Two years before Saul
Rabinowitz was to become president of Schenectady Jewish Center, he attended a
lecture given by William Bridges, author of Getting Through Wilderness.
Here, in Saul's words as it relates to SJC, is Mr. Bridges' message from that
lecture in the autumn of 2006:
As a temple we've made changes, and now we are at a stage to manage our transition. We all know of a classic management story that provides an excellent account of a leader’s successful transition project. It is in the book of Exodus, and the leader is Moses.
When Pharaoh finally let Moses’ people go, some of them surely thought the Promised Land was just around the corner. But Moses was not so naive, for he saw that he had to draw a line of no return. Whatever the old system is, it always “follows” people and tries to pull them back, just as the Pharaoh’s army did. This pull must be broken, and Moses did that by a symbolic act. He called on God to part the waters of the Red Sea so that his people could cross over, and then just as Pharaoh’s troops entered the sea he called on God to close the waters again. The pursuers were drowned.
There are two elements to this action that ought to be noted. The first is that there needs to be a clean break with the past. There must be no pieces of the past lying around to suggest that perhaps it is not gone, after all. Those pieces might be policies that were justified by the old goals, tactics that were justified by the old strategies, missions that were justified by the old vision. The past needs to be “drowned,” as the Pharaoh’s army was. We are careful not to denigrate “the past” in the general sense. The eradication of the past should not be done vindictively or with any suggestion that those who were loyal to the past were mistaken or ineffective. Instead, it is clear that the past did its job and got us where we are today. It was fine for its time, but its time is past. New situations call for new solutions.
The Red Sea experience is
a symbolic “boundary event” and such an event captures people’s attention and
carries the message that the old way is gone and beyond recovery. The
Spanish explorer, Cortez, created another such boundary event. After his
men landed on the coast of Mexico, he burned the ships. His message: there is
no turning back now! The effect of the boundary event is not just to keep
the past from invading the present; for Moses, it is also to keep the people
from turning around and returning to Egypt.
Moses knew that people need a long journey through transition before they can be transformed into the people who are ready for the Promised Land. Moses knew that it would be easier to take the people out of Egypt than it is to take the Egypt out of people. Moses knew he could not get his people into the Promised Land until the ones who had known Egypt had died. If we take that literally, it is a discouraging message. But if we take it symbolically, it makes good sense: the old attitudes and behaviors that were appropriate to Egypt must die and new ones must be generated, or else the Promised Land will prove to be just a new Egypt.
Moses knew that people need a long journey through transition before they can be transformed into the people who are ready for the Promised Land. Moses knew that it would be easier to take the people out of Egypt than it is to take the Egypt out of people. Moses knew he could not get his people into the Promised Land until the ones who had known Egypt had died. If we take that literally, it is a discouraging message. But if we take it symbolically, it makes good sense: the old attitudes and behaviors that were appropriate to Egypt must die and new ones must be generated, or else the Promised Land will prove to be just a new Egypt.
