One of the most profound lessons of the Hebrew Bible – and of Jewish
tradition -- is to be found in Chapter
Four of Megillat Esther, which we will read this weekend when we celebrate
Purim. Therein, Mordechai compels Esther to go to King Ahasuerus not only for
the salvation of the Jewish people but for her own sake as well.
Mordechai informs Esther that she is mistaken if she
imagines that her royal position will protect her from Haman’s genocidal plot.
He then goes one step further, appealing to her sense of personal mission,
enabling her to envision herself within the context of Jewish history:
U’mi
yoda’ah
im l’et
kazot higa’at
l’malchut
-- And who knows if it was not for a moment just like this that you arrived at your
royal position?
From the construction of this sentence, beginning with the
word “and,” one can imagine
Mordechai musing aloud, turning this concept over in mind, perhaps even
stroking his beard as he pondered whether Esther’s
royal position was tied up with the history and fate of the Jewish People.
Every year, this verse jumps out at me in the middle of the
boisterous megillah reading, filling me with deep emotion. Yes, the concept of
having been put on earth to fulfill a mission is deeply Jewish, but the
resonance of this pasuk is also deeply personal for me.
Three decades ago, when I was 15 years old, my father’s second wife, the
only mother I ever knew, passed away. Needless to say, this was a very
vulnerable time for me. Aside from the trauma of maternal loss (compounded
twice because my biological mother died when I was an infant), our family was
plunged into distress as my mother’s
death obviously had a devastating effect on my father as well. By the time I got to college, I had to work
full-time. Because of relationships I had formed at USY, I was able to get a
job with an automotive warehouse whose Jewish owners were very involved with
the local Jewish community and Israel.
One day, my boss called me into his office and slid an
envelope across the table.
“What
is this?” I
asked with trepidation.
Smiling, he said, “It’s for you. Open the
envelope.”
Wordlessly, I opened the envelope. There was a document
inside showing that I was registered for a trip to Israel. “What
is this?” I
repeated.
“Our
local Federation is sponsoring a trip to Israel and my partners and I decided
that you should be part of it,”
he told me. “This
is your registration.”
I was a junior in college, a rabbi’s son, but I had never been to Israel
before. That act of generosity changed the course of my entire life, setting me
on a path towards the rabbinate and service to the Jewish People.
U’mi
yoda’ah
im l’et
kazot higa’at
l’malchut?
I came back from trip to Israel the same way that most
everyone does: uplifted, inspired, transformed. That experience is ultimately
the reason I went to JTS and am now the CEO of United Synagogue.
That moment of
kindness brought me to the most recent AIPAC gathering, where I told this
story. It was a seminal moment in my
life. And it was inspired by the recognition –
on the part of my bosses -- that individuals are capable of changing the
course of Jewish history.
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| Rabbi Wernick, pictured with Rabbi Rick Jacobs (URJ) and Steven Weil (OU) |
But there is a postscript to this story, a further
extraordinary outcome to my having shared it at AIPAC.
What I didn’t
know as I ascended the stage to speak was that the president of that automotive
company was in the audience.
The man who changed the course of my life -- from late
adolescence and onward -- was attending the AIPAC convention with his
family. The act of my sharing this story
provided them with tangible, quantifiable, measurable proof that acts of chesed – loving-kindness – can change the
world…often
one person at a time.
Leaving AIPAC, I was awash in so many feelings. Yes, being
part of a mega-gathering in support of Israel is heady enough; this year’s convention drew
over 14,000 people from a wide ideological spectrum. And I had come to AIPAC on
the heels of a recent, remarkable trip to Israel with the Conference of
Presidents, the Jewish Agency and Masorti Olami, our worldwide Conservative
Judaism.
But the thought that has occupied me since my AIPAC
presentation is best encapsulated by Mordechai’s
words to Esther on the eve of destruction: U’mi yoda’ah im l’et kazot higa’at l’malchut?
What, I wonder, would it mean if we lived our lives with the
understanding that we are capable, at every moment, of great acts of
transformation and action –
through our own agency or through the enabling of someone else?
What if we lived life with the knowledge of the power and
potential of chesed?
As we approach the holiday of Purim, let us take a lesson
from Mordechai and his modern-day descendants
– Harold Scherling, Michael Schoenberger, and Dan Ribnick – who were able to
recognize the concept of et hazot
– this moment.
As surely as the sun rises, each new day presents us with
innumerable opportunities to act, to seize the et hazot.
And just as the decision of Harold, Michael and Dan to send
me to Israel grew out of their communal consciousness and sense of Klal
Yisrael, the core of our work at United Synagogue is to build, strengthen and
transform our kehillot so that they are sacred communities of meaning and
relationship.
