My four year old asked me while walking out the door this morning, “Abba, am I almost a grown up?” My six year old chimed in with a response. “I’m closer than you to being a grown up.”
I chuckled as I listened to this conversation. So many days we wake up asking the same question, “When will be grown up?” Each time we reach a different stage of life, personally or professionally, we recognize we have purely started again, and are no closer to our final destination that we thought.
We Jews as a people are the same. We started as individuals and then became a nation. We started as slaves, and then became free. We could not imagine what it would be like to determine our own destiny.
As we read the Song of The Sea, a miracle appears before us. It was an end to a dark past, but just the commencement of a bright but uncertain future. At that moment, we found our voice. The Torah teaches, “I will sing to God who has triumphed gloriously.”
This week, we heard from an incredible voice of the Jewish people. Rabbi Abraham Skorka of the St. Josephs’s University Institute of Jewish-Catholic Relations addressed Sinai Temple. He shared his story of befriending an Argentinean archbishop decades ago, who went on to become the current Pope Francis. Rabbi Skorka explained the importance of finding that voice, and allowing that voice to be shared across the divide. That simple friendship between a synagogue and a church has created global bonds that allow others to find their voices.
This Shabbat, may we celebrate the miracle of song while discovering the voice inside us allowing all of God’s people everywhere to live in shalom.
