On summer days and nights we would board the A train and ride it all through Brooklyn and into Manhattan. At 59th Street we would change for the D train north into the Bronx and about an hour later Yankee Stadium stood before us.? I remember many games there and feel somewhat nostalgic that this is the final year for that venerable old stadium.
Anyway, one day, at the end of a particularly crowded game, (and Yankee Stadium could hold something like 55,000 people), my parents and I were making our way around the stadium to the subway entrance. With the stadium on the right and the many vendors and roadway on the left, the sidewalk narrowed. The crowd of people pressed in upon itself in a bottleneck. Tighter and tighter the people pressed together; slower and slower they moved. Soon I couldn 't move at all, crushed between so many adults. Soon I couldn 't even see my parents, crushed between so many adults. The people carried me away, like the waves in the ocean. To my eight or nine year old mind, they threatened to drown me. I felt very afraid but I couldn 't even raise my arms to wave and I couldn 't see past the tall adults all around me. I felt unable to help myself. I felt that everyone was bigger and stronger than me and that I was at their mercy. Inching along, I didn 't know what I was going to do when out of the blue my father emerged and grabbed my arm and pulled me to the edge of the human wave. I was so relieved. I was free and I was safe. Free from the overwhelming crowd; safe to be with whom I belonged. What does this have to do with Passover, you ask?
How many of us here claim a Jewish tradition as our own? How many celebrate Passover in some way? One of the strengths of Unitarian Universalism is that one does not have to abandon one 's roots, history or heritage in order to be a part of this community. We can still honor where we came from and the religious traditions that might have nurtured us. As UU 's we look for the layers of meaning in the holidays of our lives.
During Passover Jewish people tell the story of their enslavement in Egypt and how Moses, guided by God, came and demanded that they be set free. After much trial and tribulation, for Egyptian and Jew alike, they did obtain their freedom and left Egypt in a hurry. They wandered in the desert for forty years before they settled in a new homeland. During Passover families and friends get together and share a special meal and tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. In this a continuity with generations of Jews is honored; a bond is recognized in the keeping alive of the vision of the importance of freedom.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, (in the Tikkun Passover Supplement 2008), suggests that people relive the Exodus in order to bring its transformative power into their lives. "Telling the ancient story reminds us that the same Power in the Universe that made the Exodus possible, can, at this very moment, make it possible for the world to be transformed and liberated from all forms of oppression." The Power in the Universe, Yahweh or God as it is called, or Great Spirit, or nature, or laws of science, Lerner says, is one of goodness and it can be kindled again in each one of us so that we can act together to transform our world. And if you do not believe that the power in the universe is one of goodness? Perhaps you will agree that it contains, at least, the possibility of goodness. Even with only a possibility, Exodus can happen.
As Lerner advises: "So we pause now to close our eyes, to envision the universe and our place in it, and to affirm the meaning of our human mission as partners with God. . . " And I would add, or the Power in the Universe, or spirit, or energy, or however we understand that word, and as partners with each other, and with the other living beings on the planet, we play an important role "in the healing and transformation of all that is." Can you imagine such a world? Can you imagine a world in which Exodus takes place? Imagine, envision, believe, persist. Make it so.
Exodus is not a miracle. Exodus takes inner work, as well as outer work. Something has to move inside us. Something moves on the inside in order for it to show on the outside. The point is that an Exodus is possible.
In Hebrew Egypt is referred to as mitzrayim, from the word tzar, the narrow place. Egypt, slavery, is the place of constriction, the bottleneck. Traditionally, mitzrayim has been understood to be a spiritual state of disconnection. (Lerner) It is the sidewalk in front of Yankee Stadium, so full that a child cannot move freely or find the safety of her parents. It is the inability, the state of powerlessness that keeps us from helping ourselves. It is the grudge and simmering resentment that keep us from loving freely. It is the self-doubt that keeps us trapped in less than optimal situations and relationships. It is the fear that paralyzes us. It is the greed and scarcity mind that keep us from sharing our resources. And so much more. What is your mitzrayim? Where in your life are you not free? Where are those narrow places that hold you too tightly and take away your freedom, your power and/or your sense of safety? Where are those places of discontent, disconnection, confusion and slavery? The inner work of Passover is to identify our mitzrayim.
At the Passover table a child asks "Why is it that on all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs, but on this night we eat only bitter herbs? ' And the answer comes back, "We eat only bitter herbs to remind us of the bitterness of slavery that our ancestors endured while in Egypt." It is important for all of us to eat bitter herbs in order to remember that slavery endures. It endures in the memories and history of those, not only Jews, whose ancestors were enslaved. We live that history, and its terrible legacy of racism, right here in this country. It endures in the millions of women and girls who at this very moment are trafficked and brought to places far from their homes in order to be slaves in the sex industry. It endures among the millions of people who do not have enough food to eat; who do not have access to clean water; who do not have homes to live in. Slavery exists in our world as well as in our personal lives as well as in our histories. It is important not to look away. The inner work of Passover is not to close our eyes to the mitzrayim in our world.
For the message of Passover is a revolutionary one and it requires inner work to produce clear, honest thinking and a courageous heart. The message is that despite slavery and tears, the world can be different. As Michael Lerner reminds us, ". . . cruelty and oppression are not inevitable 'facts of life, ' but conditions that can be changed. The way the world is now is not the way the world has to be." Do you believe that? Do you really believe that? The inner work of Passover is the cultivation of belief in the possibility of Exodus, even when moving through the mitzrayim might seem impossible.
Moving through the mitzrayim might seem impossible. We live in a global world, with a global economy that has brought benefits to many but has also brought a wider, more desperate gap between those who have and those who do not. The crisis going on right now regarding the rising prices of corn for food because of its use for ethanol, which arises from a desire to develop alternate sources of fuel, provides an example of competing needs and priorities and the power that accrues to those who have wealth and technology. Many of us have our own personal mitzrayim; places in which we are stuck and suffering oppression and do not see a way through. Perhaps we ask ourselves what difference we could possibly make. That might not be the right question.
When I was in the mitzrayim outside of Yankee Stadium, feeling deeply alone and terrified, feeling powerless to help myself, I could not have broken free on my own. I was a single drop in a tidal wave. I was not as strong as the forces that kept me moving on the sidewalk. I needed my father to pull me loose. I needed help. The Exodus story is a group story; it 's a story about "we" rather than "I." Didn 't Martin Luther King, Jr. say that until we are all free, none of us is free? The issue is not what difference do I make, but what can we accomplish together? Days after the attack on the World Trade Center Stephen Jay Gould said something like one terrible deed gives rise to ten thousand acts of kindness. When we go through the mitzrayim, we must look for the helpers. We must also become the helpers. That 's how we will get through. "We will rise all together, we will rise." That 's how transformation: personal and national and global will come about.
This is hard for Americans in general and for many of us personally. We are an independent people and take pride in doing for ourselves. We are individualists; even Lone Rangers. On one hand it makes us strong but on the other it leads to an excessive fear of dependence. We worship youth and fear old age. We undervalue those who serve as caregivers. We have an abiding distrust of any government program that hints of socialism. We scorn the word welfare. We are slaves to a consumerist culture. How do such a people come together and help one another to end oppression? How do we change the dominant way of thinking, which is "It 's all about me?" How do we do the inner work so that it manifests in outer community?
We remember to pack matzah. At the Passover table a child asks, "Why is it that on all other nights during the year we eat either bread or matzah, but on this night we eat only matzah?" The answer is "We eat only matzah because our ancestors could not wait for their bread to rise when they were fleeing slavery in Egypt, and so they took the bread out of their ovens while it was still flat, creating matzah, a flat, crunchy kind of cracker." Michael Lerner explores this further. He says, "The Torah tells us that the Israelites had to take the uncooked dough with them 'for they had prepared no provisions for the way. ' Symbolically, the matzah reminds us that when the opportunity for liberation comes, we must seize it even if we do not feel fully prepared. Indeed, if we wait until we feel prepared, we may never act at all."
Which is why we make the Exodus together. We inspire and help each other along the way. Maybe where I am not ready, you are. Maybe where you are not ready, I am. We need one another. Has it ever happened in your life that an opportunity presented itself but you turned it down because conditions were not perfect? Because you were not quite ready? Maybe next year. If I had only met you later in life. . . I imagine some of us know what that feels like. You always wonder what you might have missed by insisting upon waiting for the bread to rise.
All over the world Jewish people come together to remember their history and keep alive the vision of freedom from oppression. Those of us who are not Jewish cannot know what that feels like. At the same time, there is a wider meaning in the Passover story that speaks to everyone.
The story holds out a possibility that there can be an end to slavery of all kinds in this world. It offers the possibility of a transformation from oppression to freedom. One that takes place on the personal level, on the community level, on the national level, on the global level. The story calls us to take a chance; to take a risk and believe in its possibility. And, most important, to mould our lives so that we act as if we believed that Exodus could happen.
More, the story reminds us that inner work is necessary for any Exodus. It calls us to identify where we are enslaved, as individuals and as a people; it calls us to name our mitzrayim, and not to look away from those places of suffering. How can we do that? We take the courage not to look away from our belief that there can be transformation.
Finally, the story teaches us that we do not make any Exodus alone. We do it together and therefore we must build up the practice of being helpers for one another, of thinking in terms of "we." We will learn to accept each other 's help, even come to trust it. That and knowing the mitzrayim and believing that change is possible can prepare us to take the opportunities when they appear. We won 't wait for the bread to rise. We will have matzah.
So we pause now and envision our place in the universe as co-creators and bringers and receivers of the transformation from slavery to freedom. As we envision it, so might it be.