Action #7: Gave a drash

The rabbi was away at a Shabbaton so they needed another speaker and asked me to do it. Here's the draft I worked from though the way I said it was a little different. He asked me not to be political, so I gave my message without going there directly, emphasizing the importance of speaking up, however challenging:

Vaeira

            I’m really honored to have been asked to speak this Shabbat while Rabbi Block is away and I’m really pleased by the timing. My parents are visiting so they can be here. I have only really begun to like public speaking since I became an adult and moved away from home so they have hardly ever heard me speak in a setting like this. As a kid I was always a writer, but often I kept my writing to myself. After all, I didn’t know if it was good enough or what people would think of me or if what I had to say was important enough.

            With this in mind it really makes sense then that when I opened the parsha what interested me the most was about speech, difficult speech specifically persuasive speech, speech that sometimes changes the course of history, and hard it can be to say what you need to say.

            In the previous parsha, Hashem told Moshe to speak to Pharoah about letting the people go. Moshe objected, saying he didn’t stand a chance of speaking clearly enough,

but Hashem pushed Moshe to do it anyway. Moshe pulled himself together, went with Aharon to Pharoah, followed Hashem’s direction to speak up, and as a result the people were punished with having to work harder without the materials they needed. Great. So that didn’t go so well…

            In the beginning of this parsha he is asked now to go to the people and to tell them about Hashem and that Hashem will redeem them. Moshe did so but they didn’t listen.

            This is enormously frustrating to Moshe. The parsha goes on to tell us that Hashem comes to Moshe and again says he needs Moshe to speak to Pharoah, to tell him to send the people from his land.

Moshe says, “The children of Israel have not listened to me, so how will Pharoah listen to me?”

            This is where the parsha really speaks to me. It was one thing when Moshe first objected to speaking to Pharoah. He was filled with humility, had a speech impediment and simply didn’t think he was up to the task. Now he’s tried, and failed! And yet Hashem is asking him to do it again. Why? What’s the point? No one is listening.

            However, the Torah takes the time to say why he failed before to speak to the people effectively. So this is a chance for us to go back and learn from what went wrong.

            The pasuk says, “they did not listen to Moshe, because of shortness of spirit (or wind) and hard work.” “mit-kotzer ruach”

            Moshe may have assumed that people are enslaved would jump at the chance of being offered freedom, but if you really imagine it, it’s not such a stretch to think the people just said, “Sure Moshe… what else are you trying to sell?”

            Imagine people who have this incredible pressure on them, the physical pain and exhaustion of what they had to do, the lack of time to sit and consider this new turn of events, it’s not a surprise that the people had no brain power left to listen. They were worn out, dejected, and beyond able to think of new possibilities. Doesn’t that happen in your life? Someone tells you something critical, you know you have something important new to do in your life, new commitments to make, new change, and yet you also have to pay your bills, go grocery shopping, pick up your kids and do the laundry.

            Did Moshe understand that when he approached them? He certainly empathized with what they were going through enough to care about them, but he had never known labor like this, and now he was stirring up trouble. Of course they didn’t listen. 

            Now Rabbi Block pointed out to me that the phrase “mi-kotzer ruach” “shortness of spirit” does not actually have an indication of who is short of spirit. Obviously it could be the people as I just discussed, but it could also be that Moshe is short of spirit. He is so self-conscious, so worried about whether he will succeed or fail, that he doesn’t have the energy to pay attention to his audience.

            Maybe if he’d really watched and listened to them first he could have found a way to deliver his message to them so that they heard it. The parsha doesn’t tell us exactly how he delivered his message, but I think it more likely that he stood on a soapbox and shouted out what he had to say rather than sitting down with the people one-on-one, listened to them share their pain with him and then to tell them this promise that Hashem was going to save them.

            People need to be heard in order to hear. There’s a TED talk circulating about how people from opposing political parties can understand each other better once they understand the opposing parties’ values. When someone works for you, you get a lot more mileage when you first tell them you’ve noticed their strengths and contributions before asking more from them. When I’m teaching and a student becomes disruptive, I can’t just tell them to stop. First I need to understand why the disruption is happening and meet the student somewhere in the middle.

            All of us here have different abilities and responsibilities towards convincing others through speech. We use speech to persuade when we ask our children or spouses to do things, also when we have a difference of opinion with a co-worker. You may feel very strongly about something in the news but not think you know enough of the details or have the strength to speak up. Or you may feel you’ve said it already a lot of times so there is no point in trying again.

            Well, after the episode I shared with you in which Moshe fails to convince the people that Hashem will be there for them, Hashem asks him to return to Pharoah to ask him to let the people go. Pharoah is a much harder audience for Moshe and he can’t hope to listen and empathize in order to be heard. Moshe is certain he will fail. No matter, he has to go anyway. Moshe does so, and fails. Hashem tells Moshe in that Pharoah’s heart will be hardened, that Moshe WILL fail, and yet Moshe is not allowed to back down from the challenge. Moshe fails again and again and again, but Hashem keeps asking him to do it.

            How many times have you asked something of someone again and again and then threw your hands up? How many times has someone asked you to do something and you didn’t listen?

            There is a facilitator working in my classroom at school who recently pointed out to me that a particular seat in the room was situated so the student could not see the white board properly. At the time she said it, I was busy and had no idea of an alternative place to move it, so I shrugged my shoulders and ignored her. The next time she said, I grew irritated. Didn’t she know how hard it was to work with the confines of the room? She said it again and again, respectfully, and rightfully until I finally heard what she had to say and found a creative way to resituate the room, at least for the time in class where the white board was necessary. I’m glad she didn’t give up and I’m glad I had the humility to admit I should have listened earlier. The important thing is not how I felt about being reminded again and again what I had to do, or how she felt having to say it again and again, but ultimately is that now any child who sits in that seat can see the board.   

            So if you have something you need to say, forget yourself. Attend to your audience, believe in your message, be prepared for failure, and then don’t back down.

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            Shabbat shalom.