Rabbi Wolpe - ADL Impressions

Mark Twain, whose manuscripts are nearly illegible due to all the changes and revisions, once wrote, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter, ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

For a word to be lightning, it does not need to be long. In this week’s Torah portion, the 19th century sage, Mei Hashiloah, Rabbi Mordecai Yosef of Izhbitza, focuses on two letters: the word “if,” which begins the portion: “If you walk in my ways.” (Leviticus 26:3) He explains that “if” signals the uncertainty of one who seeks to follow God’s ways, for “the will of God is very deep.”

The more we explore “if,” the more lightning we find in the word. “If” in Hebrew is im and contains all possibility in it. “If this had happened.” “If that had not happened.” “If I had said this.” “If I had not said that.” But the word im contains an even greater power in Jewish history.

“Im” is spelled aleph mem. The Mincha Belulah (16th century) teaches that in liberation, there was an im – an if. The name Aaron begins with an aleph and Moses with a mem. So too with Purim: Esther begins with an aleph and Mordecai with a mem. Finally, Eliyahu, the herald of the end times, begins with an aleph and Moshiach, the Messiah, begins with a mem. The aleph and mem of im carry within them past and future redemption.

“If” contains all of life’s regrets. But even more, im is a word of possibility. God says, “IF you walk in My ways.” We hold the im in our own hands.

One of the best loved poems in the English language was written by Rudyard Kipling for his son. It is called, “If.” It’s worth reading the whole poem – here is a part:

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too…
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a man, my son!”

“If” is in your power – you can change your life. God gives us the power – and the choice.

The Torah never fails to admonish us about idols. Again in this week’s parashah, we are told not to set up idols. We understand that idols are a kind of substitute God, and therefore, it seems like we are insulting God by worshipping other gods, particularly when they are the products of our own hands. But I want to suggest two more ways that idols are dangerous – by making us too important and by making us too insignificant.

Idols contribute to our sense that we can channel the great forces of the world and control them. We make idols in our own image: idols are usually similar to human forms and figures. It is as if we create representations of ourselves and then venerate them.

But idolatry also gives us too little credit. Abraham Joshua Heschel once taught that idols are forbidden not because they insult God, but because they insult us. There already exists in the world an image of God. It is in each human being. Therefore, the medium through which one fashions a genuine image is the medium of one’s life, by sacred acts. To carve a piece of wood and call it God is to belittle God and to belittle the spark of God inside of us.

As images of God, we are given a sacred task. The canvas is existence; a mitzvah is a brushstroke; we are instructed to make of our lives a work of holy art. Rather than carve artistic ornaments from the material of the world and bow to them, we fashion goodness, godliness, for the stuff of our souls.

Rabbi Akiva taught in Pirke Avoth that we are loved for we were created in God’s image. But an even greater love is reflected in God’s telling us that we were made in the divine image. With such a privilege, why fashion idols? Instead, we should learn to see each other as individual sparks of the One who created us all.

During these days, Jews count the “Omer.” The Omer marks the 50 days traveling the desert from Egypt to Sinai. Beginning the second night of Passover, we count each day until the holiday of Shavuot, 50 days later, when Israel stood at Sinai to receive the Torah. Jews follow the practice of counting each evening, and there are many spiritual and mystical significances given to the days.

The Omer also has agricultural significance. It recalls the wave offering of the Temple on the second day of Passover. The wave offering was a measure of flour made from the first sheaves of barley grain that had been reaped.

The late Chief Rabbi of Israel, Isaac Herzog, writes that the Talmud regards barley is a maakhel behema, a food fit for beasts. Why do we offer animal food in the Temple? Could it not be construed as an insult to God?

We know, he continues, that human beings share many things with animals. From a certain perspective, we are a link on the biological chain, and nothing more. As with all of nature, we are governed by our physical natures. Yet, human beings can act against impulse and behave in ways that refuse to permit our impulses to control us. Judaism teaches that it is often our task to rise above animality alone and to realize our higher natures.

Nature is, in the famous phrase of the poet Tennyson, “Red in tooth and claw.” Violence and cruelty are part of human nature, too. Yet according to the Talmud, the purpose of the mitzvot — the entire system of Jewish law — is to refine human beings. That which begins as an animal instinct can, through the guidance of Torah, be lifted to embody an expression of the Divine. The barley offering is a food for animals, but sifted and refined, it can be offered to God. We too begin with an animal nature, but the Omer represents the aspiration to ennoble instinct, to recognize that we are indeed animals, but we are not only animals. Sifted and refined, day by day, we are worthy to approach God.

Rabbi Akiva identifies a problematic verse as the most important one in the Torah: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18).

Parashat Kedoshim contains a number of laws, but it is revealing to note what immediately precedes the admonition, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The beginning of the verse is, “Lo tikom v’lo titur” (Do not take vengeance or hold a grudge against others).

If you are not to hold a grudge, what ought one to do? When someone commits an offense against you, the alternative to holding a grudge is forgiveness. We are all aware that forgiveness is, to say the least, a difficult task. The advice of the Talmud is not easy to follow: “Be of those who take an insult but do not give it. Hear their reproach but do not reply” (Gittin 36b). There may be offenses for which forgiveness is not possible. Yet, we live increasingly in a society where forgiveness is not given for almost any offense, and words that one speaks can result in being publicly reviled or “canceled” with no apparent path to restoration.

This is not only ungenerous but a narrow view of the purposes of forgiveness. We do not forgive other people only for their sake. As has been said–to hold a grudge against another is to swallow poison planning for it to kill the persons next to you.

The verse that precedes loving your neighbor tells us, “Do not hate your kinsman in your heart.” It is one of the very few places where the Torah commands emotion. But we can now understand that it does so for our own good, because hatred not only imperils community, but it embitters the life of the hater. One way of understanding the famous verse that follows is – love your neighbor, forgive your neighbor, for that is one way of learning to love yourself.

It is lesson our society needs to learn.

“The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness. (Lev. 16:22).” This week, we read about the ceremony that led to the term scapegoat.’

That which is guiltless bears away the guilt and shame of others. In time, the idea became not just that we place our sins knowingly on someone or something else, but that we blame them for our own failings. We are absolved and the other is guilty. For much of human this very psychology played a role in hatred of the Jews.

When societies had difficulties, from medieval Spain to 20th century Germany, rather than explore the internal problems that caused the crisis, people – especially the leadership — blamed the Jews. Finding a reason outside oneself to despise is so much more gratifying than recognizing one’s own faults.

As the scholar Ruth Wisse has detailed, making the Jews scapegoat builds coalitions. What is more unifying than a common hatred? Whether it is for the axis powers in WW2 or the Arab nations at the founding of Israel, the identification of an enemy – especially one too weak to defend itself – forged a bond of mutual enmity. And the Jews paid the price.

When you wonder how signs could appear as oxymoronic as “Queers for Hamas,” the answer is the same. Once you build a coalition of hatred, it doesn’t matter that your values clash with other partners; you are bound by this common enemy.

The Torah understood this psychological mechanism, creating a benign and helpful system. The goat wanders off into the wilderness. No one is hurt. But when self-loathing turns outwards to other human beings, it creates havoc in the world.

Just as the Torah recognizes the syndrome, it provides the antidote. The very beginning of Genesis teaches that every human being is in the image of God. No single group is responsible for the sins and unhappiness of humanity, but there is a single spiritual reality that ties us all together. Rather than a coalition built on hatred, the Torah teaches a coalition built on the acknowledgment that we are all sparks of the Divine – a coalition built on respect, on decency, and on love.

Blessed are You O Lord our God, who has sanctified us with Your commandments and commanded us to eat bitter herbs.

We sit in ease at the Seder table and eat bitter herbs to recall the hardships of our ancestors and the ordeals of those who still suffer. We cannot forget the images of our brothers and sisters who are hostages, in cruel captivity; those families who sit at the seder in bitter anguish wondering about the fate of those whom they love; families who sit at the table that is not full, for loved ones killed in battle, injured and unable to join, serving their counry even on the holiday — reminders of the legacy of a hatred all too alive with us today. Maror is the taste of absence, the sign of the empty seat.

As with taking drops from our cups for the fallen Egyptians, we do not forget the sufferings of others, those in war zones everywhere who undergo deprivation and suffering. As with generations who preceded us, we do not shut our hearts to the pain of human beings no matter where they may be.

As hatred rises against the Jewish people across the globe, we are particularly mindful that maror is supposed to bring tears to our eyes. We weep for the legacy of antisemitism that has brought so much destruction into God’s world. We weep for those who even today, 3,000 years after our people were born, feel they cannot be fully free because of the prejudice against them, against their children, against our small family of faith.

Maror brings pain but not despair. We combine it with Haroset to remind us that the world is also full of sweetness, and it is our task to feel both, the honey and the sting, the tribulations, and the richness of tradition, the bitter and the sweet. As we taste the maror and recall the anguish that afflicts our people and our world, we pray that in the year to come, through our efforts and God’s help, there will be less pain, fewer who suffer, more who can celebrate at home and in peace. Amen.

Throughout Jewish history, the Passover has operated on two levels of time. The Haggadah recounts the past, the story of both the Exodus and the Talmudic Rabbis who expound on it. The words make all of the ideas come alive for the participants: slavery, freedom, study, storytelling, song, and symbol. Passover is quintessentially a celebration of the events of the Jewish past.

At the same time, the Passover is about the present. In medieval times, Jews felt their predicament as parallel to their ancestors, and the despotism and persecution with which they lived lent power to the tales of the Haggadah. Closer to our own day, I remember my parents telling me when they visited the Soviet Union how the Jews trapped behind the iron curtain felt the Passover was about them. In the struggles of the slaves, they saw their own struggles; in the character of the Pharaoh, they saw their communist oppressors; in the story of liberation, they saw their own hope. The Seder was not a meal about what was, but what is.

As we sit down to the Seder this year, we have the same experience. In our own day, the Seder is about the liberation from Egypt, but also about the hostages in Gaza. We recall the fear expressed in the time of the plagues but each moment also recalls us to the violence and brutality that our sisters and brothers in the land of Israel both experience and fear today. The Seder is again the story of what was, but also the story of what is.

We are told in the Haggadah that in each generation one must see oneself as if we went forth from Mitzrayim. The reverse is also the case. In each generation we must see Mitzrayim as it surrounds us today.

This year, we remember those among our people who are in captivity. As we recall the trials of our people in ancient times, we pray for the liberation of our people in our own day. In every generation, there have arisen those who would destroy us. And in every generation, we have arisen to fight, to remember, to pray, and tell the story.

This week’s Torah portion describes an uninspired procedure – the Priest examining an afflicted person’s skin disease. Yet it contains an essential truth about life, and a critique of our word.

In Leviticus 13:3, the Priest is deciding if the skin lesion denotes an impurity. One of the criteria is if “it is more than skin deep.” In other words – are we dealing with something that goes beyond the appearance and touches the character of the person?

The Torah is not fixated on appearances. Strange as it seems, for most of the major figures of the bible, we have no physical description. We do not know if Abraham was tall or short, or if Rebecca had brown hair. In an age of Instagram and selfies, there is a pervasive indifference in our sacred texts to the physical presentation of our greatest figures.

Even more, the Torah actively resists the imputation of morality to beauty. Many characters described as physically imposing are not impressive in their actions, such as Saul, Samson, and Goliath. We know from various studies that an attractive person is liable to be thought of more favorably. This is called the “halo effect” – that we tend to credit beauty with goodness. Yet character is not determined by one’s outward appearance, and as the poet Masefield reminds us: “I have seen flowers come in stony places.”

Never has a society been more fixated on the way things look than our own. But in combatting cruelty and promoting kindness in this world our tradition asks us to recall what God said to the prophet Samuel: people focus on what is visible, “but the Lord sees into the heart (I Sam. 16:7).”

Action is the measure of character. How we speak about and treat other human beings is the measure of our moral standing, not how we look on a screen. Many civilizations worshipped the contours of the human form, but the section from Proverbs we recite each Friday night, a “Woman of Valor,” reminds us that beauty can be deceitful but one who has reverence for God should be praised. Summing up the difference between the Greek and Jewish attitudes, the 19th century poet and scholar Matthew Arnold wrote that “Greece worshipped the holiness of beauty; Jews found the beauty of holiness.” For all of us, Jew and non-Jew, character is more than skin deep.

In Leviticus, Aaron is ordained as the High Priest. This week we are told (Leviticus 9:1): “On the eighth day, Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel.” Why was the eighth day chosen?

Eight is a time for renewal. Seven represents fullness, completeness. There are seven days to creation, seven days to a week. Then comes the eighth.

When a male is born in Judaism, after a week the brit milah signifies a new beginning as one ushered into the covenant of Israel. Conversely, when someone passes away, the mourners sit shiva, literally seven, before they begin a new phase of life, one without the physical presence of the one whom they loved who has died. Each, the onset and the end of life, envision the eighth day as a starting point.

The holiday of Sukkot concludes with Shemini Atzeret, the eighth day of gathering. It concludes with Simchat Torah, the reading of the Torah – the new beginning, Genesis.

Before the bride and groom come under the huppah, it is traditional to have the bride circle the groom seven times (in these days, sometimes three, three and one.) That is completion, and now they are ready to take the eight step toward a new beginning.

Aaron begins on the eighth day because he must begin again. He failed with the golden calf and will know tragedy with the death of his sons. Rashi explains that the public announcement is so that people know God has chosen Aaron despite the golden calf.

He begins again. Moses too has known multiple frustrations, disappointments, and failures. He and Aaron will nonetheless renew themselves to continue to lead Israel’s march through the desert. Eight is the promise that shortcomings are not the final word.

We celebrate new beginnings. Yet the power not of beginning, but of beginning again, is a secret to survival. The community of Safed created vibrancy from the ashes of the Inquisition, American Jewry from those who fled Europe before the wars, and countless events in the history of the Jewish people down to our own day and the founding of the State of Israel.

Many peoples in history have lived their term and disappeared; they could not exceed seven. We seek to be the people of the eight. Beginning anew is the way of spirit.

Anyone familiar with a Jewish wedding has to be shocked by the reading from this week’s haftorah. The prophet Jeremiah declares bleakly to the people in God’s name: “Then will I silence, in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of joy and gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the bride: for the land shall be desolate (7:34).”

Jeremiah’s words made sense in his time. He lived in a tumultuous age when the Assyrian empire declined and the Babylonians arose. Israel was defeated by the Babylonians and went weeping into exile. There was no joy in the streets of Jerusalem. It was a time of loss and deep despair.

So it is very strange that we quote the prophet at a wedding! What do we sing as we chant the sheva brachot, the seven blessings? “Again will be heard in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of joy and gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the bride.”

We take the despair of the prophet and with a phrase, turn it to hope. There is an even more famous example of this reversal in Ezekiel. In chapter 37, the famous vision of the dry bones, Ezekiel pronounces, “Avdah Tikvateinu” – we have lost our hope. That phrase may sound familiar. The second verse of Hatikva, the national anthem, begins, “Od lo avdah tikvateinu” – we have still not lost our hope. Once more, the words of the prophet are turned from anguish to inspiration. We know that better days will come and we refuse to be dispirited.

In these difficult days when we fight a rising tide of hate, there is an impulse to believe that our efforts are in vain and our future bleak. But every time we sing at a wedding, each time we rise for Hatikvah – indeed each time we seek to transform enmity to acceptance and hatred to love – we are practicing the wisdom of our tradition. As the Psalmist taught us thousands of years ago, “In the evening there will be weeping, but joy will come in the morning (Ps. 30:5).” Take heart – there shall be joy in Judah and laughter on the streets of Jerusalem.