Cyberdov

Here’s a gem courtesy of a frequent DJC scholar-in-residence, Rabbi ‘Texas’ Aryeh Leifert. Read the whole thing here (the following is my summary).

Moses offers two reasons why he cannot speak to Pharaoh: (1) the slaves’ unwillingness to listen, and (2) his own physical limitations. Most commentators understand thestate of aral sefatayim as distinct from the slaves’ response. Moses had a speech impediment, these commentators say, and that was why he did not feel comfortable going to Pharaoh. The Sfat Emet, on the other hand, believes that the two issues are intimately connected. He writes that Moses did not, in fact, have a physical speech impediment; rather, he felt impeded due to his people’s lack of confidence in him. As long as he did not have his own people’s support, he did not feel that he would have any chance of persuading Pharaoh to end the slavery of the Israelites.
This seems like a good excuse. Or is it?

When it comes to social activism in our world today, we see the kotzer ruach and avodah kashah of those for whose freedom we are fighting. Their struggles can lead them to accept their oppression as unchangeable. It can even cause them to resist efforts at liberation for fear that those efforts will make matters worse. It is common that, in the face of the overwhelming change needed for real liberation, the oppressed and the bystanders are overwrought with a sense of paralysis and powerlessness. In his ‘Letter From a Birmingham Jail’, Dr. ML King writes of “…Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of ’somebodiness’ that they have adjusted to segregation.” Dr. King assured his Christian brethren that “even if the church does not come to the aid of justice,” he was certain that justice would prevail. He hoped his Christian brothers would join him on the barricades, but even without their help, he was determined to forge ahead.

As Moses and the leaders of the Soviet Jewry movement and Dr.
King discovered, if a person is committed to changing the world for the better, lacking support from one’s own leaders, and even people, is not necessarily a reason to desist.

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