Kudos to President Obama for his amazing grace

By Rabbi Ben Kamin

Rabbi Ben Kamin
Rabbi Ben Kamin

ENCINITAS, California –This past week, the Jews were studying about water, words, and rocks in the weekly cycle of Torah readings.  The desert-wandering Hebrews were griping to Moses about being thirsty—they even repeated their infuriating refrain: “Take us back to Egypt!”

Moses, a good man with anger-management issues, was instructed by God to speak to a certain boulder.  Water would then flow to quench everybody’s thirst.  Sadly, Moses, so provoked by the people’s impertinence, struck the rock instead.

Water came forth but Moses received a harsh punishment from heaven: he would not go over into the Promised Land with the people he was delivering.  How a high-profile leader performs in public view carries consequences.

We need to talk to the hard places rather than striking out at them.  We don’t need to agree with every element of a president’s policies (that would not be democracy) but we need to recognize the greatness of a president who first talks to the hard places in order to bring us the waters of healing and reconciliation.

A leader is someone that does not hit the rock unless there is no water therein to refresh us.   He is a president who poignantly knows how to break out with a mournful “Amazing Grace” when nothing else comes close to defining the moment.   I don’t like everything about President Barack Obama’s foreign policy but I admire everything about Barack Obama, the man.

This Independence Day belongs to our president.  In the last two heady, historic, tragic, and triumphant weeks, he has presided over a nation that is actually selecting hope over hostility.  Nothing he has said, done—or sung—has inspired us to do anything but choose the healing.

Like a lot of other white folks who found themselves outside “Mother Emanuel” in Charleston on that sweltering Sunday, June 21, I experienced the privilege of praying with suffering servants in a public sanctuary of American renewal.  Black folks handed me cold water while white fathers bent down and encouraged their blonde daughters to also clap in the rhythm of old Negro spirituals that reverberated across loudspeakers sending rhapsody through the humidity.

Leafy elm trees that once serviced lynching now provided forgiving shade.

During this same interval, the Supreme Court upheld the backbone of President Obama’s historic national health care bill—securing American’s place among the merciful nations.  And then—even as the flag of the Old Confederacy (a short-term nation built on long-term racism) was coming down, the flag of love was being hoisted all across the New America.  Pride is replacing prejudice in a land that has always repaired itself.

We are talking to the hard places rather than striking out at them.  That’s how you get fresh water.

It is hard to imagine any recent president who could have presided over all this with such amazing grace.

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Rabbi Kamin is an author and freelance writer based in the San Diego suburb of Encinitas.  You may comment to him at ben.kamin@sdjewishworld.com, or post your comment on this website provided that the comment is civil and that you identify yourself by full name and by your city and state of residence.