At the Martin Luther King Jr. Award Ceremony at City Hall last week, long time civil servant Otis T. Barker received one of the high honors. Surrounded by his three living children, he stood proudly in front of friends, family and fellow community members. Now, in poor health, and soon to be stepping down from the Recreational Department, chants of “O.T.B.,” an affectionate nickname for him, rained down around us. And, while I didn’t know him personally, I was very moved by this show of support for someone clearly beloved in the community. The good work he had done in this world was now coming back to him as his career was ending.
At the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Vaera, our God, the God of our ancestors Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel and Leah, is relatively unknown by others outside of our ancestral family. This is the moment where God wants to establish an identity not only for the sake of our people, but the larger world. And, the way God wants to be known is not only as El Shadai and Adonai, but as the God who freed us “from under the suffering we encountered in Egypt” (Exodus 6:8).
“Each of us has a name,” as the Israeli poet Zelda once penned, not only our actual names and nicknames, but the way we are thought of in this world. Through our actions we demonstrate what we stand for, what we believe in, and how we want to be remembered. We may never receive the showering of love I witnessed at City Hall, but that doesn’t mean the essence of our life is any less significant. The people who we love, the good works that we perform, the way we show up for others, creates an impression that carries forward long after we are gone. More than our actual names, it is these identities that endure. In this spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other great leaders, may we continue to be inspired to do what is right, even when that is hard, and, like God in the book of Exodus, create the legacy we want to be remembered by.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex