Jewish prayers for Egypt's uprising
Many Jews from around the world support Egyptian
self-determination because of Judaism's own historic past with Egypt.
Michael Lerner
Last Modified: 01 Feb 2011 12:46 GMT
Jews
recount at Passover their own history with the Pharaoh of Egypt -
sympathies to the current Egyptian struggle run deep [Getty]
Ever since the victory over the dictator of Tunisia and the
subsequent uprising in Egypt, my email has been flooded with messages
from Jews around the world hoping and praying for the victory of the
Egyptian people over their cruel Mubarak regime.
Though a
small segment of Jews have responded to right-wing voices from Israel
that lament the change and fear that a democratic government would bring
to power fundamentalist extremists who wish to destroy Israel and who
would abrogate the hard-earned treaty that has kept the peace between
Egypt and Israel for the last 30 years, the majority of Jews are more
excited and hopeful than worried.
Of course, the worriers have a point. Israel has allied itself with
repressive regimes in Egypt and used that alliance to ensure that the
borders with Gaza would remain closed while Israel attempted to
economically deprive the Hamas regime there by denying needed food
supplies and equipment to rebuild after Israel's devastating attack in
December 2008 and January 2009. If the Egyptian people take over, they
are far more likely to side with Hamas than with the Israeli blockade of
Gaza.
Yet it is impossible for Jews to forget our heritage as victims of
another Egyptian tyrant - the Pharaoh whose reliance on brute force was
overthrown when the Israelite slaves managed to escape from Egypt some
3,000 years ago. That story of freedom retold each year at our Passover
"Seder" celebration, and read in synagogues in the past month, has often
predisposed the majority of Jews to side with those struggling for
freedom around the world.
To watch hundreds of thousands of Egyptians able to throw off the
chains of oppression and the legacy of a totalitarian regime that
consistently jailed, tortured or murdered its opponents so overtly that
most people were cowed into silence, is to remember that the spark of
God continues to flourish no matter how long oppressive regimes manage
to keep themselves in power, and that ultimately the yearning for
freedom and democracy cannot be totally stamped out no matter how cruel
and sophisticated the elites of wealth, power and military might appear
to be.
Many Jews have warned Israel that it is a mistake to ally with these
kinds of regimes, just as we've warned the US to learn the lesson from
its failed alliance with the Shah of Iran. We've urged Israel to free
the Palestinian people by ending the Occupation of the West Bank and the
blockade of Gaza. Israel's long-term security will not be secured
through military or economic domination, but only by acting in a
generous and caring way toward the Palestinian people first, and then
toward all of its Arab neighbours.
Similarly, America's homeland security will best be achieved through a
strategy of generosity and caring, manifested through a new Global
Marshall Plan such as has been introduced into the House of
Representatives by Congressman Keith Ellison.
In normal times, when the forces of repression seem to be winning,
this kind of thinking is dismissed as "utopian" by the "realists" who
shape public political discourse. But when events like the uprisings in
Tunisia and Egypt occur, for a moment the politicians and media are
stunned enough to allow a different kind of thinking to emerge, the kind
of thinking that acknowledged that underneath all the "business as
usual" behaviour of the world's peoples, the yearning for a world based
on solidarity, caring for each other, freedom, self-determination,
justice, non-violence and yes, even love and generosity, remains a
potent and unquenchable thirst that may be temporarily repressed but
never fully extinguished.
It is this recognition that
leads many Jews to join with the rest of the world's peoples in
celebrating the uprising, in praying that it does not become manipulated
by the old regime into paths that too quickly divert the hopes for a
brand new kind of order into politics and economics as usual, or into
extremist attempts to switch the anger from domestic elites who have
been the source of Egyptian oppression onto Jews or Israel which have
not been responsible for the suffering of the Egyptian people.
We
hope that Egyptians will hear the news that they have strong support
from many in the Jewish world. We are not waffling like Obama - we want
the overthrow of Mubarak, the freeing of all political prisoners, the
redistribution of wealth in a fair way, trials for those who perpetrated
torture and other forms of injustice, and the democratisation of all
aspects of Egyptian life.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun,
chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives, and rabbi of
Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in Berkeley, California. You can read more about the
Global Marshall Plan here.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/2011218490882163.html.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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