and the Egyptians had united against the violence of Pharaoh and God and sought another way? If they had said “we will repent together, mourn together, love together, find a way to live together?” We’ll never know. But there is still hope for our own time. 

So in the words of Dr. King, “Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world.”