Oh, The Irony of It All; A Drash for Beha'alotcha

Martin Luther King, Jr gives his 'I Have a Dream' speach, 1963

I don’t know about you, but I love humor that’s deliciously ironic.  Irony, of course is akin to sarcasm, but subtler.  It doesn’t ‘bite’ quite as hard.  Sometimes, irony is so subtle that it takes a certainly sophistication to grasp it.

                Simple irony, not the most sophisticated kind, can be illustrated by the following:  one comes in from a rainstorm, soaked to the gills, and pronounces, ‘Lovely weather, isn’t it?’  This, in a pleasant tone of voice and whilst smiling and dripping water on the floor.
                Subtle irony, in contrast is like that found in this week’s Torah portion, in a passage I shall read from this pulpit tomorrow morning.  Of course, since you’re all planning to be present here tomorrow morning, you’ll all have the benefit of hearing it.  See what I mean about subtle irony?
                In tomorrow morning’s Torah reading, we shall read of how Miriam attacks her bother Moses because of ‘that Cushite woman he married.’  This of course refers to Tzipporah, the daughter of the Midianite Priest Jethro.  So Miriam’s complaint against his brother, at least overtly is that he married a black woman.
                How are we to see what is really happening here?  This complaint comes seemingly out of the blue, with no background text to prepare us for any particular antipathy toward blacks on Miriam’s part.  But it does come on the heels of one of the series of rebellions of the people against Moses, where many of the Israelites are killed for their rebellion against the authority of Moses, and therefore by extension G-d.
                It is a common human failing to try to assassinate another person’s character with gossip.  It is a pitfall that causes each one of us to stumble.  I would be very surprised if there was a single person in this room tonight, who has not been guilty of this sin from time to time.  I know I have.  It’s certainly not something, of which I’m proud.  It’s a universal failing that, if we are aware of doing it, then we can begin to control our tongues.  Gossip is the bane of religious life; it is corrosive the delicate alloy of congregational life.  It can do more than anything else, to poison the atmosphere and tear a once-cohesive group asunder.  It transcends lines of faith and denomination, and it is found on both sides of the sea.  But that’s another sermon, for another night.  And believe me, you shall hear it eventually!  For now, suffice it to say that Miriam is blatantly guilty of it here.
                So what’s the irony of Miriam’s gossiping?  It’s in the consequences.  If the irony were simple, Miriam would turn black.  She would become what she had complained about.  That would be simple, direct and transparent.  But the Torah reports a more subtle irony in Miriam’s punishment for her gossiping.  Instead of being turned black, she’s turned white.  That is, white as snow.  She’s afflicted with tzara’at, a condition where the victim develops white scales.  Our Torah portion likens it to one who comes out of the womb with half his flesh eaten away.  It’s a form of the disease known as leprosy, whose victims were as recently as the 19^th century consigned to colonies where they were isolated from society, so greatly was the disease feared.
                The irony is of course delicious because we all agree that skin color is a completely useless indicator of anything in a person’s character.  Martin Luther King, Jr. said in his famous speech in 1963: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  While it can be argued that racism still exists, we must acknowledge that it has been forced underground.  It is so socially unacceptable to express overt racism, that those who hold racist views are forced nevertheless to repudiate them.
                We Jews have our foibles.  We can and should continually examine ourselves for qualities that are undesirable.  Even if those qualities are pointed out by our detractors, it is good to look in the mirror and ask ourselves, am I really that way?  We are often accused of racism.  But I don’t find much evidence of that in Jewish circles.  Many of our congregations look like veritable United Nations of racial diversity.  Wherever I’ve lived or visited – my native USA, South Africa, the UK, Germany, Turkey – I’ve found Jews to be among the most tolerant people one can imagine.  Some would say we’re too reflexively tolerant and thus hurt ourselves in the process.  Even in Israel, which the world press loves to condemn as a ‘Racist Country,’ as an ‘Apartheid State,’ I find very little evidence of racial hatred.  For every Jew spontaneously shouting ‘mavet la’aravim’ – ‘death to the Arabs’ – after a terror attack, I find dozens who speak up against such sentiments, or who physically protect Arab citizens.
                   I see Miriam’s complaint against ‘the Cushite woman that Moses married’ as an attempt to use gossip to undermine her brother’s authority.  If that’s true, and she’s not expressing racial contempt, does that make it any less racist?  Of course not; if the Nazis cynically used folk images of Jews as sub-humans, while not really holding such views of Jews, does that lessen their repugnance in using such imagery in their quest to rid Europe of Jews?  I think you know the answer; it doesn’t matter one whit.
                So Miriam’s punishment for railing against a black woman – whatever her true complaint may have been – is deliciously ironic.  She is turned ‘white as snow’ with a skin affliction.  The Torah, no matter how it may have come into being, certainly speaks at times with a certain playfulness and drama.  It doesn’t come across as a bulldozer.  It contains multiple layers of wit, irony and satire for us to savor and try to understand.
                We now begin a Shabbat of rest, a Shabbat of peace, a Shabbat of worship, a Shabbat which gives us the refreshment to prepare ourselves for the quest of ‘tikkun olam’ in the coming week.  We read, along with the entire Jewish world, a slice of our Torah.  Let us rejoice in the beauty, in the truth, in the irony of that Torah.  Let us see its lessons subtle and direct, and allow them to make us better people, and a better people.