A version of this sermon was delivered at Temple B'nai Torah - A Reform Congregation, Wantagh, NY on Shabbat 7th-day of Passover 5785 (April 18, 2025)
Tonight on our calendar, we arrive at the last day of Passover. Tonight, we also commemorate the crossing of the sea. Tradition tells us it was on the night of the seventh day that God parted the waters to allow the Israelites to walk on dry land toward their freedom and the promised land.
Just before the Israelites leave Egypt, after the commandment about the pascal sacrifice and how it will be offered in the future and by whom, we read, and not for the only time: “תּוֹרָה אַחַת יִהְיֶה לָאֶזְרָח וְלַגֵּר הַגָּר בְּתוֹכְכֶם There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you.”[1] We hear this idea over and over again in our Torah, that there is to be one law for the citizen and stranger alike. We are not supposed to oppress the strangers for we know what it was like to be oppressed strangers in the land of Egypt.
The Haggadah reminds us that we are each supposed to see ourselves as if we were personally freed from Egypt, because of what God did for me, when God brought me out of Egypt. So tonight, on this fateful anniversary, we put ourselves in the ragged sandals of the Israelites. Let us imagine that we have witnessed the plagues, that we have put the blood on our doorposts, and that we hurriedly packed our dough and our timbrels in our sacks just a week ago. We are amidst the mixed multitude that took their first free steps on the 14th of Nissan and has been walking now toward an unknown destination, only remembered in dream and in song.
Imagine what it must have felt like to be in that crowd, on the shores of the sea, and to suddenly learn that Pharaoh has changed his mind. To feel so trapped, surrounded, caught between the choices of a return to slavery and bondage or certain death in the waters of the sea. How do we even decide in that moment what to do? How do we decide when the answers on both sides are equally terrible? How do we get out of the stuck?
In the Torah we know the answer. God calls on Moses to raise his staff in his hand and for the waters to part. We don’t have to choose between bondage and drowning because God gives us a third option.
This feeling of being stuck between two bad choices is made most real in our sacred and powerful story of redemption. The Jewish people being caught between two bad options is not reserved for the Torah, or for our history. Today, we are again caught between two bad options as American Jews. On one side, we have the rising and ongoing antisemitism of our society and the world. On the other side, the current government’s fight against antisemitism, which brings with it a disdain and a disregard for the rule of law and due process rights.
Like the commandment in the Torah, due process is granted, according to our constitution, to all people. The language of the Constitution is clear in the Fifth Amendment: “No person…shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The 14th Amendment goes on to add that no state has the right to: “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Constitution doesn’t say citizens. The Constitution doesn’t say Americans. The Constitution doesn’t say anything about race, national origin, or immigration status as a disqualifier for these rights. Nor does it say that one’s faith or religious practices or beliefs disqualify someone from these legal protections.
As Jews we know personally what it means when rights are stripped from a group of people by a supremacist regime. We know what it means when the protections of a state are capriciously taken away or denied, when those protections we believed would keep us safe are trampled on and forgotten. A new pharaoh arose over Egypt who did not remember Joseph. The unsaid ending of this verse of Torah is that the new Pharaoh went back on an agreement and undid the decree allowing Jacob and his family to dwell in Egypt in peace. Throughout Medieval Europe, Jewish communities lived at the pleasure and under the protection of local lords and nobles, until those nobles tired of the Jews or owed them too much money, and so changed their minds, and terrorized them and kicked them out. In the 20th century, German Jewish citizens’ rights and protections were stripped from them by the Nuremberg Laws, solely because of their Judaism. Jewish citizens of Arab nations were expatriated and deported from lands in which they’d lived for centuries and generations. It is in part thanks to the due process rights guaranteed to all people that Jews have been able to thrive as we have in this nation. It’s what has made this nation different. No one can take anything away from us just because of who we are, where we come from, or what we believe. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
Today, in this nation, students whose beliefs are unpopular with the regime have been denied and deprived their due process rights. Other strangers who live among us have been snatched off the street without court or tribunal and sent to prison camps in another country to languish. The reason behind much of this is allegedly to fight against antisemitism. In order to keep the Jews safe, the reasoning seems to be, we need to take away the rights of a few, select others. In order to keep the Jews safe, we have to do away with the rule of law. This is a false choice that we have been asked to make.
This false choice has been called out this week by a statement from the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements in America as well as HIAS and the Jewish Council on Public Affairs. This statement reads, in part:
“In recent weeks, escalating federal actions
have used the guise of fighting antisemitism to justify stripping students of
due process rights when they face arrest and/or deportation…Students have been
arrested at home and on the street with no transparency as to why they are
being held or deported, and in certain cases with the implication that they are
being punished for their constitutionally-protected speech. Universities have
an obligation to protect Jewish students, and the federal government has an important
role to play in that effort; however, sweeping draconian funding cuts will
weaken the free academic inquiry that strengthens democracy and society, rather
than productively counter antisemitism on campus.
These actions do not make Jews—or any
community—safer. Rather, they only make us less safe.
We reject any policies or actions that foment
or take advantage of antisemitism and pit communities against one another; and
we unequivocally condemn the exploitation of our community’s real concerns
about antisemitism to undermine democratic norms and rights, including the rule
of law, the right of due process, and/or the freedoms of speech, press, and
peaceful protest.”
A false choice is put before us. We can and should fight antisemitism in all its forms, from left, right, and center with vigilance and determination. As the CCAR statement makes clear: “It is both possible and necessary to fight antisemitism—on campus, in our communities, and across the country—without abandoning the democratic values that have allowed Jews, and so many other vulnerable minorities, to thrive.”
This is the path on dry ground. This is our third option. Not to allow for antisemitism nor to allow for the decay of our legal foundations. The way through the waters to the promised land is paved with our voices and our belief that we can have and deserve both a nation and a society in which we are safe and in which our lives are protected under the shelter of due process.
It was not Moses or his staff that parted the waters that day. It was a man, Nachshon the son of Amminadab, who looked around and said that there must be another option. Neither willing to die at the hands of the Egyptians nor willing to drown, Nachshon believes deeply that God will ultimately come to save. So, he takes the first steps into the water, before anyone else, and he keeps going until the water is up to his nostrils. Only when he is almost fully engulfed does God finally part the waters for all the people. Nachshon had such deep faith to take those steps, and real courage. To take the steps onto a third path is not easy. It can be overwhelming and scary. It requires a lot of courage and the expectation of discomfort. But we have no choice; our other options are untenable.
We all have to be Nachshons, declaring that there is a dry path before us, if only we take it. We all have to be Nachshons believing in the promise of a better future and willing to do the work to get to it. Willing to say that neither of the easy paths is safe for us, so we will forge a new path. When we take those first steps, when we live by the rules of our tradition which work in tandem with the rules of our free society, we call upon God’s presence to be at our side and ultimately to redeem us.
There shall be one law for stranger and citizen alike. No state shall deprive any person of due process of law.
We are at the border of the sea. The Pharaoh is behind us and closing in. Do we have the courage to take the first steps?
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach
[1]
Ex 12:49
