I want to talk about ancient and modern plagues. Many of us will be sitting down to Passover seders in a few days and spilling a drop of wine in remembrance of the Ten Plagues of Egypt: Blood, frogs, lice, flies, livestock disease, boils, hail and fire, locusts, darkness, and death of the first born. In the Exodus story, these ancient plagues were God’s response to the systemic injustice of pharaoh. For enslaving, subjugating, and murdering the ancient Israelites. Some of the plagues disrupt infrastructure, some bring about personal suffering. All the plagues afflicted not just the pharaoh and decision-makers in power, but the everyday people who benefited from the ongoing oppression of Israelites. People who were just doing their jobs as taskmasters and overseers, or just following orders to take Israelite infant boys and kill them. People who, through indifference, apathy, or even agreement with pharaoh, enabled the ongoing oppression.

Many people reimagine modern plagues as pandemics, fires, floods, the inevitable consequences of living in a society that treats the natural environment as something to be used up, rather than cared for. I challenge us today to consider modern plagues that do the same as the plagues in Exodus: they turn the pressure back on the people in power and the ordinary people who enable them.

I have three modern plagues I want to briefly discuss. The first is protests, like this one. Mass mobilization of people demonstrates political will for change. Throughout history, when people are faced with a violent, authoritarian government, the nonviolent mobilization of a small fraction of the population, just 3.5% or 12 million Americans today, is often enough to create meaningful regime change. The last No Kings protest saw 7 million people take to the streets, this one is expected to be even larger. But just as one plague was not enough in Exodus, one protest or one tactic is not enough today.

The second modern plague is boycotts. Boycotts are something almost anyone can do, because we control where we spend our money.  They put financial pressure on a business and bring to light ways that businesses contribute to ongoing oppression. Boycotts ask us to sacrifice something for our values. When your local Starbucks is in a legal battle over unionization, a boycott can demonstrate support for workers. We saw the impact of boycotts on Target’s stock after they rolled back Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Boycotts should be planned wisely, with clear goals that need to be met before the boycott is considered over.

The third modern plague I want to discuss is less tangible than protests and boycotts, and more difficult to achieve. It is doing the difficult work of pursuing repair after conflict ruptures a relationship. I can’t cover this topic in nearly the depth it deserves, for that you can start with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s book, On Repentance and Repair. In this week’s Torah portion, we read about the reparation offering. Our tradition teaches that we are all going to mess up sometimes, whether through ignorance, bias, problematic beliefs, carelessness, or many other reasons. We make mistakes, we hurt each other, we rupture relationships and then we are expected to take action to repair that rupture. That does not always mean we earn forgiveness. It means owning the harm, acknowledging the impact, attempting to make amends, and doing the inner work to act differently in the future. It takes time, it often requires help from other people. The people we harmed may need help and protection and love and care in a separate process, and I’d like to note our society also does not have great structures to support those who have been harmed! As Rabbi Ruttenberg says in her book, “If we want to build a world that determines appropriate consequences for harm, that centers the needs and healing of those most impacted, and that helps the perpetrator transform into an agent of healing, repair, and ongoing renewal, we have tremendous cultural and systemic work to do.” That work can start with us in our relationships. I would argue that, if you want boycotts and protests and other modern plagues to be effective, this work must start with us in our relationships, too.

I am so glad that we are all here to attend the No Kings protest and hopefully bring about a modern plague to take one step away from authoritarianism and toward building a just and equitable society. I encourage you to consider other modern plagues that we may use to resist injustice, dehumanization, and callous cruelty that we see from modern tyrants. The ancient Israelites had God to act on their behalf. We should not wait for divine intervention. Shabbat shalom.

Sources

• 3.5% figure: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/2024-05/Erica%20Chenoweth_2020-005.pdf
• Boycotts: https://museumofprotest.org/methods/consumer-boycott/
• On Repentance And Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg