The past two weeks I have been watching Gandhi with Ben Kingsley. At 188 minutes, I decided to break it up and savor it. It has been particularly inspiring for me to reflect that the sacrifice, the love, the thirst for justice that Gandhi expressed so fully through his life is present in all of us. At the risk of seeming ridiculous, I must admit that I have been sitting on T trains, standing on street corners, praying in Shabbat services, wondering, imagining one, two, five, maybe 10 revolutionaries like Gandhi emerging from the crowd. But Friday night, Sol confirmed my suspicions. At the end of a bouncing Friday night service that nearly took the floor out from under us, Sol rose to share some Torah.
Sol taught about the first mitzvah that the Jewish people receive after being liberated from slavery in Egypt: the mitzvah of a new month. The question is, how can a new month be a mitzvah? As Sol so beautifully taught us, once we received freedom, time itself became the first imperative. As free people, our time is ours. So what are we going to do with it?
Sol shared how he his devoting his time: he talked to us about his holy work with Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, which campaigns for Universities to make new medicines and medical innovations available to communities in the developing world. Check out the Philadelphia Concensus Statement here: http://consensus.essentialmedicine.org/ . It provides good summary of what UAEM has been up to, an opportunity to sign the statement in solidarity, and information on how to get involved.
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