Isaac Hannan's Words of Torah as He Celebrates Becoming Bar Mitzvah!

Shabbat Shalom.

Water is a really big deal in the Torah. We know that because it is important for travel like Abraham and Sarah traveling along the Euphrates from Ur to Canaan, it is how they grow crops and make bread like Sarah did when the angels visited and told her she would have a baby - later named Isaac, it’s in the rain of the flood and also how Noah and Na’amah and the animals floated safely through the flood, water is part of how people meet each other - like Rebecca and Abraham’s servant and like Rachel and Jacob. Of course for us this week, I am thinking about the water of the Nile that Moses was rescued out of and the water of the Red Sea that separated so we could escape and be free.   

I’m going to talk more about the Torah, but first, I have a question for you:
When you turn on the tap, have you ever thought about what is in your water that you can’t see? 
Do you ever think about what's hidden like bacteria, or lead?

Imagine turning on your water, and the water that comes out looks like you went down to a dirty river and you got water from there. 

Now imagine really looking at it. It’s just like . . . brown, right? 
It LOOKS like you’d get sick drinking it. 
In fact, when you use it your hair starts to fall out.
AND you get a rash.  
Now imagine you have that brown water and the city leaders tell you, “Boil it.”
They want you to boil it because they’ve found poop bacteria in the water and they want you to kill the poop bacteria before you drink it. 
They still expect you to drink it!  
But boiling it doesn’t really help because the lead concentrates and actually the lead levels get higher. 
Now imagine you also have a baby and when she grows up and becomes a kindergarten kid she starts throwing violent temper tantrums and breaking things because she’s affected by all that lead.

This is what happened to Brandon and Ashaley in Flint, Michigan. 
They boiled the gross, brown water like they were told, and they used it to make baby formula and cook and bathe.
THAT’S SO GROSS! 
When their daughter was kindergarten age, she started having lots of problems. 
Brandon and Ashaley were also scared because Ashaley was pregnant and she was scared about being affected by the water. Then Ashaley miscarried and she knew it was because of the water. 

See, in April 2014 Flint, Michigan’s city leaders switched the water supply to the Flint River. That was a problem because the river water was corrosive because of all of the road salt runoff. The city leaders did not listen to scientists and add corrosion inhibitors to the water. Old water pipes corroded and leached iron and lead and more than 100,000 residents were exposed to unsafe levels of lead in their drinking water. 

100,000.
That is A LOT of people.

I think about stuff like this kind of a lot, and how caring about our environment can’t be a one-person battle. There are actions we can take by ourselves, but to really make a significant difference we need to work together as communities.

Adults need to take action NOW. 

Adults need to be honest about what’s actually happening to our environment, and they also need to work together to do something to protect it. That includes adults who are in government, because they have more power. Think of environmental policy like the rules and plans that governments make to protect nature. These are things like keeping the air clean, making sure water isn't polluted, and protecting animals and forests. Governments create these rules to balance protecting the environment while also allowing businesses and people to use natural resources. 

Voting on laws is how senators and representatives help make these rules. They often make good laws that help the environment, but other times they vote for a law that is bad and hurts the environment. Some ways their votes could hurt the environment are: weakening legal protections, supporting businesses that destroy natural areas, taking money away from things like national parks and research, and ignoring climate change.  

Even though adults usually listen better to other adults than they listen to kids, it might take a lot of adults working together to get adults who have a lot of power to listen and to make them change what they are doing. I think adults should use their life experience and their connections with the other adults they know to make that happen.   

Protecting the environment is also important for us kids to think about because in the future we will be 100% of the adults. We will be the government, we’ll be the teachers, the trash workers, the office people, the business people. WE can change the future and make it better because WE ARE BECOMING THE FUTURE.

When I first read about Flint, Michigan, I thought about myself being in their story.
I imagined myself being in Brandon and Ashley’s house.
I imagined what it would be like to turn on the water and have it come out . . . SO GROSS. 
With poop bacteria . . . and lead.

That was the first thing I thought of - what would it be like if that happened to me?
In our Hineini class we imagine ourselves in the Torah stories every week.

Being in the stories like that makes it feel real to me, and important.
Being in the Torah stories every week helps me imagine myself in other stories, like the one in Flint. It also means that as soon as I imagined being in Flint, Michigan, I thought of the Passover plague in the Torah when the water was turned into blood. I connected it right away.

In Exodus 7:14-21 God said to Moses, “Pharaoh is stubborn; he refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is coming out to the water, and station yourself before him at the edge of the Nile, taking with you the rod that turned into a snake. Say to him, ‘Adonai, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you to say, “Let My people go that they may worship Me in the wilderness.” But you have paid no heed until now. So now Adonai says, “this is how you will know that I am Adonai.” See, I shall strike the water in the Nile with the rod that is in my hand, and it will be turned into blood; and the fish in the Nile will die. The Nile will stink so that the Egyptians will find it impossible to drink the water of the Nile.’”

Then God said to Moses, “Say to Aaron: Take your rod and hold out your arm over the waters of Egypt—its rivers, its canals, its ponds, all its bodies of water—that they may turn to blood; there shall be blood throughout the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and stone.”

If I were Moses right now in this moment of this story, I would think the power to turn the water to blood is  . . . kinda cool.

But actions have consequences. I’d be kind of scared about having this much power. I’d be scared I’d use it badly. In the story it doesn’t seem like Moses is scared, but I think that’s because he has to act like he’s fine. He doesn’t want all of the Jews to be scared and nervous for their future. I might also be scared of Aaron a little bit, because he has this power, too. What if he changes sides or something? 

If I were the Nile River, I would be like, “Woah, you mean I’m just going to stop working? What is happening to me? I’m the longest river, and I’m really important! I supply water to hundreds of thousands of people!” I might ask Moses and Pharaoh’s magicians who apparently could also turn the Nile into blood, 

“What the heck, bro?!?”

If I were an Egyptian holding a jug of water, I’d be scared out of my mind. 
I would be wondering what just happened and thinking maybe I did something bad and a god is punishing me. My water supply is suddenly gone and I had no warning. I might just run away.

Maybe I’d run to Midian!

Anyway . . . 

“Moses and Aaron did just as Adonai commanded: he lifted up the rod and struck the water in the Nile in the sight of Pharaoh and his officials, and all the water in the Nile was turned into blood and the fish in the Nile died. The Nile stank so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile; and there was blood throughout the land of Egypt.”

See what I’m saying?
Flint. Michigan.
And really, lots of places where the water has become undrinkable.
Pharaoh is like all leaders who could have done differently and didn’t.
Because they didn’t, their people and lots of people suffered so much. 

The Egyptians that were affected by the plague and the enslaved Israelites are like the people of Flint, Michigan who couldn’t do anything about it. It’s not right that because of Pharaoh’s choices, none of the people have water. Sometimes people in power don’t want to give something up to help the people who need it, but caring for people in need is exactly what leaders are supposed to do - use their power in a positive way. I don’t think Pharaoh was moved by the suffering of the Egyptian people, so I think the plagues could have just hurt him. On the other hand, wouldn’t it have been better if Pharaoh had been raised to have empathy in the first place? 

I learned the king of Egypt was considered a god, and he thought of himself as a god. Maybe Pharaoh thought the people of Egypt were just there to serve him and he didn’t even think of them as people. If he had empathy then he wouldn’t be so selfish because he would understand what it’s like to just be human. It’s not like he chose to be Pharaoh, but he still should have been taught how to be a good person. 

To end slavery themselves, it probably would have taken all of the Egyptians working together to protest against Pharoah. They still might have gotten killed, sentenced to labor, treated like slaves. Something like that. It might have been tricky getting all of the people to revolt in the same way at the same time. Some of the people might even have told the Pharaoh and betrayed everyone else. 

In Flint, I wonder if there were people who had more economic security who could have fought back harder. I wonder if people moved if they had enough money to move. If they could move, I think they probably should have. If they did, I hope they still helped make things better in Flint. 

I wish it could have been easier - and just better - for the people in Flint.
No one should have to go through that. It’s a really bad thing.

Everyone deserves a chance to have the resources that they need, and I feel mad and disgusted that the city officials in Flint lied about the water and that because of that people had really bad health problems and depression and anxiety.

Maybe it could have been different in Egypt.
Maybe it could be different now. 

I want all of us to think about the thing we can each do to make something better.
Maybe it’s a small thing.
One person isn’t going to change much by doing just one small thing, but if I always do that one thing it’ll add up. If you do something, too, but, like, always, that’ll add up, too. 
Then things can get a little better.
If we are in a powerful position, like Pharaoh, or even like the nobles and scribes and magicians, or have any power at all, we should see the people we’re responsible for as PEOPLE. 
We need to lead them well, and be someone they can look up to. 
Not someone they don’t like and want to get rid of. 
We have a responsibility to use our power to keep people safe. 
We need to use our power in a good way.

I think when we read the Torah, we should think about how what we read is relevant in our lives. 
I think when we live our lives, we should think about what we’ve learned from the Torah.

In our Torah stories, I can see what went wrong, and what was bad. I also see in the Torah that people don’t always do the right thing and can’t fix everything, but people are trying. They are trying to figure it out. We are trying too. From the Torah we can learn that trying again after failing is much better than not trying. 

In our class we learn stuff about the Torah, and we also learn about . . . us. 
Like the Torah, we all have stories. Lots of them.  
That’s the really cool part.
I used to think the Torah was just one big whole thing, but it’s different books and chapters and verses. There are a lot of different stories in it and they add up to this cool thing. 

In class, we learn about the people in the Torah and find out who they are, then we imagine the stuff that isn’t written yet, and we create a new part of the story. 

Rabbi Ariel says that’s midrash. 

I like it because you get to learn more hands on. More in it. 
You get to create your own story - like  . . .we are making Judaism and expanding the Torah.
See? SO cool. 
That’s my favorite part. 
We get to become part of the Torah and the Torah becomes part of us. 
I think that’s really what I’m doing today. I’m celebrating and it’s exciting and fun and becoming bar mitzvah is paving the way - my way - into my adult story one step at a time.

I want to thank my mom for enrolling me in Hineini and teaching me the holiday prayers, my brother for being supportive even though I told him not to, my grandma and grandpa for teaching me about Judaism and taking me to your synagogue when I am in Florida, and my family in New York for supporting me on my Jewish journey. 

I also want to thank my rabbi and my classmates for helping me learn more about what it really means to be Jewish.   

Shabbat Shalom, and Happy Passover!

SHOOT FOR THE HOOP, AIM FOR THE STARS! MAZEL TOV! HINEINI