Punxatawny Phil

This Shabbat falls on a special day on the Gregorian calendar: Groundhog Day. For those of you not familiar with Punxatawny, Pennsylvania nor with Phil, the annual predictor of spring's arrival, they are both a real place and a real groundhog who we hope does not see his shadow lest winter remain for another six weeks.

This Shabbat falls on a special day on the Gregorian calendar: Groundhog Day. For those of you not familiar with Punxatawny, Pennsylvania nor with Phil, the annual predictor of spring's arrival, they are both a real place and a real groundhog who we hope does not see his shadow lest winter remain for another six weeks. The day and place have found an additional home in the lore of a wonderful film, Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray.

Now, I have been to Punxatawny and can affirm that Hollywood wisely chose another town rather than the bucolic setting of the PA locale. But where they diverged from geographic accuracy, they cleaved to a truism in a message of enduring redemption; with relentlessness worthy of the Pharaoh of Egypt, the film demands of its hero that he get life right before he can move forward in time. At first he is unable to change. But, in time, he learns to free himself of the restraints which hold back his advance toward tomorrow.

This Shabbat we celebrate Shabbat Shira, the Sabbath of Song which retells the story of the ancient Israelites standing on the shores of the Red Sea as horse and rider pursue them from the Egyptian army. Dramatically, the Red Sea parts, and the Israelites triumphantly cross over to freedom with their own physical redemption, escaping the bonds of slavery that had restrained them for hundreds of years.

Today, whether we are chained by interior bonds that restrict our personal and private growth, or whether we are unable to live freely due to very real and physical restraints, we can be moved by these stories that both reveal the transformative power of redemption. Each of them, in their own way, can inspire us to free ourselves from both kinds of bondage.

I hope you will join us tonight as we read the Torah and sing the words of the Mi Chamocha, words which come from the Song of the Sea, our story of redemption. And if we are lucky, we will do so with the knowledge that spring will soon be here.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Joseph M. Forman