Parashat Korah/Juneteenth
SERMON Parashat Korah/Juneteenth
June 19, 2026 4 Tammuz 5786
Rabbi David Edleson Temple Sinai S. Burlington, Vermont
WTHOUT COURAGE, FREEDOM IS A SLOGAN
Freedom is not a moment. There is never a moment before which there isn’t freedom and after which there is. We long for such moments. We believe in them and refer to them, but they are a best meaningful moments in an narrative and at worst deceptive lies.
Did the Israelites feel free when the fled Egypt in the dark of night fearing the Egyptians and retribution? I doubt it.
Did they feel free when they crossed the sea to safety with Pharoah’s shattered army behind them? Yes, of course, and they famously sang and danced about it as they should have, but it was only a few days later that they started to complain and rebel and ask to go back to Egypt, because comfort can feel a lot like freedom. It is easy to confuse the two.
For forty years or more, they were free but wandering in the wilderness. When it was finally time to enter the Promised Land of Freedom, they people panicked and demanded to go back to Egypt.
In last week’s Torah portion, Sh’lach, (and many many thanks to Aimee Hutton for her beautiful d’var on this last week) we read about the spies that were sent to scout out the land coming back, and ten of the twelve give a dire report, namely that there is no way the puny Israelites can defeat these giants living in fortified cities. The people immediately started to say they wish they had never left Egypt where at least the food was better.
From about the moment they finished singing Mi Chamocha with Miriam and all the timbrelling, they started to complain that freedom was too hard and could they please go back to Egypt where they might have been slaves but they had water and the food was better.
They wanted freedom, but they didn’t want to suffer and struggle to get it. And that was for their own freedom.
As I was rereading the Emancipation Proclamation as a way of honoring Juneteenth, what struck me was just how much President Lincoln was willing to endure, and have the American people endure, in order to free the slaves and enforce the union structure on rebellious states. Let’s remember that the Civil War was already in its second year when he issues the proclamation on January 1, 1863. He knew quite deeply that this war was going to impose trememndous loss and suffering on the populations of both sides. He knew it was going to create tremendous economic damage in the near term. He knew costs for basic goods were going to go way up and people would be angry, but still he moved forward with the war because the moral and strategic purposes of the war were worthy of significant sacrifice. Lincoln was many things: brilliant, awkward physically, suffered from severe depression at times, was likely bisexual, and he wrestled deeply with moral questions of freedom and war. However, once he committed, he was incredibly brave and unwavering. He continued fighting until the Confederacy surrendered. He continued until the last slaves were liberated by federal troops in Galveston, Texas, on June 19th, 1865.
If Lincoln were president today, I very much doubt that a rise in the cost of gasoline and fears in the market would have caused him to capitulate completely, and sign an MOU they gave the South the sovereignty and the right to hold slaves without interference from the North.
While I don’t know what the citizens of the Union felt back then, I like to think they wouldn’t have wanted Lincoln to capitulate that way. It is so hard to imagine Americans being so committed to a moral cause that we are willing to seriously sacrifice. Would we have been with Joshua and Caleb, or would we be one of the spies who said, “let’s go home.”
Of course, the civil war is a completely different war than the recent war in Iran, and it was highly questionable whether returning to conflict with Iran was wise strategically or morally. We don’t all agree and nor should we on whether that was wise. It is a very complex matter and depending on which lens you look at it through, the picture changes.
However, if preventing Iran from having a nuclear weapon is a necessary good as American foreign policy has been agreed on over many administrations and across parties, there was always going to be a high cost for military action. Iran controls the oil traffic and other crucial supply chains, so the President should have known it was going to cause economic pain. The American people should have known and been prepared for that sacrifice, which we were not. The reason other administrations had avoided this was because it was felt the price would be more than would be tolerable. And it should have been very clear that the worst of all possible scenarios would be to start something with Iran that we were not willing to carry through.
We are left with a more powerful Iran, about to receive an influx of money that they will spend on rebuilding their military and their terrorist proxies while maintaining their “Death to America” ideology and regime, a regime that massacred tens of thousands of its own citizens for protesting.
I personally am also deeply concerned at the shift in rhetoric being used by this administration about Israel. It does not bode well. If Trump and Vance need to cast around for a scapegoat, it can’t be shocking that they start with Jews. Many in the other party have already settled on Jews as a convenient target for getting support, a strategy as old as our people.
But we are not the President, or Prime Minister and so while we might love armchair quarterbacking their decisions, what sticks with me isn’t what Trump did or didn’t or should have done. It’s us. It’s whether we as a nation are willing to sacrifice for a greater good. It was the idea that the dollar or two rise in the price of a gallon of gasoline would mean that the moral equation of the war would change. I don’t want to minimize what that does to families on the financial edge, but I would hate to think that we backed out of WWII because the price of gas rose.
I’m not sure what a comparable modern cause might be, but the regime in Iran is pretty close. Chanting Death to America, controlling so much of the supply of oil and the worlds economy, destabilizing other nations with their funding of militias and armies within other sovereign nations, and their closeness to obtaining a nuclear weapon all make them certainly worth considering. And that is without acknowledging that they have as an explicit goal the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of its people.
Juneteenth, I think, gives us an opportunity to reflect on the relationships of comfort and courage, of safety and freedom. It is a chance to remind ourselves of how much was sacrificed in the name of emancipation and the union. Are we still a people who are willing to risk and the sacrifice to do important things, whether that is housing, food, medical care or wars against those who seriously threaten us?
Our tradition celebrates the two spies, Joshua and Caleb, who came back and were willing to fight against very bad odds. They had faith in what they believed in and were willing to sacrifice for it. President Lincoln would have stood with Joshua and Caleb. The Jews who founded the state of Israel would have stood with them. Would we?
Shabbat Shalom.
