Zelensky Speaks

Dear friends,

Thank you to all of you who came to our uplifting Purim celebration this week. It's so important to celebrate and make merry, especially now. What a fun night! That day began with Zelensky's address to congress, including the devastating video he shared, and ended with a drunken Purim bash, Mariah Carry songs from Chanan and all of us singing I Will Survive. On the train on the way to the party I read a note my rabbi, Jim Ponet sent me. He captured something deep about the connection between the holiday and the horror, between the experience of taking in Zelensky's words in the morning, and celebrating Purim at night. I share his words with you:

Voldymyr Zelensky, in the spirit of the Bíblical prophet, Amos, seems to declare, “I am no prophet nor the son of a prophet. I am a comic actor who was visited by a dream which has overtaken my life. The lion has roared; who can but tremble? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?”

The U.S. Congress heard Zelensky allude to MLK, to 9/11, to Mount Rushmore as he begged American leaders and the American nation to help bend the arc of history toward justice, to inspire the world to mobilize for peace, dignity, health and freedom, to refuse to ignore the voice of the oppressed

We have again heard the voice of God, issuing this time from a prophet speaking Ukrainian and English, addressing us from Kiev via video. And like dreamers we and our political leaders listened spellbound to the call to help halt the military invasion launched against the civilians of Ukraine by Russian troops, tanks, missiles, planes and drones at the command of a single man. And in that voice we discerned an echo of the cry from Minneapolis that yet resounds from the throat of George Floyd as a cop’s knee bore down upon his neck, the fierce anguished call to feel, attend, respond, and act with whatever we got.

Out of sheer terror the ancient Israelites fled from that call, sought escape from the summons of the Voice. But Zalensky, like Moses, Esther and Abraham, somehow dares to stand alone and face down the Leviathan like a Job refusing to cower before autocratic whim, even if it be divine: “He may kill me, but I won’t stop; I will speak the truth to his face.”

Zelensky and the Ukrainians are fighting to breathe. When we are in our right minds, we are all together in that fight for life and freedom, knowing it is why we are here after all; namely, each to find their own response, their own mode, their own language. As we allow unbearable truths to confront us, we would do well to consider Nathaniel Hawthorne's observation that while weeping passively in the face of spiritual and physical ugliness is understandable it would be better for us, if we can, to burrow toward "the fiercer, deeper, and more tragic power of laughter." Voldymyr Zelensky points the way.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha