Parashat Achrei Mot-Kedoshim 5781 / פרשת אַחֲרֵי מוֹת־קְדשִׁים
Torah Portion: Leviticus 16:1-20:27

Every now and then I find wisdom in unexpected places that I like to share with the community, and this is one of those times. This morning I received the weekly email from Hazon, “the largest faith-based environmental organization in the U.S., which is building a movement to strengthen Jewish life and contribute to a more environmentally sustainable world for all.” The centerpiece of this email is an inspiring d’var Torah by Anna Dubey. Her by-line says that “Anna is a high school senior at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School in New York City and is a founding member and Director of Public Relations of the Jewish Youth Climate Movement, a movement that empowers youth to fight for climate action.”

Anna draws a connection between the commandment in this week’s Torah portion to “Love your fellow as your self” (Leviticus 19:18) and one of the laws of Shmita, or the “sabbatical year,” which requires the forgiveness of debt. The Torah offers no direct guidance on how we should love others. Implicit is the idea that we love others by following those positive and negative commands in the Torah that our sages termed, ben adam l’havero” or between one person and another. In her commentary, Anna points out that forgiving debt is akin to letting go of all kinds of emotions that hold us back and that prevent others from moving forward, too. Forgiveness itself, Anna says, is “crucial for loving others and ourselves.”

I would just add that sometimes forgiveness itself is too difficult to muster. Sometimes people hurt us in ways that are not forgivable and sometimes they don’t deserve our forgiveness. (See https://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2018/09/when-not-to-forgive.html.) But that doesn’t mean we have to be held hostage emotionally, psychologically and spiritually by the harm done to us. Sometimes, in fact, it is even possible to build loving relationships with those who’ve violated our trust.

As a rabbi and as a human being, I am all too familiar with the pain caused to children by neglect and abuse. What amazes me is how so many people are able to move beyond that pain. Sometimes people do forgive. Other times, they allow themselves to grieve what they lost as a result of the harm done them. Other times, they view the perpetrator with compassion, seeing in them an illness that was beyond their control. All of these are ways to let go of the grudges that can otherwise weigh on us forever. It is heartening to see that a teen understands this and is teaching us to do the same.

To read Anna’s devar Torah, click HERE.

Parashat Tazria-Metzora / פרשת תזריע־מצרע
Torah Portion: Leviticus 12:1 – 15:33

A popular folktale tells how a rabbi once cured a townsperson of his inclination toward slander and other forms of lashon hara, harmful speech.

The rabbi advises the man to take a feather pillow into the town square and beat it with a broom until the pillow’s casing rips open and the feathers fly to and fro. The man follows the rabbi’s advice and watches as thousands of feathers fly away through the square and beyond. The man then goes back to the rabbi to report that he had done as advised.

The rabbi then tells him there’s just one more thing he must do to be cured of lashon hara once and for all: the man now has to go back to the square and collect up all the feathers. When the man realizes this would be impossible and protests, the rabbi explains that speech is like the feather pillow: once a word has been spoken, its effects are beyond the speaker’s control, and try as he may, there is no recapturing that speech.

This week’s Torah portion teaches about the need for all of us to control our speech and avoid engaging in lashon hara.

Parashat Tazria-Metzora ostensibly deals with a snow-white scaly skin affliction and parallel afflictions that grow on fabrics and on the walls of homes. The mysterious affliction is called tzaraat, and the one who has it is known as a metzora. How do our sages go from skin disease to talking about “wicked speech”? They play with the word “metzora” and say that it is short for “motzi shem ra” – speaking ill of another. Lashon hara, the rabbis say, covers speech that is true but has the potential to bring about humiliation and destroy people’s lives. Motzi shem ra is speech that is not true – defamation – that can have the same affect. When Miriam, Moses’s sister, publicly attacks Moses’s character in the Book of Numbers, God strikes her with tzaraat. Using the same word play, the sages say her punishment of tzaraat fits her misdeed of motzi shem ra, speaking ill of Moses and humiliating him.

Just as we have cures for diseases today, our biblical ancestors had cures for diseases in their day. Thus, the Torah directs the afflicted person to appear before a priest for diagnosis. If the person tests “positive,” the “treatment” includes separation from the community until the skin clears up, followed by an offering of two birds, one of which is to be slaughtered, the other of which is to be taken in the priest’s hand along with hyssop, cedar wood and crimson stuff and dipped in the blood of the slaughtered one. The water is then sprinkled on the person and the person is rendered spiritual pure once again.

Why are birds involved in this cure? The rabbis teach us that birds chirp and chatter just as the offender “chirped” and “chattered.” In other words, the punishment fits the crime. The price to pay for lashon hara is minimally the cost of two birds, one killed, the other “humiliated” by the blood stains it must bear. In real life, lashon hara has the potential to embarrass and humiliate or, worse, to destroy lives, livelihoods, and families.

As I mentioned, the effects of tzaraat are not limited to individuals. Clothing and the walls of houses are also susceptible to tzaraat. What’s more, the method to rid fabric and homes of the disease is identical to the cure for humans. Here, too, the Torah prescribes the offering of two birds. The rabbis teach that the diseased clothing, which can be seen by the public, represents the communal impact of lashon hara. An ill word, whether true or not, spoken about one person may upset a whole community, dividing it into advocates and detractors of both the speaker and the one spoken about. Closer to home, so to speak, words spoken have the potential to tear families apart. It’s as if the disease of one person mutates and covers the walls of his home and, perhaps, the walls of the one he or she has harmed. Thus, the Torah’s discussion of tzaraat suggests that the cost of lashon hara is born not just by the one who speaks it but by the speaker’s family and community, as well.

It is notable that both the story of the man who learned a lesson about speech and the Torah’s treatment of tzaraat each involve feathers, one in the form of the down stuffing of a pillow, the other in the form of the birds who provide them. When we fail to control our speech, we cause feathers to fly, blood to flow, the fabric of our being to become stained. Too often we ignore this high cost of our speech, and we aren’t even aware of the harm that we cause. It’s not only with Covid that we must remain vigilant about what comes out of our mouths, but with speech, too. Once it’s out, we have no control over where it lands.

We would be wise to heed the words of Rabbi Ben Zoma who said, “Who is strong? The one who controls his/her impulses.” When it comes to speech, truer words could never be spoken.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Dan

Parashat Shmini 5781 / פרשת שְּׁמִינִי
Torah Portion: Leviticus 9:1-11:47 

Imagine a place where you go to escape the stresses of life, a safe space where you feel protected from the ordinary and extraordinary things that pursue you, that run you down. Perhaps this is the place you call your “happy place,” a place you long to visit, a filling station where your soul takes a refreshing supply of warmth and contentment like God’s breath filling the lungs of the first human beings. If God is a meaningful idea to you, imagine a place where you feel enveloped by God’s loving, calming, protecting embrace.

For nearly two millenium following the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, that place of refuge for Jews and the Jewish People was, in fact, Jerusalem. Despite being forbidden during long stretches from entering Jerusalem, never mind living there, Jerusalem remained in our collective imagination our place of refuge. As the Jewish people suffered atrocity after atrocity, their safe space remained a dream. Only in the late 19th century did that dream begin to morph into reality. And though slowly, slowly, young men and women made their way to the land that would become the State of Israel, at that time there was no State. Many of those young men and women, in fact, risked their lives as they sought to create a new reality for the Jewish people connected to the land of Israel. But that land would not yet provide a place of refuge for the Jewish people. Would that a Jewish homeland have been a reality in 1939, when the Nazis were “merely” pushing Jews to emigrate.

From May through June 1939, Cuba, the United States and Canada denied entry to 907 Jewish passengers aboard the St. Louis, most of whom were trying to flee Nazi Germany. Some six months earlier, on a terrible night we now call Kristallnacht, Jewish stores, synagogues and homes were left in shambles, Jewish life itself was upended, and it had become clear that they had to get out of Germany. We know that all 907 Jewish passengers were sent back to Germany, and we know that 255 of them were among the Six Million who perished in the Shoah.

On November 29th, 1947, the United Nations voted on Resolution 181, adopting a plan to partition British Palesine into two states, one Jewish, one Arab. And on May 14, 1948, the 5th of Iyar 5708, in a museum in Tel Aviv, David Ben Gurion declared the Establishment of the State of Israel. At that moment, our 2000 year old dream of returning to Zion became a reality. And despite the war that erupted earlier that day on May 14th, and despite all the wars since, the terrorist attacks, the embargos, the attempts at delegitimizing the State, the State of Israel exists as that one place where all Jews can call home. That one place in the world that is a safe place for all Jews.

Now, over time you will come to know that I believe that grave errors, tragic errors, were made in bringing about the State of Israel’s existence and that I am highly critical of its current government. You will also come to know that I adamantly support not only the idea of Jewish self-determination in a Jewish homeland but I support Jewish self-determination in a Jewish homeland in the form of the State of Israel. I wrestle mightily with Israel’s history and with the confounding tensions between Israel’s expressed desire to be a fully democratic state with equal protections for all citizens and equitable distribution of resources and the desire for Israel to always be a Jewish homeland. I wrestle mightily partly because Israel is our safe space.

It is no secret that in the birthing of the State of Israel, mistakes were made by the most powerful nations of the world at that time, by the most zealous of Israel’s founders, and by Israel’s neighbors and their powerbrokers. Yet, none of that brings solace to those mothers and fathers whose sons and daughters gave their lives in defense of the State of Israel. And none of that will bring back the loved ones of those murdered by those who would push Israel into the sea. I know some of those mothers and fathers. I know friends of people murdered by terrorists. 

I can’t begin to know the pain and sorrow that hangs thick in the air as Israel observes Yom HaZikaron, Memorial Day, this coming week. 

This week we read in the Torah about the death of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, whose lives were cut short as they were making a sacrifice to God in the Holy of Holies (Lev. 10:1-3). Like many of Israel’s fallen soldiers, these were two young men who were novices. Some say they entered the Holy of Holies unbidden by God. Some say they were intoxicated. To Aaron and to their brothers, they were now dead, and they died doing what they thought was right, even if they went about it the wrong way. And the Torah says, “Va-yidom Aharon. Aaron’s was silent.” In creating a society that would play host to the Divine and that would become an example of righteousness for the world, Aaron’s sons were taken from him. Perhaps, he thought, this is the price of creating a safe space for God and my people.

In Israel, on Thursday, at 11 am sirens will blare for two minutes. Traffic will stop. The nation will be silent. They will stand with Aaron in that silence. And then, hours later, they will celebrate their birth, their 73rd year of independence, just as Aaron and his sons resumed their duties with a full, though broken heart.

I want to conclude with the poem, The Silver Platter, written by Natan Alterman in December 1947. He wrote these words in response to this warning by Chaim Weizman, who would become Israel’s first president: The state will not be given to the Jewish people on a silver platter.

The Silver Platter
By Natan Alterman

And the land grows still, the red eye of the sky  slowly dimming over smoking frontiers

As the nation arises, Torn at heart but breathing, To receive its miracle, the only miracle

As the ceremony draws near,  it will rise, standing erect in the moonlight in terror and joy

When across from it will step out a youth and a lass and slowly march toward the nation

Dressed in battle gear, dirty, Shoes heavy with grime, they ascend the path quietly

To change garb, to wipe their brow

They have not yet found time. Still bone weary from days and from nights in the field

Full of endless fatigue and unrested,

Yet the dew of their youth. Is still seen on their head

Thus they stand at attention, giving no sign of life or death 

Then a nation in tears and amazement

will ask: “Who are you?”

And they will answer quietly, “We Are the silver platter on which the Jewish state was given.”

Thus they will say and fall back in shadows

And the rest will be told In the chronicles of Israel.