"To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner.  I am not a teacher, only a fellow student."  (Soren Kierkegaard)

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A FEW PRE-SHABBAT WORDS FROM RABBI AARON

Darkness

In parashat Bo, we encounter the devastating finale of the plagues visited upon Egypt. Various commentators have noted that the last three plagues - locusts, darkness, and the slaying of the first-born - are all powerful expressions of darkness. Beyond the powerful literal layer of the narrative, our sages point to psychological and societal readings of these plagues. 

The psychology of the dark
Throughout our popular literature and song, the depths of depression and hopelessness are conveyed through images of darkness. Social critics - from our ancient prophets through a host of contemporary writers - employ the imagery of darkness when they describe the ravages tyranny and oppression as well as chaos and despair.  Years ago, I recall reading a very moving and harrowing history of racism and the ravages inflicted upon the citizens of Macon, Georgia. The pain, humiliation, and terror were features of a long dark night, a thick darkness of moral blindness.  

Let's look closely at two verses from parashat Bo:  
“Moses held out his arm toward the sky and thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was...”
Lo ra'u ish et achiv - a man could not see his brother, his fellow. 
Lo kamu ish mitachtav - a man could not get up from his chair for three days.

Commentary
When do find you that you are looking at a place of darkness? When you see pictures of people suffering and you're too busy with your own merry-go-round life to get off your chair, to get off your duff and to respond to the pain of that person.  Cut to the chase: lo kamu ish mitachtav means - a man wouln't get off his tuchus! 
Lo ra'u ish et achiv - a man didn't see his brother.
It's beyond dark, it's moral blindness when your soul lives in a gated community, a place where you see the faces of people in despair and pain - and you fail to recognize that those faces belong to your brothers and sisters. If those faces belong to strangers who can't move you to help in a way you can, then you are living in the darkness of Egypt.

When Haiti was devastated by the earthquake, I was literally in a bubble a million miles away, meditating, "inquiring within," if you like. Our teachers waited until last Friday to share the heartbreaking news with us. The words fell upon us flaming hail. A week of silence, of one hundred minds stilled from the outside world's carnival... Metta (loving kindness) meditation, among other things, is about inclining your heart toward the well being of everyone, starting with ourselves, extending to our friends, to the familiar strangers in our lives, to people who challenge us as "difficult" personalities, to people we've never met, to all of God's creatures. A week of living in focused silence scrapes away some of the accumulated jaded indifferences that encrusts our hearts. And so, when our teachers said just a sentence or two about the devastation - we saw no pictures, heard no reports - the meditation hall quickly was consumed with gasps and tears from shock and grief.

Sure, throughout our planet's geologic life, the tectonic plates creak and groan and shudder. Sometimes those quakes knock books from their shelves or inspire a hit tune or two ("I feel the earth move under my feet..."). Other times, tsunamis sweep hundreds of thousands to their deaths, villages crumble, entombing the unfortunate residents. It's life. And life all around our planet includes some breath-taking misery. 

So how do you define "adding insult to injury"?
After the retreat, I spent a few days with family in Berkeley and close friends in San Francisco.  I was incredulous when my buddy told me about Rush Limbaugh characterizing our government's humanitarian efforts as political posturing to African-Americans, and that Pat Robertson lashed out at the victims for "having made a pact with the devil." Too easy to brush aside these rantings as the cheap theatre of cynical men who entertain their addled audiences with sludge. This is moral darkness. 

God forbid that we might one day become emotionally calloused in this way! Our own liberation - personal as well as societal - will coincide with the moment that each of us understands that all human beings who call out in pain are crying to us. When those cries push us off our comfortable cushions, the chains will be broken.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Aaron