Community Blog

Shabbat Shalom! This week’s Torah portion is Parashat VaEra, which includes a reiteration of God’s call to Moses, some feeble explanation of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, Moses and Aaron’s family trees, and the first seven of the Ten Plagues. At various points in this parasha, more or less everyone involved suffers from a lack of imagination. No one can imagine a world in which the Egyptian government and economy doesn’t rely on slave labor. The Israelites cannot fathom freedom. Moses cannot muster belief in himself to speak before Pharaoh. Pharaoh cannot bear to soften his heart to the challenges to his power. 

What they all needed was more books. Reading is linked to stronger speaking skills, and could have helped Moses find the words he needed to “circumcise” his lips (yes, that is the term he uses in the Torah: that he cannot speak to Pharaoh for he has uncircumsized lips). Reading also expands the imagination, and empowers oppressed peoples to envision a better future for themselves and others. It helps societies develop tools to shift paradigms and encourage the next generation to tackle large-scale problems currently entrenched in the status quo. 

Of course, all these efforts require more than just reading, more than any individual book. Moses likely needed speech therapy, potentially would have benefitted from medical intervention were it available, and necessitated the disability aid of his brother to speak for him. Pharaoh, like many power-hungry leaders with too much access and influence, really needed some psychotherapy to deal with his own inadequacy issues, along with sensitivity training and better leadership skills. The Israelites needed freedom, full stop, and only material support can help a people under that level of oppression actually move forward. 

But reading helps. Learning more of anything, including speech and leadership skills, as well as imaginations and broader communications, is benefitted by literacy. I wouldn’t say that skills cannot be acquired through other means of education, but it is certainly much more difficult to learn without doing any reading. And the sooner a young person learns to read, learns to appreciate the power of reading, learns to enjoy literature, learns how to seek out information through trustworthy books and sources, the stronger foundation that person will have for the acquisition of skills later on. The more young people have access to vetted and developmentally appropriate books, the stronger a whole generation will be to one day speak truth to power, undermine unjust power structures, and imagine true freedom and dignity for themselves and others. 

As Jews, we love our term “People of the Book.” Originally given to us by Muslims overlords who saw us (and also Christians) as a distinct catergory, neither Muslim nor heathen, a protected class of people who believe in monotheistic scripture but are exempt and excluded from the particular responsibilities and privileges of Muslims in Muslim society, we have fully embraced the term for ourselves. We perpetuate our own positive stereotypes as a people committed to learning, people who hold dear not only our scripture but many other sources of revelation. And yet, PJ Library, an amazing source for young Jewish literacy, was not an original Jewish idea. The premise, which sends a new free book each month to any family that signs up, is based on Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The musical icon, whose birthday was yesterday, said of the importance of literacy, “When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams would come true. I know there are children in your community with their own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a minister [or a rabbi]. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a writer and singer. The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.”

Ms. Parton has also used her wealth and influence to fund and promote the Moderna Covid vaccine. As we read in this week’s parasha about plagues, including disease and disabling events, we are reminded again of how ever-present Covid continues to be even after a year and a half of vaccines. What other modern-day plagues are we inoculated against thanks to good information and the ability to further protect ourselves from oppressive forces that prey on ignorance and submission? 

This Shabbat and in honor of Dolly’s birthday weekend, let us all celebrate by reading a good book. May we enrich our minds and souls, feed our imaginations, and prepare ourselves and future generations to be able to create positive change in the world. Amen and Shabbat Shalom!