Be an Upstander

That great 19th Century African American educator Booker T. Washington exemplified the power of a simple and modest spirit. A story is told of a day when Washington, then a professor at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, happened to pass the mansion of a wealthy woman as he walked to work.
The woman did not recognize him and called out, “Hey you! Come here! I need some wood chopped!” She was a product of her southern post-Civil War culture and simply perceived him as a black man who was there to do her bidding.

Without a word, Dr. Washington peeled off his jacket, picked up the ax and went to work. He not only cut a large pile of wood, he also carried the firewood into the house and arranged it neatly by the fireplace.

He had scarcely left when a servant said to the woman, “I guess you didn’t recognize him, ma’am, but that was Professor Washington!”

Embarrassed and ashamed, the woman hurried over to Tuskegee Institute to apologize. The great educator respectfully replied: “There’s no need to apologize, madam. I’m delighted to do favors for my friends.”   [As told by Steve Goodier < http://www.lifesupportsystem.com/>]

Such was the grace and humility of this great African-American leader of the late 19^th and early 20^th century. Booker T. Washington was born a slave in 1856 in Virginia and grew to be an educator and author, a spokesperson for his people and an advisor to Presidents. This week we begin the story of another man who was born into slavery and became a great leader of his people. Like Booker T. Washington, this man was also famed for his simple and modest spirit. We read of the birth of Moses, who the Torah calls, “the most humble of any man on earth.” We see him in conflict with the Egyptian Pharaoh, who is characterized by humility’s opposite, pride and arrogance. Pharaoh is the very picture of a confident and self-assured monarch. He knows that he has been born to rule and groomed to govern his great nation. He has definite ideas as to where he is leading his country. Even when his advisers counsel that he should soften his policy toward his Jewish slaves, that Egypt is about to be lost, he rejects their entreaties and stubbornly sticks to his own way.

Whereas Pharaoh is born into a hereditary monarchy, Moses’ origins are kept purposefully vague. “A certain man from the house of Levi went and married a woman from the house of Levi,” says the Torah in identifying Moses’ parents. By keeping the identity of his parents anonymous, the Torah is telling us that Moses’ greatness is not inherited through any illustrious lineage. Moses was not born to lead – his right to lead was earned through his character. We know two things about Moses’ character. The first, as I have already said, was that he was the most humble of men. He did not want to be the leader of the Jewish people. He protested to G-d that he had a flaw that would doom his leadership – he had a stutter and could not speak. But G-d responds, “You don’t have to be perfect to be a leader. We are all flawed. It is only when we do not recognize that fact that we are flawed are we not fit to lead.”

The second thing that we know about Moses was that he was an “upstander”. Have you ever heard that word? When I looked it up in Miriam Webster's online dictionary, I was informed that an "upstander" is "one of the handlebars on an Eskimo sledge." Another definition of the word is being championed for inclusion in the Oxford and Webster dictionaries by two young women now in their twenties, Monica Mahal and Sara Decker.  As they tell it, “During bullying prevention movements in our high school, the term “upstander” was used on a casual basis. While we were typing up a speech, huddled in a coffee shop on a cold winter day, the word “upstander” continued to appear on the screen with the distinct red squiggly line beneath it. The message was clear: there is an error.

“We both double checked our spelling, still to no avail of eliminating the spell check notification. At that moment we realized that this groundbreaking term, one that has inspired our own local community to eschew intolerance, is technically not an official English word. Since then, we have been determined to give upstander its deserved spot in the dictionary.” As they define it, “An upstander is an individual who sees wrong and acts. A person who takes a stand against an act of injustice or intolerance is not a “positive bystander” --  they are an UPstander.”

That is a perfect word to describe Moses. The first time we meet Moses as an adult he witnesses an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave. He immediately intervenes, and accidently kills the Egyptian. The next day, the Torah tells us, he intervenes in a conflict between two Hebrews. This guy can’t seem to mind his own business – he is incapable of turning away when he sees what we call today “bullying behavior”. The aggressor turns to Moses and says, “Do you mean to kill me like you killed the Egyptian?” Moses, realizing the matter is known, flees to Midian. No sooner does he arrive than he encounters the daughters of Jethro, a priest of Midian at a well watering their flocks. Shepherds drive them off, and once again, Moses steps in to defend the weak. He simply cannot turn away in the face of injustice.

The next thing we know, Moses is being called by G-d at the burning bush. That is Moses – a humble upstander with no “yichus” as we say, no pedigree, no family history that can give him bragging rights. And he is exactly who G-d needs.

Shabbat Shalom

Blessing Our Children

Last year Rabbi Joseph Ozerowski from the Jewish Healing Network gave a three-part seminar to our Congregation, on “Bikur Cholim”, the mitzvah of visiting the sick. The seminar was designed to increase our awareness of this mitzvah and study some of the classical Jewish texts on the subject. We also hoped that Rabbi Ozerowski would teach us some skills and give us some tools to use when we visited people who were ill. We talked about making the first contact and dealing with rejection. We practiced empathic listening, we discussed confidentiality, and we role played difficult situations.  One of Rabbi’s suggestions was that we consider offering the people we were visiting a blessing upon our departure. This raised a good deal of anxiety in the participants as well as some outright resistance to the idea.  I suspect one reason for their hesitance might have been that members felt that they would not be able to formulate a proper blessing. Or perhaps they were worried that a genuine Jewish blessing has to be in Hebrew; or perhaps they did not feel worthy or holy enough to bless another person. Some believed that only G-d had the authority to bless a person. Rabbi Ozerowski assured us that one did not have to be G-d, or even a rabbi, to give a blessing to another person -- but frankly many of the attendees remained skeptical.

In a sermon on this very topic, Rabbi Mark Kunin cites Rabbi Shmuel Goldin who notes that the power for one person to bless another is in fact a G-d-given gift. When G-d commands Abraham to leave his homeland, G-d tells Abraham, “And you shall be a blessing.”  The Rabbis interpret this phrase to mean that human beings now have the authority to bestow blessings. Until Abraham’s time, blessings were G-d’s to give. G-d blessed Adam and Noah. From this time on G-d grants human beings the power to bless.

That power to bless is illustrated by the story of Rabbi Ishmael ben Elisha, who was one of the last High Priests of the Temple. He lived in the first century CE. One Yom Kippur, he says, he entered the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of the Temple, where the priest is permitted but this one day a year.

As Rabbi Ishmael recounts: “There I saw God sitting on a high and lofty throne.   “Ishmael, my son, give me your blessing,” said G-d. Rabbi Ishmael said:  “May it be Your will that Your mercy overcome your anger; that Your compassion overcome Your stern attributes; that You behave toward Your children mercifully, and that for their sake You go beyond the boundaries of strict justice”.  G-d responded by nodding his head in assent.

The Talmud concludes this story with a moral lesson -- one should never treat the blessing of a common person as though it were trivial. Human blessings can be powerful, no matter whom they are from or to whom they are given.

If we should never treat the blessing of a common person as trivial, how much more so should we cherish the blessing of a righteous person? In this week’s parasha, which closes the Book of Genesis, Jacob is about to die. He summons his son Joseph to his deathbed. Joseph brings his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. Jacob asks his grandsons to draw near so that he can bless them. He blesses them with the following words, “By you shall Israel invoke blessings, saying, “May G-d make you like Ephraim and Manasseh.”

To this day it is a Jewish custom to bless our sons before eating the Sabbath meal with those very words, “May G-d make you like Ephraim and Manasseh”. Although Joseph did not bring his daughters – if he had any, the Bible does not say -- to see their grandfather, we bless our daughters at the Shabbat table with the following words, “May G-d make you like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.”

We can well understand why we would want G-d to make our daughters like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah. The matriarchs are strong, resourceful women who are worthy of emulation. But why would we want G-d to make our sons like Ephraim and Manasseh?

Several suggestions have been made. Consider the other brothers in the Torah. Cain and Abel vie for G-d’s favor, which ended in history’s first murder. Sarah insisted that Ishmael be sent away because she did not approve of how he is behaving with her son Isaac. Jacob tricks Esau into giving him the birthright, steals his blessing, and fleas from home because his brother Esau threatened to kill him. Joseph is hated by his brothers and sold into slavery. Ephraim and Manasseh? – they are the first brothers to get along! Therefore, goes the thinking, we bless our sons with the hope that, like Ephraim and Manasseh, they too will relate to one another without envy, jealousy or hatred.

Another suggestion – Ephraim and Manasseh are the first Jewish children to be born in the Diaspora. Yet they remain spiritually connected to their family and continue the traditions of their ancestors. The message is, “Where ever you are born, where ever your life may take you, may you remain close to your family and your people Israel.”

Rabbi Richard Levy suggests a third possibility. Unlike their father Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh were not particularly gifted or accomplished. They possessed no extraordinary talents. They were given the blessing only because they were Jacob’s grandchildren. In blessing our sons in the name of Ephraim and Manasseh, we are communicating to them that we love them for who they are -- just because they are our children. Our love is not dependent on their accomplishments, or on how much nachas they can give us.

Because of society’s prejudices toward girls, who might be inclined to suppress their ambitions and not set their sights very high, we bless them in the name of our matriarchs. We are therefore saying to them, “May G-d make you like the greatest women in the Torah. Don’t hold yourself back from fully developing your talents, just because society may not expect as much from girls.”

Of course, we want both our daughters and sons to fully develop their potential, and we want both our daughters and sons to know that they are loved for who they are, not what they can accomplish. They don’t need to be like Ephraim and Manasseh, or like Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel or Leah. They only need to be themselves and to chart their own paths through life. In an essay in The Women’s Bible Commentary, Rabbi Laura Geller suggests we bless our children with the words of the contemporary Jewish poet, Macia Falk: “Be who you are….and may you be blessed in all that you are.”

Shabbat Shalom