Cheadle Parashat Bo – Bar Mitzvah Joe Rose 5774
Mazal Tov, to family Rose on Joe’s Bar Mitzva this morning. To Parents, Sharon and Julian, Grandparents Sandra and John and Sylvia and Clive. Wishing Clive a Refuah Shleima this morning and sorry that he cannot be here today. I haven’t yet had the pleasure to teach Joe at school, but I am delighted to be here this morning.
In fact we are celebrating two bar mitzvahs this morning. Joe’s and the Bnei Yisrael’s. The first book of the Torah could be described as the conception and gestation of the Jewish people. Avraham & Sarah, Yitzchak & Rivka and Yaakov & Leah and Rachel are the three stages of pregnancy. In the first chapter of the book of shemot the new creation is given a name. Pharaoh declares “behold the Nation of the children of Israel is more numerous than us.” What follows is a slow and difficult growth period. At first they cry and groan, words allude them, they fall and stumble. They ask questions, want to know why, to understand what is happening, They move from passive victims or in the words of Yehudah Avner when the state of Israel came into being, the Jews changed from being the objects of history where others made decisions for them to become subjects of history where they made their own decisions. Like a child who begins to take greater risks as they sense the call of adulthood, so to the bnei Yisrael begin to make choices and take control of their lives. Placing the blood on the doorposts openly demonstrating belief and commitment to Hashem preparing to leave slavery was their coming of age moment.
In the weeks that follow they grow up further as they navigate the challenges of life on the other side. Eventually arriving at Mount Sinai they are ready for the wedding pledging allegiance to Hashem whilst forsaking all others.
Joe, 13 years ago at your Brit Milah a blessing was said: “Just like you entered the covenant by having a Brit, so may you live to experience Torah, Marriage and good deeds.”
The Rabbis teach that every child who leaves his pre-Bar Mitzvah stage of life is like one who has left Egypt. The freedom is good but what lies ahead is the desert! Physiological changes and new-found freedoms “can,” according to some parents, “turn sweet children into monsters”! For some it is so scary, they want to run back to Egypt, to childhood, the land of freedom from moral responsibility.
So now you are a man! What does that mean?
If you were to imagine a man in your mind’s eye, what would he look like? What would he sound like? How would he act? In Western culture, the idea of a man provokes thoughts of ruggedness, strength, leadership, someone unemotional, but powerful. Winston Churchill suggested that “A man does what he must in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality.” Developing the idea further in the “The Count of Monte Cristo we hear this understanding “Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.
The storm always comes. Egypt was a storm moment for the Jewish people. Back in Egypt Moses demanded that Pharaoh free the slaves.
“Let my people go!” If we look closer at the Pasuk the phrase is “Shalach ami v’ya’avduni.” It literally means, “Send my people and they shall serve me.”
That is the key to the entire Exodus. It is not simply being freed, being out of the storm. While that is important, and it is just and right that no people ever be enslaved, it is not the complete story. If they simply had freedom, that would be freedom without purpose.
The same Hebrew root – ayin, vet, daled – meaning slave – is found in both places and it is deliberate – we are all slaves to something – we build our lives around ideas and things that we follow. We can either be slaves to Pharaoh or some other impermanent idea, or we can serve Hashem, servants to eternity and ultimate values.
Rabbi Soloveitchik writes, “The purpose of the Exodus is not political freedom, but the conversion of a slave society into a kingdom of Priests – mamlekhet kohanim v’goi kadosh and a holy nation.”
Freedom must have purpose and direction. If the slaves are simply freed to go off and do whatever they want, that is a lower level of freedom. But, with freedom with purpose, the Jewish people are asked to go to God, giving them meaning, a system of mitzvot about how to live and how to perfect the world. That is freedom with purpose. That is a very different statement from simply, “Let my people go.” That is the gift of Bar Mitzvah. You have greater freedom but also the potential for purpose.
Two American academics, Hubert Dreyfus of Berkeley and Sean Dorrance Kelly of Harvard published a book called “All Things Shining.”
They write: For the past hundred years or so, we have lived in a secular age. That does not mean that people aren’t religious. It means there is no shared set of values, in our world; individuals have to find or create their own meaning.
“This, Dreyfus and Kelly argue, has led to a widespread sadness. Individuals are usually not capable of creating their own lives from the ground up. So, modern life is marked by frequent feelings of indecision and anxiety. People often lack the foundations upon which to make the most important choices.
“Many people nonetheless experience intense elevation during the magical moments that sport often affords. They call this experience “whooshing up.” We get whooshed up at a sports arena, at a music concert, or even walking through nature.”
Many Jews don’t have a regular pattern of Jewish moments; they only have these occasional Jewish whooshing up moments. They choose spiritual moments and ideas like a buffet, but lack any ultimate purpose and direction. Our tradition has a different approach. We do have ultimate purpose and direction. We are given the gift of the Torah, with its core eternal ideas of perfecting the world in the image of God.
We are given a handbook and a system of mitzvot that guide our actions, how we speak, how we eat, how we interact, how we behave, how we conduct business, how we grow up, and how we live. We are blessed to have that purpose. We have freedom with purpose, with direction. May we all aspire to choose freedom with purpose.
Shakespeare’s Henry V describes the battle that Henry V waged across North western France, seizing Calais and other cities in an attempt to win back holds in France that had once been in English possession and to claim the French crown
Morale in the English line as they looked upon the overwhelming force of heavily armoured, highly skilled French knights must have been extremely low. King Henry, rising to the occasion, spoke words of encouragement that rallied the English troops and carried them to a victory. Although the speech below is a work of fiction, it is evocative of the spirit with which Henry–and all strong medieval kings–ruled through the strength of their convictions and by force of their personality. Its’ message is apt for Joe this morning.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian. He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d, And rouse him at the name of Crispian. He that shall live this day, and see old age, Will yearly on the vigil, feast his neighbours, And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’ Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars, And say ‘These wounds I had, on Crispian’s day.’ Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, But he’ll remember, with advantages, What feats he did that day. Then shall our names, Familiar in his mouth as household words- Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter, Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester- Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red. This story shall the good man teach his son;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Make great choices, brave choices, don’t moan about the rain, learn to walk in between the drops. Do what is right even if it is not popular; live with the many whooshing up moments that a vibrant and dynamic Jewish life gives us. Enjoy the freedoms but live with a purpose. Mazal tov!
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