Each morning and each evening, the people of the daily minyan gather to recite the obligatory prayers. It isn\’t exciting. The melodies aren\’t particularly uplifting. Sometimes there is a word of learning, but no sermon; none of the flourishes, trappings and trimmings of professional homiletics.
We leave well before dawn and as we speed through darkness I keep asking myself how it is that I\’m now the parent of a college student — I can still remember vividly the details of my own freshman year almost 30 years ago.
Try this experiment: Put your hands in your pockets and try to explain to someone — verbally — how to tie shoes. It\’s an exercise in frustration, because there are certain things you can learn by description, and there are others that can only be learned in the doing — learned not by words and concepts, but by involving fingers, hands and heart.
A poster of Moshe Dayan hung in my childhood bedroom. Growing up in the light of the Six-Day War, I adored this new Jewish hero — tough, cocky, a Jew without fear.
As I wheeled my shopping cart down the aisle of the local
market on my weekly grocery run, a toddler riding in his mother\’s cart
came up the other side. He was one of the students in the
nursery school, and when he recognized me, his mouth dropped open. He pointed
and shouted, \”Mom, look, it\’s God!\”
Ancient Greek democracy created the \”citizen.\” Renaissance Europe invented the \”gentleman.\” Colonial America produced the
\”frontiersman.\”
It is the Torah\’s most exciting, most cinematic story. The Israelites, newly freed from slavery, were camped at the shores of the sea when suddenly the sounds Pharaoh\’s approaching chariots filled the air. Realizing they were trapped, the ex-slaves cried bitterly to Moses, \”Were there too few graves in Egypt, that you brought us to die here?\” (Exodus 14:11) Moses prayed for deliverance, and was commanded: \”Tell the Israelites to go forward. And you lift up the rod and hold out your arm over the sea and split it.\” (Exodus 14:15-16)
It began with the first two human born into this world, the world\’s first brothers.
He awoke from the nightmare with a scream, as he had every night for almost 40 years. His heart
raced, his body drenched in sweat, his mind filled with vivid images of fiery destruction. He saw rivulets of blood flowing through the streets of Jerusalem, the Holy Temple ground into ashes, the lifeless bodies of the priests scattered about the Temple Mount.
This is a slightly abridged version of an address delivered to a crowd of 2,000 people at a rally for Israel at the Milken Jewish Community Center, April 16, 2002