February 22, 2025
Author(s): Rav Hazzan Aliza Berger,
Parshat Mishpatim
Sing Your Song
February 22, 2025 – 24 Shevat 5785
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
In 1992, then 25-year-old Sinéad O’Connor appeared on Saturday Night Live. She was a budding international musical superstar with two chart-topping records to her name. And, unbeknownst to producers, she had decided to use her platform to protest rampant child abuse in the Catholic Church. At the end of her performance, she stared straight into the camera, tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II and threw it at the camera as she shouted, “fight the real enemy.”
Now remember, 1992 was almost a decade before the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church would come to light in this country. Not only were most Americans unaware of the evils that had unfolded behind closed doors, but they were also outraged that a pop star would dare to dishonor and defame a venerated religious leader. Sinéad was immediately and very publicly scorned, mocked, and ridiculed.
Two weeks later, she was scheduled to perform at a special Madison Square Garden concert. Country music star Kris Kristofferson introduced her by saying, “I’m real proud to introduce this next artist, whose name’s become synonymous with courage and integrity, Sinéad O’Connor.”[1] As soon as he says her name, the crowd begins to boo and jeer at her. Sinéad walks on stage and stands in the face of that hate for what seems like forever. She adjusts her mic, tries saying “thank you” the way she would begin any other performance, but the crowd just keeps screaming at her. The band tries to save her by starting her song, but she cuts them off. 20,000 people in the audience are still booing. Jeering. The hate doesn’t end. She stares out, waiting. Kris returns. He leans in and whispers something in her ear, then walks away. Again, the band tries to temper the vitriol of the crowd with instrumentals to no avail. Finally, Sinéad says, “turn this up,” and then begins to sing/scream the same song she sang on Saturday Night Live. She gets out every word. The crowd is still booing. She finishes, turns and begins to walk off the stage. Kris meets her, hugs her, and the two exit together.
As a performer, I cannot imagine the grit it took to stand strong in front of 20,000 angry, booing audience members; not only to stand strong but to have the presence of mind to be able to pause and reflect about what she wanted to do, how she wanted to proceed, to decide to sing the very same song that earned her all of this vitriol. Later she would share that she herself was the victim of abuse growing up. That the picture she shredded belonged to her abusive mother. That she wasn’t just taking a stand for victims in general, but for herself and for every child that had ever been abused. That she believed that she was more than a pretty voice and had an obligation to stand for justice. Fundamentally she was right. A decade later, the country would be roiled by revelations of abuse, cover ups, and the church would begin paying out settlements. But she was a ahead of her time. That courageous stand ended her career.
This story made the rounds in September of 2024, when Kris Kristofferson passed away, because this moment of support kindled a beautiful friendship that would last for the next thirty-one years. But it resurfaced in my memory this week for a very different reason.
Ever since October 7th, I have felt a kinship with Sinéad O’Connor. We too, as a Jewish people, know what it is to be abused. We too know how it feels to speak about our pain, to ask for the world to stand for justice and instead to receive hate and vitriol. When Hamas stormed our borders, pillaged, kidnapped, and murdered, the world stood by and did nothing. Worse, people posted memes of parachuting terrorists as if killing civilians is something to be proud of. And when we tried to defend ourselves, the world condemned us. It’s only gotten worse. These last weeks, newspapers cover Hamas’s despicable parades of emaciated and abused hostages, as if the release of innocent civilians is in any way equal to the release of convicted terrorists who have been rightfully imprisoned for their crimes against humanity. And that doesn’t even begin to describe the pain of this week. Babies murdered with their bare hands. Returned without their mother. Thank God Shiri’s body has been returned to Israel, but my God, there is just silence! There is no outcry on the world stage! No one is saying anything. Except there was a protest this week. Do you know where that protest was? In Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in New York where protesters (if you can call them that) screamed “how many kids did you kill today?” The nerve! In a very real way, to be a Jew today is to be standing on the world stage, facing undeserved vitriol, hatred, and antagonism that doesn’t end.
How do we find the courage to stand strong and tall? How do we find the strength to keep singing? This week, our Torah offers profound wisdom hidden within the minutiae of revelation at Mount Sinai that can guide us in this painful time.
The Slonimer Rebbe, in his drash on this week’s parsha, points out that Torah is revealed in a very important order. When the Torah is first given to the Israelites, it is given in the abstract. ויבא משה ויספר לעם את כל דברי ה’ Moses comes and tells the people about God’s Torah. Later, and every other time Moses shares God’s Torah, we are taught that Moses recited God’s words explicitly and precisely, וידבר משה or ויאמר משה.
Why is our Torah revealed in this way?
Even in the desert, God knew that we would need inordinate strength to face the intensity of this world. God revealed Torah to us abstractly at first to teach us that we do not need external validation, we don’t even need God to explicitly tell us what is right. We have a connection to Torah and to wisdom that goes beyond words. We have a moral intuition that matters. And so God made sure to teach us to tune into the strength of our moral character, to tune into our inner Torah, to tune into our hearts and to the wisdom that lies at our core. Only once you’ve mastered that strength, that truth, that connection, only then should you turn outside for affirmation, validation, confirmation, and for external wisdom.
Today, we need this wisdom more than ever before. We are still that people, Am Yisrael, that has the ability to tune in. We can still, no matter what they’re saying, no matter what they’re doing, no matter the voices, we can tune into that truth, tune into that inner wisdom and to that divine connection and that will give us the strength to keep singing.
Which brings me back to Sinéad O’Connor. She took that stand in 1992 and if you were just watching the story of her life, you would have said that is it. From the outside, it looked like her stand for justice catapulted a meteoric career and ended her dreams, but that’s not how she saw it. She writes in her memoir, Rememberings, “I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career…and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.” In her eyes, a career is meant to empower you to speak your truth, to be a voice of justice, to stand up for the downtrodden and it didn’t matter to her what happened because she did exactly that. She spoke truth to power, she raised awareness, she sung her song.
Here we are. They just called our name. They called our name and the world started to boo. But it’s our time to walk on stage. It’s our time to stand strong. We must keep singing. Our song needs to be heard.
[1] Kris Kristofferson Stood by Sinead O’Connor as the Boos Rained Down – The New York Times