Get cozy for a moment, would you? I want to tell you about Serach bat Asher v’Hadurah.
Serach bat Asher was born into a family of great importance. She had many siblings, cousins, uncles, and mothers to find solace in. Her early life was sweet, if not full of the kind of adult drama that children feel like tectonic plates shifting. See, there was always grief beneath the surface, a quiet sadness in her grandfather, a heaviness she couldn’t place in her father and uncles. Serach was a happy kid, though she grew up in a time of great turning, when the water dried up and so did the food.
Still, she sat and made music, roamed with the flocks, as much as they were, and kept them company. When her father and uncles left to go to Mitzrayim, she stayed back with her grandfather, mothers, and the rest of the family, picking grains stuck in discarded bags from long ago to find enough to eat.
When they returned, something was wrong. Uncle Simeon was missing. They had sackfuls of grain, but her father Asher and all the uncles were wrought up. As the family feasted, the uncles sat in the tent at the edge of the encampment in hushed conversations with Uncle Benjamin. The next day, the men gathered in Jacob’s tent, and a wail erupted she had never heard before.
The uncles left again early the next morning, this time with Uncle Benjamin. Grandfather was unconsolable, spending much of his time in the field staring off into the distance. He took his meals in Grandma Leah’s company alone, and Serach would see a flash of colorful, striped fabric hanging out of his belt when he wandered aimlessly around the encampment and in the field.
One afternoon, they returned. Benjamin is with them, and their animals are loaded with even more food than before. But they are stricken--something looks different. The uncles gather again in the tent, they don’t go to Jacob immediately who is out again in the field. Search cannot help herself, and she listens in. “How will we tell him that Joseph is alive? He will surely die of shock.” The world spins for a moment, and Serach re-steadies herself. Uncle Joseph, who she never met, is alive? How could that be? The uncles continue: “How will we tell him that we tricked him all those years ago and instead sold him to slavery? That he is in Egypt, 2nd to the Pharaoh, the whole world begging to see him? Surely his soul will depart from his body, he will die of the shock.” Uncle Dan, eagle eye’d as always, spots Serach at the tent opening and beacons her in. Suddenly, the brothers realize how Jacob is to have the news broken to him.
Search finds Grandfather Jacob in the withered fields, amongst the crops that once stood tall and proud, and sings to him. She weaves between his legs, dances around him, and sings these words over and over again, “Joseph my uncle is alive and he reigns over all the land of Egypt; he is not dead.” And when he was done with his prayer, and she with her song, he understood. Joseph was alive. Grandfather turned to Serach, his heart full of joy, and “the spirit of G!d came over him and he knew her words were true.” Jacob blessed Serach, saying “My daughter, may death never prevail against you forever, for you have revived my spirit; only repeat this song once more before me, for you have caused me gladness with your words.”
Serach would go on to live a long life in accordance with Grandfather’s blessing, journeying into Mitzrayim and a successful life for her family there. She buried all her grandparents, Uncle Joseph in the Egyptian way and all the other uncles and aunts, siblings and cousins, her parents. She watched the rise of a new pharaoh who refused to remember them, the rise of his cruel power and the enslavement of her people. She survived the 210 years of enslavement, lived through Moses’ birth, departure and return, convinced the people to have faith in Moses. She lived through the plagues and the panic. She showed Moses where Joseph was buried and helped raise his coffin from the Nile to bring his bones back to the land. She crossed the sea, led by her great great great niblings Moses, Miriam, and Aaron, journeyed through the wilderness, made it to the Land. She ascended to the Garden of Eden without dying, like Elijah before Elijah was Elijah, and she shows up in the backs of study halls to correct mistaken rabbis.
What is so amazing about Serach bat Asher v’Hadurah? Serach is the embodiment of the story of the Jewish people, she is the catalyst that helps implement Divine plan. It is Serach who tells Jacob the news in a way he can hear, so that he can bring the family into Mitzrayim. It is Serach who vouches for Moses, so that the people will follow him out of Mitzrayim. And it is Serach who keeps the stories, burial sites, and faith of the people through the duration. Search is an ancestor who transcends time, so blessed because she was able to see her grandfather in mourning, and share with him life changing news in a way he could hear.
When I think of Serach, I think of an ancestor who understands that time is long, and that we owe one another compassion. I think of her humility--she knew there were parts of the story she didn’t hold, and so approached Jacob humbly. And so I think of Serach when I am a part of conversations in the Jewish community about Israel and Palestine, for how she is able to say the truth, though she knows it might hurt a beloved family member, and the care with which she does it.
Hevre, I vacillated on giving this sermon. Firstly, no one wants to hear the rabbi talk about Israel! Whether or not you agree with them, it will be frustrating, agitating, feel DANGEROUS. Maybe right now you are feeling under attack? Yep, that’s a nervous system response! Relatedly, I wondered, “do I need to give these folks a break? It has been such a painful year. Another year of such personal and collective loss. Shouldn’t we instead talk about joy and uplift on this the happiest and most somber day of the year? And thirdly...I don’t want to. I don’t want to wade into the hardest, most heartbreaking part of the Jewish world, in my book. I have had my heart broken by conversations, by action, by inaction about Israel Palestine in the Jewish community more times than I can count. It hurts. Don’t touch it. Don’t push on it. Don’t make me. If I feel that way, you must too.
For some of us at Hinenu, Palestine solidarity organizing is the cornerstone of our work, or our connection to Judaism. Some of us at Hinenu have lived in Israel, have family there, and are bereft with fear for them and anger at the obscene violence most recently as this summer. Some of us at Hinenu have lived in Palestine, have family there, and are continually fearful for their safety. Others of us are finding our place in this work, and conversation.
Jewish people need to talk to Jewish people about Palestine and Israel. This can be the most painful, heartbreaking part of the work. And of course--gathered in our sacred community are Jews and non-Jews, and we approach this work from different vantage points. But we are collectively invested in the Jewish project, and we are collectively responsible. Kol Yisrael aravim zeh bazeh--we are responsible for one another.
If you have said “there is no time for American Jewish feelings, there is too much at stake,” I hear you. This might not be the center of your work, but it cannot be fully ignored. We carry each other, and we have to collect each other. We cannot move forward without each other. If you have found yourself more often shouting at the Jewish people closest to you instead of organizing them, learn from Serach. If you have found yourself more often disengaging than allowing your heart to break in the open, learn from Jacob. If you have felt shut out of Jewish spaces to talk a bout Israel and Palestine, let us study together.
This is a sermon about Jewish feelings, because if we want to support liberation of the Palestinian people, peace for Israelis, we need to tend to our own house. If we continue organizing around each other, avoiding the conversation in progressive Jewish spaces, no one is served at all. So we do so with the kavvanah//intention that study might lead to action. We cannot rush our way through that work, which in my experience is some of the most painful parts of the work. Instead, we have to meet one another in the field. Sing a song. Speak to one another, listen. It is from that place we can move.
So let’s.
Our Jewish tradition is, if nothing else, an ethical inheritance, a guidebook for just living, an invitation to choose at every moment the most honest, life honoring choice. To look at the actions of the Israeli government this past spring, defending settlers seeking mass displacement of the residents of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, firing grenades into the Al Aqsa Mosque, the aggression on Gaza, and be told that they act on behalf of the Jewish people is enough to break a heart.
And so, I believe that the Jewish people are collectively experiencing moral injury due to the ongoing violence in Israel and Palestine. Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner teaches that moral injury is a “reaction to a traumatic experience—a traumatic experience that violates our sense of how the world should work. It happens when our meaning systems confront something chaotic or disastrous; when we witness events that shatter our deeply held values. But moral injury doesn’t only occur when we are witnesses. It also happens when we come to understand that we are the perpetrators or perpetuators of an unjust system; it happens when we find ourselves complicit in things that we don’t want to be complicit in.”
A facet of moral injury, I believe, is watching others who espouse the same values as we do make decisions that we find unethical. The Shay Moral Injury Center explains that “moral injury results in moral emotions such as shame, guilt, self-condemnation, outrage, and sorrow.”
We experience this pain, this moral injury, because we were taught that Israel is the most ethical military in the world, only to see it launch unprovoked bombardment this Spring. Because we were told that Israel was a land without a people for a people without a land, only to learn of the Jewish National Fund paving forest over Palestinian cemeteries. Because we are told that the choice is between a home with the Jewish people or calling out terror done in our names. Because we watch violence done in our names with our religious symbols on uniforms. Because we uncover information that was withheld from us for decades, learning that a place where we have lived, have family, spent holy time, was founded on expulsion. Because we find comfort in knowing loved ones escaped the clutches of danger in Europe to find safety in Israel, and hold it alongside what we see and learn. Because what is labeled as anti-Semitic has become a partisan issue. Because we feel we have to double down with the behaviors of a government we condemn, because we are told that is the only place we can find safety. Because the color of our skin, or the status of our parents’ Jewishness impacts just how Jewish we will be perceived as in Israel. Because our families have told us we must choose between them, and honoring what we have witnessed and learned about the occupation of Palestine. Because we are told there is no space in the Jewish community for us. Because we are accused of hating Palestinian people for still learning, unpacking what we learned, holding different perspectives. Because our Jewish institutions claim that it is not possible to affirm the basic dignity and human rights of Palestinian people, and instead double down on warmongering policy. Because we want to mourn deaths of Israelis and Palestinians, but feel pressure to choose whose human life matters more.
Moral injury happens when we see others with the same ethics make decisions we cannot abide, and it challenges “our deepest moral codes and ability to trust in others or ourselves.” Eventually, after space for the grief, the guilt, the sorrow, the Shay Moral Injury center explains that “the precipitating incidents must be shared, talked about, and looked at reflectively.” This is our charge. To find each other again. According to Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock, he is Senior Vice President for Moral Injury Programs at Volunteers of America, “recovery is a lifelong process because it requires the restoration of love and empathy.”
Jacob could have been broken when he received the news of Joseph being alive in Mitzrayim. The news that Joseph was still alive required him to confront that the family he planned for, mourned with, grew with, could also be a family that sold his young child into slavery and lied to him for decades. But Jacob rushes to find Joseph, to reunite. We don’t know what the conversations are like with Jacob and the brothers afterwards, how he confronted them for the harm they caused him, the violence against Joseph. We don’t know what they say in return of the harm he caused them by favoring Joseph over all the other brothers. But we do know the family journeys together, Jacob and Joseph and the brothers are reunited. We do not require of Jacob an immediate forgiveness or acceptance, but a process that continues over the rest of his life. But our grief can get in the way of us receiving truth. So we must honor our grief, so we can move. We can be like Jacob, who does not stay immobilized in the field, holding on to the world as he thought it was, but honors his grief even as he receives the truths Serach names.
So we can be like Serach. Serach who sees the hurt, and brings her heart to care for her family. Who learns about her family’s violence, their generational grief and trauma of brothers fighting to be loved and have enough, lies fed to her by her own family. She knows that she must connect with her kin despite her own shock and pain, to share the news that Joseph is alive in a way Jacob can hear. She knows that he might not be able to hear the story on the first time or the second time, but stays with him so he will hear her.
Jacob would not have been able to leave the field, to confront his grief, if Serach had not met him--quite literally, where he was. The stakes were too high--are too high, for us to not gather our kin, and move.
So this year, from this Yom Kippur to the next,
Let us honor our moral injury
Let us grieve for its own sake
And let us grieve in order to keep moving
Let us rise up for justice for the Palestinian people, peace for Israeli citizens.
Let us listen to the voices of Palestinian leaders here in Baltimore and worldwide
Let us find the strength to organizing in our own Jewish communities
Let us be sustained in this holy obligation to gather up our people.
Let us stand like Jacob and find the support we need from our dear ones
Let us sing like Serach calling family in close
Let us return to the field, let us linger, let us move swiftly from there.
May this be a year of great healing and mobilization.
Gmar chatima tovah, may you be sealed in the book of life for good.