At Passover, we proclaim God's saving power. The bitter herbs and the salt water remind us of the bitterness of slavery and of its tears. But we do not dwell on 420 years of hardships. Instead, we joyfully celebrate our liberation. “Dayyeinu,” we cry! Even a lesser measure of freedom would have been enough for us.

Yom Hashoah, on the other hand, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is an occasion for grief. Our liturgy may remind us that the State of Israel arose but three years after the darkest days of Jewish history. We sing Hatikvah, literally “hope,” Israel's National Anthem. But to regard Yom Hashoah as a celebration of the Holocaust's end would be deeply offensive. “To everything there is a season;” and a time to remember the Holocaust is a day of sadness.

One week after that annual commemoration of the Holocaust, we celebrate once again. Yom Ha'atzmaut means “Independence Day.” It's Israel's July 4th. After 2000 years, the age-old hope is realized: We are a free people, with our own land, in Zion, in Jerusalem.

There's an old saw about Jewish holidays, suggesting that they are all the same. The saying goes: “They tried to kill us. God saved us. Let's eat.” Even if we admit that there's some truth to the joke, we know that the truth is more complex. Our people has known the glory of God. We have also known the horrors of Auschwitz.

We would not be wrong, were we to say that we Jews are a despised people. From the biblical period to this very day, one persecution has followed another. We have been expelled from countless countries, and some would cynically say that the only countries from which we haven't been driven are merely nations that haven't banished us yet. We correctly believe a free and secure Jewish State to be required for our people's well-being, and Israel is constantly being threatened. Yes, we could see ourselves as oppressed.

But to the outsider looking in, and perhaps also in many of our own minds, we are blessed. We have been freed of the persecutions of the past. We live in an unprecedented age of Jewish security. Israel is sovereign. American Jews enjoy prosperity and opportunity unmatched in our history. What could be better than to be a Jew in the 21st Century?

Perhaps you, my dear congregation, are confused. You may be glancing down at your Order of Service. Isn't this Shabbat's sermon supposed to be about African American rage? Isn't the Rabbi going to denounce Jeremiah Wright tonight?

Indeed.

Who better to evaluate the position of African Americans than Jews?

Like African Americans, we have been slaves.

Like African Americans, we endured years in the wilderness, before reaching the Promised Land of complete freedom.

Having seen one of our own nearly elected to the second highest office in the land eight years ago, who better to understand how African Americans feel now, contemplating that one of their own may be the next President of the United States.

Admittedly, the socio-economic status of the average American Jew is light years ahead of that of the average African American. Yes, we all have access to American public education, but with the vaunted value on local control, Jews, like other Anglos, rarely go to school with more than a token few people of color. Oh, and if we're isolating for the American experience, little could be less like African American history than American Jewish history, starting from the beginning. Our ancestors sought freedom and opportunity on these shores. Our African American neighbors celebrate no Ellis Island of their own. The Statue of Liberty cannot speak to them. African Americans and Native American Indians are the only Americans who did not immigrate in search of a better life. On the whole, they have not found America to be a land of opportunity.

But really, who better to understand African Americans than we Jews?

We rightly respond with rage when anybody questions our right to our Jewish State. Indeed, some among us become filled with anger, when someone suggests that Israel's treatment of its Palestinian citizens may be problematic, or that the Palestinian people deserve their own State. Your Rabbi has heard constant tales of real injustices, groundlessly blamed on anti-Semitism. The incessant violations of the separation of Church and State, to which we are constantly subjected, are terribly wrong, but so is the fact that they are widely perceived as persecution. We well know the feeling of the people with a history of oppression. We were slaves in Egypt. We were outsiders in America. Perhaps we still are. Even in times of freedom and prosperity, we are vigilant about the vaguest hint of a problem headed our way. And well we should be.

But rage, my friends, is not the answer. The Book of Numbers, which we begin reading tonight, offers tales of anger out of control. Moses, our greatest teacher, is upset. The people have no water, so they start complaining, once again. God tells Moses, “Take your rod, and speak to the rock. It will yield water.” Moses takes his rod, alright, but he uses is to smash the rock, after he yells at the people. Merciful to the masses, God causes the water to flow. But Moses is punished. He will not see his people into the Promised Land.

Not many people are comparing Rev. Jeremiah Wright to Moses these days. And I shall not do so myself. Moses' act was relatively isolated; though he does also kill that Egyptian taskmaster. And he smashes those tablets when he sees the Golden Calf. And . . . .

Rev. Wright seems to have spewed his hatred repeatedly, over a period of decades. Many of his words have been horribly counter-productive, even in context. Surely, one can criticize American policy, American history, even the American people, without asking for damnation upon the nation. Rev. Wright is wrong.

And we should know. Jews have been known to extol preachers who lash out with angry words against Islam itself, against Allah, against the prophet Muhammad, against all Arabs, all Palestinians. Among the Jewish people are tens of thousands who still follow a now-deceased Rabbi who blamed the Holocaust on the rise of Reform Judaism. Among the Jewish people are tens of thousands, if not more, who still follow the now-deceased Rabbi Meir Kahane, who incessantly called for the expulsion, the ethnic cleansing, of all Arabs between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. Among the Jewish people is a small but devoted group who enshrine the grave of Baruch Goldstein, yimoch shemo, may his name be blotted out, who murdered Muslims at prayer in Hebron. Among the Jewish people are hundreds, nay thousands, who called for murderous revenge after a horrendous act of terrorism at a Jerusalem Yeshiva. Among the Jewish people this very month was a group who hatefully burned the New Testament, in public, in Israel.

Yes, we should know. A people's rage, even a people's justified anger - yes, a people's concern for their own future and well being - may lead to the most outrageous, immoral behavior. Our vigilance is good. At times, we must be stronger. We are taught that God gave us an evil inclination, our yetzer ha-ra, very much on purpose. Without the ability to act strongly, no nation would survive. Every people faces that moment when it must act in a way that may seem wrong, when taken out of context.

From time to time, though, our own people has gone too far. Even Moses did it. Yes, we know why he was mad. We know why Jeremiah Wright is angry. We understand why Malcolm X had had enough. We may even have an inkling of why Meir Kahane thought himself justified to call for the ethnic cleansing in Israel. But Moses was wrong. And, how much the more so, Jeremiah Wright is wrong. And how much the more so, Meir Kahane was wrong.

They were wrong because they let anger rule reason. They were wrong because they let hatred of the enemy override their love for God and all humanity.

We knew another African American leader. He, too, was angry. He, too, had reason to be enraged. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., though, did not let his anger get the best of him. Let us conclude with his words:

“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a [person's] sense of values and . . . objectivity. It causes [the person] to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.”

Amen.

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