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Everything We Need to Go Free

Shabbat Shira 5777/11 February 2017

February 16, 2017

Ozi V’Zimrat Yah, Vay’hi Li Lishua   [song]

“My Strength and the Song of God will be my salvation.”

-Exodus 15:2

Shabbat Shalom. I am grateful to the Sisterhood of BZBI for the honor of speaking to you today in celebration of Sisterhood Shabbat, in this 100th anniversary year of the Women’s League of Conservative Judaism. Thank you to the BZBI community for the warmth and support you have shown our family since Yosef and I arrived three years ago, as parents-to-be and as new rabbis out in the world. Each day we continue to learn about how to serve God and the Jewish people, how to tend to our tradition and how to lift up the wisdom and power of the Torah in ever-changing times. We were able to become rabbis thanks to the incredible generosity of the Women’s League, who through the Torah Fund, supports our Movement’s educational institutions and all of the students who want to devote their lives to the flourishing of the Jewish people, to the care of souls and to the healing of our world – as rabbis, cantors, Jewish educators, scholars and chaplains. Thank you for inviting me to share reflections today about my experiences as a woman and a Conservative rabbi.

The week before my ordination from JTS, Chancellor Arnie Eisen asked me to write a post for his blog about the unique perspective that women bring to the rabbinate. I want to share an excerpt from the letter I sent to him, back in the spring of 2012. 

On the eve of ordination, I feel immense gratitude for a sense of connection to a community of women that spans time and space.  For tomorrow’s ordination ceremony, I will wear a strand of pearls that belonged to my grandmother Ann, for whom I am named.  She was an active member of her synagogue in the tiny town of Hamilton, Ohio.  She cared passionately about Jewish continuity and the flourishing of her congregation.  She died in 1964 and never knew a woman rabbi in her lifetime, but I have no doubt she would be pleased with the way things have changed. As I walk across the stage, I will be thinking of the women of the group Ezrat Nashim who raised their voices at the Rabbinical Assembly Convention in 1972, advocating for full and equal participation for women in ritual life and leadership in the Conservative Movement.  When I receive my tallit, I will remember how Rabbi Karen Reiss Medwed invited me to a special oneg at Camp Ramah in the Poconos for girls and women who wore kippot, tallitot and/or tefillin the summer after I became a Bat Mitzvah.  Tomorrow, I will be carrying the stories of the women who have come before me, who carved out the space for my colleagues and me to become teachers of Torah.  

I am grateful for the courage of women and men who spoke out for the inclusion of women in rabbinic and cantorial leadership, who wrestled with the tradition and found openings for change.  

I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to carry on their legacy, to continue to push for more just and egalitarian institutions in my rabbinate- in terms of ritual life and in terms of the details of how we women make a living and the ways in which we are able to sustain ourselves and our families.  As a woman rabbi, blessed to be a Jew in America in 2012, I feel called to continue to work for a movement that is fully inclusive of Jews of different sexual orientations and gender identities.

Stepping into the name Rabbi, I pray that the women of our cohort,

with our different voices and visions, will continue to weave a tapestry of deep and supportive relationships, that we will speak our truths with confidence, that we will dream big.

Our ordination ceremony was dream-like. We carried the Torah, processing through the aisles of the auditorium and singing the words of Shirat HaYam – the Song of the Sea – Ozi V’Zimrat Yah. I imagined Miriam and the Israelite women dancing beside us, carrying their tambourines. I thought of Rabbi Amy Eilberg, the first woman ordained as a Conservative Rabbi in 1985.

I rejoiced in how far we had come, the policy changes that allowed me to become a rabbi and to assume a leadership role in a congregation, and the sacrifices of the change-makers who made this path possible. I celebrated my classmates, courageous pioneers, who were ordained as the first openly gay Conservative rabbis. At the same time, I recognized how much work we still had to do, that changes in the culture of the seminary and the movement were still slow in coming.

I could not have imagined where the waves of change in our country would take us in the five years since my ordination:

that our United States Supreme Court would legalize same sex marriage;
that our sisters in the Orthodox community would be in the thick of their struggle for recognition as clergy;
that as we began reading the Book of Shemot in the Torah a few weeks ago, there would be over 2 million people marching for women’s rights in our country and around the world – joining our voices to insist that yes, women’s rights are human rights.
And that at the march in DC, there would be Jewish women marching shoulder to shoulder, singing, “Ozi V’Zimrat Yah”;
Rising up because of all the work we have done already,
and for all of the liberation we long for that is yet to come.

One day in seminary, when I was feeling impatient about the pace of culture change at JTS, my writing teacher Merle Feld asked me a powerful question –

She said, “Annie, are you more in touch with what has already changed or with what still needs to change?”

The truth is – I try to hold on to an awareness of both, to remember with gratitude what has changed already and to keep my eyes on what still needs to change. Our Conservative Movement’s motto is “Tradition & Change,” and living in the tension between the two can be exhilarating and exhausting. When I think about my path as a community organizer, rabbi and, now, marriage and family therapist-in-training, a common thread is a passion for understanding how change happens – in our hearts, in our relationships, in our communities and society.  

What does it take to spark lasting change?
How can we savor the blessings and cope with the losses that come with change?
How can we sustain ourselves over the long haul?

This Shabbat, our Torah tells the story of our people’s passage out of slavery through the Sea of Reeds. This epic moment of change holds wisdom that can support us in weathering the changes that we hope for as well as the ones that happen in spite of our dreams.

Here are three lessons we can take with us from the women who led us out of Egypt, that can sustain us in times of change.

  1. Carry the stories of the past
  2. Have a little faith – we have what we need to go free.
  3. Sing along the way

***

Lesson #1 – Carry the stories of the past.

In studying the legends of midrash at JTS, I learned the story of a woman named Serach, the Daughter of Asher, granddaughter of Jacob. Midrash teaches that back in Canaan, when Jacob had given up hope of ever seeing his beloved son, Joseph, again, he heard the song of his granddaughter, Serach. In his darkest time, Serach’s song is what kept Jacob alive. God rewards Serach for the life-giving power of her voice by declaring that she will live forever! And so, in the Torah, Serach is mentioned as part of the Israelite community leaving Canaan to go down to Egypt, and her name is listed again several generations later among those present in the wilderness.

Serach is a role model of resilience. She is at once a child, full of hope and possibility, and a wise elder, a guardian of sacred stories of struggle and survival. When we suffer in the stuckness of slavery, Serach holds the keys to redemption. Through years of oppression, she holds onto the words – Pakod Yifkod. God will surely remember You.” She tells our people when the time for liberation has come. And only because of her deep knowledge of our past, are we able to get out of Mitzrayim.

On his deathbed, Joseph made his children promise to carry his bones with us out of Egypt. Four hundred years later, in this week’s parashah, Moses fulfills that pledge. According to the Midrash when it is time to leave, no one has any idea where to find Joseph’s bones. Until Serach comes forward. She remembers that the bones are in the Nile. She goes to the right spot on the banks of the river and recites these words, Pakod, Yifkod – God will surely remember You.” I imagine her song rising from her lips. Pakod Yifkod. The bones rise up in the water. And we know we are ready to go.

Serach bat Asher reminds us that, in order to make change and to survive it, we need the stories and the songs of those who have come before us. It is the connection between the generations and these stories and songs of our ancestors that hold the seeds for our liberation.

***

Lesson # 2: Have a little faith – we have what we need to go free

As God’s breath blew open the water for us to pass through, we are taught that “the least of the handmaidens saw more than the greatest prophets.” In the midrash the rabbis imagine the many miracles that B’nei Yisrael experienced in this crossing.

Rabbi Nehorai taught: “When an Israelite woman was walking through the sea and her child cried from hunger, she had only to reach out her hand, pluck an apple or a pomegranate from the sea and give it to the child.

As it says in Psalm 106, “and God led them through the depths as through the wilderness.”  Just as in the wilderness, they lacked nothing, even in the depths, they lacked nothing.

(Midrash Shemot Rabbah)

What an incredible image of the sea sprouting fruit! It is a fitting image for this Shabbat of Tu BiShvat – when we give a shout out to the fruit of the trees. And for Sisterhood Shabbat, a day on which we celebrate the courage and resourcefulness of women. Each year, the Women’s League and Torah Fund create a new decorative pin, a symbol of continuity, connection and commitment. This year’s pin is inscribed with the words Pri Yadeha,” the fruit of her hands.

What a miracle it is that in the depths of their transition, everything our ancestors needed to survive and to care for one another was right there at their fingertips. From their journey, we learn that when we have a little faith and step forward into the unknown, God will meet us with abundance.

***

Lesson # 3 – Sing along the way

There is a teaching from the Ramban, who says that Miriam did not wait until after the Israelites made it safely across the sea to lead our people in song. Rather, she led us in song as we walked, one foot in front of the other in the sand, walls of water towering over us to the right and to the left.

We sang though we did not know where we would land.
We sang though we did not know if we would even make it to the other side.
We sang loud enough to drown out the sound of Pharaoh’s chariots gaining ground behind us.
We sang the song of Miriam, and the song of Serach bat Asher and the song of God.
We sang our own songs of resilience – of survival against the odds.
Our song was a rising up of life force from within and from beyond.

Recently – I had the great blessing of traveling to the Dominican Republic with a group of clergy and American Jewish World Service, an organization that supports women’s rights and human rights work in the developing world. During our time in the Dominican Republic, we met people who are fighting for the rights of Dominicans of Haitian descent. We learned stories of struggle and survival from both sides of the island that Haiti and the Dominican Republic share. While we were there, we marked the anniversary of the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti in 2010. A woman named Amber, a member of the AWJS team who had been living in Haiti at the time of the earthquake, shared her memories with us of that traumatic time. She told us that after the initial earthquake, there were aftershocks for days. When this happened, the safest place to be was outside. Each time the earth would tremble, people would run outside and gather in the streets. As the ground beneath them shook and quieted, and shook and quieted, they would sing. During the aftershocks and between them – people who had lost so much, who didn’t know what the next moment would bring, raised their voices in song, in prayer, and in unshakable faith.

When Amber closes her eyes, she told us, she can still hear them singing.

***

On this journey,
In this life,
In making change and in letting ourselves be changed,
We learn from those who have come before us,
And from those with whom we walk –

To carry the stories of the past,
To have a little faith, for we have what we need to go free,
To sing along the way.

May we honor the stories and the songs of our ancestors,
and of the women and men who have sustained our community,
our movement and our people.
May we listen for the voices of those who are yet to come.

May the One who Brings Redemption,
help us to remember
That there is strength within us.
May we know it
when we sing with one another.

Ozi V’Zimrat Yah, Vay’hi Li Lishua.

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