Category Archives: Leviticus (ויקרא)

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 7, 2024

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Leviticus (ויקרא)

Comments

Leave a comment

The Silver Platter and the Ḥaredi Draft – Shemini 5784

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted on the partition plan. Soon after, Chaim Weitzman, who would become the first President of Israel, stated: “The state will not be given to the Jewish people on a silver platter.”

A few days later, the Israeli poet Natan Alterman published his famous poem in response, Magash HaKesef — “The Silver Platter.”

The earth grows still.
The lurid sky slowly pales over smoking borders.
Heartsick but still living,
A people stand by
To greet the uniqueness
Of the miracle.
Readied, they wait beneath the moon,
Wrapped in awesome joy before the light.
Then soon,
A girl and boy step forward,
And slowly walk before the waiting nation;
In work clothes and heavy-shod
They climb In stillness
Wearing still the dress of battle, the grime
Of aching day and fired night
Unwashed, weary until death, not knowing rest,
But wearing youth like dewdrops in their hair.
— Silently the two approach
And stand.
Are they of the quick or of the dead?
Through wondering tears, the people stare.
“Who are you, the silent two?”
And they reply:
“We are the silver platter
Upon which the Jewish State was served to you.”
And speaking, fall in shadow at the nation’s feet.
Let the rest in Israel’s chronicles be told.

Magash HaKesef appeared on December 19, 1947 in the newspaper Davar. This was before the War of Independence broke out. Alterman, in the midst of the joy and excitement engendered by the UN vote, anticipated the heavy price that would have to be paid.

This poem continues to be read each year as part of observances for Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Memorial Day and Independence Day.

This poem tragically captures the contract that is made by Israelis. Parents send their children to serve in the IDF, knowing that the existence of the state itself depends on it, knowing as well that for some of them, the ultimate price will be paid.

The official Yizkor, memorial prayer of the IDF does not begin with the traditional opening. A traditional Yizkor begins Yizkor Elohim – “May God remember.”  But the prayer invoking the memory of those who fell defending the State of Israel begins Yizkor am Yisrael – “May the nation of Israel remember.” God’s name does not appear once.

It is ironic that of all the issues roiling Israeli politics right now, with so many different groups calling for the government to resign – for different reasons – one of the leading issues that could bring down the government has to do with service in the IDF. The Haredim, the most fervently observant Jews in Israel, have by and large avoided serving in the Israel Defense Forces.

When I observe the debate over the question of the Hardei draft, I do so as an outsider, as someone who does not have to face these existential questions. America does not demand a lot from us. 

This Haredi draft exemption goes back to the founding of the state in 1948. David Ben Gurion, seeking a compromise to ensure stability in the new government, made a bargain with the small Haredi community at the time to exempt the 400 brightest Torah scholars from military service, as long as they remained studying in yeshiva full time as their full-time activity.

This was after Haredi communities in Europe had been decimated in the Holocaust. The goal was to try to build something back out of the ashes. The program was called Torah Umanuto – “Torah is his profession,” an expression taken from the Talmud.

For the first several decades, the numbers remained fairly steady. But over the last forty years, as the Haredi communities have grown exponentially and become involved politically, the numbers of exemptions have ballooned.

In 1974, 2.4% of eligible people were receiving Torah Umanuto deferalls. By 2012, it was 15%. Today, there are 63,000 draft eligible students receiving exemptions.

Governments have been trying to deal with the issue for the past twenty five years, and it now appears to have reached a breaking point.

Most non-Haredim oppose the Haredi draft exemptions, claiming that they should share the burden of protecting the state. There have been many commissions and proposals over recent decades, none of which have produced results.

Should funds for community institutions be tied to military service. Should citizenship and the right to vote itself be connected to entering the draft? Should military service be required for government employees, including those serving under the auspices of the Chief Rabbinate? These questions or part of wider issues having to do with pluralism in Israeli society and the integration of Haredim into the nation.

Why are they so adamant about not serving? First is the claim that their Torah study guarantees God’s protection of the state. Learning in yeshivah is itself a form of national service. Another fear is that sending their young people to serve in the army will expose them to all sorts of secular, ‘non-kosher’ influences. It will take them away from the influence of their Rabbis. Apparently, on the shidduch market, (matchmaking), the rare bachelor who does choose to serve has a more difficult time finding a good match.

After October 7, with war in Gaza and in the North, the military says that it needs more soldiers. Such heavy reliance on reservists for six months and counting means pulling older citizens away from their families and their jobs. It is no longer tenable, many argue, to allow tens of thousands of young Haredim to continue to sit out from national service.

This past week, a court appointed deadline passed that legally ended the exemptions. The only legal way to extend the exemptions would be for the Knesset to pass a law, which is not politically feasible. The government must immediately stop funding as many as 1,500 yeshivot with students who are refusing to serve.

At the moment, the Haredi politial parties who are part of the government are indicating that they are not going to leave the coalition. In their calculations, new elections would not improve their situation.

Haredi communities have been staging protests against the draft, with counter-protests by Israelis who are tired of bearing the cost, in both blood and money, of their refusal. They are demanding that Haredim share the burden of protecting the state.

I am thinking of the poem, “The Silver Platter.” There is a cost to having a nation. For the Haredim who refuse to serve, the cost they are afraid to pay is not their lives. It is their way of life, which they fear would be lost if they were forced to participate in what they view as the secular project of the state.

I am also thinking of this week’s Torah portion, Shemini, which includes the tragic story of the deaths of the High Priest Aaron’s two eldest sons, Nadav and Avihu. At the moment of glory, when the Tabernacle has just been inaugurated and Aaron and his sons anointed as priests, something awful transpires.

Nadav and Avihu offer up incense before the Lord using a strange fire. Flame erupts from out of the Holy of Holies and consumes them in an instant. We are not going to talk about what it was that they did or did not do. Aaron’s response is what concerns us.  Vayidom Aharon – “And Aaron was silent.” (Num. 10:4)

Moses begins ordering Aaron, his remaining sons, and cousins around, making sure that they attend to Nadav and Avihu’s corpses properly, as well as complete the dedication of the Tabernacle. The mission must go on.

Thinking that they have made a mistake, Moses becomes angry and accosts Eleazar and Itamar, which pushes Aaron to his breaking point. He intervenes on their behalf. “See, this day they brought their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord, and such things have befallen me!” (10:19)

Aaron has paid the ultimate price – the deaths of his children. Why does he bear his grief with such stoicism? Perhaps he knows that he is part of something greater – a national project from which he cannot turn away – even in this moment when he should be mourning. His loss is part of the unspoken agreement.

600 soldiers, officers, and reservists, and 61 police officers have been killed since October 7. 256 of them have died in the course of the ground invasion into Gaza, sent to eliminate Hamas.

Most recently was Staff Sergeant Nadav Cohen, 20 years old, from Haifa, who was killed fighting in southern Gaza as part of the 7th Armored Brigade’s 77th Battalion.

Their lives are added to the silver platter. Yehi Zikhram Barukh. May their memories be a blessing.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

May 14, 2022

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Leviticus (ויקרא)

Comments

1 Comment

Rise, O Daughters of Priests and Levites – Emor 5782

As you know, Congregation Sinai is a traditional, egalitarian, Conservative synagogue. There are a range of religious practices within the Conservative movement. Sinai, from a liturgical perspective, tends to be on the more traditional side.  Our service is entirely in Hebrew. We chant the full Torah reading, rather than using the triennial system. We do not abbreviate our service in many of the ways that one might find in other Conservative synagogues.

Like almost every Conservative synagogue, we are egalitarian. Any Jew above the age of B’nei Mitzvah counts towards making a minyan. There is no distinction by gender in leadership roles during services. We have the same expectations, and teach the same skills and knowledge, to all our children. Every child in the religious school wears a head covering, and all B’nei Mitzvah wear a tallit. For many years, our practice has been to accept, without judgment, any Jew according to their preferred gender identity.

I am aware of only one way in which our practice has not been fully egalitarian, and that is our treatment of kohanim and leviim — of priests and Levites.

According to tradition, Kohanim are descendants of the first High Priest, Aaron, and Leviim come from the ancient tribe of Levi. They officiated in the Tabernacle when the Israelites were in the wilderness, and in the first and second Temples. This morning’s Torah portion, Emor, addresses specifically the laws governing the kohanim, including restrictions they had to follow, as well as privileges that they enjoyed.

While Jewish identity is passed on matrilineally, one’s status as a kohen or levi is determined by patrilineal descent.

In keeping with Jewish tradition, Sinai’s practice until now has been to call up the son of a kohen for the first aliyah and the son of a levi for the second aliyah. I have been clear and open over the years to anyone who has asked that we would not consider changing this practice until someone to whom it affects comes forward with this request; in other words, someone with “standing.”

It has taken many years, but that person has finally come forward. In the interest of full transparency, that person is my daughter, Noa.

I speak today wearing several hats.  I am the Rabbi of Congregation Sinai. I am a kohen. And, I am the father of a daughter.

As the Rabbi of the congregation, I serve as mara d’atra, literally “master of the place.” I have the responsibility to decide on questions of Jewish law and ritual practice. The Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards, the CJLS, is a Conservative institution that addresses questions of halakhah, Jewish law. A local mara d’atra can rely upon a decision of the CJLS for their own community.

The CJLS, in a 1989 teshuvah written by Rabbi Joel Roth, approved extending the first and second aliyot to daughters of kohanim and leviim. I will explain the reasoning behind that decision in a few minutes.

I should add as well that there are CJLS teshuvot that allow for a congregation to dispense entirely with the kohen, levi, yisrael system. Many Conservative synagogues follow that practice.

As a kohen, I have had many significant religious experiences over the years in synagogues and communities around the world. It is an important part of my family identity, passed down by my father. Needless to say, I am called up to the Torah a lot, probably receiving more than 50% of all first aliyot at Sinai.

As for the answer to whether Sinai will call up a bat kohen for the first aliyah, I will have to be able to look my daughter in the eye and explain my decision.

You already know my answer. We are expanding our practice to call for the first and second aliyah anyone, regardless of gender, whose father is a kohen or a levi.

Before I start to explain why, I want to be clear about a few points. We are talking only about being called up for the first two aliyot. Questions around women’s involvement in Jewish ritual are not a single halakhic issue. Counting in a minyan, leading services, chanting Torah and Haftarah – each of these has been dealt with independently. Further, the priestly and levitical lines are passed only through the father. This decision does not apply to birkat kohanim, the Priestly Blessing. That is a separate issue which could potentially be dealt with at another time.

I would like to make one additional comment. Ritual is extremely personal. The prayers we recite, the melodies we sing, how we conduct services— these evoke strong feelings.

A change in any long-held practice can be difficult. Let’s keep in mind that every ritual that feels to us like it is mi-sinai – going all the way back to Mt. Sinai, actually started in a particular place by a specific person.

There was once a first Shabbat when someone thought it would be a good idea to read the Torah in public. There was a first time when someone said a blessing before that reading. There was one Shabbat when a person decided to divide the reading up into seven parts. Someone once thought it would be a good idea to honor people in the community with each of those readings.

There was a first time when a woman was called up to the Torah, which, by the way, occurred many centuries ago. There was a first Shabbat here at Congregation Sinai when a woman was called to the Torah.

Every time such an innovation occurred, it replaced a practice that preceded it. And you can be sure that there was always someone who was uncomfortable with that change.

The other thing I would like to mention is that some practices which might seem to be quite ancient are actually relatively recent innovations in Judaism.

So, why do the first and second aliyot go to Kohanim and Leviim?

The Mishnah, dating from the second century in the land of Israel, states the following:

These are the matters [that the Sages] instituted on account of the ways of peace: a priest reads first, and after him a Levite, and after him an Israelite, on account of the ways of peace…

Mishnah Gittin 5:8

This is the earliest description of the practice of kohen, levi, yisrael. A few questions arise. First of all, why? This tradition almost certainly reflects an innovation that developed after the destruction of the Second Temple, when kohanim and leviim were unable to perform their sacred responsibilities.

Second, what does the expression “on account of the ways of peace” — mipnei darkhei shalom — mean?

The Gemara addresses the first question by offering several alternative biblical verses as the imputed origin of the practice. The fourth verse suggested is by Rabbi Chiya bar Abba, who posits a verse from this morning’s Torah portion, parashat Emor

and you must treat him as holy, since he offers the food of your God; he shall be holy to you, for I, the Lord, who sanctify you am holy.

According to Rabbi Chiya, this means that in any matter of sanctity, a kohen should go first.

A Sage from the school of Rabbi Yishmael derives from this instruction to treat the kohen as holy that he should be accorded with the honor of speaking first in the study hall, leading the birkat hamazon, the grace after meals, and serving himself first at a meal.

What is the nature of this holiness which merits such special treament? There are essentially two possibilities. Either, they derive from the special sacrificial responsibilities of a kohen. Or, kohanim have a general sanctity independent of their duties in the Temple.

If it is based on their ritual duties, than we would expect that a kohen who was unable to perform those duties would not be eligible to receive these special honors. Specifically, this morning’s parashah states that kohen who has a physical defect, such as someone who is blind, or lame, or has a limb that is too short or too long, or a broken arm or leg, or a hunchback, a growth in his eye, and so on. A kohen with any of these physical disabilities is unqualified to participate in the Temple rituals. To even enter the sacred precincts would profane them.

If the privileges specified in the Talmud, such as receiving the first aliyah, derive from the kohen’s eligibility to perform the Temple service, than we would expect a physical disability to disqualify him from receiving the first aliyah as well.

But the Torah specifies that he is able to eat from kodashim, from sanctified food which is a perquisite of the kohanim. So he would seem to have some degree of inherent kedushah that is independent of his fitness to serve.

Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, a mid-twentieth century Orthodox Rabbi, ruled in the case of a kohen who received a disfiguring injury in the Holocaust was eligible to receive the first aliyah. He concludes that

the elements of priestly prerogative are not contingent upon his serving at the altar at all, and even where a priest is not entitled to serve at the altar, as a [disfigured priest], he nonetheless retains the sanctity of the priesthood, and the verse “he shall be holy” applies to him.

Rabbi Oshry concludes that kohanim receive the first aliyah due to their inherent sanctity.

Now back to the Mishnah. It indicates that the kohen should read from the Torah first “on account of the ways of peace.” What are these “ways of peace?”

Originally a kohen could forego his right to the first aliyah in favor of it going to a great sage or other dignified person. What you could imagine happening happened. People started to quarrel over who merited receiving the kohen‘s giving up the first aliyah. “Why did he allow this guy and not me?”

So the Sages enacted a ruling to prohibit a kohen from ever giving it up. The first aliyah must go to a kohen to prevent fights from breaking out in shul. (Incidentally, there were many times over the centuries when Rabbis agreed to find a way around this requirement – often for fundraising purposes.)

Finally, we come to b’not kohen – daughters of priests.

Do daughters of kohanim have any sanctity, and if so, what is the nature of that sanctity? While there was no ritual role played by the daughters of kohanim in the Temple, perhaps they have some degree of inherent sanctity. And if so, does that sanctity accrue to them only when they are in their father’s household, or does it remain with them after they are married?

In his teshuvah, Rabbi Roth points to three areas in Jewish law in which daughters of kohanim retain their rights even when they are no longer living in their fathers’ households. In other words, does a kohen’s daughter become a regular Israelite after she gets married?

One of the perquisites of the priesthood was the right to eat Terumah, a kind of Temple tax that Israelites gave. Remember, kohanim could not own land, so they relied upon farmers for their sustenance. Terumah is in a status called hekdesh, sanctified, and can only be eaten by kohanim and their households. If someone else consumes hekdesh, they have to pay for what they ate, plus a penalty.

When a bat kohen marries an Israelite, she loses her right to eat Terumah. If she does so inadvertently, however, the Mishnah clarifies that she does not pay the penalty that an Israelite would have to pay. Why not? This morning’s Torah portion states “no stranger may eat the sacred food.” Since she is not a ‘stranger’ to Terumah, she does not have to pay the penalty. (Sifra Emor 6:2)

Another perquisite of kohanim were the matanot kehunah, the gifts for the priests. According to the Talmud, a bat kohen retains her rights to eat these gifts even after she gets married and leaves her father’s household. (Rashi on BT CHullin 131b)

The final case speaks of both daughters of kohanim and leviim. According to the Torah, a first-born male child belongs to God. It must, therefore, be bought back, or redeemed, by God’s representative, a kohen. This occurs during a ceremony called pidyon haben. Parents give five silver shekels to a priest on the thirtieth day if their first-born child is a boy. There are exceptions. The son of a kohen, a levi, a bat kohen, and a bat levi do not have to be redeemed.

A Talmudic Sage explicitly ties this exemption to the actual womb of the mother. Exodus states, “whatever opens the womb among the children Israel.” In other words, there is something inherently holy about the womb of a bat levi and a bat kohen.

On a related note, a Talmudic anecdote refers to the Israelite husband of a bat kohen who regularly accepted the five silver coins for pidyon haben on account of his wife’s status. (Tosafot on BT Pesachim 49a)

These are three examples of ways in which a bat kohen has inherent sanctity that is not limited to when she is under her father’s household.

So if the approximately two thousand year old tradition of the first aliyah going to a kohen is based on the inherent sanctity of a kohen, independent of his service in the Temple, and if a bat kohen also has a measure of inherent sanctity, there are grounds for an egalitarian service to include any child of a kohen for the first aliyah.

But should we?

Historically, questions such as these have been difficult for Congregation Sinai. I arrived here shortly after the community decided to become egalitarian. Part of that decision, as many of you know, involved a compromise whereby our liturgy retained many of the elements of a traditional service while including women in the minyan and in leadership. The resulting traditional egalitarian service was one of the things that drew me to Congregation Sinai.

These are important values for me. Sometimes, a conflict arises between values. 

There have been incredible advances in gender equity. While not all the way there, we do not tolerate, by law or by accepted social norms, discrimination on the basis of gender in the workplace, in politics, or in society. Denying a person a job or advancement because of their gender is not only illegal, we now understand it to be wrong and immoral.

Today, a religion that does not give women the same opportunities as men must deal with a dilemma: Why do we accept something in our house of worship that would be intolerable out in the world? Any community that holds on to non-egalitarian practices must have an answer to that question.

That answer will be acceptable for some folks, and will most certainly be disappointing to others.

In the context of our practices at Congregation Sinai, the question of calling up the daughter of a kohen or levi for the first two aliyot is a really minor issue. It affects an incredibly small portion of our membership, and does not involve any change in our liturgy. It is now many years that we have called up men and women equally to the Torah.  

That is why I have decided, as the Rabbi of Congregation Sinai, that we will begin to call up daughters of kohanim and leviim for the first two aliyot during services. This brings us in line with the practices in a majority of Conservative synagogues.

This ruling applies to any person born Jewish whose father is a kohen. Like b’nei kohanim, A bat kohen cannot received aliyot two through seven, and like b’nei leviim, a bat Levi cannot receive the first aliyah, nor aliyot three through seven.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

May 7, 2022

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Leviticus (ויקרא)

Comments

Leave a comment

Lo Ta’ashok – Do Not Oppress Your Fellow – Kedoshim 5782

Parashat Kedoshim opens with the command, “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, and holy. Followed are mitzvot, positive and negative commandments, that define for us what that path of holiness looks like. Included are many ethical imperatives relating to the way we treat one another in daily life.

Kedoshim recognizes that we live in a broken world. There is social and economic inequality, people who behave dishonestly, and loads of selfishness and spite. Nevertheless, or perhaps even because of this brokenness, we have the capacity to be holy. Indeed, it might be the central religious imperative of the Torah.

Many of the commandments in Kedoshim are as urgent today as they have ever been. 

לֹֽא־תַעֲשֹׁ֥ק אֶת־רֵֽעֲךָ֖

וְלֹ֣א תִגְזֹ֑ל…

You shall not oppress your fellow

You shall not commit robbery…

Leviticus 19:13

These two commandments are juxtaposed in other places in the Torah as well. They are clearly a pair, but have their own distinct meanings. What is the difference between oppression and robbery?

In his Mishnah Torah, Maimonides differentiates them in opposite order. Gezel, robbery, is when a person takes another person’s property by force, whether I take it out of your hand, or enter your property, whether objects or animals. Even if I enter a field and eat the produce. This is all considered to be gezel – robbery.

Oshek, oppression, occurs when a person has something belonging to another person already in their possession, with the owner’s knowledge and consent, but then refuses to return it when called upon to do so. Maimonides gives examples such as a loan or wages. The rightful owner is unable to claim the property back because the possessor is dangerous or stubborn. Oppression, therefore, is when I already have in my possession something that belongs to someone else, but I refuse to return it.

A Talmudic Sage, Rav Chisda, illustrates oshek in the following way: I borrow money from you, and you knock on my door to collect it. I say, “Go away and come back tomorrow.” So you come back tomorrow, and again I say, “Go away and come back later.”  (BT Bava Metzia 111a)

Not only have I refused to give you what is rightfully yours. I have also wasted your time and added to your frustration.

A story is told in Midrash Mekhilta (Mishpatim 18) about two Rabbis who are captured by the Romans during the Hadriatic persecutions.

As they are being taken to their execution, Rabbi Shimon turns to Rabbi Yishmael and says: “Rebbi, my heart is faint, for I do not know why I am going to be killed.”

He is looking for theological meaning for his death.  He must have done something, he assumes. There must be some sin on his soul to explain his suffering and approaching death.

So Rabbi Yishmael asks him: “Did anyone ever come to you for judgment or a ruling and you kept them waiting while you finished your drink or put on your shoes, or got dressed? The Torah says “If afflict you afflict” (Ex. 22:22). It does not matter whether it is greater or lesser.

Realizing that, indeed, there have been times when he made those who came for counsel wait for him to fulfill his own needs, Rabbi Shimon is satisfied. “You have consoled me, Rebbi,” he replies to his teacher, as he continues on to his death.

This might not be a satisfactory explanation for you or I, but Rabbi Shimon is on a different level. This midrash understands oppression in terms of time. Valuing one’s own time more than another’s, withholding a service that another person is counting on, is considered a form of oppression.

Nechama Leibovitz shares an anecdote of when, in the 1930’s, the renowned labor leader Berl Katzenelson admonished officials from the Histadrut (the Labor Union), the Kupat Holim (the Health Service), and civil servants generally, for the malpractice of withholding service during official office hours. Apparently, there was a widespread practice of putting up “will be back soon” signs while the employees sat around drinking tea. This was disrespectful of the public’s time, a form of oppression, withholding services from people who needed them.

A passage in Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, laments that the victims of oppression are usually alone and powerless.

I further observed all the oppression that goes on under the sun: the tears of the oppressed, with none to comfort them; and the power of their oppressors—with none to comfort them.

Ecclesiastes 4:1

In his typical fatalistic way, the author does not condemn the oppressors, nor does he encourage his readers to act to lift up the oppressed. He is simply describing the way of the world. Thus it has always been, and thus it will continue to be.

The late eighteenth century Rabbi and early Enlightenment scholar, Naftali Hertz Weisel, connects the oppression described by Ecclesiastes to the commandment not to oppress one’s fellow. “Oppression,” he says,

is exercised by the strong against the weak, as in [and here he quotes the passage from Ecclesiastes,] “I further observed all the oppression that goes on under the sun: the tears of the oppressed, with none to comfort them; and the power of their oppressors—with none to comfort them.” This is the meaning of oppression throughout Scripture…

Let’s try to bring these ideas into the present. A mitzvah contained in the holiness code prohibits us from holding on to money or possessions that belong to another person. The Torah describes this as oshek, oppression. The Rabbis take this very seriously, and extend the mitzvah to include not only things, but time as well. I am not allowed to make someone wait who is counting on me. Recognized since ancient times, the victims of this kind of oppression are almost always the poor and the powerless. 

In the complex society and global economy in which we live today, navigating ‘the system’ is so much harder for some people than for others. Access to the resources which, in the modern era, are considered to be fundamental human rights, is not the same for everyone. This is true whether we are talking about a person’s ability to receive quality health care, reproductive services, or education; to obtain healthy food, breath clean air, and drink safe water.

לֹֽא־תַעֲשֹׁ֥ק אֶת־רֵֽעֲךָ֖ – “Do not oppress your fellow,” calls upon me to ask myself, what is in my possession, literally and figuratively, that ought to be available to my neighbor as well, regardless of wealth or status? 

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

May 11, 2021

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Leviticus (ויקרא)

Comments

Leave a comment

The Prozbul – Hillel’s Financial Creativity – Behar 5781

Trying to claim that the Torah supports this or that contemporary economic system or policy is like trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

Jews have lived in many places and times and dealt with many different economic and political systems.  In all of those systems, there was economic struggle and human suffering, along with thriving and flourishing. We survived as a people due to cultural and religious adaptability.

Rather than try to awkwardly shoehorn the Torah into our modern theories, why don’t we instead look at what the Torah actually describes?

Parashat Behar, the first of this morning’s double parashah, presents a priestly vision of economic justice in ancient Israel. It offers details about land ownership, debt, poverty, and wealth. It describes indentured servitude and slavery.

By looking closely, perhaps we might learn something about the economic system that actually existed at the time.

First and foremost: there is no land ownership. It all belongs to God, who apportions the land to whom God sees fit. “The land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me.”  (25:23)  This is a core concept that we must understand. Nobody owns property.

The parashah begins with a description of the shemitah, the sabbatical year. Just as every seven days ends with Shabbat, every seven years ends with Shemitah.

The Israelites are permitted to work the land and collect the harvests for six years. The seventh year is a Shabbat Ladonai – A Sabbath unto the Lord. Every seventh year, the land must be allowed to rest. There can be no harvesting or planting. Everyone is entitled to eat what the land produces on it. The Torah specifies “you” – the Israelites, along with their slaves, employees, indentured servants, and animals.

Every seven shemitah years ends with the Yovel, the Jubilee year. On Yom Kippur of the Jubilee year, the shofar is sounded throughout the land. All harvesting and planting is forbidden, as in the Shemittah year. In addition, all property returns to the person whose holding it originally was, or his heirs.  All indentured servants are automatically redeemed as well, going free and returning to their ancestral lands.

The Torah then describes the cycle of misfortunes that lead a farmer into servitude. When things first start going downhill, the farmer can take out an interest free loan to buy seed. If that does not work, the farmer sells part of his land for more seed. But not the land, actually. It is the annual productive capacity of the land, multiplied by the number of years remaining until the Jubilee. This makes sense, since the farmer gets the land back on the 50th year. If he manages to do well, he can repurchase the land at any time before then, redeeming it. It is his perogative.

If that does not work out, he can sell the productive capacity of his remaining property. He then remains on the land and becomes a sharecropper.  The purchaser of the land has to supply the tenant farmer with seed, and the farmer tries to pay off his debt with the proceeds from the harvest.

If this does not work, the farmer sells himself and becomes an indentured servant. The purchaser now takes on full responsibility for his well-being, including paying him wages. If he makes enough to pay off his debt, he goes free. Otherwise, he must wait until the Jubilee year.

All of this applies to Israelites dealing with other Israelites. The Torah specifies different treatment for non-Israelites. Non-Israelite slaves are owned in perpetuity. They cannot redeem themselves and do not go free in the Jubilee year.

So what can we say about this economy? There is no land ownership. While a successful farmer can increase his holdings for a time, it gets reset every 50 years, so there cannot be any accumulation of wealth. There does not seem to be any money in this system. Everything is based on agricultural commodities. Since all land ultimately remains under the control of the original family, there is little flexibility. Newcomers cannot break in to this system. A person who does not want to be a farmer does not have many options, since wealth is concentrated in the productive capacity of the land. 

At the same time, there is a strong concern for justice, and for preventing people from falling through the cracks when things turn poorly for them. Israelites are responsible for their neighbors. Even when someone becomes impoverished, they retain their rights and must be supported by those who are better off. Plus, the ability to redeem the land is totally in their hands.  The purchaser is not allowed to refuse to sell it back.

Was this economic system ever put into practice? During the first Temple era, we do not know for sure. But the Prophet Jeremiah makes a point of redeeming his ancestral land before he goes into exile when the First Temple is destroyed. In the Book of Ruth, Boaz redeems the land owned by Ruth’s deceased husband.

Biblical scholars argue about the extent to which these laws were observed. But the fact that the Torah can construct such an elaborate system of wealth redistribution implies that it is reacting to some situation on the ground. Behar represents the priestly vision for a just redistribution of wealth.

During the Second Temple era, however, the shemittah and Yovel laws were definitely being observed. Nehemiah makes reference to it in the fifth century. Philo and Josephus, in their histories, describe its practice during the late Second Temple period.

But the economic situation that Jews are living under is nothing like what existed centuries earlier. Let’s fast forward to the late Second Temple period, after the biblical era has ended. The Romans are in charge. The economy has changed drastically. Property ownership exists.

There is now money, which allows for a much more complex, growth-oriented economy. Think about what money is for a moment. The Emperor issues an order to make coins. The coins have limited intrinsic value, based on what kind of metal they are made of. But the government sets a value for those coins, a value that holds to the extent that people are willing to use it.

To expand the economy, the government encourages the issuing of credit, either by banks or by wealthy individuals. They make interest-bearing loans, which increases the money supply, allows businesses to grow, and allows trade to take place over vast distances.

A wealthy class emerges. Rich people need somewhere to park their money, so they do the obvious thing. They invest in real estate. Gradually, smaller farmers become squeezed out and are forced to sell their lands to wealthy absentee landowners, who typically dwell in the cities.

Jews, of course, are living under Roman rule, and they have to adjust to this system. Those Jews living in the land of Israel are also bound by the Torah’s agricultural laws, including those of the Shemittah and Yovel.

According to Deuteronomy, debts are cancelled every seven years, during the Shemittah. That is a problem. Why would anyone make a loan, especially an interest-free loan, if it is subject to cancellation at the end of each seven year cycle?

The result are as expected: credit dries up for those who are most in need. The poor remain poor, and the wealthy refuse to step in.

This situation led Hillel HaZaken, Hillel the Elder, to take action. Mishnah Tractate Shevii details the laws of the Shemittah year. The tenth chapter introduces an economic innovation that Hillel introduced. It is called a prozbul. The word most likely comes from the Greek pros boule, which means “before the council.”

The prozbul was a contract in which a creditor appears before a Beit Din, a Jewish court, and declares, “I turn over to you, so-and-so, judges of such and such a place, that any debt that I may have outstanding, I shall collect it whenever I desire.”  (Mishnah Sheviit 10:4) In other words, the debt, which by law should be cancelled, is transferred over to the court. The court is not a person, and therefore has no obligation to cancel the debt. After the Shemittah year is over, the creditor reclaims the debt from the Beit Din.

Why did Hillel issue this decree, which so clearly goes against the spirit, if not the letter, of the Torah? The Mishnah answers that question.

When he observed people refraining from lending to one another, and thus transgressing what is written in the Torah, “Beware, lest you harbor the base thought, [‘The seventh year, the year of remission, is approaching,’ so that you are mean to your needy kinsman and give him nothing].” Hillel enacted the prozbul.

Mishnah Sheviit 10:3

According to the Mishnah, those with means behaved exactly as we would have expected them to. They stopped making loans. That is why Hillel made this dramatic change. To put it into modern terms, “he eased up on banking regulations in order to get the economy moving again.”

The prozbul is one early example of how Judaism evolved to deal with a new economic reality. Over the past two thousand years, there have been many more developments. The best ones recognized, as Hillel the Elder did, the Torah’s underlying concern. “Beware, lest you harbor the base thought so that you are mean to your needy kinsman and give him nothing.”

Whatever the economic system, whether it be barter, feudalism, mercantilism, capitalism, socialism, whatever’ism, we are supposed to take care of each other. There will always be some who do well while others struggle. We have seen this very clearly during the pandemic.

Food Banks around the country have distributed food in record numbers. We have been warned lately that the numbers of homeless Americans will rise dramatically when national and state eviction moratoriums end in the near future. I am not going to suggest that there is an obvious or simple solution to these problems. We live in a vastly complex global economy that defies simple solutions. 

But we would do well to remember the values expressed by the Torah laws: to be compassionate and generous with our neighbors, to not encumber them with unpayable debt, to support them when they stumble, and to give them opportunities to redeem themselves.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

May 4, 2021

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Leviticus (ויקרא)

Comments

Leave a comment

While We Sleep – Emor 5781

I have been working on my garden this week.  I have planted tomoatoes and peppers.  I laid down my drip irrigation system.  I went to the hardware store and bought enriched garden soil. While it may seem like a lot of work, compared to ancient times it was really quite easy.

What is the nature of humanity’s relationship to the earth?

While very much in touch with the land, and full of practical knowledge—probably much more so than most of us today—ancient humans did not have a scientific understanding of the world around them. Whether it rained or not, whether the wind blew or was still, was due to active oversight by God.  And so, I imagine that there was a certain amount of awe and humility that accompanied gardening in ancient times.

We see evidence of this attitude, this awareness of our frailty vis a vis the natural world, throughout the Torah. Parashat Emor includes one of the Torah’s sacred calendars. Appearing next to instructions for priests about maintaining their pure status, it focuses understandably on the sacrifices that the priests must offer in the Temple.

One of those offerings pertains to the season in which we find ourselves right now. God instructs Moses to inform the Israelites:

Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land that I am giving to you and you reap its harvest, you shall bring the first sheaf of your harvest to the priest.

Levitucs 23:10

Notice that this is the very first offering that the Israelites in the wilderness will bring after they enter the Promised Land. They are supposed to bring this sheaf offering, the omer, on the second day of Passover. The priest will take this offering and elevate it. The Torah continues:

Until that very day, until you have brought the offering of your God, you shall eat no bread or parched grain or fresh ears; it is a law for all time throughout the ages in all your settlements.

Leviticus 23:14

Until this omer is brought, the Israelites are not permitted to consume any of the grain from the new crop. 

What is an omer? A sheaf.  What’s a sheaf? You’ve surely seen pictures. Think of long stalks of grain, bundled together. A sheaf is the quantity of stalks that a person could carry under one arm.  One sheaf’s-worth of stalks contained about 4 dry pints of grain. 

So what is the Torah asking the Israelite farmer to do?

Let’s talk about pre-modern agriculture. It was extremely time consuming and labor intensive. It is not for nothing that Adam’s curse upon eating of the fruit includes the line, “by the sweat of your brow shall you get bread to eat.”

The first step is preparation of the field by ploughing; then sowing it with seed; then hoeing; then removingl thorns and weeds; then harvesting the stalks of grain, then bundling them into sheaves.  After that comes the most labor intensive step of the entire process: threshing. This is when the farmer separates the grain kernels from the straw by beating the stalks of wheat. To thresh one bushel of wheat—about 8 dry gallons—by hand, would typically take about an hour. Finally comes winnowing, which is when the grain kernels are separated by tossing it up into the air and letting the wind carry off the chaff. At this point, the farmer has grain that can be stored in silos. Until the last few centuries, this has been the normal procedure for producing grain.  It was incredibly hard work and not particularly efficient.

The Omer offering adds some additional steps for the ancient Israelite. Removing an omer’s worth of grain from the silo, the farmer would bring the offering in a basket to the Temple in Jerusalem. The Rabbis of the Mishnah describe what happened next. The farmer would

place [the grain] into a hollow, perforated [metal] vessel and then roast it over the fire. They would then spread the roasted kernels out on the ground of the Temple courtyard to be cooled by the wind. Next it would be ground in a mill.  Finally it would be sifted 13 times. This would result in a tenth of an ephah’s worth of the finest quality flour (about one quart).

Menachot 10:4

What an enormous amount of work for such a small offering. What is its purpose? A midrash suggests an answer.

Rabbi Levi said: Even assuming that you have ploughed, sown, hoed, removed the thorns, reaped, made sheaves, threshed and laid up corn in the granaries, if the Holy Blessed One did not produce a little bit of wind for you to winnow, what would you live from? Thus, you must only give Me wages for the wind.

Leviticus Rabbah 28:2

In other words, it is a symbolic gift to the Lord for the gentle breeze that enables the farmer to conduct the step of winnowing, which depends on a breeze to blow the lightweight chaff away from the denser grain.

Of course, there are countless other ways in which the farmer depends on God’s directing the natural world to enable human beings to conduct our livelihood.  Rain in the right quantities at the right times. Peaceful borders. No blight or insect infestation, and so on. Most farmers lived a subsistence lifestyle, powerless to affect so many of the conditions upon which livelihood depended.

An adjacent midrash makes a similar point.

Rabbi Yannai said: Normally, when a person buys a pound of meat in the marketplace, he has to go through so much trouble and anxiety. [Remember, meat was super expensive in those days, and there was no refrigeration.] But though people sleep in their beds, the Holy Blessed One causes the wind to blow, and raises up clouds, and causes plants to grow, and fruits to be plump, and all we have to give Him [in return] is the payment of the omer. Thus is it written: “You shall bring the first sheaf of your harvest to the priest.” (Leviticvus 23:10)

Leviticus Rabbah 28:1

In this midrash, Rabbi Yannai describes a number of other ways in which we depend upon the orderly functioning of the natural world: He mentions God laboring to bring wind and rain, cause plants to grow, and fruit to form. And we take most of those phenomena for granted, most of the time. We literally sleep through the cycle of nature.

That is the purpose of the omer offering: to get us to acknowledge how dependant we truly are on God, the director of the natural cycle.

It is a fitting reponse to experiencing the wonder and awe that we feel when we contemplate the miraculous interdependence inherent in the world around us.

What ought we to do as a symbolic offer of the Omer?

Something that would acknowledge our dependence on God, and instill a sense of humility in our relationship with the world around us.

Because I can have a successful garden regardless of whether it rains or not. All I have to do is turn on the tap and add the fertilizer. The reminders of our dependance are less obvious.

But there are so many indications that our relationship with the earth is out of balance: microplastics everywhere – in our water, our soil, our air, and our mountains; increasingly destructive fires, decreasing sources of groundwater.

The world will continue spinning, and the laws of nature will continue to perform as intended by God. Human behavior is the variable in the equation.

Will we stay asleep in our beds while nature moves forward?

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 24, 2021

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Leviticus (ויקרא)

Comments

Leave a comment

Do Not Hate Your Kinsman, Love Your Fellow – Acharei Mot/Kedoshim 5781

Parashat Kedoshim is close to the physical center of the Torah. It begins with the instruction: You shall be holy for I the Lord your God am holy.

At close to the center of the law code which follows, we find the iconic words: V’ahavta L’re’acha Kamocha. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is the Torah’s formulation of the Golden Rule, the core principle that lies at the heart of most religions and ethical systems.

But this apparently simple expression is deceptively complex. To understand it, I invite us to look at it in context. 

V’ahavta L’re’acha Kamocha appears in Leviticus chapter 19:18.  It is only part of the verse, and it follows 19:17, which provides additional context and helps us understand what it is that God is asking of us.

So let’s look at those two verses in their entirety:

You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your fellow openly so that you will not bear punishment because of him. You shall not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your people. You shall love your fellow as yourself: I am the LORD.

Leviticus 19:17-18


Several details jump out right away. The first verse speaks of hate while the second speaks of love. Ramban notes that these verses are set up in a chiastic format. ABBA

“Don’t hate your kinsfolk in your heart” vs. “Love your fellow as yourself.”

“Reprove your fellow openly” vs. “You shall not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your people.”

Plus, the “Thou Shalt” and the “Thou Shalt Not” are reversed. Verse 17 says don’t hate but do reprove while verse 18 reverses it, don’t take revenge, but do love.

In each case, the emotional instruction adds something to the more practical part of the commandment. But don’t think that hate and love are mere emotions. In the Torah, they are actions. When the Shema tells us to love the Lord your God, it is telling us to express our covenental obligations of love through actions. Inversely, hatred in the hatred implies a sense of active plotting against another person. We need to keep this important detail in mind as we explore further.

Let’s start with verse 17. Reprove your fellow openly so that you will not bear punishment because of him. That sounds like a dangerous proposition. I see my fellow commiting a sin and the Torah tells me that I must rebuke him. I have to try to stop whatever sinful activities that are being committed.

This commandment suggests that we have responsibilities towards the other members of our community. Like it or not, the impacts of many of my decisions and actions will reverberate to the people around me. The Torah is saying that my neighbors do not have to sit idly by and watch me bring disaster on to the community. In fact, they are not allowed to sit idly by. This positive commandment instructs other people to intervene on my behavior.

Of course, the potential for abuse is obvious. I try to always keep in mind the advice that my late father-in-law, Gary Romalis, may he rest in peace, used to offer, “Unsolicited advice is never appreciated.”

But if I trust my friends and neighbors, and know that they want what is best for me, I might be open to being reprimanded when I am behaving like a selfish jerk. I might appreciate the correction.

I think the Torah might be aware of this as well, as it offers a qualifier. “You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart.”

Jacob Milgrom explains that the emphatic doubling of the verb, hokheach tokhiach, implies that reproof must be done openly. This reading helps us understand the commandment to “not hate your kinsfolk in your heart.” Hatred stored up in the heart has the tendency to fester. It is better to get it out in the open.

This is a theme that appears many times in the Bible. “Open reproof is better than concealed love,” states Proverbs (27:5). Proverbs also recognizes that it takes wisdom to receive rebuke. “Do not reprove a scoffer, for he will hate you, reprove a wise man and he will love you.” (9:8)

Taken together, we find themes of love and hate bound up with the notion of commenting on the behavior of friends, family members, and neighbors. Reproof must be motivated by love, and never hatred. And it can only be heard by someone who is open to receiving it.

The community that lived in Qumran, as reflected in the Dead Sea Scrolls, was an extremely tight-knit brotherhood. Strict rules governed daily life. Members of the community were required to reprove one another openly. Listen to what one of their documents states:

…if he kept silent about him from day to day, and accused him of a capital offense (only) when he was angry with him, [the accused’s] punishment is upon [the accuser], since he did not fulfill the commandment of God who said to him, “reprove your fellow openly so that you will not bear punishment because of him.”

Damascus Covenant Scroll 9: 2-8

A brother had to bring everything out into the open. Keeping things bottled up would allow hatred to grow. Another Qumran document provides guidance for how to offer rebuke:

To reprove each his fellow in truth, humility, and lovingkindness to a man: Let him not speak to him in anger or complaint or stub[bornly or in passion] (caused) by an evil disposition. Let him not hate him intrac[tab]ly, for on that very day shall he reprove him so that he will not bear punishment because of him.

1QS 5:25-6:1

Rebuke must be loving and humble.

The next verse in the Torah continues the theme. 

You shall not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your people.

It is so easy to judge other people’s actions. We jump to conclusions all the time, and before we know it, we are consumed. The Torah warns us against it. The Talmud (BT Yoma 23a) offers a simple example that illustrates the difference between taking revenge and bearing a grudge. I am paraphrasing.

Let’s say I ask my neighbor to borrow a hammer. My neighbor says, “No way, it’s mine.” The next day, my neighbor comes knocking on my door, “Hey Josh, can I borrow a shovel.” 

“Are you kidding me?!  You wouldn’t lend me your hammer yesterday, and now you want my shovel.  Get lost!” 

That, says the Talmud, is revenge.

Let’s say, after my neighbor refuses to lend me the hammer and then has the audacity to ask for my shovel, I instead say, “Here. Take it. You see, unlike you, I am not selfish and greedy. I am the kind of person who lends out his tools.”

That is what it means to bear a grudge.

Both of these examples are the kind of typical reactions that, I imagine, most of us would have. That is why the Torah instructs us to “love your fellow as yourself.”

Even though my neighbor wouldn’t lend me the hammer, I cannot let myself succumb to hate. What does it feel like to need a shovel when you don’t have one? It does not matter that my neighbor was greedy yesterday. When someone needs a shovel, my job is to lend it to them. Because I know what it is like to need a tool.

The Talmud’s example, of course, is a bit trite. There are much more serious offenses that impose barriers between people. It is difficult, perhaps even impossible, to imagine that we should not feel hatred in our hearts against someone who has really wronged us. 

It is perhaps easier to imagine such common trust and acceptance in a small village in which everyone knows everyone, or a tight-new Qumranic brotherhood in the desert. A complex, diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and highly interconnected world simply does not foster the level of trust and acceptance of one another that the Torah imagines.

How often do we pass judgment on other people’s actions, allow hate to fester, hold grudges, bear resentment?

Yet, this is the central command of the Torah, the ethical principle upon which all of Judaism is based, the underpinnings of holiness. 

We are not to be passive to wrongdoing, hokheach tokiach, You shall openly rebuke. But our rebuke must never be driven by hatred, must always be motivated by love for one another. How do we do this?

The Baal Shem Tov inspringly brings it together.

Just as we love ourselves despite the faults we know we have, so should we love our fellows despite the faults we see in them. 

Telushkin 1997: 466

May we have the honesty and acceptance to do so.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Jacob Milgrom, The Anchor Bible: Leviticus 17-22, pp. 1646-1656

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 17, 2021

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Leviticus (ויקרא)

Comments

Leave a comment

Death and life are in the power of the tongue – Tazria-Metzora 5781

Underneath the surface, this week’s double Torah portion, Tazria-Metzora, is about the power of words.

On its surface, we cover a variety of topics relating to purity and impurity. Childbirth, scaly skin disease, plagues that erupt on clothing or houses, bodily discharges. All of these conditions have the potential to bear impurity.

Tzara’at is often, and misleadingly, translated as leprosy. Jacob Milgrom uses the term “scale disease, ” so that is how I will refer to it.

What are we dealing with? I have sometimes been guilty of referring to this as the Torah’s version of “public health.” There are many different forms that that tzaraat takes. It can appear on a person’s skin or scalp. It can be on clothing, fabric, or leather. Or, it can emerge on the walls of a building. The Torah describes the course of progression. There is a tremendous amount of detail.

But tzara’at does not resemble any skin affliction known to dermatology. What we are dealing with here is a spiritual condition, not a medical condition.

In chapters 13 and 14, the word tahor — pure — appears 36 times; tamei — impure — appears 30 times.  The word for healing, nirpa, appears just 4 times. 

Who performs the diagnosis – a wise person, a medicine man or woman, a prophet? No. It is the priests who are assigned this duty, the ones who are charged with maintaining separation between purity and impurity.

What is the remedy? The metzora must rend their clothes, bare their head, cover their upper lip, and call out “impure! impure!” as a warning to others to keep away. But we are not concerned with contagiousness of disease. We are worried about the contagiousness of impurity, which can be conveyed through touch or through being under the same roof.

Because the metzora has this status of impurity, they must dwell outside the community.

When the priest determines that the scale disease has run its course, he performs a ritual of purification on behalf of the Israelite who then must wait a week and bring sacrifices for expiation.

Tzara’at has little to do with medicine. The Torah’s treatment of it is ritual, not medical.

In the ancient world, death goes with impurity, life with purity.

In the Book of Numbers, Aaron and Miriam complain about their brother Moses on account of the Cushite woman that he has married. In response, God afflicts Miriam with “snow-white scales.” She become s a metzora’at.

Aaron turns to Moses. Pay close attention to how he describes what has happened. “O my Lord, account not to us the sin which we committed in our folly. Let her not be as one dead, who emerges from his mother’s womb with half his flesh eaten away.”

What have we learned about tzara’at?

1.  It is the result of sin.

2.  It makes Miriam look like a corpse, a stillbirth.

Moses intercedes with a prayer, but she still must remain outside of the camp for seven days during her period of ritual purification. There is nothing medical going on here. It is all about purity and impurity.

Our tradition must find religious meaning for these categories in a world in which there is no functioning priesthood. The Rabbis do not disappoint.

Already in the Torah, we found that tzara’at is associated with sin, impurity, and death.

The Rabbis run with that.

Noting that the word for a person afflicted with scale disease is called a metzora, they make a pun.  Metzora is an acronym for the expression motzi shem ra, which means literally “bring out a bad name.” It is the Hebrew expression for gossip in all of its forms.

The case of Miriam and Aaron proves the point. What sin did they commit to merit Miriam’s punishment? They were speaking ill of Moses, specifically concerning the ethnicity of his wife.

So it is not such a stretch for the Rabbis to make the connection between gossip and tzara’at.

A Talmudic Sage asks why the metzora is required to dwell outside the camp.  Why must they be ostracized from the community? The answer is that, through words, the metzora created separation between husband and wife, between neighbor and neighbor. And so, the punishment is to themselves be separated from the community. 

The Rabbis have transformed what in the Bible was a spiritual matter into a moral lesson. The person who destroys community through their words is themself removed from the community.  This could be seen as a punishment, or we might also see it as the natural consequence of speaking destructively.

The Torah begins with words. God speaks the universe into existence. From one day to the next, God declares, “Let there be light.” “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the water…” “Let the water below the sky be gathered into one area, that the dry land may appear…” 

And then comes life. “Let the earth sprout vegetation…” “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures…” “Let the earth bring forth every kinds of living creature…” And finally, “Let us make humanity in our image…” Day after day, God creates through words.

What other kinds of words does God use in that opening week?  “God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and master it…”

The universe begins with words. Words bring life and blessing. This is the side of purity and good. The opposite, of course, is death and curse, the side of impurity and evil. This too can be the result of words. 

The lesson of Tazria-Metzora is that our words have tremendous power. We can emulate God’s act of creation, using our words for good, for building one another up. For making the world better. For making life flourish. Or, when we use our words improperly, we destroy, we bring death. We separate ourselves from one another like the metzora banished to the edge of the camp.

The Rabbis point out that every act of lashon hara harms three people: the one who is spoken about, the one who is spoken to, and the one who does the speaking. The expulsion of the metzora from the camp is an appropriate metaphor for the potential of our words to destroy community. 

Proverbs gets it exactly right when it states “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”  (Proverbs 18:21)

The corrosiveness of words is so evident and widespread in our world. I often feel powerless to avoid it. But if we remember the potential harm that words cause everyone involved, including ourselves, perhaps there is something we can do.

Before speaking, let’s ask, “Are the words that I am about to say more likely to build or to destroy? Will my speech promote peace or further division?” When listening, it is ok to say, “Can we discuss something else,” or “I prefer not to talk about someone who is not around.” Finally, and this is the hardest of all, take a break from the news, and stop checking the feed. It is not making the world any better, it is not bringing people together, and it certainly is not making your life any better.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue.”  Let’s make it life.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, Volume 2, pp. 47-51

Jacob Milgrom, The Anchor Bible: Leviticus 1-16, pp. 816-824

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

April 13, 2021

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Leviticus (ויקרא)

Comments

Leave a comment

Between the Sacred and the Profane – Shemini 5781

Parshat Shemini describes the inauguration of the Mishkan, the portable Tabernacle that the Israelites built to bring the Divine presence into their midst.

Aaron, as the newly consecrated High Priest, leads the final ceremony, which reaches its climax when a heavenly fire shoots out of the Tent of Meeting to consume the sacrifices that he has prepared on the altar.  The people respond by falling to their faces, shouting.

Meanwhile, Nadav and Avihu, Aaron’s sons, have taken their fire pans and offered incense.  The same conflagration that consumes their father’s offerings engulfs them along with it.  

Moses jumps into action, ordering the removal of the bodies and warns Aaron and his remaining sons, Elazar and Itamar, against interrupting the inauguration ceremony by going into mourning. The Israelites will mourn on their behalf.

Then, suddenly, the story breaks.

God speaks, addressing Aaron directly.

וַיְדַבֵּ֣ר יְהוָ֔ה אֶֽל־אַהֲרֹ֖ן לֵאמֹֽר׃

And the LORD spoke to Aaron, saying: 

Leviticus 10:8

This is unusual. On only two other occasions in the Torah does God speak directly to Aaron, both in Numbers, chapter 18.  Usually, God speaks to Aaron through Moses. And this is highly significant. Almost all of the rules pertaining to the priesthood are delivered to the Israelites collectively. There is no secret manual of sacrifices to which only the priests are privy. This contrasts with other ancient rites in which that esoteric material is kept secret from the general public.

So if God is speaking directly to Aaron, there must be something special about what comes next.

We might expect God to say something about the tragedy that has just befallen Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu. Maybe offer comfort. Or provide an explanation for what just happened

But no, instead God delivers instructions against drinking alchohol while performing priestly duties.

יַ֣יִן וְשֵׁכָ֞ר אַל־תֵּ֣שְׁתְּ ׀ אַתָּ֣ה ׀ וּבָנֶ֣יךָ אִתָּ֗ךְ בְּבֹאֲכֶ֛ם אֶל־אֹ֥הֶל מוֹעֵ֖ד וְלֹ֣א תָמֻ֑תוּ חֻקַּ֥ת עוֹלָ֖ם לְדֹרֹתֵיכֶֽם׃ 

Drink no wine or other intoxicant, you or your sons, when you enter the Tent of Meeting, that you may not die. This is a law for all time throughout the ages,

Leviticus 10:9

Midrashim and commentaries try to find connections between this prohibition and the tragedy of Nadav and Avihu. One solution claims that Nadav and Avihu’s mistake is that they were drunk when they made their incense offerings. But there is no indication that the esh zarah, the strange fire, that they brought had anything to do with drunkenness.

Another commentator suggests that it is a warning to Aaron and his surviving children not to drown their sorrows in drink. But again, nothing in the text suggests that this is a temptation under consideration.

God’s instructions to Aaron continues, although the syntax is strange. The sentence begins with an infinitive. It makes the Hebrew feel like a continuation from a different speech.

וּֽלֲהַבְדִּ֔יל בֵּ֥ין הַקֹּ֖דֶשׁ וּבֵ֣ין הַחֹ֑ל וּבֵ֥ין הַטָּמֵ֖א וּבֵ֥ין הַטָּהֽוֹר׃ וּלְהוֹרֹ֖ת אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אֵ֚ת כָּל־הַ֣חֻקִּ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֨ר דִּבֶּ֧ר יְהוָ֛ה אֲלֵיהֶ֖ם בְּיַד־מֹשֶֽׁה׃

And to distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean; and to teach the Israelites all the laws which the LORD has imparted to them through Moses.

Leviticus 10:10-11

Rashi, somewhat awkwardly, connects this passage to the prohibition against serving while intoxicated. In other words, you have to stay sober so that you will be able to properly distinguish between “the sacred and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean.” 

Or perhaps it should be read as an empahtic, and not directly connected to the preceding verse. וּֽלֲהַבְדִּ֔יל The essential duty of the priesthood is “to distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean and to teach the Israelites” all of God’s laws.

We see here an inner and an outer focus.  The priests have jobs themselves to do. They are tasked with maintaining separation within the sanctuary on behalf of the community.  While everyone knows the rules, only the priests have to concern themselves with fulfilling them. Of the Torah’s 613 commandments, somewhere between 201 and 293 of them only apply when the Temple is standing.

But the priests also have an outward-facing role. They are teachers. According to Deuteronomy (17:7-9), the priests serve as judges, deciding legal disputes and interpreting God’s laws when questions arise.

In the midst of their inauguration, just after tragedy strikes, God speaks to Aaron directly to summarize the essential role of the priesthood.

You may remember a passage from Exodus, when the Israelites recieved the Torah at Mount Sinai. They are instructed to be a “kingdom of priests, a holy people.” And so we see that the role of Aaron and his offspring may be seen as a means to that ultimate end. 

You may have recognized the language in what God tells Aaron. וּֽלֲהַבְדִּ֔יל בֵּ֥ין הַקֹּ֖דֶשׁ וּבֵ֣ין הַחֹ֑ל ul’havdil bein hakodesh uvein hachol — “and to distinguish between the sacred and the profane.”

We use these words in the blessing for Havdallah. As Shabbat ends, we quote God’s directions to Aaron. But instead of the priests having a set of narrow responsibilities for keeping sacred apart from profane, pure from impure, the words undergo a cosmic reformulation. 

It is now God who makes this distinction:

Praised are You, Adonai our God, sovereign of the universe, who distinguishes between the sacred and the profane, between light and darkness, between Israel and the nations, between the seventh day and the six days of creation. Praised are You, Adonai, who distinguishes between sacred and profane. 

All of creation: time, space, people, point toward these distinctions.

If that is the ultimate goal, perhaps that explains why God interrupts the disastrous inauguration ceremony to remind Aaron, and us, what it is all about. Right now, everything is a mess. 

Leviticus 1-16 (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries) Hardcover – December 1, 1998

Pure and impure, sacred and profane — all are mixed up. That is why we need the priesthood: to perform the job in the sacred Temple, and to teach the people how to live in a world in which the proper balance is maintained. 

But eventually we will become worthy of the title, a “kingdom of priests, a holy nation.” We remind ourselves of that every week, when we mark the transition from sacred to profane. The Sabbath we have just experienced, a taste of the world to come, is our sample for what a world in balance could be like.

Bibliography

Leviticus 1-16 (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries) by Jacob Milgrom

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

June 4, 2019

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Leviticus (ויקרא)

Comments

1 Comment

The Kipah Belongs to Germany – Bechukoti 5779

I have worn a kippah for most of my teenage and adult life.  I started at the end of my sophomore year in public high school and, except for a few interludes, I have worn it ever since. Whenever I speak to non-Jewish groups about Judaism, someone inevitably asks about it.  I respond with a standard spiel.  It goes like this:

I stand five feet, five and a half inches tall.  Most of the time, however, I go about my daily business acting as if I am the center of the universe.  This is true for most of us.  We tend to be pretty self-centered. By wearing a kipah, I remind myself that my existence ends at exactly five feet, five and a half inches from the ground.  In fact, there is an entire universe above and around me, and a Creator of that universe Who places demands upon me.  A kipah should remind me to act accordingly, with humility.

In addition, wearing a kipah in public identifies me very clearly as a Jew.  That means that my actions in the world do not just reflect on me.  They reflect on the Jewish people, Judaism, the Torah, and God.  If I am paying proper attention, that awareness should affect my behavior. If I do something positive in public, it reflects positively on Judaism.  On the other hand, if I do something improper, it reflects negatively on the Jewish people.  Wearing a kipah raises the stakes on my actions and helps me to be a better person.

The word kipah means a “domed cover.”  A human head is roughly dome-shaped.  Anything that covers it, therefore, qualifies as a kipah.  The word yarmulke, by the way, is Yiddish.  The best explanation that I have heard about its meaning is that it is a contraction of the Armaic words Yirei Malka, which means “Those who fear the King.”

That is my spiel.

I have always felt safe wearing a kippah in San Jose.  Never once has anyone said anything inappropriate about it to me, which is reassuring.  

The kipah has been in the news this past week because of a recent comment by the Federal Government Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight against Anti-Semitism, Dr. Felix Klein.  It is a new position, having been created by the Bundestag last year over concerns of growing anti-semitism in Germany. In an interview published last Friday, Dr. Klein, who is not Jewish, said, “I cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah everywhere all the time in Germany.”  He added that he had “changed his mind (on the subject) compared to previously.”  He went on to describe the need to educate police officers, teachers, and officials about the nature of antisemitism and its dangers.

What happened next is what seems to happen a lot these days.  Everybody went nuts and took his comment out of context. The Jerusalem Posts’s headline was German Antisemitism Officer: Don’t Wear Kippot in Public.

That’s not what he actually said.  He pointed out that there are some places in Germany where it is not safe to be visibly identifiable as Jewish.  We already know this.  When I was traveling in Europe a few years ago, I did not wear my kippah for the same reason.

The fact that Dr. Klein’s government position exists is proof that the German government recognizes the rise in anti-semitism in Europe, and specifically in Germany, and is trying to take it seriously.

Parashat Bechukotai features one of two great tokhehkhot, rebukes, in the Torah.  They are presented as blessings and curses which are conditional to our faithfulness to the God’s mitzvot.

But more than just a carrot and stick, these blessings and curses tell a story of rising, falling, and rising again.  We start with blessings.  All the good stuff an ancient Israelites would want.  Rain in the right amounts at the right time, strength, peace, abundance.  The curses are the inverse of the blessings, although they are presented in much more grisly detail.

The story continues.  The land itself kicks us out and we are sent into exile, where those of us who manage to survive continue to suffer persecution under the oppression of our enemies.  We look back with nostalgia and regret for what we have lost, and the mistakes we have made.

But God does not forget, and the covenant remains in effect.  There will come a time when God will remember and restore us.

Yet, even then, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or spurn them so as to destroy them, annulling My covenant with them: for I the Lord am their God. 

Leviticus 26:44

Already in the days of the Talmud, our Sages recognized the rising and falling cycle of Jewish history.  A baraitta interprets this verse as referring to God sending messengers to save the Jewish people from their under various oppressive regimes: Babylonia, Greece, Persia, and the Romans.

Our collective fate will continue to rise and fall.  But there is hope for the future.  Looking ahead, “I am the Lord your God,” predicts a time when no nation will be able to subjugate us.

We are a stubborn people.  For all of the mistakes and imperfections, we have remained faithful to our history and our covenant for thousands of years.  God is as stubborn as we are.  In the meantime, history continues in cyclical fashion.  We are now witnessing rising levels of antisemitism.  And it makes no sense.

Right wing antisemites attack Jews for being too liberal, allowing foreigners to infiltrate the country.  Left wing antisemites attack Jews for being racsists and declare Zionism to be white supremacy.  In Germany, the neo-Nazi party called The Right, endorses BDS, which is typically associated with the far left. The one thing that unites antisemites is that, whatever they think is wrong with the world, they all agree that it’s our (the Jews’) fault.

Reuven Rivlin, the President of Israel, issued this statement: “We acknowledge and appreciate the moral position of the German government, and its commitment to the Jewish community that lives there, but fears about the security of German Jews are a capitulation to anti-Semitism and an admission that, again, Jews are not safe on German soil.” 

Unfortunately, he is correct.  Anti-semitism is rising in Germany.  In 2018, there were 1,646 anti-Semitic crimes in Germany, which represented an increase of 10% over the previous year.  90% of those were classified as coming from neo-Nazi groups.  Anti-semitic crimes committed by Muslims in Germany are also rising.

Where will things go from here?  For better or worse, Dr. Klein’s provocative comment last week has created dialogue.  A few days later, he walked back his statement and issued this declaration:  “I call on all citizens in Berlin and everywhere in Germany to wear the kippa on Saturday, when people will agitate unbearably against Israel and against Jews on Al-Quds Day”

Al-Quds Day, was established by the Iranian government to coincide with the end of Ramadan.  Al-Quds is the Arabic word for Jerusalem.  It generally features parades with lots of Hezbollah flags and speakers demanding the destruction of Israel.  This year, German politicians are calling for large counter protests to oppose the hate-filled antisemitic demonstrations.

The Bild, Germany’s top-selling daily newspaper, put a make-your-own kippah on its front cover on Monday and published a front page commentary titled, The Kippah belongs to Germany.  Thanks to Miriam Leiseroff for translating the article from German, which I’d like to read in full.

Actually, we must be eternally grateful that Jewish life flourishes in Germany again.  We must resolutely defend what may be considered a historical miracle and gift to our country.

But the reality looks different and is expressed in the appalling (and unfortunately correct) warning of the Antisemitism Commissioner, who discouraged Jews from wearing a kippah all over the country.

Anyone who is a Jew still must hide this fact after seven decades since the Holocaust in order to be safe anywhere in Germany.

To this we have only one answer:  No, this cannot be!  If it is so and if it stays so, we fail before our own history.

Therefore the newspaper BILD is printing a kippah to cut out.  Assemble, dear reader, this Kippah.  Wear it so your friends and neighbors can see it.  Explain to your children what a Kippah is.  Post a photo with a Kippah on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.  Go out on to the street with your Kippah.

If only one person in our country cannot wear a Kippah without endangering himself, the answer can only be for all of us to wear a Kippah.

The Kippah belongs to Germany!  Die Kippa gehört zu Deutschland!

https://www.bild.de/politik/kolumnen/kolumne/kommentar-die-kippa-gehoert-zu-deutschland-62202206.bild.html

Actually, the kippah belongs to us.  But we can certainly appreciate the sentiment, and the support.  I cut out one of the kippot and made one for myself, which I am proud to wear.

We are blessed to live in safety, in a place where Judaism thrives openly.  May it continue to be so.  And may our brothers and sisters in Germany and around the world experience a day, soon, when it is possible to openly and proudly wear a kippah anywhere and everywhere.

Standard

Posted by

Posted on

May 28, 2019

Posted under

Divrei Torah (Weekly Sermons), Leviticus (ויקרא)

Comments

Leave a comment

Breaking the Downward Spiral – Behar 5779

We constantly hear about the tremendous disparities in wealth between the ultra rich and everyone else.  Just this morning, the front page article in the Mercury News reported that Elon Musk received $2.29 billion(!) in compensation in 2018.  

Parashat Behar presents an economic system that recognizes the inevitability of wealth disparities, but strives to prevent those disparities from becoming locked in across generations.  In the course of prescribing economic resets every fifty years, the Yovel system abolishes the enslavement of Israelites by their fellow Israelites.

Underlying the concept of the Yovel is God’s ownership of the land.  Humans are entitled to settle and work the land, but at no point are we to be considered its owners.  At the time of the Israelites’ settlement of Canaan, the land was apportioned among the tribes, and further subdivided according to clans and families.  This allotment is meant to be eternal.

A farmer who possesses a field owns the produce that the field yields, but not the field itself.  The Yovel, or Jubilee, occurs every fifty years.  The entire land remains fallow, like in a sabbatical year.  In addition, all land returns to the original owners or their descendants.

The Yovel system recognizes that some landholders will be successful, while others will fail.  In three stages, it describes the gradual descent into poverty of a farmer who is not so fortunate. (Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus: A Continental Commentary.)

In the first stage (25:25-28), a farmer has a bad year and does not have enough money to purchase seed to plant on his land.  He takes out a loan.  Then the crop fails, and he finds himself unable to pay his debt.  He sells part of his land for the estimated value of the number of harvests from now until the Yovel year.  In effect, he has leased the land. If his luck turns around, however, he retains the right to repurchase the land at any time.  Not only that, but his closest relative has an obligation, if he can afford it, to redeem the land so as to keep it in the family to which it was originally apportioned.

In stage two (25:35-38), the farmer has not been able to redeem it, and his crops have failed on his remaining land.  He takes out another loan to pay for seed, and he defaults again.  He now must turn over all of his remaining land to the creditor who owns his debt.  But, he gets to remain on the land as a tenant farmer.  The new owner lends him seed to work the land, and he pays off his debt using proceeds from the harvest.  The creditor is not allowed to charge any interest for the loan.  If the farmer succeeds in paying off the loan, he gets his land back.  If not, it reverts to him anyways in the fiftieth year.

In stage three (25:39-43), things are even worse for the farmer.  His crops have continued to fail and he can no longer feed himself and his family.  In this case, he enters the his creditor’s household as an employee.  He is no longer entitled to any of the profits from the land. But he is not a slave.  The creditor must pay him wages, which the farmer uses to repay his debts.  In the fiftieth year, he goes free and gets his land back.  The creditor is not allowed to treat the farmer like a slave, and is forbidden from mistreating him.

This story of a farmer’s financial decline is quite sophisticated.  It depicts a downward economic spiral in which his options gradually narrow due to increasing poverty and debt. This model of the economic downward spiral has not changed much over the past three thousand years, on both the personal, and macroeconomic level.  When an individual or a nation becomes impoverished, or as is often the case, starts out impoverished, it is almost impossible to rise.

What is unique in the Yovel system, however, is that the farmer retains inalienable rights throughout his decline.  He can repurchase the land at any time.  He does not pay interest on his loans.  He goes free in the fiftieth year.  The Yovel system recognizes that we cannot prevent a person from experiencing bad fortune, whether deserved or not.  But we can have a society and an economy that does everything possible to rehabilitate that person.

The Yovel was not a pipe dream utopia.  It was written to be implemented.  It should come as no surprise to learn that it was never successfully put into practice.  It is a timeless, universal principle that those who have wealth will always resist efforts by others to take it away from them.

That is why we find the prophets constantly complaining about the gross economic inequalities in Israelite society and the crushing burden of debt on those who are least able to handle it. The Book of Proverbs astutely observes that “The rich rule the poor, and a borrower is a slave to a lender.”  (Pr. 22:7)  It is as true now as it has always been.

But there are some positive developments taking place that are attempting to break the downward spiral. One of the ostensible purposes of the criminal justice system is the rehabilitation of those who have broken the law.  At all levels, we are terrible at it.  Recidivism rates, the likelihood that someone released from prison will return, are over 60%, which is unacceptably high.  There are many factors.

One important correlation is that prisoners who are able to gain employment after release are less likely to commit crimes in the future.  But of course, the stigma associated with being a former criminal makes it extremely difficult to get a job.  Thus, the downward spiral continues. with no Yovel to break the cycle.

The bipartisan First Step Act, which the President signed into law in December, aims to address this problem by creating more incentives for prisoners to undergo job training while in prison so that they will be better prepared to enter the work force right away.  Time will tell if it will make a difference.

Another increasing problem is the student debt crisis.  Americans owe more than $1.5 trillion in student loan debt, a number which has risen disproportionately over the past decade.

A person who is saddled by debt before even entering the work force is going to have a much harder time getting ahead than one who is not.  A young adult who graduates with debt delays achieving life milestones like getting married, having children, and purchasing a home.  The pressure of debt limits the choices and risks that a person can take.

Last week, billionaire investor Robert F. Smith made a surprise gift to the graduating class of Morehouse College, a historically black men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta.  “We’re going to put a little fuel in your bus,” he pledged as he announced that he would pay off the student loans of this year’s entire graduating class.

This is especially significant because African American college students graduate with greater amounts of student debt than any other group.  In addition, over the course of a career, an African American worker with a college degree can expect to earn close to a million dollars less than his or her white counterpart. 

In making his generous gift, Robert F. Smith is betting that these graduates will have an easier time getting started on their careers, and will, over the long run, achieve greater success and contribute more to the economy and their communities, and will be able to pass along more opportunities to their children in the next generation.

These two developments, which remove barriers to getting ahead, will make a difference in  thousands of lives.  One is a change in government policy that aims to break the cycle of crime.  The other is an inspired action by a private citizen to give a push forward to an entire class of new graduates. But there is so much more that could be done at every level to relieve the pressures that hold people back.

The Yovel‘s system of wealth redistribution would have significantly flattened the wealth disparities between the well off and the struggling, and would have ended multi-generational poverty.

It didn’t work.

But it does inspire us with a vision of how to treat each other with dignity, how to remove barriers that prevent people from succeeding, and how to break the downward spiral of debt and poverty.