Between Life and Death—Matters of Health

Between Life and Death—Matters of Health

D’var Torah for Parashat Tazria/Metzora

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

As a teaching, the Torah almost at once begins with failures.  Adam and Eve fail to teach their children morals; Cain fails to control his anger and frustration; Noah fails to advocate for the world around him and for the fellow created-beings that he is one of.

How else could the Torah also teach about the proper and right choices that humans can make?

It’s all about error and correction.

Even 3000 years ago, when stories of the Torah began to be told and retold, human beings were aware of their frailties, both spiritual and physical.  How to overcome these innate frailties became the chief concern of the Torah.

Moral choices are tough enough.  What this week’s double portion, Tazria/Metzora (Leviticus 12:1—15:33), deals with is the ones you can’t do much about to begin with:  the physical failures of the body, the moments in one’s existence when life hangs on the balance.

Nature is only orderly when it works.  When it doesn’t, it’s a mess.

Triumphing over disorder is Godly, the Torah teaches.  And it is also what makes the human being so heroic.  In attempting to be Godlike, humans learn to overcome weakness and illness. It is not only important, it’s a holy thing to try to regain one’s strength.

Because of the frank way in which the Torah speaks of the human body, along with all its possible functions and malfunctions, nobody wants this double portion as his or her bar/bat mitzvah portion.  And yet its impact on Judaism and civilization as a whole has been—and continues to be—enormous. 

The diagnostics described in the Torah may be primitive, but the process of isolation, observation and examination that the priest has to follow has become the foundation of modern science itself.  It’s no wonder that medicine and Judaism have been so closely intertwined through the centuries.  Healing and caretaking, the Torah teaches, are Divine.

Overcoming the illness begins with diagnosis.  It’s a process that may take weeks, and sometimes also involve radical treatment.  A person may be excluded from the community—though never abandoned!  A garment (yes, clothing can become infected!) sometimes must be burned.  And a house—think mold—has to be fixed; sometimes as little as taking out and replacing stone or two and re-plastering is enough.  Other times, the whole house must be demolished; even its dust must be taken to a place where it can’t infect other people’s homes.

Caretaking and nurturing doesn’t stop with the physical.  The early Rabbis (1^st through 6^th centuries) taught that verbally maligning and spreading malicious gossip about others is as bad as any infectious disease.  Not only our homes and clothes—even the words we use to communicate with one another-- can become diseased.  Words can create; words can heal.  Words, it turns out, can also hurt you.

A further lesson that can be learned from this double portion is that it isn’t enough just to declare a person healthy again. Following recovery, reintegration into the community is just as important.  Ritual and communal celebration marked the occasion then as today.

Not in the least irrelevant, the book of Leviticus is all about connecting humanity with God.  Holiness is a thread that extends throughout all existence.  The patterns are infinite.  But sometimes, for any number of reasons, the thread breaks and the design disappears.  At such moments it is important—so important that we label it “holy”—to repair the damage, to reweave the fabric.  We do so not by instinct, but rather by observation and skill, two abilities that we humans can hone to near perfection.

Tazria/Metzora teach that health and holiness—science and religion—aren’t incompatible.  In fact, they are inseparable.  Overcoming failure and frailty is the main lesson of the Torah.  Built into the human system, failure and success are intertwined.  How we deal with both is what can make us great.  In fact, nearly Divine.

As the Yiddish proverb goes: Abi gesundt.  You should only be healthy, everything else will be there too.

©2012 by Boaz D. Heilman

Of Freedom and Heroism--Israel's 64th Independence Day

Of Freedom and Heroism Thoughts on the Confluence of Passover, Yom Hashoah and Israel’s Independence Day 

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman 

April 20, 2012 The confluence of Passover and Yom Hashoah—Holocaust Memorial Day—is not coincidental. The planners of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising timed it that way, to coincide with Pesach. The day they stood up to Hitler’s army of executioners was set aside to be our annual day of remembrance. We don’t diminish the joy we feel during the holiday, as we remember our redemption from Egypt. But the following week, all Am Yisrael, the People of Israel, stops still for 24 hours. The entire day is devoted to little else beside observance of the most catastrophic event our people had suffered in 2000 or more years. Some sink into their own memories and sadness; others listen intently—as though nothing else mattered in the universe—to stories of other people. How did you survive? Who was with you? Where did you hide? Who of your friends or family were killed?

In Israel, Holocaust Memorial Day has a longer name. There it is called Yom Hashoah v’Hagvura—Holocaust and Heroism Day. Few survivors today see themselves as heroes, though a few definitely are, and some were recognized for their heroism in many ways. But the truth is that every moment that they chose to live, to survive and to remember was an act of heroism.

Yes, there were many who gave in to the silence, when they saw that all hope was gone. But for each one of those, there were ten or more who swore that they would live, no matter what. The horrible lie—among others—that was told about our people during the Holocaust is that we let ourselves be led like sheep to the slaughterer.

It wasn’t so.

There was heroism when people chose to hope rather than despair. When they gathered at night, their strength all but gone, and quietly, among themselves, discussed the day’s events. Who survived? Who was shot? What news from the Russian front? Any newcomers from the west?

 There was heroism when people chose to live rather than throw themselves against the electrified barbed wires that surrounded them. There was heroism when they questioned God’s existence and chose to believe nonetheless. Or when they chose not to believe, but rather to depend, from now on, only on themselves and on their own strength and abilities.

There was heroism when they chose love over the hate that they saw and felt all around them. No greater acts of devotion and love could ever be found than in the five year old feeding her younger brother spoonful after spoonful from a tin container of tepid soup.

Of course there was heroism when a handful of Jews in this ghetto or that, chose to defend themselves. Somehow, they managed to smuggle a pickaxe or two, a few rusty guns, a couple of ancient rifles, enough gasoline to fuel a dozen or so Molotov cocktails, and with that they hoped to ward off the entire Nazi Army. In Warsaw they succeeded for a month. Resistance to deportations from ghettos to the concentration camps took place in many cities throughout Europe. Uprisings, besides Warsaw, included Sobibor, Kovno and Treblinka.

The Bielsky Brothers, whose story was told in the movie “Defiance,” saved 1,200 Jewish refugees. Many saved others by sharing a slice of bread or anything extra they might have had on them.

Later, as the war came close to its close, the British allowed a few hundred Jews to join His Majesty’s Army—forming the famed Jewish Brigade—and actually armed them, enlisting them—the first Jewish soldiers since the Maccabees—to fight the Germans in Italy.

 Another example of heroism was in the victory of morality over instinct. Though most of the Jews who found weapons chose to fight as underground partisans, some chose not to fight, but rather to take revenge, both on Nazis and their collaborators. For a moment, they set aside God’s commandment (Deut. 32:35) “Vengeance is mine.” However, in almost all such cases, their actions were acts of desperation, carried out after much heated discussion. And in almost all cases, in later years, those who carried out vengeance regretted their deeds. Despite it all, despite the many deaths they saw and felt around themselves, despite the momentary lapse, the sense of morality was left intact within them.

Nor did the heroism stop at the end of the war. Many survivors, after losing entire families, married again and had children again. The strength of life within them was never quashed. Like a smoldering ember, as soon as they could, they breathed new life, lit new fires that still glow today with warmth, scholarship, culture, devotion, love and selfless generosity.

And to top it all off, within three years of the end of the Holocaust, a ragtag throng of poorly armed refugees somehow managed to garner enough international political, social and economic support to create the State of Israel. To wrest control of our own fate, to take the reins of history into our own hands, to defy religious and social oppression and redefine our existence in our own ancient land—to overturn the harsh decree imposed upon us by the Romans and all the nations since the year zero—is quite possibly the greatest act of collective heroism the world has ever seen.

So never let it be said that the Jews let themselves be led to the slaughter like sheep. With each step we took, with each breath we insisted on gulping, with every fiber of our being, we fought back. Sometimes, as with the first Passover, it takes the outstretched arm of God to redeem us. At other times, as in our own day, survival depends on our own deeds of heroism and redemption. It’s how we’ve come to be here today.

May our lives reflect, with gratitude, the acts of heroism that brought us to this day, and may their shining example continue to inspire us and our children, and our children’s children, well into the future.

Kein y’hi ratzon, may this be God’s will.


 ©2012 by Boaz D. Heilman

Who Knows One

Who Knows One
A Poem on Holocaust Memorial Day
by Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman



Just last week we joined in prayer, song and laughter
As families and friends reclined in comfort
Around a beautifully set table, brightly lit candles,
Celebrating freedom from persecution and oppression.


Tonight we sit with heads bowed in silence, alone with our sadness.
The darkness we sense around us is heavy, oppressive;
Would six million candles begin to chase it out?


Last week we remembered our deliverance;
Tonight we remember our destruction.
Last week we taught our children how God’s outstretched arm
Destroyed Pharaoh’s army, chariots and horsemen drowned in the
Sea.


Tonight we know not what to say
When our children look up at us and ask,
“Where was God? Why was God silent?”


Last week the ancient, familiar words rolled off our tongue;
Tonight we are dumbfounded.
Last week we sang “Mi chamocha,”
Tonight we wonder, are we alone in the infinite universe?


Last week, Elijah’s full cup glittered with wonder and hope;
The bitter herb gave way to full sweetness of wine and apples.
At midnight, we sang softly Chad Gadya, an only kid…


Tonight the bitterness lasts far past chatzi ha-layil
The eternal, infernal darkness not broken in half for the dawn,
No afikomen, no sweet dessert, no remembrance of past joyous
Seders;
On our palate tonight there are no songs of praise
No chad gadya, no “Who Knows One.”


No fierce wind, no fire, no quaking,
No still clear voice speaking to us from a smoldering bush,
The heavens won’t open, a drop won’t spill from God’s cup of sorrow.
Only silence and unanswered questions,
As the wax tapers down and the darkness descends.




Boaz D. Heilman
Yom Hashoah, 5772
April 18, 2012

Towards the Redemption of All Humanity

Towards the Redemption of All Humanity
D’var Torah for the Eighth Day of Passover
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
April 13, 2012


The Exodus was a one-time event. The intervention of God in human history, giving birth to the Jewish People, still reverberates today; but it was physically witnessed by only one generation. It was at Sinai, then, that God’s presence was transformed into something that would last for the rest of our history: Words. Each word, each utterance of sound became a vessel for God’s holiness, embodied in something that could be carried throughout the eons, transferred from one generation to another.

The holiday of Passover thus represents only the beginning of the history of the Jewish People. The rest of the story, one which is still unfolding, is how we have been applying these words to our lives and how we interpret them in such a way that our children—indeed, every new generation—might understand their importance and relevance.

Passover, then, leads in a direct line to Shavuot, seven weeks and one day later, a holiday on which we celebrate receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai. One miracle leads to yet another, possibly even greater miracle: The parting of the Red Sea, in which the infinite might of God was displayed to one generation, is matched by a minimizing of God’s might in such a way that an infinitesimally small part of God’s eternal holiness can inhabit the space enclosed by a single utterance, a single syllable.

This transformation represents a leap of faith, a moment in our people’s history in which they moved from their need for instant gratification to greater maturity and understanding. God’s message, refined and concentrated into words, must be unraveled in order to be understood. It’s not always easy. Words change meanings; they evolve. And of course, so do we, as does our understanding of the human condition. Sometimes understanding the meaning behind the word takes great effort and even struggle. It is anything but instant.

A similar evolution takes place in the miracles that form the bookends of this holiday sequence, miracles that underpin our understanding both of God’s role in our lives, and also of the role we play in God’s vision of Creation.

The culmination of the wonders and miracles associated with the Exodus from Egypt is, of course, the parting of the Red Sea and the emergence into history of the People of Israel. The second miracle represents the culmination of God’s Redemption of all humanity—in fact, of all Nature and Creation. This vision is described in the haftarah (readings from the Prophets) for this Shabbat, Isaiah 10:32—12:6, the haftarah for the eighth day of Passover. This scripture contains the famous prophecy:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with
the kid; and the calf and the young lion
and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
And the cow and the bear shall feed,
their young ones shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
And the suckling child shall play
on the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall
put his hand on the viper's nest.
They shall not hurt nor destroy
in all my holy mountain; for the earth
shall be filled with the knowledge of God,
as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9).

Isaiah’s end-day vision is as breathtaking as it is fantastic. It might as well be an illusion, a mirage that only desperate, feverish minds can conceive.

And yet, is it that much greater than the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea?

The cynics among us may scoff at such images; they may look for other interpretations and possibilities. Could the Israelites have taken a route through some swamp—negotiable by foot but not by horses tethered to iron chariots? Could some cataclysmic drought have been responsible for a dry path among the reeds?

But in looking for such “scientific” explanation, we miss the entire lesson of the miracle. It is an allegory, a poetic visualization of Israel’s safe passage through the straits of history. How many times have the eons parted to let us through? How many empires, hard in pursuit of our people, have been swept aside like so much straw and chaff? What greater miracle is there than that of Israel’s survival despite all our oppressors and detractors?

And if it is true for us, why is it so difficult to envision a time in which all humanity will find similar redemption?

In the Exodus story, the key to Israel’s redemption is compassion, whereas Pharaoh’s downfall was a result of the “hardening” of his heart. Pharaoh’s reaction to the demand to free his abused slaves was the opposite of compassion. What would it take for all of us to activate our softness-of-the-heart, our ability to feel someone else’s pain and do something to ease it, an ability that is both divine and human, inherent in all of us?

And what would follow such a conversion in the hardest-of-heart among us? If all hate turned to love, if all fears, grudges and jealousies melted away, would the result not be a major turnabout of all nature—at least as we see it now? Would the fiercest lion among us not turn as gentle as a lamb? Would not the most innocent among us be the first to show us the way to true faith?

Would it be a miracle wrought by God or by humans?

The ancient sages, the Rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash, taught that when the People of Israel faced the depths of the Red Sea, it took more than a divine miracle to part the waters. Yes, God did blow a fierce east wind all night long; and, yes, Moses did lift his miracle-making staff and extend it over the Sea. But what really brought about the miracle, say the Rabbis, was a man who, unafraid, unwilling to wait any longer, plunged into the raging water. Nachshon ben Aminadav was his name, and his reward was that he spearheaded the Israelites’ advances through the Sinai Wilderness, leading them to the Promised Land.

The ultimate miracle, the one described by Isaiah, will require similar forces. It will be not only our faith in God, not only our trust in Moses’s guidance, but also our own actions that will make the vision come real. It is to this magnificent vista that Passover leads us.

May the deeds of our hands, the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable as we go forward towards the Redemption of all nature that Isaiah describes.



© 2012 by Boaz D. Heilman

The Empty Seat at the Table

The Empty Seat at the Table: A Message for Passover
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
April 6, 2012


The Passover Haggadah has a timely rejoinder for us all: In each generation, each of us must see him- or herself as though he or she had just been redeemed from Egyptian slavery. Even as we sit in luxury, reclining upon pillows in the old Roman style, served one sumptuous dish after another, our cup of wine literally never empty, we must also remember the days in which we had nothing—or very little—to eat or drink, and little obvious reason to thank and praise God.

For some of us, born in this great country after the deprivations of the Great Depression and after the terrible sadness of World War Two, we can’t even begin to imagine such a time.

But imagine we must.

The forebears of many of us today came to America fleeing hunger or persecution. As they lifted their eyes and saw the Statue of Liberty, they knew they had come to a new world, a place where a whole new world of freedom and opportunity awaited them. Many of them began their new lives here in poverty and squalor; but soon, within a few years, certainly within a couple of decades, their life here began to bear new fruit.

For those who came later, fleeing the terrors of the Holocaust, America represented nothing less than a new lease on life.

Millions found new opportunities to rebuild their lives both in America and in Israel following the establishment of the State of Israel. Nearly 750,000 refugees from Arab countries arrived, along with their brethren who survived the Holocaust and understood that only in Israel would they be able to express themselves fully as Jews, able to protect themselves from any attacker.

Millions more fled the USSR in the 1970’s and 80’s. And yet more arrived under cover of darkness from Ethiopia as part of Operation Solomon.

Tonight, all these newly-freed people can raise their voices and sing with true understanding about the narrow straits they had to pass through in order to become free.


But as we look around us, at the larger world we live in, we realize how many more are yet entangled in webs of violence, oppression and slavery: Minority Christians and Muslims throughout the Middle East who are driven from their homes, their houses of worship bombed and burned; women in Pakistan and Afghanistan who suffer abuse and are often sold as slaves; children in Uganda and Sudan who suffer abuse, forced to fight in wars they didn’t start, kill others or be killed themselves, who are abused and all too often find themselves victims of human trafficking.


And even among us, in our own cities and towns, we still find religious intolerance, bigotry, homophobia, fear and ignorance.

The list goes on and on.

A new tradition has evolved in the homes of many Jews lucky enough to celebrate the Passover in luxury and gratitude: Leaving an empty seat around the table, symbolic of the many who still languish in misery and slavery throughout the world. Every time we look at that seat, we remember that once, we too had no place to sit around a table laden with all manner of food and drink. Remembering this, we can begin to understand what freedom really means. It is NOT dayenu—it is not enough that we ourselves are free tonight. For as long as some of us are not free, none of us is totally free either.

It is at such moments that we recall a passage from our prayer book, Mishkan Tefilah:

Standing on the parted shores of history
We still believe what we were taught
Before ever we stood at Sinai’s foot;
That wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt
That there is a better place, a promised land;
That the winding way to that promise
Passes through the wilderness.
That there is no way to get from here to there
Except by joining hands, marching
Together.


Tonight, as our voices join together in song and praise, as many of us recount not only the origins of Israel’s history but also their own, more personal story of redemption, let us join hands and make a solemn promise: to remember those whose stories tonight are not told, those whose voices have been stilled by violence and pain, but whose prayer tonight joins our own—L’shana ha-ba-ah bi-Yrushalayim. Next year in Jerusalem. Let us make a pledge to work even harder to bring freedom to those—near and far—who are still oppressed. Next year, may all find a place to sit around a table and eat, drink and sing to their heart’s delight. Next year, may all be free.


© 2012 by Boaz D. Heilman