WHEN YOU SEE YOURSELF AS A VICTIM YOU BECOME A VICTIM

There was a time in the forties when Molotov was Soviet foreign minister. He was a shrewd man and worked for Joseph Stalin, who was The Boss. He was once overheard talking to Stalin by Trans-Atlantic telephone during the course of some very intricate negotiations with the West. He said, "Yes, Comrade Stalin," in quiet tones, then again, "Yes, Comrade Stalin, and then, after a considerable wait, "Certainly, Comrade Stalin. Suddenly he was galvanized into emotion. "No, Comrade Stalin," he barked, "No. That's, no. Definitely, no. A thousand times, no!"

After a while, he quieted and it was "Yes, Comrade Stalin," again. The reporter who overheard this was probably never so excited in his life. Clearly, Molotov was daring to oppose the dictator on at least one point, and it would surely be important to the West to know what that point might be.

The reporter approached Molotov and said as calmly as possible, Secretary Molotov, I could not help but hear you say at one point, "No, Comrade Stalin."

"May I ask," said the reporter, cautiously, "What the subject under discussion was at that time?"

"You may," said Molotov. "Comrade Stalin asked me if there was anything which he had said with which I disagreed."

The opening story the Torah portion this week Shemot tells us of Moses as an active adult, went out to his brothers, saw an Egyptian beating a Jew to death. Moses killed the Egyptian and saved an innocent life.

Why was he the only one who stopped the beating? Why did no one else kill the Egyptian? Because a slave often surrenders himself to his pitiful fate. In Tunisia it took a poor vender to set himself on fire and die from his burns in order to spark revolution against a corrupt regime.

What is the subsequent story in the Torah about Moses? Due to his act of aggression, he is forced to escape To Midian. Once again he finds himself embroiled in yet another conflict. He witnesses the local shepherds bullying a group of girls who were first in line to draw water from a well. He immediately rises to their defense, driving off the offending shepherds. Moses was a stranger who had just arrived in town. Who asked him to intervene? Who asked him to get involved? The answer is that someone who grew up in a house of royalty has the courage and the assertiveness to take charge and administer justice wherever justice needs to be administered. He had the mind set and the confidence not to allow bullies to bully innocent young woman.

Perhaps G-d caused Moses to grow up in the home of royalty, so that his soul would be accustomed to a higher sense of learning and behavior, and he would not feel lowly and accustomed to a house of slavery.

The curse of the Egyptian exile consisted not only of the physical slave labor and the horrible oppression of the Hebrews. It also inculcated within many of the Hebrews an exile-like mentality.

You know the anecdote:

Two Jewish men in Tsarist Russia were being led out to a firing squad: one, a humble tailor, the other a wild anarchist. As the Tsarist officer in charge of the firing squad tried to put a blindfold on the condemned anarchist, the young Jew fought back. He would face death unblinkingly, he said bravely. Alarmed, his fellow Jew interceded: "Please, don't make trouble!"

This is why the redeemer of Israel needed to grow up in the Egyptian palace, not among his own people. Had Moses grown up among the Hebrew slaves, he too would have suffered from a slave-mentality lacking the courage to fight injustice and devoid of the ability to mold an enslaved tribe into a great people with a vision of transforming the world into a place worthy of the divine presence.

You are a child of royalty, you are a Jew, you are G-d’s ambassador to the world. You have been around 3500 years. This is about our role as Jews. We must stop seeing ourselves as “slaves,” as victims, projecting that sense of insecurity. When you see yourself as a victim, you become a victim. And it is all in our mind. We must cultivate the sense of inner freedom, inner redemption, inner royalty, projecting it to the world. And the response will be reciprocal. For this is the truth about our world:The world respects and admires Jews who respect themselves and their Judaism.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky