Pauline Berkowitz is a seventh grader at the Booker T. Washington Middle School’s ‘Delta’ program.  She has been part of the Hebrew Tabernacle family since the age of five.  Her favorite subjects are Art and Math.  She loves skiing, soccer and running.  She has been a member of the New York Road Runner Foundation.  She is an avid reader of both fantasy and realistic fiction.  She also likes books and movies dealing with the life of Anne Frank.  Pauline enjoys spending time with her four grandparents, both near the beach at Amagansett and at Camp Naivelt (a Jewish family) camp near Toronto.  She also loves spending time with her many cousins, especially her newest one, Sam.  She is very excited about her upcoming Bat Mitzvah.

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         In this week’s parasha, Parashat Bo, God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh and insist that Pharaoh let the people go. When Moses and Aaron go to the Egyptian palace, they threaten Pharaoh that if he doesn’t let the people leave there will be swarms of locusts. The Pharaoh’s servants tell him to let the Hebrew people go, and when Pharaoh asks who is going to go, Moses says that every one of the Hebrews are leaving, and Pharaoh says that only the men can leave. After this, locusts come and cover the entire land of Egypt, and eat everything that grows in the fields. God hardens Pharaoh’s heart and he still doesn’t let the people go. Then the plague of darkness comes, and only the people of Israel have light. Pharaoh says to Moses that he and his people can go but all the animals have to stay behind. God hardens Pharaoh’s heart yet again. God tells Moses that this last plague, the death of all first born animals and men, will make Pharaoh want to let the people go.  Then, God tells Moses and Aaron to tell the people Israel to take an unblemished lamb on the 10^th of the month, and slaughter it at twilight on the 14^th day of the month.  He then tells them to take the blood of the lamb and paint the blood on every door post. The lamb shall be roasted and eaten with matzah and bitter herbs. Each man is to dress with shoes on their feet and a staff in their hands. God will see the blood on people’s door post and “Pass over” it. When Pharaoh sees that his own son has died he calls Moses in the middle of the night and says “go!” The Egyptians loaned the Israelites gifts of gold and silver. The Israelites, numbering 600,000 men and countless women and children, leave Egypt with cakes of unleavened bread, which did not rise because they hurried out of the land. Now the Israelites ended 430 years of their lives in Egypt. God tells Moses to dedicate the first born children and animals of the Israelites to God. The laws of Passover are then repeated. Children are to be told about what happened when the people went out of Egypt.  That is where we get the Passover Seder.

               Judging by our Jewish history with Egypt, it’s no surprise that we do not think too highly of them. Pharaoh of course is presented in the torah as an evil person who enslaved our ancestors and tried to kill off all the baby Hebrew boy slaves. Stereotypically we tend to think that all people follow their leaders. In this situation we think all of the Egyptians and Pharaoh are bad and the Hebrews and God are good. End of story. But I don’t think so. First of all, the torah states that God himself hardens Pharaoh’s heart. Surprise!! Secondly, the Egyptians loan the Israelites gold and silver before they leave Egypt – and they probably knew they would never get their “loan” back. Now, do you think Pharaoh would approve of this? Not at all.  So now God is good and sort of evil – at least to Pharaoh.  Remember, God is the god of everyone, not only Jews.

               Did all of the Egyptians support what Pharaoh was trying to do? We can never know.  If so, maybe we are right to have feelings of hatred towards the Egyptians. But we have already shown that they might not have been as bad as we think.  There is even more to the story; the Torah gives us some other information about the Egyptian people. We learn that Shifra and Pua, who were Egyptian midwives, did not obey Pharaoh’s rules by not killing the baby Hebrew boys. We also know that Pharaoh’s daughter, who is referred to as Batyah in the Midrash, which means the daughter of God, disobeys Pharaoh’s rules by raising Moses, even though she knew he was a Hebrew and that it was illegal.

              We see from all of this that not all Egyptians are the same, and that not all Egyptians were against the Hebrews. What are we supposed to learn from this story? We shouldn’t hate all Egyptians. The story of our ancestors in Egypt should not teach us to be hateful to a whole people. We should remember that it was the evil Pharaoh who made us slaves and we have learned from this that we should always fight against evil tyrants, so that all people can have their freedom.

           The Torah recognizes that Jews may learn to hate all Egyptians because of what Pharaoh did and that is why at the end of the Torah, in Deuteronomy (chapter 23 verse eight), it says not to hate all Egyptians:  “You shall not abhor an Egyptian for you were a stranger in his land.”

            Just because Pharaoh wanted to kill all of the Hebrew boys and because he also enslaved the Hebrews it doesn’t mean that the Jewish people should have bad feelings towards the Egyptians.  Also, we wouldn’t want to be judged as a Jewish people by what any other individual Jew might do.

            Meir Kahane was an Orthodox rabbi who created the Jewish Defense League in Brooklyn, in the 1960’s. Elderly Jews had been attacked by blacks and the police could not guarantee their protection. Meir Kahane also was active in the movement of supporting Soviet Jewry when the Soviet Government, in the 1970's refused to let Jews leave the country. He wrote a book called "Never again" in which he recounted how Jews in America did not do anything to help Jews of the Holocaust. Then, he moved to Israel and became involved with right-wing politics. Meir Kahane preached hate and racism against the Arabs. He believed that Israel should kick out all of the Arabs and that being a Jewish and a democratic state was contradictory. He was assassinated by an Arab American in NYC in the early 1990's. His political party was outlawed by the Israeli government because of its radical views.

            Many people were against Meir Kahane, especially Arabs, and due to this, many people hated him and many Jews disagreed with him too. But since he was a rabbi and an outspoken one, people often judged all Jews by what he had to say. 

            We all have personal examples as well. At school, during my humanities class, a person in class said. “Oh, who was that serial killer from the ‘70s?” And I replied “Oh yeah, you mean David Berkowitz.” Everyone in my class started laughing, the Jewish kids in my class stared at me. A boy next to me asked if we were related. I told him that David Berkowitz was adopted, so we were probably not related by blood. After this I was thinking to myself Oh no! What are they going to think about me? What should I do? But the rest of the day and the next went fine, so I didn’t really have to worry about anything, but still, I wouldn’t be wanted to be thought of as a relative of a serial killer. Also I wouldn’t want all the other Berkowitz’s in the world be thought of that way.

            Even as Americans, we are often judged by our leaders. President Bush is one of them. Many people around the world hate Americans because of Bush’s policies. They hate us because of his decision to send Americans to war. I know a lot of French kids.  French kids see Bush as a vicious, thoughtless warmonger and this leads them to think of Americans as arrogant brutes who don't care about the innocent people who die at the hands of their government. They don’t see that there's more to America than George Bush; that most people supported Gore in the 2000 election, that hundreds of thousands of Americans marched against the war, that Americans are a kind, big-hearted people.  Even Americans, who support President Bush, don’t agree with him all of the time.

            The story of our ancestors in Egypt should not teach us to be hateful to a particular people. We should remember the evil Pharaoh who made us slaves and we need to act to make sure there are no “Pharaohs” in the world today.  We saw how the Torah recognizes that Jews may learn to hate all Egyptians because of what Pharaoh did and that is why at the end of the Torah in Deuteronomy it says not to hate all Egyptians. As Jews, we need to be extra careful not to hate – even those who have done us harm.  But not just Egyptians, – you don’t judge a book by its cover and you shouldn’t judge all the Berkowitz’s by one Berkowitz all Jews by one Jew or even a country by its leaders. We should judge everyone fairly and on their own merits – just like we would like to be treated.  After all, it was our own Rabbi Hillel who created the Golden rule: that which is hateful to you, do not do to others.

Now that I am done with this speech, there are people here that I would like to thank for helping me with this speech and preparing me for this day

• First I’d like to thank Rabbi Weiner and cantor Fletcher and the Hebrew tabernacle
• Then I’d like to thank my parents and all of my family
• And finally Nina Nesher.