After Obama, No Excuse

Many labeled Barack Obama the bi-racial or post-racial candidate. Better yet, he could not be labeled; he was the once-in-a-lifetime politician that transcended the narrow definitions imposed by the long entrenched white versus black society. How did Barack make voters forget his skin color, non-traditional upbringing, and Black Liberation church affiliation? He did not present himself as the ‘black’ candidate, the ‘theologically-different’ contender, or as ‘Congress’ most-liberal’ nominee. He was the quintessential everyman’s man, the ultimate prototype melting-pot citizen.  As such, he was offensive to none, agreeable with all.

Without a doubt, Obama’s story is compelling. It’s a political rags-to-riches testimony multiplied by the 100th power. But he is not alone. Others have crossed larger deserts - literally. Shlomo Mula grew up in a tiny Ethiopian village with no electricity or plumbing. At the age of sixteen, he and a group of friends decided to physically walk to the Promised Land, though they had no shoes or food. Their plan was to cross Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, the Sinai Desert, Gaza and arrive at the holy city of Jerusalem. Shlomo’s father sold the family cow for two dollars, the price of a guide for the first leg of the journey. In the course of his cross-country trek, Shlomo was captured by robbers in the jungle, tortured and thrown into jail by the Sudanese army, and dumped in a sweltering, over-crowded refugee camp. There he met a white person (the second one in his life) who, under the cover of night, drove them into the Kassala desert where a plane (he had never seen one) flew him to Israel. For seven years his father, nine brothers and two sisters did not know if he was alive. But the most difficult part was not leaving his family; it was travelling 400 years in a 4 hour flight. There is one point on which Shlomo is emphatic: he was not driven by Ethiopian poverty, but by the Zionist dream. In February, 2008 Shlomo Mula was elected to the Israeli Knesset.
In truth, both Barack and Shlomo were merely following in the footsteps of an earlier pioneer. In this week’s Biblical reading G-d said to Abraham, “Go forth.” With these words history was forever changed.  Not only did Abraham give rise to Judaism, he was also the inspiration for Christianity and Islam. But to achieve this revered status, Abraham had much to overcome and accomplish.

He was the original iconoclast who defied the conventional idols and traditional institutions of his day. He was also a warrior defending the weak against the strong, who welcomed strangers into his tent, who prayed for the wicked of Sodom, who scaled a mountain to offer his son as a sacrifice, etc.
 
  Nonetheless Abraham is the paradigm of the un-heroic hero. In Greek and western cultures, a hero is conscious of playing a part on the world stage under the admiring gaze of his contemporaries. But Abraham is one who (in Maimonides’ lovely phrase) “does what is right because it is right,” though all the world thinks otherwise. 
Let us reexamine G-d’s first words to the first Jew: “Lech L’cha.” Though ancient tradition offers many interpretations on this phrase, “Lech L’cha” could also mean “Go by yourself.” Only a person willing to stand alone, true to his faith can journey from the familiar to the unfamiliar and leap into the unknown. In this sense, “Lech L’cha” means being prepared to travel an often lonely journey. To be a child of Abraham is to have the courage to be different. In an era of polytheism, that meant spreading monotheism. In a time of slavery it meant challenging the mighty Egypt. When power was worshipped, it meant constructing a society that cared for the powerless. During centuries in which the mass of mankind was sunk in ignorance, it meant honoring education and creating schools to provide literacy. When war was the test of man, it meant striving for peace. In ages of radical individualism like today, it means knowing that we are not what we own but what we share; not what we buy but what we give; and that there is something higher than appetite and desire. To travel alone if necessary, to swim against the tide, to speak in an age of relativism of the absolutes of morality, all these and more were born in the journey undertaken by a lone believer with no supporting entourage.
Success and fame were not on Abraham’s itinerary, but he realized these goals anyway. Most important, he did so without diminishing his individuality. He did not try to blend in with his neighbors, or claim that his beliefs were the standard fare. Sadly enough, many Jews have abandoned the trail blazed by their forefather. They dropped their Hebrew sounding names to hide their ethnicity. They were convinced that only by jettisoning their Jewish peculiarity could they succeed. How ironic that Barack Obama (whose own political handlers were embarrassed by the “Hussein” moniker) would be the one to prove how misguided they were.

The immigrants of yesteryear were quick to throw away their kippahs, their sidelocks, and any other external sign of Jewish tribalism. Likewise, many abandoned Jewish ritual observances, like keeping kosher, which they saw as backward and primitive. They had no choice, they murmured under their breath, if they were to get ahead. Yet a black man whose Kenyan relatives are publicly slaughtering sheep and goats to celebrate his victory is the most powerful man on earth.
What Barack Obama has done is remove from every Jewish person, and indeed every member of any ethnic minority, the excuse that they cannot afford to be different. The Bible declares that every human being is created equally in G-d’s image. That is why when a sweating black child kicking a soccer ball in Georgia in the shimmering heat of August was denied a drink from a water fountain because of the color of his skin, Jews marched alongside blacks.  It was simply immoral.
There are those who believe that what unites the black and Jewish communities is their shared distinction of being the world’s foremost victims. But that is a foolish reason for our bond. In truth, our relationship would be better built on a shared destiny and belief that we are allowed to be unique, rather than a shared oppression.

So though we are all equal, we are also so very different. But that is no reason for prejudice or even suspicion. The strength of society lies in its diversity, not in its conformity. May we all find our inner pride and loudly proclaim: I don’t have to be like you, to be liked by you.