Drashot for Shabbat Shirah

The Song in our Hearts

A Drash for Friday, 25 January 2013

A few weeks ago I jokingly told you about the trauma I experienced when I realised that I was addicted to songs that come under the rubric of ‘oldies.’  Oldies for the old, right?  Lots of things conspire to make us aware – sometimes painfully aware – of the passage of time.  Our preference in music is one of those things.  The songs that formed the soundtrack to our lives at that time of self-discovery, usually remain the preferred soundtrack to our later years as well.  Not long ago, I attended a party where the main attraction was karaoke.  It wasn’t surprising that I did not recognise the songs that the younger performers chose.  Nor that they looked on with blank faces when I sang It Was a Very Good Year, written by Ervin Drake and made famous by Frank Sinatra in the 1960’s.

                But even though there is a generational disconnect between choices of songs, each one of us goes through life with a song on our hearts.  Some time ago, I was listening to one of my favourite commentators on contemporary life, Dennis Prager.  A caller asked him if he could imagine a different life than the one he’d built.    He thought a moment before answering.  This is a man who is nationally known in the USA, and fairly well known worldwide thanks to internet streaming of radio.  He lectures around the world, in English Russian and Hebrew.  He writes columns and books that are widely read.  A few years ago, he was spoken of as a possible candidate for the US Senate.  And a caller asked him if he could imagine a different life.

                His answer was telling.  He responded that he was happy with his life but that nothing in it was essential.  Except two things.  One was religious faith.  Prager is a Jew, a Progressive Jew, and a proud one.  He could imagine himself belonging to another religion had the circumstances of his birth been different.  But he could not imagine not being religious at all.  He can respect and even appreciate another person’s faith, but he cannot imagine a life for himself that lacks faith.  And the other thing in his life, which he could not imagine being without, was music.  Prager is not an accomplished musician, but he is an educated consumer of music.  He plays interesting and edgy music on his radio program.  His tastes are far-ranging and eclectic.  And he can’t imagine a life in which he is denied the pleasure of music.

                I think that describes many of us.  Most of you in this room tonight are not accomplished musicians.  You may have played an instrument sometime during your lives.  But the process of making music – of daily practice to keep your technique fresh and to learn new songs – is not on your menu.  Nevertheless, in ways that are probably not always foremost in your consciousness, you have a song on your hearts.  At certain moments, in certain moods, it will come bursting to the forefront.  For some, it’s when they’re in the shower.  For some, it’s when driving alone in the car.  Ever seen people singing along with their car radios?  Singing with wild abandon in the privacy of their automobiles?  At least until they stop for a traffic signal and cars all around them stop and their occupants stare at the one singing?  Maybe you’ve seen drivers like that.  Maybe you’ve been a driver like that!

I’m also not an accomplished musician, although I probably ‘play’ at it more than most.  Of course, I’ve been using the ukulele as part of my pulpit persona for some time.  Recently, I’ve been seeking out for the first time, opportunities to play uke in groups.  Clara and I played with one such group this week, and it was delightful.  There’s just something incredibly happy about a group of ‘normal’ people, people like you and me, strumming little instruments and singing with abandon.

This Shabbat is known as Shabbat Shira, the Sabbath of the Song.  That’s because this week’s Torah portion is Beshallach, which contains the Song of the Sea.  It’s the song that Moses and the children of Israel sang at their salvation when the sea allowed them of pass and to flee Pharaoh’s chariots pursuing them.  It’s the song whose climax we sing when we sing, at each and every service, Mi chamocha ba’elim Adonai.  I hope you’ll come tomorrow to hear it sung, with a melody you probably have never heard, by Clara.

The point is that the children of Israel, when rescued at the waters of the Sea of Reeds, could have reacted a number of ways.  And the way they reacted was to break into song.  And this does not surprise us.  After all, even if you are not one given to singing in the shower, or whilst driving your car, you certainly understand the importance of having a song in your lives.

 In some ways, that song that plays over and over in our hearts defines us.  And each person’s song is unique.  Even if I and someone else are signing the same song, we are singing it each in our own way, with our own special lilt to it.  And with our own unique evocation of memories and emotions.  This is what makes music so special.  In hearing a song, each one of us has the capacity to make it our own.

The Song of the Sea, the unique song found in the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Exodus, is the song of our distant ancestors when they experienced deliverance from Pharaoh and Egyptian bondage.  It is a song the expresses the joy of a people freed to realise their potential.  They don’t yet know what that potential will be.  They have no idea of how their collective story will unfold.  But they know that the journey has begun.  The song, at least a portion of it, remains part of our soundtrack even today.

When the Dreamworks film The Prince of Egypt came out in 1998, I took my children to see it.  When parts of the Jewish story make it into the general culture, I – like many of you – feel a certain pride.  I remember sitting in the theatre watching the movie, and thinking ‘That’s my story.’ And then came the song When You Believe, which later won an academy award and was especially well-known after its being recorded by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston sent it soaring on the charts.

I have a confession to make; I’ve been known to cry at movies.  So it wasn’t unprecedented that, during the song When You Believe, I cried.  Hopefully my children didn’t notice…but they probably did.  And especially was a blubbering when, in the middle of the song, a child began the refrain:

Ashira Ladonai, ki ga’o ga’a.  Ashira Ladonai ki ga’o ga’a

Mi chamocha ba’elim Adonai.  Mi Kamocha Nedar Bakodesh.

Each one of us has his or her song in their head.  And there will be times when that song will come out, either from one’s own mouth or from someone else’s.  And when it does, and one can share one’s song with the world, that’s something  of extraordinary beauty.  That, I think, is why so many of us enjoy following American Idol and its spin-offs, reality shows where ‘ordinary’ people are given an opportunity to share their songs with the world.

Because those songs define us.  And if we reach a point where the song is no longer in our heart, then we’ve lost something very precious.  So sing away in the shower.  Or in the car…even at red lights!  Or at a karaoke night.  Or at any opportunity.  Because each person’s song is precious.  Shabbat shalom.

Refugees trying to reach Australia

Strangers in the Wilderness

A Drash for Saturday, 26 January 2013

I joked a few months back, that I remain addicted to closely following politics in my home country, the USA, for a number of reasons.  And one primary reason is that the political show here in Australia seems tame – and therefore boring – by comparison.  And if you heard my comments as a criticism then, or hear criticism now, please don’t!  True, boring is not complimentary.  But sometimes boring is good.  Look at the USA, which has lurched along from one political crisis to another during recent months.  The latest one involves Secretary of State Hillary Clinton banging the table like a petulant child under examination by members of Congress.  But the last crisis, the one over a combination of legislation and executive order to curb the circulation of guns after the most recent mass killing, has not yet wound down.  And still looming is the fight over the debt ceiling.  My crazy country provides no small amount of political theatre for the drama-starved masses around the world.

Here in Australia, apart from the ongoing Julia-and-Tony Show of constant barb-throwing, the biggest ongoing public policy drama seems to focus on the question of refugees.  How should they be received?  Where should they be received?  How do we separate the real refugees from those who simply don’t want to wait their turn?  What kind of reception do they get when they finally are allowed to live in Australia?  I ask all these as separate questions, because they are indeed separate questions even if they are all part of the greater question of how a country receives newcomers.

In this morning’s Torah reading, the Song of the Sea, the children of Israel are depicted as breaking out into ecstatic song upon their deliverance at the Sea of Reeds.  In their intense joy over their final break from Egypt, they cannot know what sort of challenges await them.  They can only know that they have been freed from involuntary servitude in a ‘narrow’ place and are entering the expansive wilderness of their potential.

In the wilderness, the children of Israel will be on their own, except for God who will provide for their needs in ways they cannot yet know.  They will experience many tests of their faith in their ultimate destiny.  Many will be the times when they will implore Moses to just let them return to Egypt.  There, while they lacked freedom and security, they at least had some measure of predictability in their lives.  That brings a certain amount of comfort.  But Moses, despite his periodic frustration with his people, stands fast and leads the people up to their entrance to the Promised Land.  And then Joshua, his chosen successor, takes over.  After their grand exit from Egypt, in fits and starts and with a 40-year delay, the people find their way to the Land of Israel where they begin to live out their destiny.

Along the way, others seek to hamper them.  Amalek attacks them from the rear, a cowardly attack that serves as the leitmotiv for all cowardly behaviour by nations forevermore.  But they fight off adversity and find their way to their land.

This is our shared story as Jews.  We repeat it every year.  Every Shabbat as we read our way through the Torah, the story unfolds.  We act it out during our Passover Seders, as we shall in two months’ time.  Because we continue to repeat it, it has become part of who we are.  The aspect of Jews as refugees is almost unavoidable.

Of course, we don’t need to look all the way beck to Egypt to remember the experience of being a refugee.  Most of the people in this room came to Australia as refugees after the Second World War, or they are children of those who came then.  And what about those who came more recently, as they no longer felt secure in their homes in South Africa?  They probably didn’t meet the definition of ‘Refugee’ used by the UN or by the Australian Government, but they still felt the sting of uprooting themselves from all that was comfortable and predictable.  So Jews, including the Jews of Australia, know how it feels to be a refugee.

The current controversy over refugees is extremely complicated.  I’m sure that, if I polled the Jews in this room, I would hear quite a variety of opinions as to whether the current crop of refugees even deserve the name, or the status.  But I think you would all agree that everybody who comes to live on these shores should be able to build a life here in dignity and security.  One of the complaints I heard most often about those who come here as refugees, is their inability – or perhaps unwillingness – to integrate into Australian society.  We want them to not just live in Australia, but to become Australian.  And whether we think individually that certain members of the refugee ‘class’ should have that status or not, we probably all agree that it is good for them, and good for all of us if they are able to navigate the shoals of life in their new country.

And that’s what I want to address this morning.  Some weeks back, I expressed a desire for us as a congregation to do some good works together in the sphere of interfaith relations.  I asked for your ideas about how we might contribute.  I have to be honest; I did not get a lot of feedback from you.  This is not a criticism – you’re clearly looking to me for leadership.  But as a newcomer myself, I’ve felt rather clueless about how we as a congregation might chip in.

But I finally did get some feedback and, coming as it did shortly before Australia Day weekend, it resonated immediately.

One of our members has suggested that we pool our talents to provide some kind of assistance for new residents, especially refugees.  To provide advice and assistance with figuring out how to live in Australia.  How to be marketable in one’s job search.  How to find the best education for one’s children.  How to protect one’s best interests legally.  How to figure out what government entitlements one is due, and how to get them.  How to master the subtleties of the English language.  These folks face so many different challenges.

If we remember our own history as refugees, we might feel some measure of identification with these newcomers.  If we remember how alone we might have felt when we came to Australia, or how our parents may have felt.  About the heaving saga of Jewish refugees, wandering the earth for a secure place.  In their exit from Egypt.  In the various exiles that came after that.  To be a refugee, and an outsider, and a newcomer, is something that each one of us carried around as part of our baggage.  While each of us might have a different opinion on public policy, we can all empathise with the refugee on a personal level.

That we read The Song of the Sea on Australia Day Weekend is a pleasant convergence.  It’s an opportunity for a nexus between this chapter in the Jewish story with the unfolding story of Australia, which each one of us have made our home.  And it is an opportunity to reflect on ways that we, as individuals and as a congregation, might help the latest newcomers to Australia to overcome the challenges of being a refugee, a stranger, a newcomer.  I am therefore offering this for your consideration on this Shabbat.  If you have thoughts or ideas as to how we can do this, please don’t hesitate to talk to me about it.  During the coming weeks, I’ll be putting heads together with you who are concerned about this issue and would like to help.  Let’s make Australia Day about more than picnics and parties.  Let’s use it as an impetus for pooling our talents and resources to do some good as a congregation.  Maybe by Passover, we will have a concrete plan as to how we can contribute.  Think about it and talk to me soon.  Shabbat shalom.