This past week I was in an immersive Jewish learning environment for three days with Hadar.

We studied different texts of Talmud and tackled difficult questions like, “How to Live in a World that Defies our Values,” and “Is Loving Our Enemies a Jewish Value?”

Rabbi Shai Held presented texts to answer the latter question specifically.

He talked about the incorrect notion that has become the norm, drummed into people over centuries by Christians, for thinking about Judaism vs. Christianity: that Christianity is about love, and Judaism is about law. Rabbi Held vehemently challenges this idea and the anti-Judaism that has come along with it, including among Jews ourselves; “We have a vengeful God. Jesus and the god of the New Testament are all about love; we’re all about the stringency of the law.”

Yet, not only was Jesus teaching Jewish values (he was not a Christian), as recorded in the Newer Testament, but go ahead and read the Book of Revelations, Rabbi Held says, and you’ll see a very punitive God and a whole lot of destruction.

When talking to Christian theologians and podcasters, Rabbi Held insists on a starting point of common understanding: “Most discussions among Jews about loving your enemy took place in ancient times when Jews had no power. Meanwhile, the same discussions among Christians took place when Christians had immense power.

“So, don’t lecture me as a Jew about the superiority of Jesus, when Christians, while preaching that Christianity was all about love, were slaughtering and torturing Jews. If we can have that common understanding, then we can begin talking.”

Meanwhile, Jews get very excited when we get to this week’s parsha and Shabbat Shira, the Shabbos of Song. But it’s a painful story if we really look at it.

We have been through 400 years of slavery, having seen the beginnings of Moses, saved first by the midwives and then by Pharaoh’s daughter, through all the plagues, and we are finally at the dramatic and terrifying moment where Moses stretches out his arm over the sea, it splits, the Israelites run through, and the wall of water closes behind them, drowning the Egyptians in pursuit of them.

Having reached the other side, the Israelites break out in song, rejoicing at their freedom and the fate that has befallen the Egyptians, and Miriam, Moses’ sister, leads the women as they dance around in celebration.

Personally, I have always struggled with the idea of a punitive, jealous God who, on the surface, seems completely responsible for the four-hundred year enslavement of our people. God tells Moses that this will happen, and also informs him every time he will harden Pharaoh’s heart.

And God is not patient or kind in many instances. He has already gotten angry several times, first with Moses for being afraid and trying to get out of his overwhelming assignment, and later with the Israelites who are grumbling and begging to go back to Egypt where “at least we had food.”

It is this angry God that Christianity has used to spread the idea that Jews are all about law, and Jesus is all about love. But as Shai Held showed us, there are many, many Jewish texts, both from the ancient rabbis and our scriptures, that challenge this idea.

Among the most well-known is that they say we are not to rejoice at the suffering and death of our enemies—specifically here, the Egyptians.

R. Held also separates texts from the ancient rabbinic that are prescriptive (“If your enemy falls, do not rejoice; if he trips, let your heart not exult.” Proverbs 24:17), and those that are descriptive (“When the righteous prosper, the city exults; when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy.” Proverbs 11:10).

What we do, Held says, is automatically demonize those that hurt us, and our texts are telling us not to, time and again.

But it is this story that gave previous generations of Americans the strength to continue their fight and stand up to power against all odds—especially those fighting for the liberation of American Black slaves, including slaves themselves who resisted again and again, and then those fighting for an end to Jim Crow.

Meanwhile, the plague that strikes me the most these past years is the darkness that God brings upon the Egyptians. It’s described as a darkness so thick, it can be touched: וְיָמֵ֖שׁ חֹֽשֶׁךְ/va’yamesh khoshekh (Ex. 10:21).

Even after liberation, in the desert, the first waters the Israelites encounter are too bitter to drink.

We are in the midst of some really dark times, with a fear and a darkness so thick we can feel it, and the waters are very bitter.

It’s a complicated question of how to live in a world where we have to balance loving our enemies with our need to protect ourselves.

How to continue to live with love as a guide for our actions, like the midwives did, and with the courage they had as ordinary people, while living in a world that defies our values.

I had a revelation a little over a week ago that changed this whole narrative for me around the God of the Bible and God’s role in the world.

I realized that maybe, through all the times God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, lengthening the suffering and delaying the liberation of the Israelites, the Torah is trying to teach us that, ultimately, redemption and liberation are up to us.

It is up to the resisters—all of us ordinary people, like the midwives that started the whole thing, all the way to Moses who learns to speak with authority and confidence, entering and leaving Pharaoh’s presence as he pleases, despite his fear and despite a speech impediment—it’s up to all of us to make redemption happen.

God, or the Mystery, or whatever you want to call this force that connects us all, is there to give us hope, strength and courage to carry it out.

So, how do we live in a world that defies our values?

As we know very well, it’s not only between Jews and Christians that dialogue is challenging in this day and age. It is also between Jews and Jews, and between those on different ends of the political spectrum.

It may seem completely counterintuitive as things seem to get worse and worse and our outrage increases at every turn, but it seems to me that there is only one starting point to move us forward.

If one our highest value as Jews is love, as the rabbis reinforce over and over, then we need to reclaim it and embrace it entirely.

Quoting from Rav Kook, “The pure righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not complain of evil, but increase justice…”

And, I would add, they do not complain of hatred, but increase love.

May we learn to be purely righteous.

Shabbat Shalom.