"Purim & Parkland": post-school shooting Shabbat sermon

The Prophets Are Talking: Purim and Parkland February 23, 2018 – Isaac M. Wise Temple

Rabbi Michael Danziger

I have cried more this week than, maybe, any other week before. I’m not a big crier, and I don’t keep good stats on this, but I don’t remember many other times when so many news stories, especially, have brought me to tears. Strange tears, that are a mixture of sadness and horror, and admiration and hope, as we have watched our kids – kids of our country and of our Jewish community – rise up to fight, to advocate in their own defense. And they’re not standing up to mean big brothers or lunchroom bullies, but they’re standing up to us. They are marching, speaking, singing, rallying to be heard by the generations that are now in charge.

Teens rebelling against the rules of adults is not new, but this isn’t about curfews or cars – this is about wanting to feel safe at school. About feeling that too many of their friends have been murdered, and that they don’t want any more peers, families, and communities to experience that. Our kids have been made to feel that they need to stand up for their very lives.

It’s not really kids against adults. It’s kids against the way things are, and should not be. And gun violence – school shootings – have been the catalyst, but when it comes to the way things are, and should not be, it’s much more than that. Teens and others are standing up to complacency, to hopelessness, to the feeling that some problems are too big or too complicated to address. They are standing up to the notion that we can’t get involved or try to change something because we have too much to lose.

They are reminding us that when it comes to the lives of our children – or the life of our planet, or how we treat women, or so many other issues – that we have to make things change precisely because we have too much to lose.

We – those of us “in charge” – have let too many things go too far down bad roads; and one reason is the fear of what we might lose if we stand up and stand out. Our kids are reminding us now that that’s nothing compared to what we might lose if we don’t stand up and stand out.

It’s a big part of Esther’s role in the story of Purim, which we celebrate in the coming week. As queen to King Achashversosh, Esther had it pretty good! She would never want for anything. And when our people – her people – were threatened by a decree orchestrated by Haman, the path of least resistance would have been to feign ignorance and let history run its course, or to throw up her hands and say, “yes, it’s terrible, but what can I do?” The riskier option would seem to be going to the King, outing herself as Jewish, and pleading for righteousness and mercy. Maybe it would work, and we’d all be saved. Or maybe she’d be put to death for approaching the king, unsummoned, with the death of the rest of the Jews to follow. That’s pretty risky.

But so is allowing the world to be a place where Haman’s way is never blocked. Thank God that Esther, with Mordechai’s help, knew that to be true.

I don’t know what, exactly, it will take for us to make our kids and ourselves safe. I don’t know what it will take to make the planet they inherit hospitable to the long lives they are asking us all to make possible. I don’t know what it will take for them not to be crushed under the weight of all our debts – actual financial ones and otherwise.

But I suspect that if we fail to figure these things out, nothing we save in the process will be worth it.

Haman is identified in the Purim story as a descendant of Amalek, whose people attacked the Israelites in the desert and have come to symbolize cruelty to those who are vulnerable. In a passage in Deuteronomy, which is a special Torah reading for this Shabbat, the one before Purim, we are instructed to blot out the memory of Amalek from the earth. While this wording may raise serious questions about just what we should be willing to do to erase Amalek’s legacy from the earth, we can take it as a reminder that we must not tolerate advantage being taken of – or cruelty toward - the vulnerable.

Those who survived in Florida have looked anything but vulnerable this week, but they are our children. And inaction, timidness, or even too much patience in response to their pleas make us Amalek’s partners, rather than his foil. Failing to follow the lead of our kids puts us dangerously close to being on Haman’s side when this Purim comes and goes.

There is a pattern in the history of our prophets. They cry out loudly about a societal wrong. They tell us if we don’t change our ways and change our world, we’ll be conquered or destroyed. They are dismissed – as crazy, as emotional kooks, as zealots, (as crisis actors? – not in our Bible, thank God!), and they are not heeded. And eventually, they are proven right, and we are conquered – our society destroyed. That’s the pattern. We’ve done it too many times. It has cost us Temples, lives, and for thousands of years, taught the Rabbis, it cost us a homeland.

The prophets are talking to us again. Right now. They may be kids, but their message is all grown up, and the stakes are nothing short of life and death.

I’ll close with words from Elena Paull, a friend and colleague in Jewish youth work, penned earlier this week after a conference call to coordinate responses to Parkland. She wrote:

I have been wrestling with what to say for 7 days now. But last night I was on the call. I was there with young leaders who didn't wait 7 days to find the words. They found their feet, their voices, their moral compasses, and started charging ahead, knowing that words would follow even as the tears flowed and hearts broke; as they buried their friends; sat shiva at the houses where they usually have sleepovers; and then did it all over again every day for the last 7 days.

And through it all, they did not wait for adults to tell them what to do… They told us what we could do to support them in making the change they want to see - and will create - in the world. They are already there - on buses to their legislatures; organizing town halls; fundraising to get their peers to national marches; getting interviewed on CNN; and meeting with their school administrators.

Our nation's young people are not watching. They are acting. Jewish teens are not waiting. They are mobilizing. Join me in following their lead.