Erasing A Legacy of Hate — Friday Night Shabbat on June 9th, 2023

Today’s episode is a Shabbat Replay of our service last night, June 9th. This is a lightly abbreviated recording of the entire service, so if you’re looking for Rabbi Steven’s powerful Pride sermon on the passing of Pat Robertson, a particular song, or any other moment, check the timecodes below.

Timecodes:
[00:52] Lechu Neranena L’Adonai
[03:59] Welcome from R’Lizzi
[07:18] Shiru L’Adonai
[10:40] Mizmor L’David
[13:50] Words from R’Lizzi
[22:55] Lecha Dodi —> Siman Tov U’Mazal Tov
[28:00] Bar'chu et Adonai Ham'vorach
[29:18] Hashkiveinu (Ufros Aleinu) —> V’Shamru
[34:16] “So, Pat Robertson died yesterday…” Drash by R’Steven
[46:35] Ana El Na
[49:28] Announcements
[57:38] Aleinu
[59:55] Kaddish
[01:02:09] Hallelu

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Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

Rabbi Steven Philp  
Shabbat Shalom, everyone. I didn't introduce myself. Oh, well. That's probably Lizzi who's asking me to introduce us. I'm Rabbi Stephen. This is our amazing davening team, you are at Mishkan. And it is wonderful to see all of you here. So Pat Robertson died yesterday. And I imagine many of you, as I'm hearing are familiar with this man, who welcomed controversy as a means of spreading his particular message. He leaves behind what I would call it truly awe inspiring legacy and both senses of the word awe amazing, and terrifying. There are the material achievements, like the Christian Broadcasting Network is one of the largest conservative media production and distribution companies in the world. And then there are the immaterial gains, galvanizing the Christian right, reshaping the Republican Party as a bastion of social conservativism, escalating the so called culture wars of religious freedom and cultural diversity and family values, and feminism and LGBTQ rights. And of course, there was the incredible harm he has inflicted on individuals and on communities by stoking a discourse of hate and it is not hyperbole to say that he has left this world with blood on his hands. There is there's a kind of poetic justice that Pat Robertson died during pride month and in fact, I learned about his death through a meme shared by several of my friends that use the word pride as an acronym P R. Ide Pat Robertson is dead everybody. But in the rush to celebrate his demise, I have to admit that I felt a little bit of discomfort. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful that he is no longer able to harm me and the communities that I love. It there was an uncomfortable likeness between dancing on pat robertson's grave, and the perverted delight that he took in assigning tragedy whether it was earthquakes or hurricanes, or COVID, or 911, or even the Holocaust, to the advancement of progressive values, and the protection of those I care about most. When people die, our tradition invokes the phrase, you he's the Hello Libra, ha. May their memory be for a blessing. Contained within these words is the hope that remembering the person even as we mourn their loss will bring us comfort and strength, even joy and inspire us to bring their best qualities into our own lives. And so we learned that even the seemingly unremarkable life can be a blessing as it changes those who carry their memory for the better. Yeah, our tradition offers a corollary, who, for those who leave behind a legacy of harm, embark Shimo, zero No. May their memory and their name be erased. This phrase was first invoked in reference to a man who applauded the genocide of our people, but it's also linked to Comelec who preyed on the vulnerable, the disabled, the ill that had fallen to the back of our caravan as we fled slavery, and Egypt, we are commanded twice by the Torah, to erase his memory as a way of honoring and caring for those who bore the consequences of his hatred. It is an epithet that we've given to the worst enemies of the Jewish people, Stalin, Hitler, for example. So how do we decide whose memory is for blessing and whose memory should be erased? Pat Robertson was unquestionably unquestionably a hate monger whose decades long career inflicted real and irreparable harm on countless people. You ma Shimo visa throw, his name and his memory be erased. Yet Pat Robertson was also a son, and a husband and the father, a minister, who I imagined was loved perhaps passingly and perhaps deeply by his friends and his family and his community who if they were Jewish, I imagine might say, he's your cannoli Raha may his memory be for a blessing. And above all, he was a human being complicated and complex, just as capable of healing and of harming as any one of us here. It is a chance plunging truth, to recognize that even our enemies have redeeming moments. And it is a humbling reality to understand that our heroes sometimes do bad things. Our Torah reading this week ends with a conflict between the siblings Moses, Aaron and Miriam, one that brings out their worst and their best selves. The chapter opens with the latter two seemingly without cause spreading slander about their brothers saying Ishaku Sheetla. Ca he has taken a Cushite woman into his house. Okay, great. So the modern i This might seem like an innocuous if somewhat random statement. So let's look a little deeper. First, Moses, his wife, see Pora is a Midianite. Not a cliche. A cliche is a generic term used throughout the Bible for dark skinned people from Africa. By calling her a Cushite, Aaron and Miriam are doing two things identifying her as an other. an interloper does not belong to the tribe, the people Israel and pointing out her difference in appearance, in particular the color of her skin. It is an incredibly xenophobic, and deeply racist statement. Second, their words have potentially devastating consequences for Moses, his leadership, and the stability of Israel society, which is, by the way, brand new. All this incident is quickly resolved. In just a few weeks, just a few weeks, we'll read about another moment of incitement that leads to full scale rebellion against the political establishment, one that ends with the deaths of 1000s. So as punishment for their slander, Aaron and Miriam are brought before God and after being scolded, which I imagine, is incredibly terrifying. The latter of the two is stricken with leprosy. There's a lot to unpack here about why Miriam and not Aaron is punished in this way. But I want to focus on what happens next. Moses has every reason to be furious. At Miriam. She insulted his wife, she incited xenophobia and racism within their community. She attacked his authority and threatened the stability of a society still in its nativity. Her words were harmful, and hateful, and potentially destructive. Get seeing her suffer as sores spread across her body, Moses cries out, Elena, refine Allah, Oh, God, please heal her. I don't think he says this, because he's not angry, but because alongside his anger, he is able to hold compassion, and the belief that she can and will change for the better. And so God is like, No. And Moses, like, come on God. And God relented, says, Fine, we'll come to a compromise. Miriam will live outside the camp for seven days, because what she did was wrong. But after that, she'll be healed, and she can rejoin her community. That was a paraphrase, by the way. I liked this story, because it points to a fundamental building block of our tradition, that our response to a world that is complicated and complex inhabited by people who are complicated and complex is yes. And, yes, we should be held accountable for our actions. And yes, bad choices have consequences. And yes, justice can and must absolutely be pursued. And no person is purely good, or purely evil. And we all have the capacity to grow, to change, to improve, and the pursuit of justice must be accompanied by the desire to heal, because both Justice and healing are part of the remedy to harm. Yes. And so I'm going to return to pat robertson one last time before we can let his name fall into the annals of history to say, you Masha, mogsie, hurl. And you he's your corner, Libra ha, yes. May his memory and name be erased, and may his memory be for a blessing. May we be the tools of dismantling the legacy of hatred that he has left?

Rabbi Steven Philp  
May we erase the effects that racism and nationalism and misogyny and homophobia and all the other forms of bigotry that he preached have had on our political process through our votes, and our activism, and our community organizing both of those who are like us, and perhaps more particularly with those who are very different from us. May we reclaim religion from the right with the knowledge that indigenous to our tradition, our voices of progress among them, and perhaps my most favorite, the belief that all people, all people, without question are created in the divine image. Beings have inherent worth and dignity not only deserving of lives free from harm, but of being accepted and celebrated and loved. And I'll hand it to Pat Robertson and his ilk one thing. They had unabashed passion for their cause. They had a clarity of purpose, and what they hope to achieve, and a sense of pride and their identity as conservative Christians. And from that we can learn may we be blessed with that same passion. And that same clarity of purpose, and that same pride in who we are, and what we stand for. And so perhaps this is where we start right here and right now, by meeting hate, the legacy of hate that he left with love, love for ourselves and love for each other. It is pride month after all, to be more unapologetically and proudly and joyfully, the very thing that they would want to eradicate from this world and help each other, do the same. You're already doing it by choosing to celebrate Shabbat in a public space, like this town center. I hope you'll come back next week. And the week after that. I hope you'll learn more about and get involved with our justice work as we create a more equitable and safer Chicago for everyone, for all people. Hope you'll join us for all of the programming we're doing for pride as we celebrate queerness and all of its forms, but more than anything. I hope that you'll continue to be you because who you are. Where ever you might find yourself in the brilliant rainbow of human identity and expression is always is always for a blessing. Shabbat shalom.