The Torah portion this week, Yitro, begins with Moses’ father-in-law arriving in the Israelite camp in response to something he heard. As the first verse states: “When Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard of all that God had done for Moses, and for Israel his people, and that the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt” (Exodus 18:1). Our Thursday night Talmud study recently looked at Zevachim 116b where the rabbis debate the question of exactly what Jethro heard. Rabbi Yehoshua suggests it must have been the way with Amalek, our people’s first aggressor after leaving Egypt. Rabbi Elazar HaModa’i suggests it was the giving of the Torah. And Rabbi Eliezer says that it was the sound of the Crossing of the Sea. All great suggestions. The sound had to be something so loud it reached beyond our encampment into the larger world beyond.
In our own lives, we have all experienced things from far away that wake us up and force us to take notice. The recent fortieth anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion was a reminder of just such an event. I remember being in tears as a fifth grader after seeing what happened. The October 7th attack and 9/11 are others. On May 14, 2022, our own community was the victim of such a seismic event, just as we were on the crash of flight 3407 seventeen years ago next week, where we lost our beloved Cantor Susan Wehle.
This past month Minneapolis has been the center of a seismic event, the deaths of Renee Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Pretti have shaken our nation and larger world to the core. These times, whether recently or biblically, are a reminder of how interconnected we are as human beings. When one human being cries out the world cries out. What exactly Jethro heard in this week’s portion is up to speculation from the rabbis. The deaths of both this mother and poet and ER nurse are not. As I wrote in a poem I composed last week: “Cry out cry out for what’s been done/Cry out cry out for every broken one.” May all our cries of anguish be heard in our community and around the world. And may the lives of each of these Americans be for a blessing.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex
In memory of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti:
“The Streets of Minneapolis Are Crying”
Cry out cry out for what’s been done
Cry out cry out for every broken one
For every heart that’s been lost
For every soul that’s been chained
Everybody that’s been broken
And may be broken once again
Cry out cry out to ease our pain
Cry out cry out to unlock our chains
Cry out cry out to remove this shame
Cry out cry out so we won’t have to cry out again
The streets of Minneapolis are crying
The streets of Minneapolis are dying
What we saw cannot be unseen
What was done can never be made clean
Don’t let them rob us of our dignity
Don’t let them make us into who they want us to be
They cannot take away our humanity
We are united against this hostility
Stronger than anything they bring
Crying out with a voice of unity
Cry out cry out for what’s been done
Cry out cry out for every broken one
-Alex Lazarus-Klein