Real Heros
Over the past 8 years we have heard the word hero often. We call all kinds of people heroes. The firefighters and the police officers, doctors, and researchers. The people in the military and even the people who plow our streets are said to do heroic things to clear our way. And the people who populate those professions undertake dangers, and times great dangers, to help strangers from danger and despair.
But the truth is also that if you go into those professions you’re bound to face a moment that will give you the chance to save a life, or do something lasting. In other words, there is great probability for heroism in those jobs.
If you stop and look at the movies or tv, we find that they spend a lot of time and I think a lot of money trying to make people look like heroes. The heroes are either these strong, beautiful and powerful looking people who always seem to be at the right place at the right time to do something remarkable. Or, they show us someone who is strong, beautiful and powerful but they hide behind the façade and persona of someone weak and simple. But when the moment comes, they slide out of the weak, and reveal their true identity.
That’s what we are raised to think and see of heroes. It’s not fair to blame Hollywood. Look back in many cultures – Ulysses, Beowulf, Gilgamesh – the fairest, strongest, and smartest are the best heroes. Which actually is just another way of saying that people who are pretty, and smart, and fit are thought to be better.
And this isn’t just some armchair speculation. Science shows it as true, too. Tall people make more money than short people. Blond haired people have better job advancement than dark haired people. Good looking people statistically have better job security than people who are judged to be less appealing. And don’t think this is something that is only in Western societies. It’s not. In short, humans have for the longest time judged the ability and strength of a person based on what they look like.
But just like your bubby would tell you, books are best not judged by there covers. In fact, the very best books are the ones that surprise us. They leave us thinking how we never expected to be so moved by it.
And so too this morning in our Torah portion we are surprised. This morning we read of the improbable, of the improbable hero. We read of the kinds of people who you would never think are the kinds of people who would do great things, the real ones tend to look like regular ordinary people. They seldom have bulging muscles, and fancy cars. They aren’t the most beautiful or the most charming, but isn’t that the way the world usually works: that in the most inauspicious containers come the most remarkable things?
It could be said that the most improbable hero is our greatest one. The story of Moses flies in the face of everything that could make sense.
He is cast away at the age of 3 months by his mother, and survives the trip down the Nile in a wicker basket. He is pulled from the water not by a farmer, or a shepherd, but by Pharaoh’s daughter herself. He is not cast aside, but adopted by her, and becomes a son to the Pharaoh.
He grows up not as a Jew, but as an Egyptian, and a privileged one at that. Yet, in a fateful moment he leaves that life behind. He runs from Egypt and when called by G-d returns with the task of freeing an enslaved nation from the grips of the world’s most powerful empire.
Moses is charged with the task of speaking both to his adopted father, the Pharaoh, to convince him to let them go, and to his lost people – the Jews – to convince them to believe that their freedom was on the way.
What makes this heroic story even more improbable is that Moshe could barely speak. We are told that Moshe was afflicted with a horrible stutter that made it near impossible to talk. He admits to G-d that he is “ahral sifatayim” – he has unformed lips. That his mouth was deformed in a way that prevented him from forming the words that let us talk freely.
There is a story in Jewish tradition that seeks to explain why we all have a small indentation, a cleft, above the middle of our lips, just below our noses.
A midrash explains that just before a baby is born, an angel comes and touches him on the upper lip, right blow the nose, forming the cleft that helps to define our smile. It is with this touch, that the angel seals the baby’s lips, so that he does not tell, or even remember, all that he knows about the world he has come from.
And according to our sages the rest of our lifetime is spent in recovering that knowledge, the knowledge of the creator who gave us birth. We already know everything that we need to know, the Midrash tells us but it takes us a lifetime to remember.
And yet, the angel’s touch also forms our lips and empowers us to talk. And when we can talk, we take the first steps to joining the world. The ability to speak gives as much as it takes from us. By being able to speak we are able to help ourselves, and to help others. But by being able to speak we can also hurt ourselves, and others. Talking is a powerful, and sensitive tool.
Just ask any parent: who doesn’t remember the first words of their children? From the moment they are able to say those words, we smile because it feels like they’re joining our world. And in fact with those words they are reaching out to us, and we can reach back to them.
But for Moshe there was none of that.
Because he didn’t have those words. There was no reaching out and no reaching back. Disabled with the stutter can you imagine what his life was like? Alone, and in a corner? Wanting to say so much, and not saying anything? Hoping that people wouldn’t laugh, and wishing that people would be able to see his beauty and brilliance.
And it was him – this man who was chosen by G-d to speak? This was the man who was to save an entire people?
But maybe it was only because he had suffered so much that he was able to help the suffering? Maybe.
Maybe because Moshe was an outsider, as someone who was not able to join others and talk with them, that he lived inside himself. And by living within himself Moshe learned what our tradition expressed in a unique way. The rabbis of the Talmud were wondering “Aizehoo Hagibor”? – who is the most mighty, the most heroic, and the most valiant in human life?
And the obvious answer would be the strongest, or the wealthiest of people. But our tradition I think offered a truer answer: “haechad she-covaish et yitzro” – it is the one who conquers himself. It is the person who finds strength in what they can take from themselves, not in what others can give to them. It is the person who finds their courage from what they are, and not from what others think they are.
So here is the thing: I sit in my office like so many other people do. And I sit down at my desk and I open books that are hundreds and thousands of years old. I glide through the words of Hillel the Great who lived 2400 years ago. I read the words of great commentators and rabbis who lived hundreds of years in the past in countries scattered throughout the world. And their greatness all came from the words of this man Moses, who lived over 3500 years ago. Of all the people I admire in life, he is my greatest hero. Because he taught me, and us all what true heroism is.
It is not in the feats of greatness or beauty. Not in power or victory.
The stories we read in our world about heroes attract us because they want us to think that heroism is something that you can do in a job, or something that you can make by working out, or looking good. In other words, predictable and probable.
But Moses teaches us that all too often the greatest heroism comes from the least likely of places. Moses teaches us that many people surround themselves with many accomplishments, but true success lives in what we are, and not what we have.
Shabbat Shalom