I was a typical suburban 16-year-old sardonic Jewish kid in 1977, when the television series “Roots” debuted. It remains one of my most indelible memories from growing up. It awakened feelings in me that I was barely starting to understand. This week’s parshah brings back powerful memories of that series and the lessons it taught me about love, family and perseverance.
In “Roots,” we meet Kunta Kinte, a teenage African boy who is torn from his family, taken to America and sold into slavery. He tries to run away multiple times. He is whipped, beaten and finally his owners cut off part of one foot so he cannot run again.
He is Abraham. At least Abraham had a choice when he embarked on a new path. Kunta’s “Lech L’cha” was involuntary.
Kunta’s Sarah is Belle, a house cook he meets later in life and marries. They have a child, Kizzy, who is sold out from under them when she breaks the master’s rules. Kizzy is about 16 when this happens, and she never sees her parents again.
This entire parshah is so full of real human emotion, and it ends with Isaac settled with his new wife, Rebeccah. Abraham and Sarah are dead. It is bittersweet: we know life must go on and none live forever, yet we mourn the loss of our first patriarch and matriarch. They were first, so they are special. With the tears of their loss, we also have happiness and hope in the fact that Isaac has found love and comfort in Rebeccah.
The end of this parshah is emotionally equivalent to the scene in “Roots” when Kizzy, who has been away for many years, finds her way back to the home of her parents. She finds their graves in the plantation graveyard. We cry with her for all the pain and struggle she had had to endure. She has also found love, though, and soon she will have her own child to love and raise (Chicken George).
Isaac is “settled near “Beer-lehai-roi” as the parshah ends. I love the word “settled” here, because at least in English, it connotes a level of peace and comfort. After all that Isaac has been through (see the Akedah), it is good to know that he is “settled.”
We suffer, we struggle. But the journey of Isaac and Kizzy seems to tell us that those who follow God and their own hearts will find peace.
Chuck, you said: At least Abraham had a choice when he embarked on a new path. Kunta’s “Lech L’cha” was involuntary.
ReplyDeleteI think this makes the two stories way, way different. It's like the difference between Christians believing in original sin and Jews believing we are born pure. The difference is too wide a gap to make the stories analogous. Another example: comparing African-American "progress" in the US with the "progress" of other immigrant groups. People who came here as slaves should not be compared to people who took more voluntary journeys, for many reasons, not the least of which is that most groups brought their language with them on their journeys, and African-Americans could not, and were prevented from learning the language of the new country.
You say "the difference is too wide a gap to make the stories analogous."
ReplyDeleteI'm not saying they are analogous in every way. That would be a silly claim as I point out in my comment about Kunta's involuntary journey.
I'm saying they are analogous in the way they struck me emotionally (mostly in terms of the strength we find in family), and in the way they present people finding hope despite struggle and heartache.
I tend to look for similarities between peoples whenever possible. We have enough dividing us-- both real and imagined--and so I focus on what makes us the same.