Torah Portion
Personal Growth Develops
With Acceptance Of Change
and the prophets of Baal.
Elijah points his finger not at the
false prophets, for his anger is not direct-
ed to them. He turns to the people as he
declares, "I have contempt for you. Not
because you worship the idols of Baal,
not because you follow the false
prophets, but rather because you can't
he Torah portion for this
make up your mind about which of the
Sabbath continues the saga
gods to worship.
of Moses demanding the lib-
"Sometimes you worship the Lord,
eration of the children of
your God, about whom you have been
Israel from Egyptian slavery. The text
taught through the generations.
depicts the awesome confrontation
Sometimes you worship Baal and the
between Moses and Pharaoh in vivid,
other pagan deities of the sur-
dramatic encounter.
rounding culture."
The absolute dictator of
He berates them in a power-
Egypt sits upon his throne,
ful passage: "How long will
entrenched in his power.
you halt between the opin-
Standing before him, with no
ions? How long will you
earthly power or worldly
express
your loyalty to the
resources, is Moses, the would-
God
of
your
fathers one day,
be liberator of his people.
_and
the
next
day to the pagan
Every time God inflicts
deities?"
another plague upon Pharaoh's
The Talmud gives sound
people, the ruler summons
advice about this matter, urg-
Moses to appear before him
RABBI IRWIN
ing, "Let thy yea be yea. Let
and he says, "Take the chil-
GRONER
thy nay be nay." If you say,
dren of Israel out; let them
Special to The
"Yes," you should mean
worship their God." But then,
Jewish News
"Yes." If you say,"No," you
after the plague ceases and _
should mean "No."
time elapses, in the biblical
Now, this exhortation could end at
idiom, "Pharaoh hardens his heart" and
this point. But like any challenging
refuses to allow the slaves to leave as he
truth, it needs to be viewed in more
had promised.
than one dimension, for the text
Plague after plague is heaped upon
requires commentary.
Pharaoh. Each time, first he promises
Like all virtues, the quality of consis-
that he will release the slaves, then he
tency
and constancy must be observed
hardens his heart, a process that contin-
in a proper measure; but when carried
ues to the very crossing of the Red Sea.
to an excess, it can be destructive and
Pharaoh has gone down in history as
injurious. Life isn't simple. There are
the symbol of a king who constantly
times when we should change our mind.
changes his mind. When he is unchal-
To be rigidly consistent, to be unmoved
lenged, he oppresses the slaves. When
and unmoving means that we can, on
plagues come upon the people, he
occasion, be a source of anguish to our-
promises to free the Hebrews. He is a
selves and to others.
weak ruler who vacillates, for he has no
We are morally bound to differentiate
fixed principles or constant standards.
between consistency and stubbornness.
He may be the emperor of Egypt, but
Some people, once they make up
he is a slave himself to expediency, to the
their minds, cannot be moved no matter
stress of the moment.
how circumstances have altered. They
Vacillation is a human frailty to
will
not bend or yield, even though they
which everyone falls prey from time to
may
have arrived at an improper deci-
time. The English essayist Joseph
sion, or what was once correct, now no
Addison once observed that nothing
makes a person so contemptible, so
demeaned in the eyes of the world, as
inconsistency. When we succumb to this
fault, we are perceived as opportunistic,
Why is Pharaoh viewed with great
cowardly, or dishonest.
contempt in the biblical narrative?
A story elsewhere in the Bible
What is the difference between
describes how a noble and courageous
consistency and stubbornness?
prophet, Elijah, chastises the children of
Why was the prophet Elijah more
Israel for this very failing. The book of
angry about the conduct of the
Kings describes a contest between Elijah
Hebrew people than the deeds of
Shabbat Bo: Exodus:
10: 1-13: 16; Jeremiah
46.13-28.
T
1.,,wq.21aggiephotographu.com
ARNOLD
LINCOLN-MERCURY-MAZDA
Drive East Pay The Least
mama
PASSION FOR THE ROAD TM
LINCOLN
Mercury 4e,
GIL PRATT
Leasing Manager
Your West Side Specialist
(810) 445-6000
Gratiot Ave. at 12 Mile Road
Roseville. MI 48066
Fax (810) 771-7340
Conversations
28585 Telegraph Road
353-1300
American Heart
Association-
Flghting Howl Disease
end Stroke
1/22
1999
IRWIN GRONER
is senior rabbi of
Congregation Shaarey Zedek.
the false prophets?
•
<
'
• ' • ‘3.<
•••
longer is. These are stubborn people.
There is a Yiddish (and also a
Hebrew) word for this. The term is
akshun, someone who has made up his
mind and that is the end of the matter.
Neither storm nor earthquake can shake
him from his stubbornness. He is highly
opinionated; he is hopelessly rigid; he is
completely unbending.
We must avoid vacillation; but on the
other hand, we must shun stubborness.
A Chinese proverb declares, "He who
constantly wants to be happy must
change
.
b
One of the great philosophers of the
ancient Greeks, Heraclitus, said, You
never step into the same river twice. You
can step into the same place in the river,
but the water isn't the same because the
stream is constantly flowing."
He suggests an analogy to the stream
of time and experience. Life is a process
of change. Our thoughts and attitudes
change as a result of changing circum-
stances and new insights, as a conse-
quence of our own personal growth.
In professing our religion, we should
keep our minds open to fresh under-
standing, to new experiences. I know
people who have a negative attitude
about Judaism, its practices, observances
and traditions. When I probe the ques-
tion, I discover this is because at a very
young age they were forced to attend
services, or their teachers were harsh and
unfeeling, perhaps even cruel or because
Judaism was associated with sad and
painful events.
But as we grow and mature, we begin
to understand that we are not self-suffi-
cient, We don't have all the answers to
the mysteries of human existence. We
sense depths of spiritual resources within
our tradition and faith and heritage that
we should discover or re-discover.
I know a woman who, for almost 20
years, never went inside a synagogue.
And yet, in recent years, she began to
feel a deep need for the very faith she
had sought to escape, She now worships
quite frequently at Sabbath services.
Is she a hypocrite? Is she inconsistent?
I believe she is very wise. She has grown
and developed beyond the shallowness
of her earlier years.
It would be tragic if we resisted all
change for the sake of a rigid and
unyielding consistency In the realm of
the spiritual and religious, we should be
constantly growing. Of course, vacilla-
tion is a serious human weakness. We
must fulfill our commitments; we must
be true to our word.
We have a responsibility of equal
weight to aspire to greater levels of
awareness, sensitivity and faith. 7