America, America

Rabbi Noa Kushner

Parashat Vayera

I.

We got a text early this week, before election day, from our friend in Israel — She is a religious progressive, an activist, someone who is deeply embedded in the work of building pluralism in Israel, of working to end oppression. She told us she was thinking of us, worrying with us 

And then she said, “I’m sorry, but I’ll bet you a double decker hamburger that Trump wins.” 

At the time, I felt bad for her. I knew she had been forced to live under Bibi’s administration for who knows how long. I knew her hopes had been raised only to be crushed again and again. I didn’t blame her for putting what I was sure was an Israeli overlay on top of our, very different, fundamentally different, democratic process and largely progressive American society. That morning I was clear the Democrats would win — if not by a landslide, then by a decisive majority. 

And while I’ll let the data analysts figure it all out, and while I am cautiously optimistic, still, our friend was more right than wrong. 

II. 

This morning, I got another message from a different friend in Israel. This person, too, is a religious progressive activist, she too is deeply connected to Israeli society. (What can I say?) 

But, like many, by this morning I was not as clear about the differences in the electorate between the US and Israel. 

By now, I had passed through the initial twenty four hours of what I can only call dread and despair.

By now, I was spending all my time with Nate Silver, alternatively loving and hating him with his every overly-detailed-yet-still-inconclusive update. 

After saying she was thinking about us, worrying with us, my second Israeli friend said she thought about the fact that — if Biden indeed wins — America will have escaped the clutches of a bully, a tyrant. 

She reflected on how rare that is. She said that if America can free herself from this person, with the whole world is watching —

this significant moment will remind people who live under other forms of corrupt leadership — in Russia, in Turkey, and even, she said, in Israel — that there is still possibility, there is still the potential of freedom for all. 

Now we remember, escaping a bully, leaving a trap of this kind is one of the hardest things we can do. No one gets out unscathed. 

So the idea that the election would more or less be a resounding agreement of all Americans on how abhorrent and incapable the president is — this is was not only politically naive, it was emotionally naive, religiously naive. 

Because we even now from Torah that leaving slavery in Egypt is not a clean affair 

We know leaving the Pharaoh comes with a cost 

We know we were so afraid, so hesitant to leave that God had to make it impossible for us to stay

And even when God made it impossible to go back we still begged to go back

And we know it was so hard to leave that even with the plagues, not everyone left 

That even with all the miracles God performed for us, we never forgot the Pharaoh  

Pharoah’s lure of security and the fear he awakened in us

rested deep in our hearts. 

And we know that many of us looked back over our shoulder for the Pharaoh for the rest of our lives

No, no one leaves a bully easily and no one leaves unscathed

Not in Torah, not in history, and not now

Still, we also know, as we might seek to remember now with all our strength, that it is possible

Our Torah also teaches us, as undeniably painful and destructive as the leaving might be, 

It is possible.

III.

It would be nice if this week’s Torah would give us a breather

I know everyone is struggling now, 

Would be nice if there was a simple story about flowers or maybe a love story 

But first of all, there are no easy Torah portions. 

And second, in this week’s Torah, we have one of the hardest and most complicated stories of all — 

But still, with your permission, I am sorry bring up something difficult but I feel there is something we can gain from one verse. Even just two words of one verse.

I am talking about the story of Abraham who binds his son as if to sacrifice him and is stopped by God at the last moment. 

Volumes have been written on how Abraham even came to this 

and if he was not stopped, let’s just say I could not be a rabbi

But tonight I just want to draw attention to how he is stopped. 

There is an angel who calls from heaven and says his name, not once, but twice. 

“Abraham, Abraham!”

Some say the angel called an extra time out of love and encouragement (Beresheet Rabbah 56:7) 

Tanhuma says Abraham was so set on going through with it, the angel had to be forceful, emphatic. (Tanhuma, Tzav) 

But I was taken by a teaching in the Zohar my teacher Avivah Zornberg offered 

That says that the reason Abraham has been called twice is that he became two people:

There is the first Abraham, the one who is set on completing the unspeakable task, the one who imagines this violence is what God wants, that this is what will keep him whole and protected 

And the second Abraham, who, in my view, understands that he was wrong

That he has been threatening his own child

That pieces of himself are bound on that alter 

Things that must be unbound 

And that great mistakes have been made in the name of God

And the Zohar says that in the space between —

In between the first time the angel says, “Abraham!” to the second 

Abraham goes from being the first version of himself to being the second 

And it is only the second version of Abraham that can hear the command of the angel to stop

Only the second version of Abraham can understand that he has made a mistake with his life and so start to try and fix what has happened 

It made me wonder, it made me hope

Perhaps just like there were two Abrahams,

Maybe there are two Americas

Maybe, just like the second Abraham did not erase the first but learned from his tragic decisions

Maybe, just maybe, there is the America we know 

And there is also a second America

An America of Not Yet 

An America of the Possible 

Maybe if we admit that we have made mistakes, mistakes for generations 

Mistakes that course through our country 

Maybe if we begin to understand our current role in these mistakes 

Maybe if we see all that is bound on the alter 

Maybe if we admit all we have lost and continue to lose in continuing as we were 

We could find and inhabit and animate that second America, that America of the Possible 

Maybe, just like Abraham 

Even in the midst of his making the worst mistake of his life, some would say in all of Torah

Maybe just like Abraham got another soul, another chance

Maybe there is also a second version of us, another chance for America. 

IV.

In order to find that second America we will need to start with finding and saying more of the the truth to ourselves and one another 

I know that in this moment we are reeling from the loss of our narrative, not to mention losses in the senate and house, the supreme court, too many to count. 

I could list the atrocities and offenses of the enemy, but you already have them memorized. 

We have been repeating them to each other for years, reciting them like prayers 

I know we have felt and still feel like we are at war. 

And I know we are exhausted from the equivalent of living with an abusive and corrosive leader.

I know if we felt as if we were awakened suddenly in 2016, now we feel as if we have not slept in four years. 

But when we are done shaking our heads at the results, at a mixed outcome, a close call we once felt was practically inconceivable, we must then begin to see our role in the matter. 

Many of you will say, with good reason, “We are at war, some would say we are losing, have lost key battles (!), how we can look inward now when the enemy is so strong?”

But this shabbat I want to suggest that, while working and fighting to progress in the judicial system, in the schools, in legislation, while this is critical and must continue

If we don’t also seek a second path, a internal path, 

We will never get where we are trying to go 

In the words of Washington Post columnist Phillip Kennicott, 

[Trump] …gave our unique brand of ugliness — rooted in racism, exceptionalism, recklessness, arrogance and a tendency to bully our way to power — a name. 

“And although white supremacy may be the better, more clinical term for what ails America, “Trumpism” is a useful …alternative. It …includes not just avowed racists who have publicly supported the president, but also those who downplay the problem, or align with it for personal gain, or who are simply unwilling to acknowledge its history and persistence. 

“…although some White people will reflexively resist acknowledging how their own lives intersect with white supremacy, it may be easier to see how much Trumpism exists in all of us.” (“Trumpism is a lifestyle disease, chronic in America,” The Washington Post, November 6, 2020, Phillip Kennicott). 

See we have to look outward, yes but also inward 

Otherwise we won’t see what is lurking in there 

And I learned from my teacher Isoke Femi of GLIDE 

Something I had learned from the chasidim through my father long ago 

That we not only need to acknowledge what is in us

We also have to find a way to love those forbidden pieces 

We have to find a way of loving and incorporating the pieces of ourselves we have cast away, 

Otherwise we will never figure out how to love people in society that it has been hard for us to love

And given what we just learned in the election

If we insist on keeping our current understanding of the world intact 

If our only tactic is to fight harder, fight smarter 

If we only hate the enemies more, inside ourselves and out 

If we fight the building of the wall only to build stronger walls around our social circles and hearts

The America of Not Yet will never come to be 

Instead of continuing binding more and more on the alter

We are going to have to build a collective with more room for more sides of ourselves than we may be able to imagine right now

It is possible that the first Abraham could not imagine the second Abraham, he could only feel his way there 

It is possible that there are no words recorded in Torah between the first and second times that God calls to Abraham because that kind of transformation doesn’t come in words

But whatever happened, it allowed Abraham to change course, to unbind, to take down

We, too will need a collective that allows for more sides of ourselves 

One that accesses parts of us we don’t even fully admit are there yet 

And we will need a collective with more room for more kinds of people than it may be possible for us to imagine right now 

This does not mean we cannot stand our ground on issues, we can, we must

It just means going forward, we take some of our precious things off the alter, we unbind

It means we make the effort to put pride and purity aside and in many cases, build any bridge we can. 

It means we are allowed to change our minds 

It means we are greedy for human connections of all kinds. 

It means we are curious about someone with whom we vehemently disagree, rather than dismissive. 

It means we really live by the difficult idea that God is in each and every person, not just the ones who look like our larger cosmopolitan tribe, and not even just the ones who read what we read, not even just the ones who think like us. 

That larger collective is the promise and the burden of our democracy

A democracy that is flawed, but, thank god, on this shabbat, still intact. 

V. 

Bereisheet Rabbah has one more take on why Abraham is called twice. Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov said: God spoke to him, [the first time]

and to future generations [the second time], because there is no generation which does not contain people like Abraham (Bereisheet Rabbah 56:7) 

In other words, when the angel was calling to the second Abraham, the changed Abraham, the Abraham that had moved from the acknowledged violent past into a kind of future — 

That angel was also calling to us

That angel was also calling to anyone in our generation who was willing to claim a place in the second America, 

in the America that is Yet to Be 

And just like Abraham is called twice in Torah, 

we too are called twice 

in our song, America the Beautiful

we too are called twice

Maybe once for what is 

and once for the America that will surely Be — 

America, America 

God, shed thy grace on thee

And crown thy good with brotherhood 

From sea to shining sea.