Judaism: Surviving Exile

Judaism is an ancient religion that is rich with history, theology, stories, rituals and tradition. It is too much to tackle in a short sermon or blog, so I’d simply like to share one thing I appreciate and respect about Jews and the Jewish religion: their ability to survive.

Sharon Salzberg tells a story about visiting the Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, outside of Jerusalem. She said that one of the most moving and power places in the complex was the children’s memorial, built by the contribution of an American couple whose 2 ½ year-old son was murdered in a concentration camp in Germany. The memorial to the 1.5 million Jewish children who died is carved from an underground cavern, it is a very dark chamber in the shape of a dome. As you enter, you are unable to see anything around you, so you grope your way through the darkness by holding onto a railing around the circumference. As you walk, you hear the names of children who died in the Holocaust slowly being read aloud.

In the center of the dome is a flickering candle. Lining the walls of the dome, hundreds of mirrors reflect this light from the candle in the center as well as its reflection in other mirrors. The impression is one of being surrounded by limitless points of light, each one representing a child killed in the Holocaust.”

There is no way for me to begin to grasp the horror, the pain, the grief, the anger and the terror of being Jewish at that time, or so many other times. There is no way to make sense of this kind of fear and hatred of another religion or race.

Here is a list of the major wars, pogroms (organized massacre of an ethnic group) and forced exiles of the Jews according to the Bible and history.

• 1200 BCE Hebrews in slavery in Egypt
• 722 BCE Assyria takes most of Israelites into exile
• 586 BCE Babylonian conquest and exile
• 70 CE Rome conquers Jerusalem, destroys temple, 1.1 million Jews killed, more enslaved
• 132 CE Rome quashes uprising and kills 580,000
• Beginning in 1095 CE Jews victims of Crusades
• 1492 CE thousands of Jews forced to leave Spain
• After 1555 CE Jews in some cities in Italy and Germany were forced to live in ghettos, Jewish-only quarters, walled in and locked at night
• 1648 CE Greek Orthodox people led massacres against Jews in Ukraine & Poland, hundreds of thousands killed
• Late 19^th and early 20^th century Russian pogroms killed up to 70,000 Jews
• The Holocaust – 1/3 (6 million) of all Jews in the world murdered by the Nazis
• Between 1933-1941, 340,000 Jews left Germany & Austria, 100,000 went to countries eventually conquered by Germany and lost their lives

There is not another religion that has faced this type of continuous persecution throughout the centuries.  Frankly, it is a miracle that there are still Jews in the world. How did they survive? Why did they stay Jewish? Where was their God in the midst of it?

If you read the Psalms you will find that they are full of lament… why god? Where are you God? Help us God? Have you forgotten us, God? For example, Psalm 22 begins “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These passages contain the very real record of the ancient Jewish people’s experience of oppression and persecution, their fear, anger, confusion, desperation, grief, and sorrow.

Surprisingly, the end of every lament returns to trust in God, hope for justice, and faith in the future. Psalm 22 reads, “But my children will be faithful to you, and they will be told about Yahweh for generations to come. They will come and proclaim your justice to a people yet unborn: ‘All this Yawheh has done!”

To lament and to hope. This feels to me like the survival tactic of the Jewish people. It is healthy to express pain, sorrow, desperation and fear. It is important to recognize it, name it and claim it. But it is also important to look at what we have been through, see our own strength and resilience, remember that we have felt the strength of the divine getting us through the worst of times. Lament and hope. I believe it is a gift to all of us during our own times of suffering and exile.

By simple virtue of being Jewish, they have experienced exile, being forced from their homeland, over and over again. There is also a metaphorical exile that Jews face, and we all face at different times in our lives. Those times when we must leave that which we’ve known and venture into the unknown. Or those times when we’re adrift without a safe, secure place to call “home.”

Being an outsider and different is one way of experiencing exile. Cast out from the “in” groups, judged and bullied. Losing one’s job, or role, can make us feel exiles from all that we knew. It could happen when our children leave home, or we move into assisted housing, or retire, or we leave the church we’ve attended for a long time. Grieving the loss of a loved one can feel like you’ve been exiled to a desert place with no guidance or direction.

Perhaps you know that Orthodox Jews strive to keep the 613 laws laid out in the Torah (the first five books of what we call the Old Testament). While that seems overwhelming and oppressive, I’ve often considered the context in which they were handed down. It was after being liberated from slavery in Egypt when their identity as a people was beginning to coalesce. It seems to me that these laws served not only as guidelines for how to live, but as a set of rules that not only set them apart from others but gave them a reason to band together. To dress in a certain way, eat in a certain way, pray in a particular language still today, sets the Jews apart and bonds them together through these customs.

Many of the Jewish high holy days or festivals emphasize hope and center around liberation and new life.

Passover is the feast celebrating liberation from slavery in Egypt. We know it as the meal Jesus was sharing (ironically) the night he was betrayed and imprisoned.

Sukkot is a fall festival, but during it they build temporary shelters where they take meals for a week to remember how God protected their ancestors during their 40 years in the wilderness.

Hannukah is a celebration of the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after it had been taken over and desecrated by the Greeks. The Menorah is a reminder of how God made one night of sacred oil last for 8 nights until more could arrive.

The Egyptians, the Romans, the Nazis, the Christians, the Russians, the Greek Orthodox, Muslims, have all tried to demean, terrorize and destroy the Jews, but their spirits are grounded in a God of peace and strength and resistance. It is a spirit that has been forged by centuries of trials and tribulations, a spirit we almost can’t begin to understand except to borrow a bit of it for our own struggles and exiles. It’s the spirit Karyn Kedar wrote about in her book, God Whispers, “Light and goodness are not beyond our grasp. We should not defer or postpone joy and blessing. We need only to begin to choose life… The world of the spirit speaks to you in a hundred voices. Listen with the heartbeat of your soul.”

Love & Light,

Kaye