The Audacity of Tikvah: Sh'mot 5769; MLK weekend on the eve of Obama's Innauguration

The Audacity of Tikvah:
Parashat Sh’mot 5769

This past weekend’s edition of the television show “Meet the Press” contained an interview with one of my childhood heroes, Bill Cosby. In a discussion about the impact of the election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States of America, the host Dick Gregory asked of Cosby:
“Will you tell me what it was like for you to go in and vote for Barack Obama?”
Mr. Cosby replied thoughtfully: “Well, I took my father's picture, I took my mother's picture and I took my brother James, he died when he was seven, I was eight. And I took the three of them into the voting booth in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, and I pulled the curtain and I took their pictures out and I said, "And now we're going to vote." And I--we only, I only voted once. But--and I did that and their pictures were out, and then I put them back into my pocket and I opened the curtain. And it, and it was wonderful.
I want to focus on a very telling moment in that interview: when Bill Cosby slipped on the words “And I--we only, I only voted once.” It is my contention that this was not an inadvertent slip of his tongue; but rather an intentional example of the true gravity of November 4th 2008. For Cosby, this day was not his day alone. It was his father’s, his mother’s and his brother’s day as well.
I imagine that many, if not all, African-Americans could attest to experiencing a similar feeling in the voting booth in November; and indeed, many of us here today can attest to feeling that as well. How many of us had Goosebumps on that day? How many of us paused to recognize the significance of that moment? How many of us stayed up past midnight to watch President-elect Obama utter his now famous words:
“This is our time ……. to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.”
I am certain that President Elect Obama is a well-read and learned person, although somehow I doubt if he knew that when he said the words “That while we breathe we hope,” he was actually paraphrasing from B’rachot page 63b of the Jerusalem Talmud. There in our ancient text, Rabbi Yochanan explains that there is one thing in life that we all can rely upon, “She’Kol Z’man She’Adam Chai, Yesh Lo Tikvah” “That every moment that a person is alive, they have hope.” In fact, this direct relationship between hope and life can be seen in our own language, as well as in the Modern Hebrew language. When we hope, we aspire, that is we breathe. And so too in Hebrew, when we have Shoafim (hopes) we are engaged in the very act of Sh’eifa, of breathing.
But sometimes I wonder if it’s really that easy. After all hope, in the face of overwhelming darkness, can sometimes be difficult to find; and the paradigmatic example of the perils of hopelessness can be found in the institution of slavery. Slavery exists only when it succeeds in depriving the human being of hope. Conversely, freedom exists only when hope becomes reality, not merely “a dream deferred,” as Langston Hughes once put it.
This morning we read from Sefer Sh’mot, the beginning of our own national narrative of despair and hope. A new Pharaoh arises in Egypt, one who does not know of Joseph and his work on behalf of the Egyptian people. This Pharaoh immediately sees the Jewish presence in Egypt as a threat to his power and so he enslaves the Israelite people, mandating a long list of difficult and back-breaking work for them. But work alone is not enough to plunge us into the depths of hopelessness. No, in order to rip from a human being their ability to hope, one must take from them their only true possession, the integrity of their family. So Pharaoh decrees that all male-Israelite children are to be put to death, a decree that the righteous hand-maidens Shifrah and Pu’ah defy. It is into this ethos of hopelessness that a young child is born in the tribe of Levi; and in an act of desperation he is set a drift in a basket made of reeds.
In our reading this morning, we find a passage which clearly demonstrates that even Moshe Rabeinu, Moses our Teacher, knows intimately of the perils of hopelessness. Moses flees Egypt after killing an Egyptian taskmaster and he becomes a shepherd of the flocks of his Father-in-Law Yitro in the land of Midian. One day, God visits Moshe in the form of the famous burning bush. God explains that God has heard the cry of the Israelites, and that God will lead the people out of slavery into freedom by the hand of Moshe.
However, Moshe is not so easily convinced. He questions the efficacy of God’s plan several times. First he asks of God, “Mi Anochi?” “Who am I that I should go to Pharoah and free the Israelites from Egypt?” The Commentators explain that Moses is having a crisis of experience. He wonders if God shouldn’t send some one more well-known among the Israelites and the Egyptians to accomplish such a daunting task. Secondly, Moses asks of God, when the Israelites ask me “Ma Shmo?” “What is this God’s name who sent you, what shall I say to them?” This is a crisis of faith, demonstrating Moses’ uneasiness in being the representative of a God who can neither be seen, nor felt, nor heard by the people. And frankly God doesn’t do much to boost Moses’ confidence, explaining that God’s name is the inscrutable “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh,” “I will be which I will be.” Finally, Moshe confronts God with a crisis of personal confidence, reminding God that “I am slow of speech and slow of tongue,” seemingly referring to his having some type of speech impediment. But God will simply not hear it, a slightly irritated God reminds Moshe by means of a rhetorical question, “Who gives man speech at all?” It seems that Moses finally gets the point; that hope is not something we choose to have; it is something that we are born with. That leading a people to freedom is not a task we can deny, but rather a mandate from heaven; that in Shakespeare’s words “Some men have greatness thrust upon them.”
All this is to say, that even the greatest leader in our history suffered from the disease of hopelessness. But he also lived long enough to discover that there is a cure: that the cure for hopelessness is not found through portents or signs, nor through plagues or miracles, but rather through faith in the truth of God and in the goodness of humankind.
Today we find ourselves living in an America where hope is scarce. Hope has become a dirty word, a word devoid of pragmatism or realism. But on this Shabbat of all Shabbatot, we are reminded that Tikvah, that hope, is truly audacious. This weekend we mark a special confluence in history: on the 19th we will commemorate the accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who gave his life in order to preach a message of hope, and on the 20th we will watch as America ushers in the first African-American president in our history.
This will not merely be a moment for one man, for one family. Nor will it only be a moment for those who are African-American. No, this will be a moment for all who are American and for all people around the world to witness that hope is indeed alive. That while we still have much hard work to accomplish in order to reach the ideal, nonetheless there is hope that the famous words of a modern day prophet will at last ring true:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
Shabbat Shalom