D'var Torah

Oftentimes, the marking of the Martin Luther King holiday and the observance of Kindness Week in Kenosha overlaps with stories of the exodus from Egypt in our Torah reading cycle.    And so it happens this year with Torah portion Beshallach, including the parting of the Red Sea (Exodus 14 and 15), read in the synagogue this Shabbat. The juxtaposition is meaningful.  After all, the King observance evokes memories of the mid-twentieth century Civil Rights Movement and the Voting Rights Act, both of which resulted in the liberation of Blacks and other disenfranchised minorities in America from certain types of oppression – Jim Crow laws and voter restrictions in the South.   But, these landmark actions have not brought about equality and equal access to education, health care, housing, and employment for People of Color.  We have not crossed the Red Sea to full equity and inclusion, and we have even gone backward and find ourselves facing raging waters once again in the realm of attempts at voter disenfranchisement.  Through study sessions on implicit bias and white privilege over the past year, some of us have had our eyes opened to how, without realizing it, we are part of the problem.  In my sermon this Shabbat, I will speak about how our unwitting biases get in the way of type of kindness that is needed to cross the Red Sea of racial inequity in the 21^st century.