Community

By Zachary Scott Roe

This past Shabbat, my friend and fellow congregant Zach Roe delivered the d’var Torah (words of Torah) at our synagogue--Temple Beth Israel in Waltham, MA. He so moved me that I asked whether I might share his sermon as an essay on my blog, and with his consent it appears below (only the second time I’ve published a guest author). The bracketed words are mine, intended to help translate some of the terms for readers who may not recognize them. I also added the title.

Happy birthday, Zach!

-Dina Wolfman Baker

Ben Bag Bag, a disciple of Hillel the Elder, once wrote regarding the Torah, “turn it and turn it again, for all is in it; see through it; grow old and worn in it; do not budge from it, for there is nothing that works better than it.” And Ben Bag Bag was right; the Torah has everything in it. Wrestling with angels, fire from the heavens, crossing through the sea on dry land. Lots of exciting stuff. Like today’s parsha [weekly reading], Metzorah, where we have the exciting story of … skin disease. While this may not make a top ten list of favorite or most exciting parshot, there are some very important lessons we can glean from these passages and the commentary around them.

So, metzorah is a word that refers to somebody with tzara’at. Often, tzara’at gets translated as leprosy, but that’s not actually what it is. The Torah refers to tzara’at as a “nega”, an affliction or plague. The people who develop it end up with patches of bright white skin and hair. A Kohen [priest] has to check the patches and declare the person to be ta’amei (unclean). If determined to be a metzorah, the person has to leave the community. Once healed, an offering had to be made that involved taking two birds, killing one, draining the slaughtered bird’s blood into a container of clear water, and dipping the other bird, the cedar, the hyssop, and the string into the container.

I’m sure by now you’ve all figured out the profound implications this has in our modern life, but, just in case you haven’t, let’s dig deeper into what our sages have to say about this text.

When the gemara [rabbinical commentary in the Talmud] discusses tzara’at and the halachot [commandments] regarding the metzorah, it is often discussed along with the Mourner and the Menudah (someone who is excommunicated). A menudah can wear tefillin [leather items one wears during prayer], but what about a metzorah or a mourner? A Mourner can’t say hello. What about a metzorah or a menudah? The three get grouped together when asking these questions. So what does the metzorah have in common with a mourner and a menudah?

A Metzorah develops pale white skin that looks like a corpse, and, also like a corpse, the metzorah is ta’amei (unclean) in the same way. If a metzorah is in a tent, then everything in the tent is considered unclean, just like a corpse. So, as a mourner deals with death, the metzorah deals with a form of almost living death. As a Menudah, once excommunicated, is cut off from the community, so, too, the metzorah is made to be separated from the community, at least until healed.

So now we know what it is, its physical effects, what needs to be done, etc. But the question that remains is, “how does one contract this disease?” And the sages have quite a bit to say on this, as well. The first thing to note is that they say that tzara’at is, in fact, a spiritual malady with physical ramifications. This isn’t a bug you pick up from someone. Instead, they say it is the result of grievous spiritual misconduct. And what is the misconduct that leads to this malady? Many different rabbis had their lists of various unseemly practices that would cause tzara’at. However, there a few that

show up on most lists: lashon hara (evil/unkind speech), hotzaat shem ra (spreading a bad name, ie. Slander), and rechilut (gossip).

Important to note is that each of these acts can only happen within community. These aren’t personal shortcomings. And I think that’s the reason that the process to resolve tzara’at is so intense. Because one hasn’t just hurt themselves, they have, to lesser or greater degrees, broken the community.

Let us briefly return to the purification ritual for this malady. There are two birds, one slain and one dipped in the blood but eventually set free. There is water that becomes discolored by blood. There is blood placed on hyssop and wood. Maybe you’ve noticed already, but this ritual has quite a bit in common, symbolically speaking, with Pesach [the holiday of Passover].

One bird is slain. Could this represent the Egyptian firstborn? The word negah that I spoke of earlier that means affliction or plague is used only twice in the Torah: once when discussing tzara’at, and earlier in Sh’mot 11:1, which says "vayomer ad-nai al-Moshe, od nega echad avi al-Mitzraim,"—God said to Moshe one more plague I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. And that was the plague of the killing of the first born. Water filled with blood, as the Nile turned to blood. The second bird is dipped in the bloody water but is freed, as the Hebrew slaves were freed through waters that closed in over the Egyptian army. The hyssop and the cedar wood are dipped in the blood, as the wooden lentils of the homes were covered in blood by hyssop dipped in blood. This purification ritual is like a mini-Pesach.

It seems like the Torah is making a connection between Pesach and the purification of the metzorah. But what is the connection? I think the clue lies in understanding what happened on Pesach, because it was then that we became a nation. We went from simple individuals to having a dual identity as both individuals AND members of a wider nation, a people, a community. When we speak lashon hara or hotzaat shem ra or rechilut, when we use our words to harm, mistreat, and abuse the people within our community, we end up separating ourselves from that community. And the only way to return is to remember that moment in time when we became a people. To remember what unites us as Am Yisrael, the people of Israel. To work to rebuild our sense of communal identity.

If any of you have ever stepped into a synagogue, and I’m assuming you have as you’re currently in one, then you’ve most likely heard the common lament that goes something like, “We need to rescue the Jewish community! The Jewish community is shrinking and dying!” And I understand where those voices are coming from, I really do. But I can’t help but wonder, “If that is true, then why?” I think part of the problem is that so many of us have lost sight of that communal identity, start placing ourselves over the community, and brandish our tongues as a weapon against those who don’t follow our way of doing things. We say this person isn’t observant enough, this person is TOO observant, this person is in a gay, interracial, intercultural, interfaith marriage (not to be too specific), this person is a convert, this person looks differently, acts differently, thinks differently. And we aren’t pushing people away from Jewish community (because they’ll find it if they want it). Ultimately, what we’re doing is pushing ourselves away from the opportunity to have more meaningful connections with a wider and more diverse set of people and ideas within the Jewish community. And we end up hurting ourselves in the process, because we are not just individuals, we are part of a whole.

We have a tradition that every Jewish soul (present, future, and past) was present at Sinai to receive the Torah. And as we stood there to receive it, there were no qualifications given, no, “Accept my Torah, but only if you’re heterosexual, only if you’re a certain race, only if you marry a Jew, only if you’re born Jewish.” We are, all of us, the people of Israel. We are all Jews. We may be gay or straight, religious or secular, married within the tribe or not. We all bring our diverse backgrounds and experiences and traditions, and the Jewish community is richer for this.

As we get ready to celebrate Pesach next week, let’s all take time to think about the importance of community, both locally and as part of the Jewish people, and let’s always remember to use our words to build up our community and all around us, words that comfort and support and give life. Shabbat Shalom.

Never Run Out of Propane

The Backstory

I have an excellent sense of smell. When out to dinner, I know that a dish is burning in a restaurant kitchen before the staff is responding. A few weeks ago, I began insisting that we had a leak in the propane pipes leading to our oven. We use the propane tank that’s plumbed from our side yard only for cooking, both indoors and on our patio grill. My husband didn’t smell it, but he’s learned to trust my nose. He called the plumber, who declared the pipes to be fine; we should call the appliance repair folks. So they came out and declared the oven to be fine; we should keep our hood vent going long after cooking (seriously?!). A couple hundred dollars in service charges left me with reassurance that we didn’t need service and the low level but persistent, unpleasant odor that’s given to propane—something variously described as the smell of rotten eggs, a skunk's spray or a dead animal.

 

The Dinner

I came home from work on Thursday evening to find that my husband had been using the outside grill for the second night in a row. It may not be all that warm yet in the Greater Boston area, but technically it’s spring…and the weather was clear. He was ready to barbecue. What I found on the table, however, was a small serving plate of grilled eggplant and some salad for each of us.

“This is dinner?” I asked with amusement.

“Yes. The start. I’m working on it.”

Quizzical look.

“I cooked one side of a piece of salmon. When I turned it over, we ran out of propane.” Fortunately, fish readily continues cooking off-heat once it’s warm; he left it on the grill, cover closed, and eventually we enjoyed a delicious main course.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, as clarity hit. “The propane is formulated for the odor to concentrate at the bottom of the tank. The smell was a warning that we were running out. I completely forgot.”

 

The Call

Of course, I'd also forgotten the name of the company that had taken over our propane supplier since our last refill—after all, until now I’d never needed them. I found that on line, called the first 800 number that came up, and dealt with a lovely person late on a Thursday evening who took care of everything. She did so despite that I had inadvertently called the mid-Atlantic office, so she got on another line with the New England region to set everything up for me.

She told me that I’d hear from the local office about coming out to inspect the tank that night and to deliver propane by the next day.

 

The Wildlife

The did as they promised. Just before 1:00 today, my husband texted me: “Tank is here, but also a dying raccoon by the empty tank, so now waiting for police.”

And 1-1/2 hours later: “Hi, raccoon is gone and now we must contact our propane friends to schedule

a hookup crew for tomorrow. The new full tank is onsite at our house.”

I guess we couldn’t expect the propane crew to stand by waiting for animal control to do its thing.

And I guess we’re going out for dinner.

 

The Moral of the Story

Know what your nose is telling you. And never run out of propane.

Bullies

Preamble:

In honor of my father, I delivered this essay as the d'var Torah (words of Torah, or sermon) at Temple Beth Israel in Waltham, MA on July 28, 2018. The 7th anniversary of my father's death, on the Jewish calendar, would be the coming Wednesday. 

This was the first I've felt nervous before speaking in a long time. I knew there was risk in delivering these words. Thanks to a sudden inspiration just before I came up to the lectern, I set the stage by telling a story of when my son was a child and he pre-negotiated my understanding and patience ("promise you won't lose it with me") before telling me he'd bounced a super ball in his room and right through the glass of his front window...leading to some valuable lessons learned. I asked the congregation also to not lose it, because what I was about to say may be jarring but maybe we'd find things to learn together if they stuck with me.

My father, of course, always was frightened for me when I took risks; but he also was proud of me once I had. I hope this essay would have made him proud.

Vocabulary notes:

• Parashah = weekly Torah portion
• Torah = the Five Books of Moses
• Va-etḥannan = the name of the week's portion, which encompasses Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11
• JPS Tanach = An edition of the complete Hebrew bible published by the Jewish Publication Society
• Humash = the Torah in printed form (rather than in the sacred scroll)
• Etz Hayyim humash = a particular printing of the humash from the Rabbinical Assembly of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, with translation and commentary; the edition is titled "Etz Hayyim" or "Tree of Life"
• Adonai = a term for God that I use when the translation says "Lord," as I am uncomfortable with the gendered translation

~~~

I don’t like God very much, in this parashah.

Running a search on the JPS Tanach translation, I found God described as “impassioned” three times and “compassionate” only once. God’s mood is portrayed three times as angry, while God’s love for us mentioned just once—yet our required love for God surfaces three times.

These data underscore the emotional response I feel when reading the parashah this year—that it portrays God primarily as an angry and self-referential authoritarian.

I’ve studied, written and spoken about Va-etḥannan before, and this isn’t always what rises to the top for me.  Just last year, speaking on the occasion of my father’s yahrzeit as I am today, I focused on the imperative of social justice for living in community and the urgency of teaching the next generation. I have scribbled notes in my Etz Hayyim humash, over the years, about our role in serving as a positive example; about the moment of the covenant transcending generations; about going even beyond the mitzvot to “do what is right and good” (Deut. 6:18); and of course about the inclusion of the Decalogue and the Shema.

But when I turned to Va-etḥannan this year, these are the passages that stood out:

You saw with your own eyes what Adonai did in the matter of Baal-peor, that Adonai your God wiped out from among you every person who followed Baal-peor; while you, who held fast to Adonai your God, are all alive today. (Deut. 4:3-4)

Take care, then, not to forget the covenant that Adonai your God concluded with you…. For Adonai your God is a consuming fire, an impassioned God. (Deut. 4:23-24)

For I Adonai your God am an impassioned God, visiting the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and the fourth generations of those who reject Me, but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love Me and keep My commandments. (Deut. 5:9-10)

Do not follow other gods, any gods of the people about you—for Adonai your God in your midst is an impassioned God—lest the anger of Adonai your God blaze forth against you and God wipe you off the face of the earth. (Deut 6:14-15)

Why is this how I am experiencing the text? The answer came to me last weekend while reading the novel The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton. It’s about five young women who form a tight bond while living in Palo Alto, California, in the 60s and 70s. One, Ally, is a white woman who married an Indian man and faced discrimination from many fronts. Here’s a passage:

Ally couldn’t say when, exactly, she’d fallen in love with Jim. Maybe that first moment she’d heard his lyrical voice—“excuse me, ma’am”—before she’d even looked up to see his face.

She knew her parents might be reluctant, that they’d worry about the problems she and Jim and their children would face. But she never imagined they would refuse to have Jim in their home, even to meet him. She never imagined that her father wouldn’t walk her down the aisle in the end, that she’d be married by a justice of the peace in Ann Arbor, in a dress she’d owned for years.

“I was sure my mom and dad would embrace Jim eventually,” she would tell us later. “You can’t know Jim and not love him. I never imagined they never would come to know him, that when I told them we were married they’d hide their goddamned prejudice behind the excuse that Jim wasn’t Christian.”

And while we were blinking at that—at Ally swearing and meaning it—she would say, “’For I, the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.’ Those were the last words my mother said to me, the last time she acknowledged I was alive. A quote from the goddamned Bible, from Exodus, for Christ goddamned sake.”

The quote is indeed from Exodus—Chapter 20, verse 5. And Va-etḥannan echoes it.

Ally’s late 1960s fictional mother cites religious belief to justify hate and quotes biblical text to validate turning against her own daughter. In 2018, real-life figures are similarly misappropriating sacred text. I believe most of us recall that last month Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended Administration immigration policy that led to the separation of thousands of children from their parents by saying, “I would cite to you the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes.”

A June 15 article in Slate pointed out that the same Christian bible passage was used to defend slavery in the United States by arguing that it mandated obedience to the Fugitive Slave Act, that some European church leaders quoted it to promote submission to Hitler, and that it was cited to defend the status quo in Apartheid South Africa. Yet, Slate reports, theologians consider this a corruption of the passage that “places God as the appointer of authorities, but not the appointer of specific laws,” with the understanding that no one should respect or comply with the orders of those authorities if those orders are evil or unjust.

On March 19, Marco Rubio tweeted:

I will place boys as their princes; the fickle will govern them & the people will oppress one another, yes, each one the neighbor. The child will be insolent toward the elder & the base toward the honorable. Isaiah 3:4-5

His intent was to scold the youth who emerged as leaders in advocating for gun control because they didn’t trust elected officials to take action. Yet the full passage actually describes a world of chaos in which “People will oppress each other—man against man, neighbor against neighbor” and the children rise up because the elders are unable to lead, incapable of acting in their honored roles.

It’s a form of bullying—this misuse of holy text to justify controversial policy or condemnation of another's views. People in positions of power are yielding a literary tool of authority (however ineptly) to bludgeon their adversaries and hold sway over their followers.

Is it surprising that politicians usurp the bible to play the bully, when the God that emerges in Va-etḥannan could readily serve as a model for bullying? They might learn from the example of God’s actions against Baal-peor to frighten us into submission. Or from the image of a fire consuming those who fail to honor a covenant. Or from forcing a choice between future generations suffering guilt or experiencing kindness, that loyalty might be coerced rather than earned. Or from the potential to be wiped off the earth should that loyalty ever wander.

This reminds me that we have heard a lot about demands for loyalty in the current administration—loyalty to a single authority figure rather than to principle or to the responsibilities of a position. Turning back to The Wednesday Sisters, our current situation has parallels to the era in which the novel is set. The narrator explores her ambivalence about the anti-war protests, saying:

I believed—most American’s believed—that the spread of communism would be loss of freedom and torture and death, and perhaps even nuclear war. We never imagined the communist world would just collapse as it did in the Soviet Union years later. We thought the only way to preserve our lifestyle was to fight theirs. And we couldn’t, truthfully, imagine that America might be wrong. We didn’t like to imagine that what we were doing as a country could be imperialist or illegal or just plain immoral any more than we liked to imagine an America that could be defeated by a small country of small people we thought of as less intelligent and less compassionate and less worthy than we were. So we just didn’t imagine it.

How current this sounds—the incapacity to stand up against immoral government action, the acceptance when those different from us are portrayed as less important, intelligent, decent or worthy, because it’s all so beyond what we can let ourselves imagine. This mindset—in which we so want to believe good of our country and by extension its elected officials—has left us particularly vulnerable to those who will bully us into, if not full fealty, at least inaction.

And this doesn’t apply only to political leaders. We have seen many other examples in which holding positions of authority can open the door to bullying, predatory and harassing behavior. We want to believe the best of our companies, our bosses, our teachers…and we want them to think the best of us. The #MeToo movement has woken us up to the danger of this power dynamic and emboldened many women to speak up about our experiences. But this progress toward awareness in one dimension seems to brush aside the broader issue, as I repeatedly see people calling for gender diversity in work groups and conference panels without even taking notice that everyone in the room is white.

Does the example of the jealous, impassioned, easily angered, punishing aspect of God—the one who demands loyalty yet can confer great kindness and rewards—model, reinforce and serve to justify the bullying behaviors of political and other authorities? Or does monotheism guard against this because only God’s self holds the true role of authority, as exemplified in the parashah by Moses ascribing all that he describes to God—with his impending death resulting from the moment when he acted outside God’s authority? Or does our belief that we are created in God’s image communicate to some that they can seize authority through authoritarianism?

It really doesn’t matter whether I like God in this parashah. After all, God is…God.  Most religious constructs establish that there are beings—or as in our case a singular being—whose actions and decisions we may not understand but we accept as having purpose and reason.

But the rest of us are not God. Much of what Moses rails against here—what earns the threat of God's wrath in his oratory—is the setting up of false Gods. Let's not imagine that the sin of idolatry is limited to the graven image.  At every instance we must call out, speak against and bring down those who set themselves up as false...and bullying...gods.

Which brings us to the most important question I ask today: what is our responsibility, as students, interpreters and custodians of these sacred texts, to eradicate the oppression perpetrated by the bullies?

~~~

Postscript:

I ended my d'var Torah with a question. But here, I'd like to offer some possible answers. 

1. I reject the notion I hear in many circles that rabbis should not preach political position from the pulpit.  That is so forceful in the Christian right and we just forfeit it for the most part. Anyone--particularly a community leader--who believes our political environment poses a critical threat to our humanity should use the tools she or he has to address that threat.
2. When we cannot trust the Federal government to function within the conceit of a Democracy or for the best interests of the people, we must organize and act on a local and regional level and develop a deliberate structure of linkages among those local and regional efforts (which I believe large, systemic, humane nonprofits can help facilitate), so we end up with a national network strong enough to serve the nation and facile enough to serve localities in a manner that meets human needs and fights the injustices from the Administration. I believe even synagogues can have a role in that, our linkages with other local organizations can be a start of this network, and the larger Jewish governance bodies and foundations can further it.

I hope this is the start of a dialogue that helps us find our way to actively repairing our world. Please use the comments section to offer your answers.

Light

There are more people in Alabama moved to deny power to a multiply-accused child molester (which, for some reason, the media choose to couch as “sexual misconduct,” but that’s another essay altogether), and to cast their vote against an individual who can’t comprehend that tokenism and stereotyping is the embodiment of prejudice (one of our lawyers is a Jew; someone with our campaign is a black), than there people in Alabama unable to step away from party ideology.

Thank you.

Let’s remember that this triumph was true in the last presidential election as well. The majority of Americans voting chose to deny the bigot and sexual predator, despite that he won the Electoral College.

Right now, when it’s been more than a year since I could take heart in what’s emanating from our country’s political system, it feels good to remember that most of us do act on what we as individuals recognize in other individuals, rather than on the collective pressure of holding to party lines.

Tonight, the light of my Hanukkah candles will represent the ray of hope we received from Alabama last night.