“Blessings and Curses” – Shabbat Re’eh, August 2, 2013 by Rabbi Audrey R. Korotkin One of my rabbinic colleagues took to Facebook this week to ask for help translating an old saying her grandmother used to use at this time of year. In the Yiddish: "iz geht schon auf Elul" In English, Elul is just about here. It may only be early August, but our penitential season is upon us. It’s a time of year we take to heart. Next Shabbat, just after Rosh Hodesh for the month of Elul, we in the Reform movement begin integrating prayers of supplication and High Holy day melodies into our Shabbat worship, to get us in the mood for the Days of Awe. In some Sephardic congregations, the shofar is blown every single morning before the regular daily congregational prayers even begin. It’s a call, it’s a wake-up, it’s a warning. And it’s what makes the news out of Israel this week all the more troubling. Within just a few hours this week, these two stories hit the wires. First, David Lau, the recently elected Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel and son of a former Chief Rabbi, let loose with a racial slur that was stunning in its ignorance and stupidity. Here’s the way the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported it on Tuesday: “Exhorting his haredi Orthodox constituents to devote their time to learning Torah rather than watching basketball at the Maccabiah Games, he said: “Why do you care about whether the ‘kushim’ who get paid in Tel Aviv beat the ‘kushim’ who get paid in Greece.” Kushim is a derogatory Israeli slang term for blacks. It’s like publicly using the “N” word. Or the “S” word that our grandmothers used to describe the “girls” who cleaned their homes. Now, you’ll be happy to know that Rabbi Lau told everybody yesterday that it was only a joke. Thank goodness for that. Because, you know, racism is inherently hilarious. Rabbi Lau, being the 39th generation of rabbis in his family, must be so knowledgeable in Torah that he sees humor in the Biblical roots of this derogatory phrase “kushim.” That would be the incident in the book of Numbers where Miriam and Aaron confront Moses over his marriage to an Ethopian: “Ki Isha Kushit lakach!” – He went and married a Kushite woman! – they cry out. God is so incensed over their prejudice that Miriam immediately finds herself covered with snow-white scales. You want white, God seems to be telling her, you got white! I wonder how Rabbi Lau would look in white. But what makes Rabbi Lau’s little joke so especially egregious is his own background. His father was a survivor of Buchenwald. His grandfather died in Theresenstadt. Rabbi David Lau should know very well the shanda, the disgrace, of disparaging another based on race or ethnicity. He should know what ultimately results from a people being dismissed as something less than fully human, as something less than a creature made in God’s image. It is not funny. And it is not, as the sport minister termed it, “unfortunate.” It is disgusting. It is disgraceful. It is certainly not Jewish. But wait – there’s more! Not 24 hours after Rabbi Lau’s remarks became public, the Haredim rioted in Beit Shemesh. You remember Beit Shemesh. The city (well, one of them) where the secular and the modern Orthodox are being overtaken by the ultra-Orthodox, who demand that everybody follow their rules. The city where, two years ago, a little 8-year-old Modern Orthodox schoolgirl was abused and spat upon by a group of Haredi men for supposedly not being modest enough in her long sleeves and long skirt. Yeah, that Beit Shemesh. This time, a group of Haredi men took to smashing the windows of Egged public buses after hearing a rumor that a woman on one of the buses asserted her legal right and refused an Orthodox man’s demand that she move to the back so he wouldn’t have to look at her. The woman at the center of the drama later told reporters – who photographed her in her usual modest dress, long sleeves, head covered – that she actually was moving. But the rioters didn’t care about the facts. They heard the rumor, which was enough red meat for them to take their hammers and smash the bus windows, terrifying the riders inside the bus, including young children and babies. And others in their group blocked the bus so that the driver could not get away from the attack. Police detained two people for questioning. I am holding out hope that they will be punished to the full extent of the law. But I’m not holding my breath. It is disgusting. It is disgraceful. It is certainly not Jewish. Iz geht schon auf Elul. Can you read the calendar, guys? Shame on all of those who proclaim their holier-than-everybody-else attitude, and then make a mockery of their piety; whose tzitzit and black hats disguise black hearts and empty souls. And shame on anybody who allows them to get away with it. “Re’eh” – Look here, God tells the Israelites at the beginning of this week’s Torah portion. “I lay before you b’racha v’klalah, blessing and curse.” Blessings if you really listen to what God is telling you, and curses, if you do not listen. The language is not that of mitzvah, of commandment, but of sh’ma, of listening. Of behaving with respect. Being good with God requires being good with everybody around you. No longer, says God, will every man be free to do as he pleases, to act on what is right in his own mind. The symbol of the single place of worship that is used here is the symbol of the unity of the people, the focus of the nation on one set of rules and one way of applying those rules. Nobody gets to be holier-than-thou. We don’t have kosher Jews and glatt kosher Jews. The priests and the Levites may hold a special ritual status, but every single person has equal status in God’s eyes. We are the B’nai Yisrael, the children of Israel, and our parent does not play favorites. Iz geht schon auf Elul. And God will judge each of us on our merits. And what about those blessings and curses that we are to see and comprehend? They are not just abstract concepts. They also are people. There are people in our communities who are blessings. They do, as God implores us again this week, what is right and what is good. They go beyond the rules. They see that Jewish life is not merely centered around scrupulous observance to arcane rituals. They see, as God teaches us, that Jewish life requires adherence to the ethical foundations of what make us truly B’nai Yisrael. They see to the poor and the needy, they behave respectfully and ethically toward others at home and at work, in the synagogue and in public. They give, and they live, without a thought for their own self-aggrandizement. They take seriously the responsibility God places in their hands this week: “do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman.” They are women and men, traditional and progressive. They are Ashkenazic and Sephardic. They live within Israel and outside of it. And we are blessed by them. Unfortunately, there also are people in our world-wide community of Kl’al Yisrael who are curses. The outward piety, the tzitzit, the animated davening, the superficial study of Talmud Torah – all of that means nothing if, outside the walls of the synagouge or the study hall, a person behaves so shamefully. Spitting on a little girl going to school is spitting on the God in whose image she was created. Rioting and destroying property and terrifying children and babies brings shame, not only on a community, but on the God they supposedly revere. Abusing and belittling women subverts the very nature of creation: “zachar u-n’kevah bara otam” – “male and female, God created them.” Knowingly and deliberately using derogatory terms to describe people who may not look like you, or dress like you, or pray like you – this is a deliberate challenge to God’s charge to the people at the end of this week’s Torah portion to respect everybody: the servant, the stranger, the orphan, the widow. Women equally with men. Non-Jews as well as Jews. Bear in mind, God says yet again, “Ki eved ha-yi-tah b’Mitzrayim.” That you were once slaves in the land of Egypt. That’s why you base your life on Torah. Those who do not see what God lays out here – those who are so fixated on the power they wield in their little fiefdoms, on their vanity and their conceit and their arrogance -- they cannot possibly be called Jews. They are a curse. We are cursed by their presence among us. Our communities cannot be strong, we cannot be the lights unto the world that Isaiah promised, if we do not condemn these idolators among us and exile them from mainstream Judaism. I don’t hold out much hope where Rabbi Lau is concerned. But there’s some hope in Beit Shemesh, where a modern Orthodox woman, Aliza Bloch, is running for mayor next week and may have a chance to defeat her Haredi opponent. As Debra Kamin wrote in the “Times of Israel” today, “The election, city residents say, will be a watershed for Beit Shemesh. It will mark the day the city became a Haredi bastion or turned itself around and moved toward inclusion and diversity.” This election is a fight for the life and the soul of Beit Shemesh. Young people by the score have made clear that, if the Haredi win, if they are further empowered and their intolerant attitudes and abusive behavior spread, many of them will move out. And what happens in Beit Shemesh could happen anywhere in Israel and everywhere in the Jewish world. A lot of people may respond to the mainstream acceptance of this abuse by moving away from Judaism. So we all have to stay and fight for it. Iz geht schon auf Elul. Elul is almost here. The Days of Awe will follow quickly. This is the time to see God’s path and follow it. Kein yehi ratson. Be this God’s will and our own. As we say together: Amen. #####
Posted on: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 14:56:59 +0000
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