This is the sermon I gave at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, on Shabbat Shirah, the Sabbath of Song, on January 30, 2027.

This Shabbat is one of a few that has a special name. This is Shabbat Shirah, the Sabbath of Song. It gets that name because it is the Shabbat on which we read the Torah portion that includes Shirat HaYam, the “Song at the Sea” that the Israelites sang as they crossed the Red Sea during the exodus from Egypt. There is a special melody that is used to chant the song that Cantor Emerita Deborah Johnson will sing at our service tomorrow morning when we read from the Torah.

At Temple Sinai and many other congregations, Shabbat Shirah is an occasion for a service that focuses on music and song. Tonight, we are singing and listening to wonderful music from Cantor Debby Gelber, her husband Avi Pfeffer, Cantor Emerita Deborah Johnson, Marvin Wasser, our accompanist Raymond Buttero, and from the students in our Religious School. I am so grateful to all of you for bringing your songs to our worship together tonight.

It’s great to sing together in joy and celebration, but we should also remember the song that makes this Shabbat Shirah. In this week’s Torah portion, the Israelites are singing to God a song of gratitude that tells the story of their liberation from Egypt.

For the last four weeks, we have been reading in the weekly Torah portion the story of how Pharaoh oppressed the Israelites because he was fearful that their numbers were growing too large. Although they did nothing to threaten Egypt, Pharaoh thought the best way to address his fears was to force the Israelites into slavery. When that was not enough, Pharaoh decreed that the first born sons of the Israelites would be thrown into the Nile River to drown. God heard the cries of the Israelites and sent ten plagues to show Pharaoh and all of Egypt that the God of Israel does not tolerate cruelty and hatred.

So the Song at the Sea is not  just a song of joy and appreciation of beautiful music. It is a song of liberation. It is a song that is about our values. It is a song of remembering that the Jewish people were formed in response to intolerable oppression and that we were given a mission in that moment of our creation, in the moment when we crossed through the Red Sea, to stand up for justice and freedom against all forms of oppression.

There has never been a moment in human history when we have been able to put that mission aside or to lower our guard against the threat of oppressors and oppression. Just looking at the holidays on the Jewish calendar, we are reminded over and over again that we have a sacred duty to remember to love freedom and to fight against the oppressor. We remember on Passover when we tell the story of our liberation from slavery in Egypt. We remember on Purim when we tell the story of Haman’s evil plot to destroy us. We remember on Hanukkah when we tell the story of the Seleucid Empire’s attempts to force us to give our faith. And, of course, we also remember on Yom HaShoah as we contemplate the greatest act of evil ever perpetrated by human beings.

But we should also remember this lesson when we look out at the world around today us and see any group of people oppressed by hatred and organized oppression the way that we were oppressed by Pharaoh. Our song on Shabbat Shirah should be a song of liberation, not just for ourselves, but for all people everywhere who are  hated, harassed, rounded up, exiled and oppressed because of who they are.

We are facing many challenges like this in the world today. Across the world, there has been a distinct rise in words of hatred and anger directed against minority populations, usually people who have little power to defend themselves. In Russia, Ukrainians are repeatedly falsely called “Nazis” to justify the terrible war that Russia launched almost four years ago. Throughout Europe, politicians blame recent immigrants from the Middle East for their countries’ economic and security concerns, stoking rising levels of hatred and violence against Muslims. In Myanmar, the government uses hateful rhetoric to normalize atrocities committed against the Rohingya people. And, we Jews are well aware of the massive global surge of anti-Israel material on social media is spreading misinformation and incited hatred against Jews.

This week, we received a new reminder that government-sponsored hatred and violence is not just something that happens far away. In the United States, our own government has been on a campaign for the last year to vilify immigrants from Latin America, calling them gang members, rapists, and murderers, when, in truth, immigrants in the United States are far less likely to commit violent crimes than citizens who were born here.

A massive increase in spending on border protection and immigration control has, predictably, resulted in stepped-up, government-sponsored attacks in areas with large immigrant populations, particularly in cities. Across the country, there are Latin American immigrants who are living in fear, many who dare not leave their homes for even a moment, because they don’t know when a government agent will pull them over, accost them on a city street, invade their workplace, or even enter their home without a warrant.

We should be aware that the threat from agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection is not just against people with criminal records or even just against people living in the United States without legal documentation. Increasingly, these agencies have expanded their scope to target people with no criminal history, legal residents, and even U.S. citizens who find themselves swept up in broad enforcement operations.

We are now seeing indiscriminate detention. There has been a sharp rise in the detention of noncitizens who have no criminal convictions, with nearly 90% being deported rather than released back into their communities. We are seeing threats to legal immigrants who are facing new travel bans and who have been stripped of protected status, making them subject to deportation, too. We are seeing surveillance tools and AI tracking used to monitor citizens engaged in lawful protest. We are seeing many immigrant families avoid essential medical care, schools, and public services, regardless of their legal standing, because they are afraid of being swept up in the anti-immigrant law enforcement surge.

And, of course, in the last month we have seen two U.S. citizens attacked and killed by government agents in Minneapolis. Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were shot by ICE agents during a month of intense federal activity that has sparked widespread protests and legal challenges from state leaders who describe the operation as unconstitutional retribution.

Tonight, as we sing for the liberation of our people from slavery in Egypt, from a king who was so scared of us that he forced cruel labor on us and threatened to kill our children, we should remember that our work of standing up for justice and freedom is not over. Tonight, we are singing a song for the God who loves justice and freedom. Our song is also for the people in our own times who are struggling just to live their lives in the face of a government that has chosen to hate them for no cause.

The Song at the Sea, which Cantor Emerita Johnson will sing for us tomorrow morning, begins with the words, “I will sing to God, who has triumphed gloriously.” On this Shabbat Shirah, let us sing to God a song of hope for a new triumph for justice when men, women, and children across the world can live their lives without fearing that their government will stoke fear and hatred against them. Let us sing to God a song of hope for the glory of a world in which no one is be snatched from their homes, separated from their families, or even killed because some politician has decided that they can use the pain of others to enhance their own power. Let us sing for the world that we dream of with God for a time when, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “All the earth will be calm and untroubled, when all will break out in joyful song” (Isaiah 14:7).

Shabbat shalom.

This is the sermon I delivered at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island on Shabbat Shemot 5786.

“A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” (Exodus 1:8)

This verse begins the narrative of this week’s Torah portion, Shemot, which is also the beginning of the book of Exodus and the longest and most complex story in the Torah. The story of how Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt is the most central story to Jewish identity in the Torah. More than any other, this is the story that tells us who we are as a people and it is the story, more than any other, that informs what our values are.

And it all begins with the statement that "a new king arose in Egypt."

This is a story that Judaism seems to tell over and over again. We hear it again in the story of the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II whose army destroyed the First Temple and sent ancient Israel into exile for 70 years. We hear that story again in the Book of Esther, in which Haman’s power arose in Persia to destroy the Jews.

It happened again in the story of Chanukah, in which Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the cruel Seleucid Greek king, tried to force us to abandon our religion. It happened again in the story of the First Jewish-Roman War in which the Roman General Titus destroyed the Second Temple and exiled us from our land on the eve of his becoming the Emperor of Rome.

It seems like there is always some “new king” to threaten us, all the way up to the 20th century and to the present day. But, we should notice that the “new king” is never presented just as a threat to Jews and to our physical safety. The “New King” theme is also a symbol of all the forces in the world that oppose the values of the Torah – it symbolizes what happens whenever kindness, compassion, humanity and understanding are overthrown by the values of greed, violence, cruelty, and power-for-power’s sake. It is what happened during the Crusades of the 11th to 13th centuries. It is what happened during Spanish Inquisition starting in the 15th century. It is what happened during the anti-Jewish pogroms that swept Europe in the 19th century.  It is what happened in Germany in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s.

There is always some new king who is trying to remake the world in the image of their own power and domination at the expense of humanity. Judaism from its very beginning has seen itself as the light unto the nations that stands in eternal opposition to the darkness of such power. It is an identity that we rehearse in the Passover Seder. We retell the story of the Exodus that begins in this week’s Torah portion and we transform Pharaoh from a wicked ruler who lived “once upon a time” into an eternal image of self-destructive selfishness that would rather be destroyed than yield any of its power.

During the Seder, we make it clear that we are not just talking about one cruel man long ago, we directly state, “In every generation, we are obligated to see ourselves as if we personally left Egypt.” The exodus did not just happen long ago. It is still happening now and in every age.

Growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, this was the main thing that I learned about Judaism. With grandparents who lived through the Holocaust, in a Jewish community calling for the redemption of Soviet Jewry, in a nation that was at war with itself over the quagmire of Vietnam, I readily internalized the message that to be a Jew, first and foremost, is to stand against the tendency of people to forget their values, to give into the allure of greed and might, and to forget that those they regard as enemies are living breathing human beings just like themselves. To be a Jew, as I first learned it, is to be wholly dedicated to fighting against such tyranny.

I know that I am not the only person who grew up feeling this way. I know that I am not the only Jew who holds onto this central lesson that we have been teaching for nearly 3,000 years. I know that you all take pride in being Jewish and in Judaism for the way it embodies these values. I also know that our faith is not the only faith that teaches this.

Yesterday, I stood under the rotunda of the Rhode Island State House with dozens of other faith leaders who called on state lawmakers to dedicate their efforts in the 2026 legislative session to ending the stain of poverty in the Ocean State. We called on them to assure affordable housing, provide school meals for all, maintain and expand public transportation, reform our broken criminal justice system, and to change our tax system so the wealthiest among us pay their fair share. We did not do this because we are all a bunch of liberals who believe in big government – even if we are often caricatured that way.

No. We did this because we all identify ourselves as people of faith standing up against the forces of greed that don’t mind seeing people living in the streets if it also means collecting higher rents. We see ourselves as people of fundamental values who stand up against allowing children to go hungry when we could easily afford to feed them all. We see ourselves as people of common decency who know that the very idea of a billionaire is offensive in a state where 15% of all children live in poverty.

For me, that understanding of self, values, and mission begin with the story we begin reading in the Torah this week. It is the story of Moses standing in front of Pharaoh and saying, Shalach et ami, “Let my people go.” It is the story that never ended, that will never not be needed, that exists forever as the call to conscience to return to the values of humanity and to be forever watchful of the human tendency to forget what it means to be human – to be forever watchful of the rise of a new king.

And that, of course, leads us to the present moment. For, if you look closely, you can see the new kings arising in the world today. It is in the charter of Hamas, written by its founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, dedicated to the killing of Jews everywhere. It is in the rise of authoritarianism throughout the world, chipping away at democracy and human rights in dozens of countries, including Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea, Niger, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Myanmar and Afghanistan. There are too many to mention and it is too painful to recount all the ways that the rule of law is crumbling and executive power is growing beyond all checks and bounds.

And, of course, we cannot forget to mention the two countries that are most dear to us that have seen deeply troubling decay of humanitarian values. The President of the United States last week ordered the kidnapping of a foreign ruler, not to restore human rights or democracy there, but, in his own words because, “It’s going to make us a lot of money.” Just days ago, he defended the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis by government agents with the false claim – against obvious video evidence – that she was acting violently. He even called her a “domestic terrorist,” as if anyone who dares to peacefully oppose the growing authoritarianism in our country should be treated as so much human garbage.

It all forces us to ask the question: What new king has ascended the throne in America?

In Israel, more than two years of war against Hamas have nearly numbed us from recognizing the agonizing truth that the country’s Prime Minister is still undermining the move toward a ceasefire and restoring peace and stability to the region, apparently to bolster his chances of staying in office and avoiding criminal prosecution. In the past two weeks, he has also renewed efforts that started before October 7, 2023, to strip power from the Israeli Supreme Court to enhance his own power as Prime Minister. Again, we Jews must be asking the question: Has a new king ascended the throne in Israel, one who stands in contradiction to the values of Torah and humanity?

These are difficult and painful questions, but I believe that we must confront them and take action – as Jews and as human beings – to be what the Torah calls us to be: A light unto the nations and a nation of priests. It is the mission, more than any other, that defines us as Jews.

But we should be careful not to be too disheartened by recent events and recent trends. Remember, our tradition tells us that this is the way it has always been and this is what we are always called to do, in every generation. And, in painful truth, we must acknowledge that, as bad as things seem now, we know that we Jews have seen far worse. We act in courage and in honor of those who have come before us to take up the task again of standing up against the darkness.

Don’t stop standing up for what is right. Don’t give up, even when it seems difficult, being the light, recognizing that there is a new king arising who does not know the values we stand for. Let us teach him the lesson that is coming to him – just like Pharaoh, just like Nebuchadnezzar, just like Haman, just like every cruel and selfish tyrant we have stood up against in the past. This is what we are here for.

Shabbat shalom.