I have just a few words of Torah to share tonight. This is the time of year, the six weeks of run-up to the High Holy Days, that I shy away from giving big ol’ drashot, because I’m spread thin with preparation, and because a part of me wants to hoard my creativity so I have ample supply for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
And still, here we are, it’s Shabbat, and there’s a Torah portion sitting there calling to us, and what a shame not to at least take a peek.
This week’s Torah portion is called Eikev, from the Book of Deuteronomy, and it is still Moshe making his great speech at the borders of the Promised Land. And he’s talking ahead to what it will be like when people are settled. And the settling of the people is sometimes unsettling for us, because it is a story of conquest. Really rather brutal conquest, when the Children of Israel take the land after their 40 years in the Wilderness. This is a piece of Torah that is squirm-worthy every year.
But at least we read it every year and do the squirming. And the grappling. And rethinking. We wonder aloud how to make peace with this piece of Torah. What we learned from being conquerors 3000 years ago that we ought to pay attention to now.
One specific bit caught my attention this year. And it’s this. Even though Moshe is giving encouragement to the people – be brave, the people who live in the land will fall before you – he is also seeing beyond the conquest to a time when the conquest is just a story. He envisions the Israelites of the future living on the land, farming, cultivating abundance and building wealth. And he gives this very interesting warning:
When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget Adonai who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock; who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your ancestors had never known, in order to refine you by hardships and benefit you in the end—
וְאָמַרְתָּ֖ בִּלְבָבֶ֑ךָ כֹּחִי֙ וְעֹ֣צֶם יָדִ֔י עָ֥שָׂה לִ֖י אֶת־הַחַ֥יִל הַזֶּֽה׃
––and you say to yourself, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth, this privilege, for me.” Remember that it is Adonai your God who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfillment of the covenant made with your ancestors. (Deuteronomy 8:12-18.)
I was arrested by this bit this year because of how it resonates with our evolving conversations in this country about reparations for descendants of enslaved black people, and our growing understanding of the system of white supremacy that continues to operate under the surface and on the surface in this country. Don’t worry, I’ll break this down a bit in a moment.
In these verses, Torah is pointing out that if you experience success, it is a mistake to think that it’s just because of how skilled and talented you are. No, in fact there’s a history, a long history, that makes it possible for your skills and talents to benefit you. You were set up for success. In Torah, Moshe is saying, “God set you up for your success. If you had been left in slavery in Egypt, you’d still have nothing.”
So the question of what gives rise to present-day success. That’s where white supremacy comes into play here in the landscape of our American lives.
There are interesting conversations to be had about whether Jews are “white” or not. And the answer might frequently begin with, “it depends.” And I know that not everyone in the community identifies as white, so my words might not speak quite to everyone in the same way.
But I think it’s fair to say that the members of this congregation who grew up Ashkenazi Jewish in America are largely white-assimilated. That is, over time, our ancestors began to succeed in the way that white people are able to in this country. We did not end up held back in the way that black people systematically are, or at least not for long. We have come to unconsciously rely on this.
So it is easy for us to fall prey to the same illusion as the future Israelites who are being addressed in Torah. The illusion that our success, collectively and individually, is simply a matter of our own cleverness and talent. I certainly feel, in my experience, that we are, on the whole, a rather clever and talented people. And the fact that we started off as immigrants with nothing who were widely hated in the Old Country makes our success in America feel all the more impressive and bragworthy. Look where we started! Look how far we’ve come! (“My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.”)
But like in Torah this week, we have to look at how the ground was prepared for us. We came to a country with an economy that was based on first the enslavement and then the poverty-level labor of a whole people for whom other opportunities were denied by law and by custom. America as a whole, not just the south, was built on this.
Twentieth Century Jewish immigrants to America did not practice slavery, although some earlier Jewish immigrants did. But we all benefited from America being a golden land of opportunity, di goldene medineh we say, which it only was because of its brutal history of colonization and enslavement, and because of its ongoing practice of white supremacy as its core economic and social feature.
Moshe doesn’t tell the people not to value abundance and comfort. He just tells the people to remember where it came from and to act in gratitude. With blessing. With mitzvot.
As we move toward the High Holy Days, when it is our custom to think about repair and reparation, it is worthy to ask the same question. What do we owe? What do we owe for the blessings of being comfortable and safe and housed and educated and employed? (Customize that as appropriate.)
We owe gratitude for sure. But what else do we owe, knowing that our security and our status is built on a crooked system? How can we be part of healing the harms of the past and the present? How can we be part of re-shaping and fully sharing the opportunities of the future?
This is huge. And it’s an exciting and uplifting conversation to have. And I am grateful to be living in a time where it is at last happening. This is not a conversation we should be frightened of, even though there might be loss involved. Fairness sometimes involves loss.
A group of Ner Shalomers have just spent a month studying this question, with the help of a curriculum developed by Reconstructing Judaism, and they will become our teachers and we will learn together. We are only limited by our imaginations.
So for now, as a first step, let us notice our blessings, and be aware of all the led to them. The sacrifices of our ancestors. And the hardships forced upon other Americans. Let us remember and notice and begin to learn and to speak so that, down the road, the fields will blossom and the rain will fall, in equal measure for all.