“Ring the Bells That Still Can Ring” – Leonard Cohen, Anthem
Over spring break, I answered a call from Jewish Community Action, a local social justice organization. They needed someone to testify before a Minnesota legislative committee, against a bill aimed to reopen a shuttered prison in Appleton MN. I strongly believe that adding more prison beds is NOT a good solution to the woes of our state, so I agreed to go testify.
Now, some would say that by the time a bill is ready for input from the public, the legislators on the committee have actually already made up their minds one way or the other. And so one might argue, “Why bother going to testify, if their positions are already hard and fixed?”
My answer: I chose to go because I felt I had a responsibility to at least try to have an impact. I went because I felt it was the right thing to do. I very consciously did NOT let the possibility of already-hardened positions deter me. I still felt a moral duty to speak out.
Every year at Passover, we retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt, with this perplexing detail: God tells Moses, “Go to Pharaoh and tell him to let My people go. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, so he will not do as you demand.” Most contemporary readers are troubled: what kind of a god would harden Pharaoh’s heart, thus prolonging the suffering in Egypt, and depriving Pharaoh of his free will?
This year I’ll be bringing my experience at the legislature to the story. Moses went to Pharaoh, even when the likelihood of changing Pharaoh’s mind was next to nil. The text could be telling us, “Step up, speak out. Don’t let the apparent intransigence of your opponent keep you from saying what needs to be said.”
I haven’t answered the specific question of Pharaoh’s free-will, but I’ve addressed the issue of my own free-will — that I must exercise it to speak what I believe. And we can take a clue from Pharaoh, to never harden our own hearts against another. Keep them open, even a crack as Leonard Cohen taught us, lest we ourselves be guilty of blocking out the light.
— Shosh Dworsky, Associate Chaplain