Rabbi Sarah Wolf

January 23, 2009

The Difficult Work Ahead

What a week.  This past Tuesday, we watched history being made.  The cameras captured not only the momentous event of the inauguration of Barack Obama, but the emotional reactions of people from all walks of life.  We saw schoolchildren awed into silence, people weeping in Selma , Alabama and others dancing for joy in Kogelo , Kenya .    People huddled around TVs in homes, bars, storerooms, and schools.  We saw a moving portrait of Americans united in a truly remarkable occasion in our lives and in the life of our country.  So just imagine how one special viewer, a 104-year old woman named Florence Beatrice Stevens Smith, must have felt.  The New York Times describes the scene: “The community room was already packed, with residents peeking behind walkers, when Ms. Smith entered, with a red, white and blue lei around her neck. The ceremony had begun. Although several in the room dozed peacefully, the television was turned up loud enough for people down the hall to hear it from their beds.  Ms. Smith did not say much. But an employee at the home confirmed what stories in the newspaper had said: Ms. Smith had been a typing teacher at Tuskegee University in Alabama , and her father, a former slave, had served in the Union Army.  When Mr. Obama appeared on screen and began his oath, she moved forward in her wheelchair and adjusted her glasses.  ‘He is really president,’ Ms. Smith whispered, as others in the room applauded. ‘That’s nice.’”

          In his inaugural speech, President Obama articulated a feeling that many of us have, that we stand on the edge of a new chapter in history.  He said, “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America .”  We begin this work by acknowledging that “what is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character [as] giving our all to a difficult task.”  In other words, it is time for all of us to celebrate becoming B’nai Mitzvah, people of responsibility.  We must set childish things aside, as President Obama said, and freely accept the obligations that come with adulthood.  Now the question is: how will we respond to this call to service, to this opportunity for a new beginning?

          There is an interesting parallel of the line I just quoted from President Obama’s speech and this week’s parashah, Va’era.  In our portion, God sends Moses to tell the enslaved Israelites about their new beginning (which will be even grander than the one our president offers us).  God promises that “I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage.  I will redeem you…and I will take you to be My people” (Ex. 6:6-7).  But how do the Israelites respond to Moses’s pronouncement?  We read, “V’lo sham’u el Moshe mikotzer ruach ume’avodah kashah,” “But they did not hear Moses, because of their kotzer ruach,” literally their shortness of spirit, “and because of their difficult work.”  The people are told that they are going to be saved and they cannot even hear Moses’s words, much less celebrate or prepare for their liberation, because of the terrible toll slavery has taken on their psyches.    

          This “kotzer ruach” is usually translated as “crushed” or “anguished spirit,” suggesting that the Israelites are in too much despair to believe that God will in fact save them.  A famous Chasidic interpretation explains that the Israelites had actually grown tolerant of their enslavement and resigned to their situation.  The people had lost all faith in God and all hope that their circumstances could change.  Ending their spiritual bondage would be just as crucial as freeing them from their physical bondage. 

This reading of “kotzer ruach” is appropriate for the context.  We can easily imagine the Israelites sinking into a communal depression because of their long and terrible period of servitude.  But a more common translation of this phrase in other biblical passages is actually “impatience” or a “shortness of temper.”  Using this translation, we might conclude that the Israelites ignore Moses’s words not because their faith is stunted, but because their capacity to shoulder any responsibility for their own destiny is stunted.  Ironically, the people do not want to hear about their imminent redemption because they know that becoming God’s own people will require hard work; they will have to replace the backbreaking labor of slavery with another “avodah kashah,” the difficult labor of serving God.  It is only later, after the plagues have started, that Moses finally convinces the people that they will in fact be freed from Egypt .    

It is striking to me, then, that President Obama describes the avodah kashah he is calling for, the “difficult task” of renewing and repairing our country, as an opportunity that is the opposite of spirit-crushing and is actually an undertaking that is the most “satisfying to the spirit.”  We are being asked to free ourselves from the bondage of self-interest and complacency and to bind ourselves instead to a “better history,” a destiny that we can only shape together.  We do not yet know how we’ll achieve this goal or what sacrifices we will be asked to make, but at the very least, we can be open and ready to accept the challenge, because while the work will not be easy or completed quickly, it will be fulfilling.

Our parashah can be a guide for how not to respond to President Obama’s charge.  We cannot give in to despair and hopelessness, in spite of the very real hardships many of us face or will face.  Fortunately, if there’s one thing our president has an endless supply of, it’s hope.  But we should also be careful not to indulge in the other sort of kotzer ruach, impatience and desire to avoid the long-term sacrifices we must make and the work we must do.  As Bishop Gene Robinson prayed last Sunday, “Bless us with patience and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be fixed anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.”  Barack Obama is not the messiah.  He’s not even Moses.  But he just might be an extraordinary leader, standing with us on the shores of the Red Sea and asking us to cross, to flee from our narrow places so that together we can fulfill his vision that one day we will be able to tell our children that “with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.”