Courage
This Shabbat is known throughout the Jewish world as Shabbat Hagadol- The Great Shabbat. At a Brit Milah we bless the baby, Ze Katan GADOL yihiyeh- This little one should become GREAT. This is our coming of age moment, back in history the Bnei Yisrael grew up and became great. Tradition tells us that taking the sheep in anticipation of the Pesach Sacrifice was this moment of greatness. Standing up to the society which had embittered their lives and openly defying the religious order transformed the slave nation into a liberated nation. They were still confined to the Egyptian borders but their spirits were free and when the time came to leave they walked out tall and pride. So this Shabbat demands something from us, to be courageous! To be a GADOL!
I want to focus on three areas where we need courage:
Courage to be Jewish- to be different
Courage to ask questions
Courage to deal with family during Seder night
The root of the word courage is cor—the Latin word for heart. In one of its earliest forms, the word courage had a very different definition than it does today. Courage originally meant “To speak one’s mind by telling all, one’s heart.” Courage, said Churchill is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
Over time, this definition has changed, and, today, courage is more synonymous with being heroic. Heroics are important and we certainly need heroes, but I think we’ve lost touch with the idea that speaking honestly and openly about who we are, about what we’re feeling, and about our experiences (good and bad) is the definition of courage.
Ordinary courage is about putting our vulnerability on the line. In today’s world, that’s pretty extraordinary. When we pay attention, we see courage every day. I see it in my classroom when a student raises his or her hand and says, “I’m completely lost. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Do you know how incredibly brave it is to say “I don’t know” when you’re pretty sure everyone around you gets it? The truth is many times lots of others are just as lost.
When we share our stories of vulnerability and imperfection with our children we teach them that it is possible to be brave and afraid at the same time, as Mandela taught “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
Every soul cries: “Am I worthy of connection?” We then allow the mass public to tell us the answer to that. This leads us to “the fear of connection, We’re scared to death of each other!
So what would it look like to be free of this shame? What differentiates the open and vulnerable from the ones cowering in the corner “Those who feel worthy have a strong sense of love and belonging and BELIEVE they’re worthy of it.” They believed what makes them vulnerable makes them… beautiful! The belief that we are worthy to give love and receive love. Courage to be imperfect. To “tell the story of who you are with your whole heart,” Cor the Latin word for “courage.”
Most people run from that feeling of vulnerability, we make excuses, crack jokes to avoid making eye contact that piercing stare that has a “superman” X-ray vision quality to it.
Friends, we can either think of being vulnerable leading to a life of shame or seeing it as the beginning of finding the life we were created for. A life of joy, creativity, belonging and love! Imagine for a moment what that life could look like? A life free of having to prove yourself to others. A life free of questioning your every word and movement. A life free of checking yourself out in the mirror every moment in fear your hair may have moved out of place. Those who have discovered this kind of life become safe people, they become people who provide love, safety and comfort for weary souls around them.
The Cowardly Lion in the wizard of OZ was able to admit what he lacked:
Courage! What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes the flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the Sphinx the Seventh Wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the ape in ape-ricot? What have they got that I ain’t got? Courage! You can say that again!
Cowardly humans are more likely just to change the subject. What, then, do truly courageous people do? They dig deeper, they take responsibility.
It requires gumption to follow one’s principles wherever they lead.
The path of least resistance is to attribute problems to those who have less power than you. It’s much harder to say I blame myself.
We have to be willing to take on the nay-sayers, to fight for what’s right even in the face of concerted opposition.
I understand how real fear keeps more of us from doing what we know should be done.
It takes courage to stand up to absurdity when all around you people remain comfortably seated. But if we need one more reason to do the right thing, consider this: our children are watching us, deciding how to live their lives in part by how we’ve chosen to live ours.
We dare not fail ! Lady Macbeth thought so too:
Macbeth: If we should fail?
Lady Macbeth: We fail? But screw your courage to the sticking place, And we’ll not fail.
This is one time when you don’t have to feel ignorant because you don’t understand what Shakespeare really meant. Although he invented “sticking place,” and though our usage derives directly from this scene, Shakespeare never explains what the phrase means.
Macbeth still has cold feet; he and his wife have agreed to kill King Duncan of Scotland, but he can’t stop thinking of all the consequences the deed might not trammel up. Lady Macbeth, after impugning her husband’s manliness, urges him, as we might say, to “screw up his courage.” The OED suggests that Lady Macbeth’s original words refer to the twisting of a tuning peg until it becomes set in its hole. The editor of The Riverside Shakespeare, on the other hand, suggests that a “sticking place” is “the mark to which a soldier screwed up the cord of a crossbow.” Whether the metaphor is musical, martial, or otherwise, Lady Macbeth’s meaning is obvious though her words are obscure: “tighten up your courage until it is fixed in the place necessary for the murder of Duncan.”
Courage to ask questions
Seder night gives you the opportunity to do my job. To spend two glorious nights as educators, for many that’s two nights too long! Seriously though it’s our job to tell the story in a way that makes sense to the children. They might learn at school but we have to prepare extra material. With the internet its easy today. If we rush through those bits with all the verses to get to the meal we miss the point. Vehigadta L’bincha- tell your child. What are you passing on memories of boredom, the burden of seder night or the majesty of Jewish tradition?!
It takes courage to ask. We don’t want to appear foolish and ignorant even if at times we are truly ignorant. Back in ancient Greece Socrates would be there to put us all through our paces.
Socrates, never wrote any philosophical works. He conducted philosophy by holding conversations with just about anyone who would talk with him. These conversations, as portrayed in Plato’s Dialogues usually consist of Socrates asking questions that lead his conversant to further and further question their own beliefs. The self-doubt many felt after conversing with Socrates was uncomfortable enough that the Athenian assembly eventually voted to put him to death. Actually, Socrates had plenty of opportunities to escape this punishment, but choose to hold his ground on principle. He regarded cowardice and hypocrisy as fates worse than death.
He habitually started his conversations with others by asking them for an account of some concept:
What is justice? What is piety? What is knowledge?
The remarkable part is that almost all of the people to whom he put these questions claimed at first to know the answers. Through a process of questioning and testing hypotheses he inevitably led the other person to the inescapable conclusion that their own thinking was riddled with uncertainties and contradictions, and that they did not really know what they thought they knew at all.
Many people were not pleased to have to admit their ignorance of the very subjects on which they were taken to be experts. It’s OK to tell a child I don’t know, but I will try and find out. It also takes courage to admit to oneself what we don’t know and ask questions.
Soc: Tell me, if you can, what is courage. La. Indeed, Socrates, I see no difficulty in answering; he is a man of courage who does not run away, but remains at his post and fights against the enemy; there can be no mistake about that.
Soc. You would call a man courageous who remains at his post, and fights with the enemy?
La. Certainly I should.
Soc. And so should I; but what would you say of another man, who fights flying, instead of remaining?
La. How flying?
Soc. Why, as the Scythians are said to fight, flying as well as pursuing.
La. That is true.
Soc. For I meant to ask you not only about the courage of heavy-armed soldiers, but about the courage of cavalry and every other style of soldier; and not only who are courageous in war, but who are courageous in perils by sea, and who in disease, or in poverty, or again in politics, are courageous; and not only who are courageous against pain or fear, but mighty to contend against desires and pleasures, either fixed in their rank or turning upon their enemy. There is this sort of courage-is there not, Laches?
La. Certainly, Socrates.
Soc. And all these are courageous, but some have courage in pleasures, and some in pains: some in desires, and some in fears, and some are cowards under the same conditions, as I should imagine.
La. Very true.
Soc. Now I was asking about courage and cowardice in general. And I will begin with courage, and once more ask, What is that common quality, which is the same in all these cases, and which is called courage? Do you now understand what I mean?
Courage to be Jewish- to be different
Pesach 2094- A fifth question for the Ma Nishtana has been unearthed buried deep underground in a part of Manchester that used to be the home of a large Jewish community. “Why is this Matzah so much more expensive than that Matzah?”
Pesach presents us with so many different customs more so than any other festival. Differences in what we eat, how we conduct Seder, what we cook and how we transform our homes, our own kitchen looks like an early version of a space ship with silver foil everywhere. How well we cope might reflect how much courage we have to be Jewish. Do we experience our Judaism as a very visible wart on the tip of our nose, it makes us feel awkward and ashamed, or is it a badge of honour a Jewel that we wear with pride. Shabbat Hagadol 3326 years ago the Israelites stood up and made that statement- we are proud to be different from others and we are choosing freedom from slavery to be different from others. We need to make that commitment today. After the 6 day War there was so much pride in the achievements of the IDF and Israel that many Jews who had held back from identifying chose to, some with religious commitment others with a necklace with a Chai some with a Kippa, it didn’t matter it’s what they did that counts. Today Shabbat Hagadol we are being asked to make that same commitment.
Courage to deal with family during Seder night
It might be tempting to point a family member when the marror is spoken of or to pour salt water into an annoying relatives Kiddush wine but we must remember that the Torah specifically required the Israelites to eat the Pesach meal with family. The focus on the home and family as the nation is about to be liberated reminds us that the freedom is best enjoyed in the safe environment of the home whilst being surrounded by family. Seder night is not an easy ritual. Young family would have worked in school to produce beautiful resources that they might wish to share, cantankerous older members might be wishing to get it all over with. The balancing act is difficult. Moshe demanded that Pharoah release the entire nation from young to old and somehow we must be courageous to accommodate all our guests around our own tables without leaving anyone grumbling that slavery would have been less gruelling than a seder night.
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