Listening to Moses (and people with disability)

We read the beginning of the book of Exodus in shul yesterday, and I am grateful to Penina Weinberg, my fellow member of Temple B'nai Brith, for bringing forward Professor Julia Watts Belser's discussion of Moses in Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole. 

There's a longstanding tradition of commentary on Moses' saying he was "slow of speech and tongue" (4:10). Older midrash has Pharaoh trying to tell whether a prediction that Moses would take his throne away from him was true and placing before the baby Moses a gem and a burning coal. The theory was that if he were greedy and ambitious, Moses would reach for the gem. Instead, he grabbed the coal and, as babies do, put it in his mouth. Thus, the rabbis explained, he burned his speech organ, explaining his reluctance as a grown man to "speak to the Children of Israel." That is why his older brother Aaron has to interpret for him, to the Jews and to Pharaoh's court.

Whether for that reason or for something congenital, Moses was a stutterer. Belser (Penina says) uses him as a model of how disabled Jews can not only achieve leadership despite their characteristics, but even because of them. So, when rabbinic interpretation jumps ahead to Deuteronomy (where Moses orates for chapters and chapters) and concludes that God must have healed him in the meantime, Belser rejects that interpretation. She, and Penina, and I all like to imagine that forty years later, Moses still spoke with his usual stuttering voice--and the Israelites patiently listened.

Now, here's the further question this raises for me: What happened in the meantime to make it possible for him to be willing to speak, and them to listen?

Was it simply that Aaron (and Miriam) had died, and Moses had no other choice?

Or had he gained a lot of confidence by being a prophet and a leader for all those years?

On the audience side, was it simply that the generation who had met Moses in Egypt had all died out (except for Joshua and Caleb)?

Or had something changed for the Israelites over that time: the experience of living in the wilderness, or of being taken care of by God just as Moses said, or something else?

Most importantly: can we learn anything from the Torah about how to change our own society so that people's differing abilities and disabilities are valued, as part of what they brought with them to Sinai? What?

P.S. I also want to think about big brother Aaron and how he was able to put himself at his brother's disposal after not seeing him for decades!

Yes, I'm Privileged

Many of you may have seen it.  A young white Jewish student, Tal, wrote a piece for Time about why he's tired of being told he's privileged. Here's something you might not have seen yet: A black graduate student who goes by @dexdigi beautifully pointed out the tired old fallacies that Tal was spouting as if he'd come up with them for the first time. 

Now, here's my take.

Like Tal, I am a white Jewish man from a working-class background who went to an elite university (in my case, decades ago). Like Tal, I give a lot of credit to my parents for their struggle to make sure I got the opportunities I deserved, and to my grandparents, who struggled with a new language and culture.

But unlike Tal, apparently (and definitely unlike some of the commenters on this thread), I realize that while I was disadvantaged by class and antisemitism, I never had anyone think I was a janitor instead of a professor simply because of the color of my skin. 

I never had to worry that someone I thought of as a friend would rape me simply because of my sex, or attack me violently because I said I was one gender and my birth certificate said I was another. 

I didn't have to be concerned that doors would literally be shut to me because there were no wheelchair ramps leading up to them, or that people would see signs of a disease like MD or CP and assume I was stupid or insane.
 
I have 99 problems but lack of privilege isn't one of them.

Use Your Powers for Good

Rand Paul, who is running for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky, thinks for the President to criticize (much less regulate) BP, which is spewing oil all over the Gulf Coast is putting the government's "boot heel on the throat of BP."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100521/ap_on_bi_ge/us_rand_paul

He also thinks the federal government used too much power when it passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Restaurants, hotels, and such are private businesses, according to the son of former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, and the government shouldn't demand that they serve black people--just politely suggest that it's the civilized thing to do! Same thing with the Americans with Disabilities Act: just another instance of "big government."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/05/21/tea_party_candidate_faces_heat_for_stance/

When you hear people complain about "big government," remember what they really mean is government that stands up to the powerful people in America. Whether those powers are the white supremacist establishment in 1964 or the corporate elite today, government is the only institution with enough countervailing power to call them to account. But we, the people, have to force the government to use its power in our interests--and we won't do that if we get distracted by people like Rand Paul.