Growing up, I learned that Hanukkah, Passover, and Purim spoke of the need, motive, and way of social justice. Keeping the feasts and telling the stories kept us focused on the need to see and lift the oppression of others. We were moved to do so because we ourselves had suffered. We were compelled to do so because God had commanded us to. (Deuteronomy 15:12-15) As we dripped the wine from the cup of plagues we remembered, that our cup of joy is never full as long as someone else is suffering. The strange, maddening white evangelical lie that the Bible does not teach social responsibility or social justice is not only disturbing. It is damaging. It has allowed people who claim to be the community of Jesus to turn people into things to be used rather than persons to be loved. Jesus always turned problems back into people. He was a Sabbath-giver, a hurt healer, and a burden-lifer. How will we recover what He as Torah-made-flesh offered? Maybe we need to learn from the Rabbi.
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