Sermon given January 24, 2026

I thought long and hard about what to focus on in the sermon today, and I couldn’t land on one best choice.

So, first, sure, let’s talk about the parasha. Let’s talk about parashat Bo, where we see the culmination of the plagues God sends to Egypt as signs that our ancestors, the Israelites, must be freed from their unjust captivity.

Specifically, we can call our attention to the story of the plague of darkness:

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יְהֹוָ֜ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֗ה נְטֵ֤ה יָֽדְךָ֙ עַל־הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וִ֥יהִי חֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־אֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם וְיָמֵ֖שׁ חֹֽשֶׁךְ׃

And God said to Moses, put out your hand towards the heavens and a darkness will descend, a darkness that is tangible.

The Midrash of Exodus Rabbah 14 explains that this tangible, touchable aspect of the darkness meant it was so thick, “of such a double character”, that it physically impacted everything around it. But I am certain that all of those exposed to such deep and penetrating emptiness would have surely been impacted emotionally. The devastation-- the loneliness-- the panic-- would have been profound.   

And I think there are those of us today, here in person or online, and certainly there are those sheltering in place in our city, scared to go to work, scared to go to school…. who have felt that way, this week-- felt like there was a darkness closing in, something impacting all aspects of our lives, thick, and heavy.   I know that at moments, I have felt that way. Perhaps you have, too.

Scripture teaches us that the only ones who were not enveloped by this darkness, and not surrounded by its tangible despair, were the ones who believed in something greater, the ones who maintained hope, the ones who wanted freedom-- that is to say, our ancestors, the Israelites.

This is the first lesson that it is important to highlight in this sermon-- the fact that ours is a tradition of stubbornly nurturing light in the face of looming and penetrating darkness. 

But there are a few other stories I need to share with you today, too. First, a small yet agonizing story from our history as Jews and as Americans, one that it is important we never forget, immortalized in the words of Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, writing about one specific event during the Holocaust:

“No instance better summarizes America’s and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s reaction to the Jewish situation than the fate of the SS St Louis, whose seemingly endless trip from Germany to North America and back became known as the ‘voyage of the damned.’

The St. Louis set sail from Germany in May 1939, some six months after Kristallnacht. Aboard were 937 Jews, almost all of whom held visas for Cuba. While en route, there was a change of government in Havana, and the new administration refused to honor the visas. For days, the St Louis remained docked in Havana’s harbor, as representatives of international Jewish organizations tried moral suasion, and then bribery, to influence Cuba’s leaders to admit the ship-- to no avail.

American Jews likewise tried to influence their government to admit the refugees, and also had no success; the United States would not accept any of the Jews on the ship.

Indeed, in 1989, I spoke to a survivor of the St Louis who told me that when the ship neared the territorial waters of Florida, the Coast Guard fired a warning shot in its direction.

Hitler, meanwhile, was ecstatic. For all that world leaders publicly attacked antisemitism, they clearly did not want the Jews any more than he did.

The St Louis finally started its tragic journey back to Germany. In the interim, several European countries, England, Belgium, Holland, and France, agreed to admit the passengers. Those fortunate enough to be admitted to England survived the war, but those who received visas for Belgium, Holland, and France lived securely only for a short time. By 1940, the Nazis had occupied all three countries: it can be surmised that most of the passengers on the voyage of the damned were murdered in Nazi concentration camps.

The sheer pointlessness of these deaths was underscored by the survivor of the ship mentioned previously (she and her family had been admitted to England.) “We were so close to Havana we could see the city clearly”, she told me. That tantalizing and agonizing recollection undoubtedly accompanied many of the former St Louis passengers on their trips to the death camps.”

This is the second important lesson to highlight in this sermon-- that in addition to being inheritors of a tradition that urges us to resist looming darkness, we are also descendants of people who have been targeted, rejected, chased, murdered, and tortured just for being who we are. We are a people made up of refugees, of asylum seekers, and we know, keenly, what it is like to be told in word and in action by the rest of the world that we are not worthy of the dignity of a life free from fear.

And that painful inheritance can also be a source of immense power, and immense empathy, if we let it move us and shape our conscience, and then our actions. 

So now, it is time to move on to the third story of our sermon. After the story of the plague of darkness, thousands of years ago, and the story of the SS St Louis, less than a century ago, we move ahead to to this past week.

A priest, a reverend, and a rabbi walked into a factory. 

But this was no joke. There was no punchline. In that factory, the three of us met with business leaders, workers, asylum seekers, and retired law enforcement. What took place was a secret and painful logistical discussion. Though all the workers were here legally, the factory had been notified that it might be a target for federal agents. Questions were asked that should not have to be asked, and answers were given that should never have to be given. At the end of the meeting, though, our mission as clergy was clear.   

The next day, the priest picked up a bright orange vest and handed it to me. “It’s an honor to give this to you, rabbi,” he said.

“And it’s an honor to receive it from you, Father”, I replied.

And then we joined our clergy partners, over half a dozen other members of the cloth, Catholic, Episcopalian, Quaker, UCC, and more, who had heeded our call. 

We stood in a line, with our backs to the factory, feeling with each Signal notification and unmarked SUV that sped by the weight of our sacred responsibility.   Parked cars with masked agents appeared at the factory and the workers, dozens of asylum seekers and new immigrants, sheltered in place.  I observed our line of bodies, singing songs of spirit and protest, shielding the bodies of the workers, the immigrants, the asylum seekers, who were hurrying behind us into and out of the factory, just trying to get home and back to their families without being attacked. Sometimes, especially that first night, they moved as close to the ground as they could, fully aware that there were individuals in cars nearby who wanted to kidnap them, divide their families, and worse. One of them had a member of their household taken. And every shift, my heart was broken wide open. And every shift, it was also filled with the immense bravery and courage and strength of these fellow humans, humans just trying to live, humans just trying to work and earn a living, humans just trying to be safe in a world that has rejected them.

We are only privy to a fraction of what these new Mainers must be going through-- the fear, the stress, the secrets, the mistrust, the sense of being trapped and hunted-- but as Jews, we should be able to honor and understand it. And we do not have to know every detail of their lives to know that they are human beings, that they are deserving of the same dignity as every other person, and that our God commands us to love the stranger, for we ourselves know what it is like to be strangers. 

As Jews, we do not get the luxury of pretending that evil does not exist in this world. We don’t get to pretend that humans can do evil. We don’t get the luxury of being bystanders. 

Because we were strangers in Egypt. Because we were targeted, and harmed, and killed, in Egypt.

I know that I am not the only person in this room, or listening to this sermon online, whose heart has been broken again, and again, and again this week.

I don’t often share the fact that part of why I became a member of the clergy was not a love of rules or hymns or challah, but rather because I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about mortality, and about how we each have one life to live on this Earth. Judaism’s insistence that we embrace both creative work (aka malacha) and also embrace intentionally moral, connection-nurturing actions (aka mitzvot) appeals to me for many reasons. One of these reasons is that Judaism gives me the tools, with each prayer and each command, to imbue my life with sanctity and to do my tiny party to help bring healing and love to this hurting world. 

I went to that parking lot, and that factory, and I sang and prayed and shielded those workers alongside my interfaith colleagues this week, because I know that I have a finite time on this Earth to try and help others, and I literally do not know how I could function if I did not at the least try contribute to being the solution or the help to fix even one tiny part of the immense brokenness which is around us. 

Mishna Sanhedrin teaches us that judges spoke to witnesses before they would testify in ancient cases, reminding them that with their words and actions, they had great power. They spoke, quote, “To teach…that whoever destroys one life is considered by the Torah as if he destroyed an entire world, and whoever saves one life is considered by the Torah as if he saved an entire world.”   

We can each help save an entire world, whether with our bodies, or our titles, or our homes, or our money, or our time, or our prayers, or our words, or something else. Each of us, in our own way. Every little bit matters.

I want to speak from the bottom of my heart when I say how moved I have been, this week, to see the absolute outpouring of care and volunteering and donating and showing up and outreach and prayer that Temple Beth El and the greater Portland Interfaith Community have shown one another as our own looming darkness, our own tangible, touchable threat, has settled onto our streets. I want to specifically name how our incredible staff and lay leadership has pivoted, adapted, implemented new safety protocols, and had difficult conversations at all hours of the day, all while urging one another to remember to practice self-care and show ourselves grace. I want to thank the congregants who showed up to volunteer and teach and do jobs others had to drop to go and attend to urgent need.

I’m here today less as your rabbi and more as a fellow human being and as a witness, this week, to some of the best and the worst that we as humans have to offer. 

We are in the thick of it, my friends,

And we are not alone.

We are never, ever, alone.

This darkness that has descended is, indeed, tangible. It has grabbed our hearts and our neighbors. It threatens to overshadow our joy and our hope. But we are the descendants of a people that has insistently, stubbornly, and heroically insisted on responding to darkness with light, again and again throughout history.

And now it is our time.

It is our time to go out into the tangible darkness, and let our tangible love, and our tangible light, SHINE.

 Shabbat shalom.