… Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Eternal, the God of Israel: ‘Let My people go!'”
—Exodus 5:1
When I was a little boy, our synagogue placed a large banner at the entrance of the driveway, big enough for people in their cars passing by to read. It said: “Let My people go! Free Soviet Jewry.”
One day at Sunday school, our rabbi gave me and the other students in my class bracelets to wear, each one bearing the name of a Refusnik, one of the brave Jews in the Soviet Union who had applied to immigrate to Israel and been refused and persecuted by the authorities. Mine read:
Anatoly Sharansky
3-15-77
Anatoly Sharansky became known the world over by his Jewish name: Natan. He was arrested by the KGB on March 15, 1977, and imprisoned for nine years. He spent 405 days in the punishment cell, a sensory deprivation chamber with—as he describes it in his memoir, “Never Alone: Prison, Politics, and My People”—”no light, no furniture, nothing to read, no one to talk to, and barely anything to eat.”
Eventually, of course, Sharansky was released by Mikhail Gorbachev. He was finally able to make aliyah and reunite with his wife Avital. He later became a minister in the Knesset and Chairman of the Jewish Agency.
Generations of Jews across the millennia have been inspired by Moses’ words to Pharaoh: שַׁלַּח אֶת־עַמִּי (shalach et Ami)—”Let my people go!”
Interestingly and suggestively, our Torah makes it clear that the request comes from God, from “the ETERNAL, the God of Israel.”
The message is timeless and timely, echoing through the generations. God wants us—and others—to be free: free to live where we want, free to pursue the work that inspires us, free to love whom we want, free to worship and free to practice our religion as we please.
These words are timeless: We have longed for these things throughout the centuries. Sometimes we have been fortunate enough to enjoy these basic human freedoms. Too often, though, they have been denied us.
These words are timely: We know that right now there are people all over the world who wish to be free, people all over the world whose dream as individuals and as members of a community is “let my people go!”
In Iran, in Ukraine, in China and Russia, and even closer to home—in pockets of our own country right here in America—there are those who are not yet free. Our tradition calls us—as we read these words in this week’s parashah—to be God’s partners in giving those shape, in bringing freedom to our world.
Shalach et ami–Let my people go! God wants us and all of humanity to be free.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi