A Bat Mitzvah Teaching On Persecution—And Its Tragic Resonance Today
This past Shabbat we celebrated another sacred rite of passage in our community. Margot Englander, like Samuel Marion before her, had her Bat Mitzvah celebration scheduled for just a couple of weeks after the whole world changed in March of 2020. Like Sam, with grace and dignity, Margot shifted gears, held a small service with just her immediate family (and pets) in 2020, and held off on any big celebration.
Then, just a couple of months ago, the family reached out to see whether we might commemorate that moment, calling her up to the Torah (virtually) on the anniversary of her initially-planned big day, hear her chant Torah, and hear her deliver her D’var Torah, her words of Torah—her teaching.
Wow are we glad they did.
Margot’s Bat Mitzvah fell on what what is known as Shabbat Ha-Chodesh. Shabbat Ha-Chodesh comes around every year on the Shabbat immediately preceding the first day of the Jewish month of Nisan, the month in which the festival of Passover falls. Jewish tradition sets forth a series of special shabbatot (shabbats) in advance of Passover to help us spiritually and practically prepare for the seminal holiday. Shabbat Ha-Chodesh literally translates to “The Sabbath of The Month,” and on it we re-read the Torah portion which describes the events of the very first Passover celebration in which the Israelites shared meals with their neighbors and got ready to rush out of Egypt. This helps remind us to prepare our spirits and our homes for the coming commemoration of this event, with its themes and messages of freedom in the face of adversity and hope springing eternal.
Margot picked up on a particular verse in her Torah portion, where God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites how to honor the Passover meal: “In this manner you shall eat it; with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste” (Exodus 12:11).
What was so striking to her about this verse? Well, given that her Bat Mitzvah was initially scheduled to be on Refugee Shabbat, an annual moment for congregations, organizations, and individuals in the United States and around the world to dedicate a Shabbat experience to refugees and asylum seekers, Margot found in this verse a description of refugees. And this was mightily poignant given Margot’s personal connection to a particularly special refugee in her own life: her grandmother Rose.
Rose was a survivor of the Holocaust, and Margot described, with beauty and grace, Rose’s harrowing journey through ghettos and forests in Eastern Europe, from Poland to Russia and back again, before landing in the United States, but not without suffering heavy, devastating losses along the way.
Margot’s telling helped evoke for us the eternal nature of the Passover story, its manifestations throughout the generations. What a blessing that Margot shared this story with us, honoring her grandmother’s memory so beautifully here among the Society Hill Synagogue community. Thank you, Margot.
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Unfortunately, there are far too many reminders in our present world of similar violence deployed against people based on their race, religion, or ethnicity. Yet again (I have had to use those two words too many times) in our country, we bore witness to a spree of targeted gun violence Tuesday resulting in eight victims, six of whom were women of Asian descent. It is heartbreaking.
As a Jewish community and as fellow human beings, our hearts break for the loved ones and communities of the deceased.
As Margot’s talk so eloquently reminded us, as Jews, we know what it means to be persecuted for who we are, attacked for something that is innate to who we are. It breaks our heart to see other communities face this—the torrent of violence being perpetrated against the Asian-American community cannot stand, and as Jews we have to call out hate and push for whatever reforms we can that will help put an end to this violence.
And as human beings, we know that life is precious. Far too often, we have to cite the Talmud for the proposition that, “Anyone who destroys one soul… it is as if they destroyed an entire world… And conversely, anyone who sustains one soul… it is as if they sustained an entire world” (Sanhedrin 37a). But the reason this verse is so powerful is that it underscores the preciousness, the holiness, of even one life, let alone eight. It’s a stark reminder of the urgency with which these hateful strains need our attention.
May the lives of those lost be blessings to their loved ones and to our world.
