If you have been paying any attention to politics over the past few weeks, you know that they have been heated. All sorts of nasty names have been thrown around. Political interactions have been pretty heated for some time. Political advocates often demonize their opponents, wanting nothing to do with people like them, comparing them to the evils in their lives, or even some of the worst of history’s evils.
This attitude is far from a modern development. It has been found in every generation. For much of the past two thousand years, the Jewish people were often a primary target of such demonization. Some of the worst offenders in history compared the Jews to rats or to a plague.
And that’s where we are in the Torah this week, after a pharaoh arose, “who knew not Joseph.” Pharaoh told his advisors:
Behold, the Israelites have become many and great, as opposed to us. Let us deal wisely with them so that they may not increase, otherwise in the event of war, they might join our enemies, fighting against us, rising up from the ground.
Those last few words in particular caught my attention, “rising up from the ground,” “v’alah min Haaretz,” in the Hebrew. What rises up from the ground? What would Egyptians have thought of when they heard that phrase in reference to something that they didn’t want to see rising up from the ground? The first thing that occurred to me was likely what was intended, locusts.
The term for locust in Hebrew is Ravah. It is based on the root – Reish-Vav, which has to do with many. Using that Hebrew connection, in the context of worry about something multiplying and attacking, rising up from the ground, a slightly different translation would be more appropriate:
Behold, the Israelites have become an enormous swarm, apart from us. Let us deal wisely with them so that they do not multiply. Otherwise, in the event of a war, they might be added to our enemies, fighting against us, rising up from the ground.
That is a statement that might have been said by numerous rulers throughout history about their enemies or at least about people who are different, whose numbers are growing over and against their own.
In fact, it is regularly used, even today. Talk of “swarming” is all too normative for people who oppose immigration or are concerned specifically about America’s southern border or about refugees coming to Europe. That is how they often describe refugees and migrants. Seeing that term in the words of Pharaoh about the Israelites, who themselves were migrants, escaping famine, resonated with me.
It wasn’t just a matter of Pharaoh worried about a people who might politically cause problems, it was a matter of Pharaoh seeing the Israelites as a dangerous other, a swarm rising up from the ground.
Whenever we want to rally opposition against someone, an individual or a group, it often begins with showing how they are “other,” that they don’t really belong in the primary group, and then, if that isn’t working or isn’t working fast enough, portraying that person or people as evil or even inhuman. If you consider the worst persecutions in history, the greatest oppressions, from genocidal wars to slavery, from religious persecution to forced marches, all of them have included some form of degradation and some level of demonization, used by those in power to justify the mistreatment they desire to do.
In politics today, it is normal to paint political opponents, not just as having a difference of opinion, but as motivated by evil intent. Some years ago, it occurred to me that political opponent shaming in America almost always resembles Antisemitism, even when the target isn’t Jewish. Antisemitism seems to be the paradigm for rallying opposition against anyone. Consider this:
The worst political opponents are called Nazis, people who hate children, racists, communists or socialists who would destroy businesses or greedy capitalists who hate and oppress workers, people who are called “Un-Christian,” had their group or national loyalty questioned, depicted as war mongers, or depicted as having their purity corrupted, perfidious, and manipulative, perhaps portrayed as someone who doesn’t care about the very lives of children, someone who is immoral, and maybe even called something “other,” such as a member of the all evil opposing party or hated group. This is so normal in our political dialogue that we hardly even pay attention to it.
But you get the idea. That list is the same list that was used against Jews in the 20th Century by both the Nazis and the Soviet Union, though not all the same terms were used by each, of course.
Have we seen those terms being applied to non-Jewish members of the US Congress? To Presidents or Presidential candidates? It wouldn’t take you more than a moment to find such criticism, from the left against the right or right against the left, from within the Democratic party in criticism of those who refuse to vote with the rest of the party or when the Republicans have control, in criticism of their own too. In primary campaigns? Just… yikes! Difference of opinion these days is tantamount to waving an enemy flag.
Something that is increasingly concerning to me is that whenever any of these charges are made against any political opponent, there is the possibility that someone will remember the Antisemitism to which they’ve been exposed and connect the current criticism to Jews, thus increasing Antisemitism. For example, is there any question that when someone hears that a politician supports Wall Street and Banks? Or supports New York Liberal ideas? That people might think of the criticism, the traditional Antisemitism, that they have heard in relation to Jews?
We are, of course, particularly sensitive to all of this at this time of year, and especially tonight, when we feel our difference from those around us. It is Chinese and a Movie Night! The night when Jews are commanded by Tradition to indulge in salty foods, reminding us of the parting of the sea, using chopsticks that remind us of Aaron and Moses’ staves, which like us they seem to have dropped all the time, all the while eating eggrolls reminiscent of Moses in the basket, but better represented still by wonton soup! The tubs of popcorn at theaters to which we journey, now roughly the size of the great Pyramids, remind us of the abundance of sand across which we journeyed in the wilderness!
As an aside, that sort of Drash on foods and actions is exactly how Jews have retold stories and put meaning behind new traditions, generation after generation. It’s very similar to how the rabbis created Jewish meaning behind the actions of a Roman Symposium Meal with its story telling, courses of foods, and four cups of wine, turning it into our Passover Seder.
Among the movies that we might see this weekend is a fantastic Spiderman Movie, No Way Home. I saw it last week. If you’re a diehard fan of the MCU, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you probably have already seen it. If not, it’s worth seeing and some of us probably will see it again.
Spiderman is one of those characters that is based on a public and private persona, like Superman. The private or hidden side is one for which if people knew the truth, it would cause problems. People would be afraid or act differently towards them. The public persona enables them to lead a normal life, or at least a life devoid of attention paid to their difference.
For generations, that was Jewish life. Also, I should mention, that was life for homosexuals too. If people knew… Well, depending on where you were and when, there could be problems. Your whole life, your whole world could come crashing down. To bring everything together could create problems.
I won’t tell you anything about the Spiderman movie, except that this is how it begins, with that barrier between public and private shattered. On the other hand, this week in our Torah portion, that very thing happens to Moses as well.
Moses’ true identity was
hidden, until he was forced to make a decision between his public life and his
private persona, the moment he defended a slave and attacked the overseer. He
was suddenly a public Israelite. At that point, he had no choice but to flee.
If you think about it, Moses later actually proves Pharaoh’s prophecy correct, right down to locusts rising up from the ground and covering the land.
Notably, what the story of the Exodus reminds us, and the story of Moses and the overseer in particular, is both that we cannot easily hide who we really are and that when we act like who we really are, we can be like Moses, or Superman, or Spiderman and use our difference, our unique set of skills and understanding, to overcome oppression and evil.
Sometimes, it benefits us to keep the different aspects of our lives separate, perhaps even hidden. We may see ourselves having dual identities, perhaps ones in conflict. Healing may only come with wholeness, the point when we allow what we have hidden to become part of who we are in public.
If you’re a fan of Marvel movies, there is another character who has a profound dual identity, the Hulk, a different times an unassuming calm headed scientist or a raging difficult to control monster, who is immediately recognizable. In a later movie, this duality is resolved by having the two parts exist together, the calm scientist keeping control of the mind as the monster form remains. The character then ceases to have conflicting identities and is happy.
For many Jews, finding this happy medium is difficult in America. They’re always worried about how others will view them. No few Jews have made Aliyah to Israel to alleviate the conflict, the allow themselves to feel comfortable as a public Jew.
It occurred to me, as I considered this, that when God speaks to Moses from the Burning Bush, Moses asks God:
When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?” What shall I say to them?” and God responds, “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh,” “I am what I am,” or perhaps, “I will be what I will be.”
That God, who was known by many names and identities in ancient times, was telling Moses, “I am who I am. I have one identity.” And Moses himself would realize, “I am who I am as well. I have one identity too. I am a Child of Israel.”
It is, I think, only at that moment that Moses ceases to be afraid to be in public, what he had long been only in private, an Israelite.
Shabbat Shalom
