Parshat Sh’mini Passover
SERMON Parashat Sh’mini Passover April 18, 2025
Rabbi David Edleson Temple Sinai South Burlington, Vermont
In Every Generation
It turns out that Jews seem to have a problem having faith. We are “the people of the book” but we endlessly question what the words in the book mean and if they are true.
Think about it. The Jews had just gotten out of Egypt where they had been enslaved for hundreds of years, and they got out not through political organizing, or coalition building, but through plagues that were incredibly dramatic. Over and over, Moses tells Pharaoh that if he doesn’t let our people go, God will send a terrible plague, and then Pharaoh doesn’t and God does and everyone witness it. When the people got to the sea, the had no faith that they would get across. Even Moses seems skeptical. Only one, Nachshon ben Amminadav, had faith and plunged in until the seas parted.
So they get across, Miriam leads them in song, they celebrate for a good hour, and then as soon as they are short on water, they all throw their hands up, saying Moses tricked them into leaving Egypt just so they would die of thirst in the desert. This happens over and over again.
Each time they encounter a problem, a good part of the people instantly give up and announce they are all “doomed”. Each time, God saves them and the people witness it, but does that mean next time, they’ll have faith? No!
They need water. They give up and say “we’re doomed”!
They miss eating meat. They give up and say “we’re doomed”!
They get stressed when Moses stays too long on the mountain and say “we’re doomed”!
When the 12 scouts that were sent into Israel come back and say they people are giants and it will be a tough fight, they give up and the entire people start wailing and crying all night. What do they cry? “We’re doomed!”
Over and over, God saves them, and over and over, when they encounter the next challenge, they give up. They are sure they are defeated. They are sure they are doomed.
This is not a bug, but a feature of who the Israelites are in the Torah. There are stories in the midrash that the only reason God ended up with us is because God drew the short straw when he divided up the nations and got stuck with this kvetchy stiff-necked and panic-laden people.
I was thinking about this during our Seder the other night when we read and sang “V’hi Sh’amda.”
וְהִיא שֶׁעָמְדָה לַאֲבוֹתֵיֽנוּ וְלָנֽוּ. שֶׁלֹא אֶחָד בִּלְבָד, עָמַד עָלֵיֽנוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנֽוּ. אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר, עוֹמְדִים עָלֵיֽנוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנֽוּ. וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַצִּילֵנוּ מִיָּדָם
This (God’s promise) has stood for our ancestors and us. For not just one enemy has risen against us to wipe us out, but in every generation, there have been those who have stood against us to destroy us, but the Holy One of Blessing saved us from their hands.
We sing this, but many of us don’t believe it, and certainly don’t trust in the future. Since we are the generations of our people living after the Shoah, the Holocaust, our skepticism is certainly understandable. Unlike the Israelites in the wilderness, we didn’t get the miracle.
And so we have a healthy doubt, and we add that we are living in an age of doubt and anxiety, and age of disruption and disillusionment. This after a period, particularly for the Jews, of profound renewal and optimism.
I think when we read “V’hi Sh’amda” each year, we hear quite keenly the “For not just one enemy has risen against us to wipe us out, but in every generation, there have been those who have stood against us to destroy us.” That speaks to our history and our trauma and our fear.
But I notice, and particularly this year, that when it comes to the “And God saved us from them,” we don’t hear it, or we roll our eyes, or we see it as a quaint relic of faith from another age when people just didn’t know better.
I think we need to challenge ourselves on the hubris of cynicism. We are Jews. Let’s try to balance our fears with more faith. Let’s remember that, yes, things can indeed get worse, but that they can also get unexpectedly better. It turns out that we are not, as a rule, good predictors of the future. Unintended consequences seem as reliable as the intended ones if not more so.
I know many people are struggling now. People are afraid about the future, about being targeted, about the attacks on higher ed, about all of the upheaval and unpredictability of the present moment. These fears are reasonable - my fears about antisemitism are getting much worse, not better - and fear can be a useful guide.
However, so can faith. Faith needs to be part of our way forward. Hope does. Faith in God. Or, faith in each other. Or, faith in the longer arc of history. Faith that humans can do better and build a society that is more fair to all of those who want to live under the rule of law.
As Jews, we are the descendants, literally or spiritually, of those who resisted, of those who refused to go along with the powerful crowd, who refused to convert or leave their Jewishness behind, of those who saw much more power in asking questions than in giving answers. We have been through it all, and yet we are here, and we are not only here, we are in a golden age of Jewishness. We’ve never had more power, or more education, or more cultural creation, or more scholarship than right now. There are more Jews studying Talmud at a high level today than in our history. We shouldn’t really be here, but here we are.
Our history gifts us with skepticism, and a bit of negativity. But our history and our tradition also can give us the gift of faith that things sometimes turn out well, and much better than we feared.
Fear doesn’t always tell the truth.
Being Jewish gives us the right and the obligation to have some faith that we are not doomed, but with a miracle or two, we can get to the promised land.
Shabbat Shalom
David
