Vengeance and God’s Ways: Emor

Vengeance and God’s Ways

D’var Torah for Parashat Emor

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Couched within this week’s Torah portion, Emor (Leviticus 21:1—24:23), is a curious incident that involves a fight between two men.  One is an Israelite; the other is of mixed cultures—son of an Israelite woman but an Egyptian man.

It’s unclear what they fought about, but at a certain point the man born of two cultures curses God in the plain hearing of many witnesses.

The question of what to do with the blasphemer is brought up to Moses, who in turn refers it to the highest authority of all—God.  God decrees that the man be publicly executed by stoning.

Death by stoning was, in ancient cultures, the most public form of capital punishment. The particular crime leading to this penalty was understood to have been committed against the entire community; the entire community was thus expected to participate in the execution. 

It’s a peculiar coincidence that it this week that we read of this incident, in the immediate wake of the heartbreaking bombings at the Boston Marathon and the almost-surreal manhunt for the perpetrators.  When it became apparent that one of the alleged culprits was caught alive, a whole legal discussion began:  How is he to be treated?  Should he be “mirandized?” Would he be tried as a US citizen?  Would the bombing be viewed as an act of internal terrorism—or as yet another example of fundamentalist Islamic-inspired terrorism sweeping over the whole world?

In the heat of the moment, many thought of revenge.   Relying on a verse from this week’s portion (“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” Lev. 24:18), their first impulse was to combine rage and pain with the instinctive need for immediate retribution.

One acquaintance went so far as to actually call for s’kilah—the public execution by stoning that Emor mandates. 

Thank God, the ancient Jewish laws concerning capital punishment changed rapidly (to the point where, by the year 0, any execution was illegalized by the early rabbis).  And yet, at least for those familiar with this week’s Torah portion, the concept was never far from mind or heart.

But was it really a similar sort of crime?

In Emor, there was a struggle between two men—and religion must have played a part, since the cultural chasm between them was considered important enough to include in the description of the fight.  But the final judgment had to do not with the fight itself or even with its unspecified result, but rather with the fact that the man of mixed culture cursed God in public.

What harm was caused to the public in this incident?  Why would this quarrel entail a public execution?  And is it really similar to the Marathon bombings?  After all, though religion did, apparently, play a part, the harm was not to God but to the many spectators who had gathered at the finish line.

My sixth-graders and I pondered these questions in class this week.  Did the alleged terrorists blaspheme against God?  Did they curse God?  And if so, would it not be up to God to assess the damage and impose the penalty?  How could the two attacks be comparable?

And yet, the parallels exist.

The Israelite camp had dedicated itself to God and to what they all agreed was holy.  The first part of the portion teaches about the holy days, why (and how) they must be celebrated.  Laws of ritual sancity are spelled out for the kohanim, the priests.  Laws detailing how the people must bring sacrifice to God are explained.  Lastly, a stern warning is issued reminding the people that our sacred responsibilities do not end with offering sacrifice to God.  Lev. 23:22 spells it out:  “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not completely harvest to the border of your field, and you shall not gather up the gleanings of your harvest.  You shall leave these for the poor and for the stranger.  I am Adonai your God.”

Compassion for the less advantaged in our society, taking care of the widow, the homeless and the orphaned children is a huge concept the Torah holds to be sacred obligation.

To curse or blaspheme God doesn’t mean only taking God’s name in vain, or even using it as a swear.  Rather, it is to go contrary to the commandment that dictates that we must act in a holy manner because of our sacred relationship with God.  To curse God means not only to raise your fist at heaven, but also to kill and maim women, children, unarmed men and innocent bystanders.

The Boston Marathon is held in celebration of America’s highest ideals, and many of these come straight from the Torah.  Education and enlightenment, healing the sick, providing for the needy, and above all providing food and shelter to the stranger and homeless—these are our sacred duties, responsibilities that Boston has championed from its very founding.

In a sense, what the terrorists did last April 15, Patriots’ Day, was to attack the very pillars of our existence, the very meaning and purpose of our heritage and culture.

And that IS cursing and blaspheming our God, the punishment for which—at least according to parashat Emor—is s’kilah, public execution by stoning.

Thank God, we no longer engage in this horrific sort of punishment.  Another concept Jews have taught the world is to hold life sacred.  All life; and that includes the life of vicious murderers.

Some may grumble and protest, but to take a life is contrary to our belief, and if it is done, it is done only after tremendous deliberation and soul-searching.  The rules couldn’t be more strict.

So what are we to do today?  How should the surviving perpetrator of the Boston Marathon bombing be dealt with?

In a word—justice.  Revenge is not our way.  As sweet as it is, revenge allays the pain for only a moment or two.  Complete investigation, lawfully conducted, must be the process we follow.  We’ve come a long way since the dictum of the Torah—which was never seen as final in the first place, but rather as a starting point for further discussion and interpretation.  That, too, is our way.

We don’t know what lies at the end of the road for Dzhokhar Tzarnaev.  Perhaps it will be the death penalty—permitted by U.S. federal law.  But it will not be through s’kilah, public stoning.  This may be the law still in some backwards countries, but not so with us.

Thank God.

© 2013 by Boaz D. Heilman

Why Is There Shabbat?

Why Is There Shabbat?

A Poem for Shabbat Acharei Mot-Kedoshim

April 19, 2013

by Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

What if God had not ceased from all creation?

Would there be any jagged edges left?

Any crags cleft into the smooth surface?

Would there be pain?

Would there be love

Or shelter from the darkness?

Some safe harbor to embrace,

A light to shelter behind slumbering lids?

Would there be memory,

A shattered fragment from a looking glass

Holding shades of long-lost love,

Of faraway shores and blue-green seas?

Would there be mystery

Or happy endings to pursue?

Would we, humans, charged with blessing,

Still tremble at the touch, the sound, of holy?

Whom would the angels shout praise to

And who would hear their chorus of “kaddosh!”?

What soul would Hope arise from,

What vastness hold her longing wings?

But God did cease God’s holy work.

Light was put away,

Put on lockout,

In darkness to await the spark.

Now chaos holds sway

In realms not yet created

In the non-presence of no-moment

In the deepest void of not being

An unlit match still awaits,

Imprisoned in its own casing,

For a word to emerge

And free it from its bindings

The word is ours,

The silence, ours.

And ours, too, the blessing

To create, to give form, to launch in time.

We are here, hineinu!

Hear us, God!

Us—the mortal creatures You created

B’nai Elohim—divine children—in Your image!

We bless You

Because You ceased creation

And left a moment incomplete

For us to fill with all our might, with all our souls.

Baruch atah Adonai, m’kadesh HaShabbat—

Praised be You, Adonai, whose sanctity is from end to end

From beginning to beginning,

Who left crags in the rock

For honey to drip out of,

For manna to sate our hungry souls,

For blessings to exist

And miracles to come true.

 © 2013 By Boaz D. Heilman

Day of Horror, Day of Hope

Day of Horror, Day of Hope

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

April 16, 2013

The horror of yesterday’s events hasn’t subsided yet.   As I stepped outside my home this morning it seemed to me that a cloud of smoke was hanging over downtown Boston.  Of course it wasn’t.  It was only the sadness in the air, and the dust that was slowly settling to the ground.

The graphic pictures in the media, the interviews, the heartbreaking stories of tragedy, horror and heroism bring to mind so many other events that have shaped our young century.  Patriots’ Day 2013 will remain etched in our memory along with other dark days and nights.  It will never feel the same again.

It’s still too early to identify perpetrators and to point fingers at any individual or organization, and we must be careful not to do so until all the evidence has been gathered and sifted through.  However, patterns can be perceived. 

Yesterday was Patriots’ Day, commemorating the beginning of the American Revolutionary War.  America was born to be a place of refuge.  It became a haven for the poor and persecuted.  It provided new hope for millions who sought freedom of thought and faith and who hoped to leave old prejudices behind them.  Patriots’ Day is Boston’s day of pride for its role in the events that shaped this New World.  That Patriots’ Day was chosen for the running of the Boston Marathon—an event bringing together a diverse multitude of peoples, faiths and cultures—represents not only a commemoration of our past, but also the present and future hopes that America stands for.

Boston is still a haven for immigrants.  My own neighborhood has seen a demographic shift from housing built for veterans of World War II, to people of Italian descent, to Latinos and, most recently, to immigrants from Russia and the Far East.  Just down the street from us is Moody Street in Waltham, a strip of shops and restaurants representing every conceivable nationality and culture.

The terrorists chose Boston, the Boston Marathon and Patriots’ Day as the setting for their vile deed of hatred and violence because these are all about what America always was and still is today—a champion of freedom and diversity.

The media had converged on Copley Square, the finish line of the marathon, assuring the terrorists of the widest possible publicity.  What they didn’t take into consideration, however, was the excellent security that prevented a greater horror yet, and the immediate presence of a great medical support team.  As horrible as the bombings were, the results could have been more devastating.

There are lessons to be learned.

Somewhere out there, someone is hailing yesterday’s horrific events as acts of heroism.  It is cowards, however, who plant bombs in trashcans, aiming to hurt innocent bystanders. 

Terrorism seeks to plant fear in our hearts.  Instead, what we saw yesterday was an outpouring of love, support, encouragement, prayer and hope.  People opened up their homes and hearts, doing everything they could to alleviate the pain and horror.  Messages of support poured in from around the world.  Instead of the divisive effect the terrorists had hoped for, there was unity borne of grief and sadness.  That is true heroism.

For me personally, yesterday was a doubly sad day.  I was remembering the fallen of the State of Israel’s wars—more than 25,000 in its 65 years.  There was Yoram, my next door neighbor who fell in the Six Day War; Eli, a family member, who fell during the Yom Kippur War; and Gadi Manela, a true hero, a friend to me and brother to my brother, who was killed chasing terrorists in the Jordan Valley in 1968.

Today is Israel’s 65^th Independence Day.  It is a day I normally celebrate joyfully, with blue-and-white flying colors.  Today, however, I’m wearing a black ribbon over my heart.  I grieve for the heavy price of defending freedom.  I grieve for the 8-year old boy who was killed yesterday after running out to hug his father, his hero, who had just crossed the Boston Marathon Finish Line.  I grieve for the other two dead, and for the many who are still in hospitals fighting for their lives, and I grieve for the hundred plus spectators and runners who are maimed, injured and awaiting months and years of therapy—both physical and psychological.

Of the many factors America and Israel have in common, there is one thing I wish we didn’t share:  Terrorism.  But the truth is that we do.  It is the heavy price we pay for our freedom.  Terrorism has not cowed Israelis; it won’t make Americans run for cover either.  It only serves to reinforce in us our purpose and resolve.

On this 65^th Independence Day of the State of Israel, may God bless and keep Israel strong, safe and secure. 

On this day of sadness and hope in Boston, may God keep America strong and guide it along its path and purpose of providing safety, shelter and hope for all humanity.

God bless America.

Combatting Contagious Diseases: Tazria-M'tzora

Combatting Contagious Diseases

D’var Torah for Parashat Tazria-M’tzora

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Tazria-Metzora (Lev. 12:1—15:33), this week’s double Torah portion, is the ultimate proof for why Torah has to be interpreted and not simply taken as God’s immutable word.  I imagine that this extract from some proto-medical manual, with its intricate descriptions of sores, rashes and other eruptive outbreaks, must have been as baffling to its students as were the very conditions that they came to diagnose and clarify.

Yet, to a primitive society with little or no scientific knowledge, the instructions were critical. 

The ailments and physical failures that are described in these portions were disfiguring and, often, deadly.  The Black Death, the outbreak of bubonic plague in medieval Europe, is reported to have killed a full third of the continent’s population.  Centuries earlier, plagues were—and well into our own day, still are—just as devastating.  In every age, it has been of vital importance for society to diagnose and isolate a deadly contagious outbreak.  What this week’s portion represents is a system, a methodology, whose goal is understanding and containing the disease.  Just as important is its teaching that requires the priest—the same one who had diagnosed the illness—to go visit the sick person every seven days to ascertain which way the disease was going. 

What we have in these two portions is the basis for medicine as a legitimate and desirable Jewish profession.

But aside from that, the instructions themselves are pretty much useless to us today.  Thankfully, medicine has come a long way from the year 1000 BCE.

The ancient rabbis of the first millennium understood this fact very well.  From early on, they started giving new meanings to these portions and to the diseases and conditions they describe.  Tzara’at, the disease we came to call leprosy, was to the ancient mind a mysterious infliction.  Knowing little about medicine and even less about viruses, they took the word tzara’at and redefined it by employing a verbal pun.  They took another phrase, one that sounds like m’tzora (“leper”), and made it the reason and cause of the disease.  Motzi-l’shon ra’—a gossip—brings the conditions upon him- or herself by spreading a false and vile rumor.  The result of gossip, teach the rabbis, is an eruption of ill will that is as disruptive of the well being of individuals and society as any disfiguring and disabling plague.  Tzara’at is thus the original social disease.  Pun intended.

What makes this portion even more prone to interpretation is that the physical ailments it describes aren’t limited to the human body.  The Torah teaches that tzara’at can be found in clothing as well as in the walls of one’s house.  The analogy doesn’t lag far behind.  Our deeds and words have a lasting effect on everything around us, beginning with ourselves and spreading out in concentric circles.  We know that words can hurt as much as any violent act.  Rumors and lies can destroy friendships, marriages, careers and lives.  This truth is even more imperative today than ever because of the much wider reach of our words.  For all the wonder and excitement of cyberspace, overuse, misuse and abuse of the social media has become an unchecked plague of our own digital day, a tzara’at that has brought harm and even grief to many.  

In Tazria-Metzora, this week’s still vitally important Torah portion, the follow-up instruction given to the priest is as important as the initial diagnosis itself: Every seven days, he must go outside the camp, to where the suspected carriers of the tzara’at contagion are exiled, and reexamine them.  This continues until a definitive diagnosis can be made, or else until the person is healed and is allowed to reenter the community.  Invested in the priest is the authority to make fundamental decisions that bear on the wellbeing of the entire community.

Of course, today we have no priests.  At least not in the Jewish religion.  What are we to make of this?  Obviously in health issues, we have doctors, physicians, nurses and other caretakers who examine their patients and take care of their physical ailments and conditions.  We also have contractors of every sort to do any housework that needs to be done to eliminate pollution and contamination.

But who are the individuals whose role it is to monitor cyberspace?  How do we eliminate the kind of taints that exist in this new world that we and our children have discovered? 

Censorship has never been the answer.  But the Torah does have us assign shoftim v’shotrim, (“judges and officials,” Deuteronomy 16:18) to enforce rulings and decisions.  The job of the priest has always been to instruct people about being holy—a state of being that results from a close relationship with a holy God.  As parents, teachers and rabbis, it becomes our role to be the priests, our role to be the shoftim v’shotrim.  It is essential that along with a cell phone and iPads, we also give our children strict instructions about the proper way to use these tools.  Ultimately, we have to learn to trust our kids, but until such time, they have to earn our trust and faith. 

Today we know so much more about medicine.  We know the causes of tzara’at (and the fact that it is barely contagious, and certainly not fatal any more).  Thanks to the methodology we study about in this week’s portion, we have come to understand so much more about the functions and failings of the human body.   Science has taught us to eliminate many diseases altogether and to find remedy for the symptoms of still others.  Today we also know that viruses can be transmitted not only by physical contact, but also by digital contact.  The importance of Tazria-Metzora is thus just as important today as when it was first written down some three thousand years ago.  As a medical text, its words may be archaic, but its meaning and teaching are as fundamental for us today as for our ancient forebears some three thousand years ago.

© 2013 by Boaz D. Heilman