Shabbat Greetings
Our Torah portion this week, Vaera (Exodus 6:2–9:35), opens with God speaking to Moses at a moment of deep frustration. The Israelites are suffering more than before. Pharaoh’s heart is hardened. Freedom feels distant. God responds not with an immediate miracle, but with a reminder: “I am the Eternal… I have heard the groaning of the Israelites.” Redemption begins when suffering is heard and named.
We are reminded of this painfully in our own time. Just days ago, a synagogue in Jackson, Mississippi was targeted in an arson attack; a sacred space violated simply because Jews dared to gather, pray, and exist. It was not only an attack on a building, but on memory, belonging, and dignity. Like the cries of Israel in Egypt, it is a reminder that hatred still hardens hearts, and that silence only deepens suffering. Vaera insists that God hears and therefore, so must we.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. understood this truth deeply. Like Moses, he spoke to a people exhausted by broken promises. Like Moses, he confronted a system built on oppression and hardened hearts. And like Moses, he believed that history bends not by accident, but by moral courage rooted in faith.
Vaera teaches us that liberation is never a solo act. God sends Moses with Aaron at his side. Redemption unfolds through partnership, persistence, and shared struggle. That is a powerful message for Jews and Black Americans, whose histories, while distinct, are bound by the experience of slavery, degradation, and the long walk toward dignity. Our communities have walked together before: in the civil rights movement, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, and in synagogues and churches that refused to remain silent. Dr. King called on Jews not as allies of convenience, but as moral partners — people shaped by the Exodus story, commanded to remember what it means to be strangers in the land of Egypt.
When a synagogue burns in Mississippi, and when a Black church is attacked anywhere in this country, our pain is not separate. Vaera reminds us that hatred against one community is always a threat to all communities. And it reminds us that God’s response to oppression is not isolation, but covenant, a call to stand together.
Vaera reminds us that miracles begin when we refuse to normalize suffering, our own or anyone else’s. In an age of economic inequality, racial injustice, antisemitism, and fear, the call remains the same: to listen, to stand together, and to speak truth to power.
May we honor Dr. King not only with words, but with action. May Jews and Black communities once again link arms, not because our stories are identical, but because our destinies are intertwined. And may we, like Moses, have the faith to keep going even when redemption feels far away, trusting that God still hears the cry of the oppressed and calls us to help bring freedom closer.
If you want to help Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Mississippi, donate here.
SHABBAT SHALOM