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Protecting Our Hearts: Confronting Evil Without Losing Ourselves

Writer's picture: Rabbi David BaumRabbi David Baum

Updated: Jan 27

Rabbi David Baum, Congregation Shaarei Kodesh

Shabbat Va-era 2025-5785







Early in the film Selma, which tells the story of the famous march by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights activists, there is a tense meeting set in January 1965 between pastors of the Southern Christian Leadership Council and young organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. 

 

In the film, Dr. King asks the local organizers what kind of man local sheriff Jim Clark is. Recalling a prior experience in Albany when the sheriff avoided confrontation and the protests were ineffective, Dr. King asks whether Jim Clark will make the mistake of reacting violently to peaceful protest. John Lewis, one of the local activists who eventually became one of the greatest Congressmen in our history, assures King that Sheriff Clark is will surely respond with violence, and this convinces King that Selma is the right place to advance the cause of voter registration for African Americans. 


The events of “bloody Sunday” on March 7, 1965 at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, when police and local bigots savagely beat John Lewis, march organizer Amelia Boynton and others, captured the attention of the nation and the world, leading to successively larger protests and then to President Johnson’s sponsorship of the Voting Rights Act just one week later. 


As you read many of Dr. King’s speeches, you see his focus on Moses and the story of the Exodus as if it is his story, and in many ways, it was. The struggle for freedom of the oppressed is a timeless story, and it is seen most prominently in these parshiot that we read over these weeks in Exodus. 


But, I wonder if, in the aftermath of bloody Sunday, Dr. King asked God, was all of this violence and suffering necessary?  


It’s the same question that we probably ask ourselves as we read about the suffering of the Israelites under brutal slavery, and even the plagues that decimate the entire Egyptian population.    


It seems that the question of why people suffer has always gripped our thoughts.  Is suffering necessary to bring about great and needed change?  


What if Sheriff Jim Clark had not “made a mistake” and had instead left the protestors alone? How many of them would really have made the march 54 miles to Montgomery? If no one had been beaten, would the world have paid attention? In other words, would it have been possible to eliminate the racist barriers to voter registration without exposing the violent injustice that supported them? Were the injuries and even the deaths of these brave protestors necessary to shock the world, to soften the heart of a nation, and to correct an injustice?


Just as in the story of Selma, it looks like unfortunately, suffering was necessary to end the oppression of the Israelites in Egypt.  


It seems like the Israelites needed to suffer before becoming convinced that the affliction of slavery was intolerable, and that the risks of escape were worth bearing. 


Egyptians suffering lead to the realization that the enslavement of Israel was destroying their country. And perhaps even God had to witness Israel’s suffering, and even to experience their suffering, before the scales of justice and mercy would shift, allowing for a historic change, and redemption to follow.


In both the story of the Exodus and the march in Selma, we see that suffering can be a catalyst for change, exposing injustice and igniting a collective moral response. But these stories also leave us with profound questions about the cost of change—questions that feel especially relevant today as we grapple with moments of national and global upheaval. Whether it is facing the trauma and aftermath of all we’ve all experienced during Covid; the dangerous realities of being a Jew, both in Israel and around the world after October 7th; the reality that we are trading murderers and the worst of the worst for hostages taken by Hamas; the natural disasters that we face domestically that have ruined millions of lives; or the uncertainties of leadership transitions that we experienced this week in America, we are often left asking: how do we confront these challenges without losing ourselves? How do we protect ourselves our emotional selves to weather these storms while also remaining open to the possibility of redemption and hope?


Anyone else find themselves turning to God and asking, “Is this all necessary?”


The story of the Exodus, from slavery to freedom, from degradation to dignity. But why couldn’t we have skipped the slavery and degradation parts if this was all inevitable?


We know the end of the story, but they didn’t. Moreover, what if God wasn’t the sole orchestrator of the ending? 


The entire Exodus story depended on one person, and one person alone, and it was dependent on an aspect of that person that only he could control: Pharaoh and his heart. I have to thank my brother who thought about this upon reflecting on last week’s sermon, what if Pharaoh didn’t make up the story of the Hebrews being a fifth column, and instead of training the Egyptian public to hate the Hebrews, he taught them to love them and accept them? 


In Exodus chapter 4, we read a prophesy from God about Pharaoh: 


וַיֹּ֣אמֶר יְהֹוָה֮ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה֒ בְּלֶכְתְּךָ֙ לָשׁ֣וּב מִצְרַ֔יְמָה רְאֵ֗ה כׇּל־הַמֹּֽפְתִים֙ אֲשֶׁר־שַׂ֣מְתִּי בְיָדֶ֔ךָ וַעֲשִׂיתָ֖ם לִפְנֵ֣י פַרְעֹ֑ה וַאֲנִי֙ אֲחַזֵּ֣ק אֶת־לִבּ֔וֹ וְלֹ֥א יְשַׁלַּ֖ח אֶת־הָעָֽם׃

“And the LORD said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the marvels that I have put within your power. I, however, will stiffen his heart so that he will not let the people go.”


The commentators argue about this issue of Pharaoh’s heart being hardened.  Was Pharaoh just a pawn of God, a robot who couldn’t make his own decisions, or was Pharaoh in charge of his faculties?  In Chapter 7:3, God tells Moses:  “But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart (Aksheh et lev Paroh), that I may multiply My signs and marvels in the land of Egypt.”  The verb used here is Kasheh, to make difficult or hard.  Earlier on, God tells Moses that he will Achazek, or stiffen, Pharaoh’s heart. In the Exodus story, there are 20 references to Pharaoh’s heart.  


In the Bible, the heart is the seat of the intellectual, moral and spiritual life of a human being.  This organ determines how we will behave in the world.  


There’s an important distinction though in the first five plagues – during these plagues, Pharaoh actually hardens his own heart, while during the last five plagues, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart.  Why would God do this?  Why would God cause undue suffering?  


During these plagues, Pharaoh plays a game with Moses and God – he retreats, and then comes back meaner and more vicious then he was before. The Hasidic writer Rabbi Kalonymos Kalman HaLevi Epstein (Cracow, 1751-1823) notes that the word for “I have hardened,” [his heart] hikhbadati, has the same gematria (numerical value) as emet, or truth. 


According to his interpretation, God didn’t actually harden Pharaoh’s heart; instead, he simply revealed the truth to the entire world: that Pharaoh’s heart was always hardened. 


This interpretation not only asks us to reflect on Pharaoh’s heart but also challenges us to consider the state of our own. What have the traumas we’ve encountered that I mentioned before—the plagues of our lives, both personal and collective—done to our hearts? Have they hardened us, closing us off from others, or have they opened us to compassion, growth, and action?


Our very own Rabbi Amy Grossblatt Pessah shared some beautiful, and impromptu Torah during our scholar in residence weekend. She questioned our speaker about his view that now is the time to care about Jews alone, and that we can’t open our hearts to others while our people are suffering. She said:


“There are two ways to go through life, one is to see the world through an abundance perspective, and through a poverty perspective. When we see the world through an abundance perspective, we see and understand that there is enough to go around, and when we see the world from a poverty perspective, we feel like there aren’t enough resources. This causes us to shut off our hearts, as opposed to expanding them. But the heart is an incredible organ; unlike the other organs, the heart is ever expanding; it has no bounds, and yet, it has the equal potential to harden.”


True power lies in here, our hearts, and the only one who controls it, is you. 


The world today offers no shortage of opportunities to soften our hearts and take action. From combating antisemitism to addressing systemic inequality, the need for justice is as urgent as ever. But we cannot act unless we first look inward. Where have our own hearts hardened? Is hatred driving me, or is it love? 


This week, let’s each commit to one act of kindness or Tikkun Olam to open our hearts more. It could be as simple as reaching out to someone in need or as bold as standing up for a cause we believe in. Small acts, when done collectively, can lead to great change.


But no matter what happens, we cannot let the evil we see in the world harden our hearts and change what’s inside.  I believe we do have free will, and our hearts are in our own hands.  


The injustice seen in our country against African Americans in this country, what Dr. King fought against, is a constant reminder of what was deep down in the hearts of the American people – justice and equality.  It was during the 1960’s when our country was changed, but there was much suffering that came with it.  This suffering might have been necessary to open our hearts, but what came out was not guaranteed to be good.  


But, we must never forget, when we are in the throws of suffering, our hope for the future sustains us. I recently found an interview with my great-Uncle Andrew Baum, a Holocaust survivor. The interviewer asked him, while he was in a concentration camp, if he knew that the Nazis were losing the war. He said he had no idea, but he went around to everyone he could to tell them that he saw the news and the war was coming to an end, and that they would be free soon. It was this optimism, he told the interviewer, that he said not only sustained him, but his fellow prisoners, and his brother, my grandfather, and that is why I am alive today. 


My great-uncle Andrew Baum’s resilience reminded me that even in the darkest times, we can choose hope over despair.


As we leave this sacred space today, let us carry that hope with us. The Exodus teaches us that redemption is possible, but it begins with open hearts. Let us all continue to work on our hearts, so that, God forbid, when our hearts are broken by suffering, good will come out to flood the world, and not hate. May we soften our hearts, strengthen our resolve, and work together to bring more light into the world.








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