​​​​Benjamin Fried​

A rabbi far more pessimistic than I once told me this joke:  two rabbis in town had a terrible squirrel problem in their congregations’ attics, and they were discussing what they could possibly do about it.  The first rabbi came back a week later and said that he had hired an exterminator to take care of the problem.  The second rabbi replied that he had figured out a cheaper way of dealing with the squirrels:  he had given the squirrels b’nai mitzvah, and they had never been back to synagogue since.

 

Now this is clearly not the norm for us here at Shir Ami, and I do not share in this “sky is falling” alarmism.  But the fact is that cultural assimilation to one degree or another is the norm in our culture.  Even in our post-modern society where we have shifted the paradigm of America from the melting pot model—where people’s differences ideally melt away—to the toss salad model—where differences are celebrated—holding onto our ancestral culture is difficult. 

 

This tension is beautifully depicted in Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2003 novel The Namesake.  In this story, an Indian couple, who met through an arranged marriage two weeks before their wedding, emigrate to America, where the husband works as a PhD student at MIT.  They struggle to acculturate to their new home, which is so strange to them and so far from everyone and everything they know, but they want to build a better life for their children.  They name their first child Gogal, after his father’s favorite Russian author who has incredible intellectual and emotional significance for him.  But his son cares little about his parents’ culture and chooses to go by his Americanized name Nikhil, symbolically rejecting the world he came from and the emotional significances of his father.  While his parents struggled to hold onto their Indian heritage, Nikhil was American who wanted more than anything to blend in, to not stick out.

 

Stories like these are the norm in our society.  It is little surprise then that when people immigrate to the United States speaking a native tongue that that language completely dies out within three generations.  Assimilation is the norm, because it is the path of least resistance; it is effortless.

 

Assimilation is also not a problem unique to America or to our globalized world; it is a problem that we Jews have been dealing with for nearly 3000 years.  The Torah commanded the Israelites many times that when they entered the Promised Land, they were absolutely forbidden to take up the practices of the Canaanites—their sacrificial rites, their dietary practices, and most of all, the worship of their gods.  But in a time where prosperity depended on agriculture and was completely dependent on the fertility of the ground and the uncertain rains, the lure of fertility god and the ba’alim made the Israelites want to assimilate into the culture of the Canaanites.  Yes, Adonai is a jealous God, and yes Adonai took us out of Egypt in our ethnic mythology, but if the rains do not come and our fields do not produce a fruitful harvest, our very lives could be at risk.  Maybe that commandment not to worship graven images is not so important, if we can guarantee our harvest with these ba’alim.  We see that even in Ancient Israel, assimilation was effortless, the path of least resistance. 

 

In the face of these irresistible forces stood one man whose actions and prophecies drew the Israelites out of this mentality and saved their national identity:  Eliyahu HaNavi, Elijah the Prophet.  Elijah was a spiritual man of deep conviction and belief.  He is the prophet, after all, who saw God not in the crash of thunder or the wind of a hurricane, but in the still small voice within himself.  Elijah’s very name, Eliyahu meaning my God is Adonai, conveys his deep spirituality and his attachment to his Israelite identity. 

 

It is this deep conviction that Adonai is One that led him to risk his very life to convince the Israelites that assimilating and worshipping the ba’alim was wrong.  In the Northern Kingdom, King Ahab was married to a foreign wife, Jezebel, who worshipped the ba’alim with great lust and brought the Israelites to participate in her people’s cult.  As a result, the Israelites worshipped fertility gods and forgot that Adonai is their God and the only God.  The problem came to a head when Elijah confronted the 400 prophets of Ba’al who worked for King Ahab.  Despite the fact that the Israelites were worshipping a fertility god, their crops were not fertile and a horrible drought had parched the land.  Elijah challenged the prophets to a duel to see whose god was the true God.  The prophets of Ba’al danced in circles for hours, eventually descending into a violent frenzy, but nothing happened.  Finally Elijah offered a sacrifice to Adonai, and it was immediately consumed, and soon after, rain clouds appeared and a downpour ended the drought.

 

Elijah the prophet stood up against the forces of assimilation, even against the powers of the monarchy, and told the Israelites not to give in.  Not to give into worshipping strange gods, even though it might seem beneficial to their bottom line.  Not to give into fitting in and being like all the other nations of the world.  He told them to worship Adonai, even though it seemed to go against their self-interest, even though it would be the harder route than simply assimilating.

 

Assimilation is often the easier route for us Jews.  In May of 2002, a reporter stationed in India traveled to Pakistan to investigate a lead he had regarding a connection with the notorious attempted shoe bomber and Al-Qaida.  While en route, he was captured by terrorists, and murdered.  He was only 38 years old, and his wife was pregnant with his son.  Daniel Pearl, as we learned afterwards, uttered four final words before his capture:  I am a Jew.  These four words bare witness to Daniel Pearl’s courage and commitment to his people; four words that convey to us that Daniel Pearl’s spirit could never be snuffed out.  He did not deny who he was, even when his personal safety was at extreme risk.  Assimilation might be the easier route, but Eliyahu HaNavi and Daniel Pearl proved to us that holding onto our Jewish identity with every fiber of our being is essential.

 

Why is that the case?  Why does it matter if we hold onto our heritage and worship Adonai?  This is the exact question that our Haftarah portion that we read tonight asks.  We read from the end of the book of Malachi because it is Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat right before Passover.  The Haftarah mentions a Yom Adonai, the Day of Adonai, in which the prophet Elijah will come and bring the Messiah, which is an important part of the conclusion of our Passover Seder.  In describing the coming of Elijah, the prophet says that people will ask what the point is in holding onto our identity as Jews.  If the righteous and the wicked prosper the same, why be moral at all?  The prophet answers that those Jews who hold onto their heritage will be God’s “treasured possession,” and God will be “tender towards them as a man is towards his son.”  

 

This line about this day of redemption when Elijah will return tells us that it is our distinctness as Jews that makes us God’s beloved.  A midrash that I love asks the question of why that is the case.  If we believe that Adonai is the God of all peoples, indeed—the God of the entire universe, how could we possibly have the audacity to believe that our relationship with God is special?  The midrash tells us that God loves hearing song of the Jewish people because it symbolizes a deeply reciprocated relationship.  We all know that every day the Jews sing mi chamocha ba’elim Adonai “who is like you Adonai,” a piece of our liturgy taken directly from the Song of the Sea in our Torah.  But did you know that God also has a song that God sings about Israel at the end of Deuteronomy?  Ashreicha Yisrael!  Mi chamocha?  You are a happy people Israel!  Who is like you?  The midrash tells us that Israel is the chosen people of God because their song is the same song that God is singing.  We sing of God’s incomparability, and God sings about our uniqueness.  We are beloved because we do the same thing God does.  At our Seder tables, we read about how God saved our people from slavery and oppression, then we leave the Seder table inspired to go do God’s work through our Jewish institutions that fight human trafficking, provide for the needy and hungry, and use our voice to support civil rights and equality for all.  Our relationship is reciprocal because we are commanded to be like God.

 

Tonight is Shabbat HaGadol, and just three days from now, we are going to sit down to our Seder and retell the story of our freedom.  We often think of Passover as a time where we connect with our family or a holiday that helps us reflect on issues of social justice.  To be sure, this is certainly the case.  However, I think it’s important for us to note on this Shabbat HaGadol the example of Elijah the Prophet, the man who stood the tide of assimilation, and in the process saved the uniqueness of the Jews as a people.  Passover is also about renewing our identity as Jews.  While I believe that every religion has some access to Ultimate Truth and Goodness, we have to believe that being a Jew is something worth fighting for, worth saying “no” to the forces that try to make us act just like everyone else.

 

When I was a kid in Hebrew school, I was very perplexed by the prayer in our morning liturgy, Baruch atah, Adonai, Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, sheasani Yisrael, “Blessed are You Adonai, who has made me a Jew.”  It seemed odd to me that a people who have experienced so much hatred and persecution over the course of history for their very identity to actually thank God for being Jewish.  It never seemed like something to celebrate but rather a burden.  But as I’ve learned more, as I’ve been moved to tears by our music and liturgy, as I’ve discovered the beauty of our textual tradition, as I’ve fallen in love more and more everyday with our people, as I’ve learned from the example of Jews who refused to convert or deny who they were, even at the edge of a sword, I finally get it.  It is good to be a Jew.  Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam, she’asani Yisrael.