The Road to Sinai

That's the title of this week's Torah portion in the Plaut Modern Commentary on the Torah. We are entering the moments of anticipation as we set out of Egypt, into the wilderness, unaware of that which lies in front of us, but moving towards faith. It is a story in our narrative that even those who study Torah little understand the themes and complexity of questions that such a story gives birth to. We were enslaved in the land of Egypt. We were slaves and now we are free. The sea parted and crushed our enemies. Redemption came to those who had faith. The enslaved shall be set free. Freedom is God's greatest gift.

But all are not free. And slavery is both relative and figurative. Governments enslave people. Emotions can enslave the heart. Schedules enslave one's sense of freedom in balancing wants with needs. And, the lottery by which we are born into one life instead of another has the ability to enslave us into the vantage points from which we view the world.

Slavery and redemption are themes that penetrate the Jewish narrative. On this weekend especially, we recall similar themes in American history as we remember Martin Luther King, Jr. Stories of wandering through Egypt. Working towards a promised land. Understanding that one must move forward on faith, with little to hold onto as certain for what might lie ahead.

I just returned from a two week trip to Ghana. In the Upper Volta region of Ghana we spent a week working with the local tribes in the community build a community center behind the church in Gbi Atabu (Guh-bee Atabu). Day in and out, I stood at the base of the cement pit each morning, unable to divorce myself from the reality that I was connecting with my history by mixing concrete and building bricks in a way that I have never experienced before. My entire life I have read stories about the Jews enslaved in Egypt, mixing mortar and turning them into bricks. It took a trip to West Africa to understand the physical challenge endured by any people who can not rely on modern technology to build the necessary infrastructure in the places that they live.

It's safe to say that I lived Torah this week in Ghana. On the same week that the Torah talks about the people setting out from Egypt; from bondage moving forward towards liberation, I am able to land in a community where life is a hand on effort to do just the same thing.

In a town with barely paved roads, about 6 hours north of Accra, the capital of Ghana, lies a community of people in which tribal culture and faith based life add a richness to existence where material goods are minimal. We arrived carrying more wealth on our backs than many of these people have in their mud/cement one-room homes. We also brought our westernized biases, unable to fully stomach the lack of basic necessities that we understand vital to life. A meeting with a Cuban doctor residing in the region for 2-years spoke to the reality that he sees 3 - 4 children a week die from Malaria, TB and other diseases. AIDS runs rapid through communities while certain mandates in American policy for AIDS relief limits those who can receive medical treatment. Policy and medical relief is not the place to give birth to value based biases that end up limiting medical treatment to those most likely to further the epidemic. A visit to a Liberian refugee camp reminds me that once people have been displaced from one home, after a certain amount of time what was to be a limited squatting turns into a new home. People become dependant on the camps. They fear going back to the place that was once home, now calling 151 square acres with 50,000 inhabitants the only home they can plant their feet in. There is an infatuation with the West that is unprecedented.

It's easy to anticipate landing in a region such as this under the assumption that it is I, or we this delegation of American rabbinic students, who has something to teach these people. These people of the developing world who have not had the privilege to be able to take advantage of the education and technology resources that I have so casually taken advantage of my entire life. But, it is only a short while before I realize that my role here is not to teach at all, but rather to learn. The faith and culture upon which this community builds its livelihood explains how a people can thrive amidst such great challenges to survival. There is a richness here that I have never experienced before.

Our first night in Gbi Atabu, we have a welcome ceremony with the elders. We are introduced to the queen of the community only to re-meet the following morning as she arrives at the work sight to be as involved in the process of building as all other members of the town. There is a respect for the elders, a love for the children, and an incredible sense of communal responsibility, and it excludes no one from participation. There is song. There is dance. There is faith in God and people that gives life to every hot and dusty moment we are there. We take Ghanaian tunes and apply them to our Jewish prayers. They smile without any inhibition at the chance to say "shalom" to the people of Israel. They love Israel. They love God. They are also the people of Moses.

And what about the work to be done that we did not need to be in Ghana to do? The work of learning and dialogue between future leaders of each American Jewish community that often seems unable to find any common ground? I take experiences such as the one I have just had and realize that we are foolish to think that people who seem so different than us are not actually very similar. In the same space that an Orthodox rabbinic student might have something to teach about Jewish law and obligation, I as a female rabbinic student in a progressive movement have an incredible amount of knowledge to offer to a movement that has yet to take on social justice as a primary concern.

We come together to talk, to study, to listen and to try and create spaces in which the goal is not for everyone to be comfortable, but for us all to be equally uncomfortable. We all had to concede some of our comfort zones in order to enable one space in which we could all make do. The result: friendships I can now not imagine living without. People with whom I can continue to study who practice in different ways than I do and organize their Judaism in different ways than me, but ultimately hope to help in making the world a better place. Each of us came to Ghana with a fire burning inside of us: a fire to see justice in our world; to help balance out the disparity between the incredible privilege we come from and to interact with people in a region of the world who do not even have drinkable water. Each of us came open to dialogue with peers who see things differently than we do, only to find out that in more ways we actually share many visions. I come home with a new appreciation for the things I have in my life, the incredible privilege that demands awesome responsibility. And, I come home with new friends, throughout this country, working to bring Torah alive and use it as a leverage to bring about social change in our world today.

Egypt can be anywhere, and the oppressed is not specific to any one group of people. We have stories of survival through injustice because of the faith and communities that people held onto. We read these stories and can either leave them as tales of our history or we can use them to open our eyes to the way these same stories manifest themselves in our lives today. We have a responsibility to act. To use our lives to bring about a change. To realize that there is incredible reward in the giving of one's own heart and hands in order to help give strength to the hearts and hands of our brothers and sisters: in different movements of the same religion we practice, in different regions of the world in which we are easily able to turn our heads but can find our lives forever changed should we allow ourselves to experience life through a different lens.

I come home still very much unable to articulate the complexity of these past two weeks. I know that this trip is over but much of my own work and responsibility is just beginning. I realize that the coming out of Egypt was not an end in the days before reaching Sinai, but simply a beginning. The Israelite people went out of Egypt on faith that life could be no worse than it had been under the auspice of slavery. It was a faith that sustained them for 40 years of wandering, with only hopes of reaching a promised land to push them along the way.

The people in Gbi Atabu bring their faith to every moment of their lives. Every business gives both the name and a testament to faith in its signage: The El Shaddai Lubricants and Spare Parts Auto Center and the God Overcomes Any Challenge Unisex Hair Salon. These people pray to God through dance and drumming. They hold their children on their backs while carrying cement from one location to another on their heads. The men mix concrete in bare feet, singing all the while. The children chant and point at the 'Yevohue' (white people) as we walk through their towns, giving some of them their first opportunity to see a person of light skin color.

I return home in culture shock from where I have just come and how quickly my life here picks up without having missed a beat. I tread my heels hoping to hold onto these moments and this experience before it fades quickly into the past and a photo album. I do so in a space when I am not even fully able to process what has just happened, knowing I want to bring as much of it into my day to day as possible moving forward.

More stories and thoughts to come...as the wandering through the desert continues and there is time to both look back hoping to take the details and lessons learned with me as I continue moving forward in hopes of reaching the promised land.

Shabbat Shalom.

Shit, I have to write something

I spent an entire year sitting down, writing religiously every Friday. I became shomer bloggish. I think El Al lost my creative juice which I was forced to check because of the new liquid segregation laws that have been put into place since 9/11. I'm not even close to being a 'rabbi' yet and all of a sudden I come home and people are calling me rabbi, wanting to study Torah with me and I have to write 4 short sermons in the next two weeks and El Al lost my creative luggage.

Weekly Whether...kind of like the weekly forcast...an projection of what we can expect as we come into the next week...a reference point from which we can consider...what will the whether be?

Torah is really just like the whether. We wonder whether it was written or actually handed down by God to Moses. Did he hand it? Did he toss like, when I would yell to my sister from the bottom of the stairs to throw down the notebook I forgot to bring down, was it like an ayiup; the pass that won the championsip? We wonder whether we're allowed to take what is written and interpet it. We question whether we're at liberty to pick and choose, like a democracy or whether some part of this written word is totalitarian in its meaning. There is so much to whether.

It's Friday morning in Jerusalem. I'm in Baltimore. I have been to Shabbat services on three continents in the last month alone. I'm dizzy spinning and can't figure out why I can't find my creative juice. I guess it was too big to fit in the alotted ziploc bag that you pass through security.

I'm starting a new blog...I'm going to whether the weater each week. Talk a little Torah. Try and put it together. Try and write for these projects, that I am honored to be involved in, but overwhelmed with where to start. So...I'll turn to the Torah...I have to write 4 sermons anyways in the next two weeks. here goes.