Drash for Shavuot

Chag Sameach, Lovers of Torah!

Clara and I arrived here on 23 May of last year.  But due to the variations of the Jewish Calendar, in Jewish terms we’ve been here just over a year.  I know that because, last week, as I was preparing my drash for Bamidbar, I realised I’d spoken on that Parashah the first Shabbat we were here on the Gold Coast.  So I had to look up the drash I gave that Shabbat and read through it, and Make sure I wasn’t repeating myself this year.  And there it was, on my hard drive…and thank God what I’d decided to say last week for the first weekly portion in the Book of Numbers, wasn’t the same message I gave a year ago!  And now, every time I prepare a drash, I’ll have to check my thoughts against what I said for the same Parashah the year before.  As you can see, when a rabbi starts developing longevity on the job, his job becomes ever harder!  But the worst thing is the High Holy Days, Yamim Hanora’im of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.  Because we rabbis see our drashot on those days as a kind of valedictory, we pour our hearts into our sermons for those days and really endeavour to say something profound and new.

          I don’t usually sweat the Three Pilgrimage Festivals, of which Shavuot is one, nearly as much.  In fact, I seldom give drashot on these festival days.  Why?  Well for one thing, each festival has its own message that is built-in, if you will, to the history and purpose of the day.  Shavuot, which began just over an hour ago as sunset, is Chag Matan Torah…the festival of giving the Torah.  This is the anniversary, according to the Rabbis, of the event on Sinai that largely defines us as a religious group.  Actually, the three festivals taken as a series, define Jewish religion, that is the relationship of the Jewish people to the God of Israel, in its totality.  Passover’s message is that we needed to be free of the tyrannous rule and servitude of Pharaoh if we were to serve God.  Through signs and wonders, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, God provided that freedom.

Shavuot’s message is that we need memory and parameters if we are to service God.  The Torah provides both.  Its text recounts our oral history, how a band of nomads came to be a people, and how that people was forged in adversity.  Its text provides the legislation that informs us what God, who gave us our freedom, expects of us.  On Shavuot we read the Ten Commandments, or the Ten Utterances.  These do not, in and of themselves, constitute a law code.  Rather, they form a sort of preamble to the law code that is Halachah.  The Ten Commandments form a basis for all the legislative messages in the Torah.  When we read the Ten Commandments, as we shall in our Torah reading tomorrow morning, we do not for a minute think that we’re reading a sum-total of God’s expectations of us.  Rather, we are looking at the ‘tip of iceberg’; we are looking at an elegant encapsulation of the principles that underlie all of Jewish law.

And then of course there’s Sukkot, which happens after Yom Kippur.  Its message is that the same God who gave us freedom, the same God who gave us a blueprint for our life as a people, kept us safe and nourished during our years of wandering.  Even after imposing upon our distant ancestors the sentence that they would die in the desert in preparation for their children’s inheriting the Holy Land, God then stayed with the people.  He saw to their needs and comforted them.  He instructed them to craft the Tabernacle, to be used in the cultic rites that were a reminder of His presence.

Three festivals, three different themes.  And taken together, they spell out what it means to be a Jew.  But tonight, I’m going to break my pattern and offer you a few thoughts.  Why?  Well, because I can…of course!

I had a girlfriend once.  Yes, I know…quite incredible!  And yes, this was before Clara and I met!  So I had a girlfriend, and we were the only Jews in our small city of about 80,000 souls.  Okay, we weren’t the only Jews in this city!  But we were the only visible Jews in this city.  My girlfriend, Donna was very visible, because she was half of the pair of principal presenters on the evening news program on this city’s only television station.  I was visible because I was in the Navy and did a lot of community service work.  So there were other Jews around, a small congregation of them not to mention those who wouldn’t be caught dead in the local synagogue!  (Sound familiar?)  But since they didn’t have public roles, and they didn’t dress like Paul Corias, one wouldn’t know they were there…unless one knew them personally.

So this young woman, Donna the Jewess who was on the evening news, and I sometimes made community appearances together.  She liked to take me along because I was a perfect foil.  And I was often able to go, because I would wear my uniform and my commanding officer was happy for his sailors to make appearances in town in uniform.  So one day Donna and I were at a local school where we were judging some competition:  I think it was the National History Day Fair or some such.  And afterward, while talking to the children, it somehow came out that Donna was Jewish.  And because it was a Christian school, a few of the children were immediately full of questions.  At that moment, I was busy with another cluster of children who were asking about all the cool badges and ribbons on my uniform.  Donna called me over to ask me to field a question that she couldn’t answer. “Don can answer that,” she told the child who’d asked. “He loves the Torah.”

Now I’d never thought of myself as a particular lover of the Torah.  I was simply a Jew, always trying to learn something new, always trying to discern what it was that God wanted me to do.  (And speaking in rhyme like Johnny Cochran…)  Of course, I would touch my Tallit to the Torah when it went past, and then kiss the Tallit, as a sign of veneration.  And I tried to live out the values and the lifestyle that we learn from Torah.  But if someone would say of a person, “he loves the Torah,” that would have evoked images of Chassidim dancing ecstatically with the scrolls on Simchat Torah or some such.  I simply didn’t see myself as fitting that description.

So my friend’s proclamation, that Don would be the one to answer the child’s question because “he loves the Torah,” got me to thinking.  Especially because I was able to answer the child’s question which, it turned out, was not a difficult one.  When I had a chance to really chew on Donna’s words, I realised that I did, indeed, love the Torah.

And most of you do, too.  No, you don’t do so demonstratively.  At least, not all the time.  But the fact that you’re here tonight, celebrating the Feast of Weeks, says something important.  When other Jews are home waiting for NCIS to begin, you’ve come here to spend an hour at shule, honouring that it is an important festival today and wanting to make a statement about it.  And your statement, repeated in every Jewish community in the world today beginning here in Australasia and working its way west, reverberates powerfully.  On a weeknight, when you’ve just been in this sanctuary a couple of days ago and will be again in just a few days, you’ve taken the time to attend this service.  Even if you don’t think of yourself as the most religious Jew on the planet, you’ve added your voice and your presence to an important phenomenon.  Yes, chances that you think yourselves this way…and perhaps I’m embarrassing you by saying so.  But unless I’m dead off base, you too are Lovers of the Torah.

Oh, I guess I could now go on to tell you of the responsibilities that being a Lover of Torah entails.  I guess I could try to convict your hearts to translate that love into some particular action.  But not tonight.  Oh, I reserve the right to bring that message some other night, some other day.  But for now, let’s just bask in the notion that we are Lovers of Torah.  Try not to be embarrassed about it.  It doesn’t mean that you’re too Jewish, too religious!  It just means that your heartstrings, or perhaps some other imperative, pull you to this place tonight.  Chag Sameach, Lovers of Torah!   

Drash for Parashat Bamidbar

It matters who does the Counting

You may know that I consider myself something of an ‘armchair’ historian.  That is to say, I enjoy reading, and understanding history.  But I am not trained as an historian, and I cannot claim the title of ‘historian’ without the modifier above.  But I have read to the point that I think that I have some appreciation of the great events and trends that have shaped the world as we know it today.  I believe that history is a very important discipline, perhaps one of the most important of all the humanities.  When I first read what George Santayana wrote about remembering the past, it resonated deeply with me.  The Spanish essayist famously stated: “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”  He is often misquoted in different ways, but even then his message is usually quite clear:  it is important to know, and therefore to study, history.

So, why didn’t I become an historian?  Who knows?  To paraphrase Gene Wilder in the film The Frisco Kid:  “God made me a rabbi.  Maybe God had enough historians.”

The truth is that the study of history was much maligned by high school students when I was in school.  One would hear horror stories that the study of history is all about “memorising names and dates” as if they are all disconnected factoids. “Memorising names and dates” became a trope for the notion of learning irrelevant information with which one would not otherwise bother.

Given that I graduated from high school close to forty years ago – and I never thought I would be saying that – I have grown and matured and, I hope, wizened since then.  I still have little patience for memorising disconnected factoids.  I’m not a big fan of trivia games and trivia evenings.  But I see the study of history as being far deeper than the memorisation of irrelevant information.

This Shabbat, we begin reading the fourth book of the Torah, Sefer Bamidbar, the Book of Numbers in common designation.  As the book begins, God instructs Moses and Aaron to organise a census of the people Israel.  They are to be counted, all the males from age 20 and above, all those fit for military service.  They are not only to be counted, but organised into military formations, by tribe, with leaders of various echelons to be identified and appointed by leaders from each respective tribe.  These leaders were appointed to work with Moses and Aaron to accomplish these tasks.  The first order of business, which we have just read in our public reading from the first chapter, was to actually name the tribal leaders who will conduct the census.

This information may seem extraneous.  It may seem tantamount to the “disconnected factoids” that students often think that history as an academic discipline entails.  But there’s nothing extraneous about the identities of the officials involved in the census.  They would be aware of which families had how many sons eligible for service.  And they would also be aware of the capabilities of the men in question, the better to organise them into troops and echelons.

The use of tribal officials to determine military draft and organisation has its modern equivalent.  The United States, from 1940 until 1973, relied on local Draft Boards to determine who would serve.  Military call-ups, deferments, and exemptions were decided by boards made up of prominent citizens in each town and city.  This lent authority to the entire process, since these decisions were being made not by some faceless bureaucrat in Washington but by boards comprised of local citizens.  One can certainly argue that the process, handled at a local level, had more credibility as long as those administering it were known to be upstanding citizens, as intended.  And of course, its purpose was critical:  to staff the army during wartime.  The process needed the full cooperation of the country’s citizens if it was to fulfil its intended function.  That the system broke down during the Vietnam War – as it apparently did here as well – had to do with the extensive scope of deferments and exemptions available.  This, plus a lack of popular appreciation as to that war’s purpose.  In addition to other factors.  But then, we’re not here this morning to study the Vietnam War…

So, to the ones being mustered and counted and assigned, there was nothing extraneous about the identities of the tribal elders assigned to serve on the ancient equivalent of a ‘draft board.’  And there’s nothing extraneous about the fact that the tribes of Israel functioned as autonomous entities.  True, Moses served as the head of the confederation, until he died and was replaced by Joshua bin Nun.  But as we learned way back in the Parashat Yitro in the Book of Exodus, the tribes were organised to be mostly self-governing.  All but the most difficult disputes and issues were dealt with at the lowest possible echelon, at the tribal level. 

That’s how the Israelite nation functioned for generations.  The tribes were organised into an army, with the army’s divisions organised along tribal lines with tribal officers leading the troops into battle.  But once the nation entered and occupied the Land, the people were arrayed geographically according to tribe.  Each tribe’s territory was ruled autonomously.  There was no institutional central government.  The Malbim, Rabbi Meir Leibush who lived in Russia in the 19^th century, asserts that this tribal geographic division is the very reason that the conquering army was organised by tribe.  The tribes cooperated in cultic matters, under the leadership of the tribe of Levi, who were set aside for that purpose.  Also when there were threats to the nation.  There was no king, only judges:  ad hoc leaders who arose to lead at certain key times.  That is, until the people demanded a centralised organisation under a king.  Saul was the first king appointed, followed by David.

The word ‘tribalism’ has a negative connotation today.  It means factionalism; it means allegiance to something other than the state.  Tribalism is seen as weakening the state.  In the case of an emerging state such as Iraq, tribalism clearly impedes the creation of a polity that can govern with any effectiveness.  So in the modern world, the argument that tribalism gets in the way of progress, is probably not a difficult argument to make.  But in the ancient world, and certainly among the emerging people Israel, tribal loyalty was a strength.  It was the glue that kept the people together.  It was the basis for bringing the nation together for the difficult tasks ahead.  It matters that specific tribal leaders supervised the counting for the census.

But it takes an appreciation of the discipline of history, to enable one to truly understand this.  Otherwise, we have a tendency to superimpose our contemporary sensibilities and values over people and events that happened long ago.  And that is not helpful.  It impedes us from learning the lesson of history.  And actualises the pitfall identified by Santayana.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out one other fact – definitely not an irrelevant factoid – about the list of tribal officials who were to conduct the census.  The name of the first official listed – Elitzur – means ‘God is my Rock,’ or ‘God is my Protector.’  The name of the last person mentioned is Einan, which means ‘eye.’  The Ba’al Turim, Jacob ben Asher whose life spanned the 13^th and 14^th centuries, asserted that this alludes to the verse Deuteronomy 32.10:  “(God) protected (Israel) like the pupil of His eye.”  In other words, Rabbi Jacob saw the names as predicting that God would register His approval of the enterprise by protecting the Israelite army in its coming campaign.

I know that I’ve asserted on occasion that the Torah is not a history text.  That it is a morality text.  But it is couched in the form of an epic narrative that chronicles people and events asserted to be historical.  It is therefore important to apply the principles of history as a discipline when reading, and trying to make sense of, the Torah.  And if it is an important morality text as I’ve asserted, then it is important to make sense of it.  May we succeed in doing so.  Shabbat shalom.

Drash for Shabbat Behar-Bechukotai

Australian Dairy Farm

That it May Go Well for You

Here in this Lucky Country, in this land of plenty where we are blessed to live, it is hard to really appreciate the grinding poverty and hunger of other parts of the world.  But it exists.  Always somewhere over the horizon.  Out of sight…but hopefully not out of mind.  Because one would have to be heartless not to acknowledge that the kind of poverty I have in mind does exist.  The kind where children – and adults – routinely die of malnutrition.  The sort of places from which we see haunting images of distended bellies and discoloured mouths.  Of listless people who don’t even swat as flies buzz around their heads.

The fact that such hunger is limited to specific places, begs the question:  what is it about these places that causes such a shortage, or imbalance of resources?  Why do some places experience disaster after disaster that causes famine, with not only hunger but lasting physical and social devastation?

With that question in mind, we read today’s Torah reading from Leviticus 26.3-14, that promises abundance and plenty if we will only obey God’s laws and commandments.  If we are obedient, things will go well for us.  Had we read further in the chapter, we would also have read a vivid description of the kind of disaster that the Torah predicts, should we not follow God’s laws and commandments.  If we fail to obey, things will not go well for us.

So are we to look upon places that prosper, and assume that their inhabitants are following God’s laws and commandments?  And to look upon places that suffer poverty and famine, and assume that their inhabitants regularly transgress God’s laws and commandments?

Obviously such an assumption, even when cloaked in genuine concern, can and does come off as being arrogant.  But if we are blessed to live in a land of plenty, a land without hunger, shouldn’t we assume that we’re doing something right?  Lucky as this country may be, it still requires good stewardship to keep it ‘lucky’!  And if it is okay to think that, then isn’t the corollary – that the countries chronically suffering are doing something wrong – also valid?

In Progressive Judaism, we have traditionally had a problem with passages in the Torah such as this one for this very reason.  They are part of Torah and we cannot excise them.  But we must somehow make sense of them.

We can write them off as expressions of the theology of a God whom we reject.  We can say that this is not God was we understand Him.  And I would not disagree with that sentiment.  I do not believe that God, incensed at a nation’s non-compliance with His law, smites that nation with His wrath.  That’s not within my own understanding of God’s nature.  Even though the latter is really beyond understanding...

When we think of the phrase ‘God’s laws and commandments’ today, we tend to automatically think specifically of ritual law.  Keeping kosher.  Avoiding forbidden activities on the Sabbath.  Rendering the proper documents in their proper forms – for example, the ketubah and get – at the prescribed times of our lives.  Mourning in the prescribed way.  It is hard to make a moral connection with our compliance – or non-compliance – with these statutes, and how much we prosper or do not.  If we do focus on such things only, then we’re looking at a very limited part of God’s law.

But God’s law as presented in the Torah includes rules that make simple good sense.  For example, in agricultural law.  The Torah demands practices that are common in successful agricultural economies.  These are practices that care for the land and help ensure sustained successful harvests.  These are practices that are often ignored in places where crops fail or are marginal year after year.  Places that cannot feed their inhabitants.  Places where famine has changed the very weather patterns over the years, drying up seasonal rains.

Although ostensibly caused by a protracted drought, it was bad farming methods that largely caused the ‘Dust Bowl’ of the American Midwest of the 1930’s.  That resulted in devastation which depopulated large swaths of a number of US states.  But Americans learned the lesson from their misfortune.  The government today encourages farmers through financial and other incentives to institute a number of practices that have led to sustainable farming.  They have restored the fertility of the land.  American farmers are once again feeding the huge US population and other large parts of the world as well with their massive grain harvests.  They were not looking to the Torah for guidance in how to effect this restoration.  But much of what they did, came from wisdom already stated in the pages of the Torah.

Another good example is the State of Israel.  The Ottoman Province of Palestine, part of which became the modern Jewish State, was an impoverished backwater of the late Turkish Empire.  Its hillsides were seriously eroded.  Its lowlands were covered in malarial swamps.  When the Jews began settling and cultivating the land, they used scientifically-proven methods.  These settlers were largely secular Jews – they weren’t necessarily looking to the Torah for guidance.  But their methods were already largely found in the wisdom of the Torah.  And look at how the land has blossomed!  Long-time residents tell of how the microclimate has changed over the decades – of how it has cooled and become wetter – thanks to the successful cultivation of the land.  Good methods, used for years, bring change that ultimately becomes self-sustaining.

So we can look upon the successes of agricultural economies and admit that the Torah contains wisdom in this area after all.  And if we can make such an admission, then we can ‘mine’ the Torah for wisdom in other areas as well.  And we can admit – and even celebrate – that the Torah serves as a compendium of wisdom in various disciplines.  Thus we can read the prediction of success and prosperity if one follows its law – and disaster if one does not – less in terms of Divine reward of punishment.  Rather, perhaps such phenomena simply represent the prosperity that follows from good sense decision-making.  And the poverty that follows from poor stewardship.  To put it another way:  perhaps God has no ‘need’ to reward or punish us for our compliance or transgression of His law.  We create our own reward or punishment.  Because God’s law, at least much of it, has proven to be sensible and plain good practice.

Perhaps this does not help us to have compassion for places that do not put into effect the Torah’s wisdom.  Or does it?  If we are blessed with success and prosperity, then that gives us a responsibility to assist other places in learning the wisdom we possess.  This is why Australia is so quick to send assistance, technical and otherwise, when disaster strikes elsewhere.  As, I’m proud to say, does the United States.  But I’m most proud to point to Israel, and the way she responds when disaster strikes in far-away places.  Despite being a tiny country with a relatively-small population and economy, despite her own ongoing security problems, despite being particularly reviled among the nations of the world, Israel is usually the first to offer, and then provide assistance.  I’ll never forget seeing the Israeli flag flying over the very first aid hospital set up in the wake of Haiti’s devastating earthquake in 2010.  In America’s backyard – but the Israelis were the first to assist.  

If we accept the premise that there is abundant wisdom inherent in God’s law, then we should look for good consequences if we live according to it.  And bad consequences if we do not.  It’s only logical.  And if this book that we lovingly take out and read every week does have intrinsic value and wisdom, then we aught to share that wisdom with the world.  We have a fount of wisdom to share with the world.  To share with others the means to live and prosper.  That’s the Torah’s universal message.  That humanity should live and prosper. 

And that is up to us.  Do thusly – establish good, healthy practices based on timeless wisdom – and it will go well for you.  Fail to do so, and it will not go well.  Those are the choices.  May we make the right one, and influence other peoples to do likewise.  That it may go well for all. 

Drash for Parashat Emor

Meaningful - and Not-so-meaningful - Distinctions

Many of us know a story about a Jewish man, with the surname Cohen or some variant, who goes to an Orthodox rabbi with his fiancé.  The rabbi sits and talks with the beaming young couple, listens to their stories of how they met and so forth.  Then he pronounces, perhaps regretfully, that he cannot marry them to one another.  Why not?  Because the woman is not a ‘fit’ partner for the Cohen, usually because she has been previously married and divorced.  This, despite that she has brought her Get to show the rabbi that she was divorced in the proper manner and is therefore allowed to re-marry.

          I’m not thinking of someone in particular with this story.  Rather, this is something that actually plays out with some regularity.  The young couple has run smack into the laws of priestly purity, still enforced in Judaism’s more traditional sectors.  The young man probably knew that his being a Cohen gave him the first Aliyah often at a traditional synagogue.  Perhaps he knew that, if he attended the synagogue on a major festival, he would perform the Duchenen, the blessing of the congregation, from beneath his tallit after having his feet washed by one of the Levi’im.  Maybe he had, once or twice, been asked to receive tribute from the father of a firstborn son who would redeem that son ceremonially from him when performing Pidyon Haben.  But chances are that he did not know he was forbidden to marry a divorced woman.  Doing so would result in his being ritually defiled, and would have prevented from performing his priestly duties in case the Temple and its cultus were re-established.  But more importantly, his offspring would then not be fit to act as Cohanim.

          Just to make it clear; in Progressive Judaism we do not recognise either priestly perquisites or priestly requirements as being operative in our age.  Just as we do not reserve the first Aliyah for a Cohen and the second for a Levi, we do not send marrying couples away because the man is a Cohen and the woman is divorced.  After all, family legends of Cohanic or Levitical descent are almost never provable.  Given that, and given that we wish to bring down barriers that divide members of our congregations, you can be sure that progressive rabbis would not refuse to marry any two Jews because of the relationship of surnames to previous marriages.  It simply is not an issue in our circles.  But it is in traditional Judaism.

          And please don’t construe this as a criticism of the customs of our more traditionalist cousins.  Many Jews who affiliate with Orthodox Judaism bristle over this law or that law.  Sometimes their bristling over such law, drives them into Progressive Judaism.  That is certainly the case with a handful of our members here.  And many of our number do criticise Orthodox Judaism over these laws, but I choose not to.  It simply isn’t necessary.  Orthodox Judaism is what it is, just as Progressive Judaism is what it is.  What’s to criticise?  But the laws of priestly purity, enforced even today, are probably one of the most misunderstood areas of traditional law as they affect the Jew today.

          As this week’s Torah portion opens, we are instructed in these laws.  The entire people Israel was to consider themselves a nation of priests, a nation set aside for a specific witness among the peoples of the world.  But the entire tribe of Levi were further set aside for service to God and the people Israel in the Ohel Mo’ed – the Tabernacle.  And the sons of Aaron, brother of Moses, of the tribe of Levi, were set aside yet further for the priesthood.  This service was not voluntary.  All the Levi’im were compelled to work full-time in the service of God, and the Cohanim had a very specific, and honoured, position.  In order to maintain his ritual purity to perform his duties, the young Cohen had to marry a woman not previously married, nor one ‘defiled by harlotry.’ He was also not to defile himself by contact with the dead, except in the case of a close relative, as that would make him unable to perform his duties for a time.  He was not to make himself unfit in any number of ways, such as shaving his head or being tattooed.  These were practices that, while being forbidden of all Jews, did not carry the same degree of taboo for them.  And although the daughter of a Cohen was not designated in the same way as her brothers, she was under similar scrutiny; should she transgress such laws of purity, it was as if she had defiled her father.

          So what are we to learn from all this?

          At its essence, the Torah is about boundaries.  The entirety of Jewish law is about distinctions.  Between Israel and the nations.  Between sacred and ordinary.  Between male and female.  Between the permitted and the forbidden.  Between kosher and treif.  This definitely clashes with contemporary sensibility whose goal is often to eliminate barriers and boundaries.  As a baby boomer, it seems that my entire lifetime has been characterised by the societal tendency to tear down one boundary after another. 

To be sure, some barriers needed to be torn down, and we are better off for their elimination.  For example, racial boundaries that divided us sharply based on the superficial distinction of skin colour.  Or class distinctions that dictated that we limit our associations to those of a particular economic class.  I’m not saying that these distinctions no longer exist.  But when we cross such boundaries, we are not invoking the same degree of taboo that we once did.  Perhaps one day in our lifetimes, nobody will care any longer about such things.  There is plenty of evidence that we are moving in that direction, and I believe that’s a good thing.

But if I were to stand in front of you and proclaim that all boundaries and distinctions are obsolete, I would not be authentic to Torah.

          For example, the distinction between Israel and the nations.  If the people Israel are not set aside for a unique role among the nations, then why bother to have a synagogue?  Why not join our neighbours in church?  Why care whether Jews marry one another?  Why accept holy proselytes who are called to take on the distinction of Jew?  Why not send them away and tell them to be good people and that’s it?  Because, deep in the kishkas, most of us in this room this morning believe that we Jews have a Divine purpose for being Jews.  This distinction does not mean we think ourselves better than any other human beings.  Or that we don’t relate collegially to our neighbours who are not Jewish.  At least, it shouldn’t.  We should no more think ourselves superior to others because we are Jews, than we should eschew friendships with those who are not Jewish. 

And it doesn’t mean that all of the children of Noah – that is to say, all the inhabitants of the world – don’t have a sacred purpose in their lives.  But the Jews do have a unique and sacred purpose.  Of course, any Jew can sidestep it without much trouble.  One can easily opt out of Jewish life altogether.  Or, one can remain on the margins of Jewish life where one is probably not serving much apparent purpose in one’s Jewishness.  But that doesn’t change that it matters that we affiliate as Jews, and that we behave as Jews.  That we accept that our being Jews carries some level of obligation.  Far more obligation, than privilege!

Our task is to embrace the boundaries that matter.  To use the distinctions that those boundaries create, to being meaning to our lives.  To bring meaning to our world.  And, at the same time, to reject meaningless or unnecessary boundaries.  And embrace the crossing of the latter.

Do the boundaries between Cohen, Levi, and Yisrael fall into the former, or the latter category?  In Progressive Judaism, most of us hold that they are an example of the latter.  We have decided as a movement to ignore tribal distinctions.  We also advocate the elimination of other distinctions, while preserving others.  But our selective retention of distinctions does not call into question the very enterprise of making such distinctions.  It simply means that we must be careful about the distinctions we draw.  And about how we translate such distinctions, into the way that we relate to one another.  There are religious philosophies extant that would have all of humanity thrown together in one amorphous mass.  One can see the attraction in such a vision of absolute egalité.  But there are distinctions that are meaningful.  We should not be in such a hurry to erase them.  Shabbat shalom.

Drash for Parashat Tazria-Metzorah

A woman suffering from nodular leprosy.  'Leper' is commonly
understood to be the meaning of 'metzorah,' from this week's
Torah portion

Stop Judging by Appearances

All around the Jewish world this morning, rabbis and other Jewish darshanim or ‘preachers’ will open their weekly sermons by telling their congregations that this week’s Torah portion is a problematic one.  The dual portion Tazria-Metzorah is, after all, about skin disease and emission of bodily fluids.  In the ancient world, few things provoked popular loathing as much as skin disease.  Such maladies were seen as manifestations of character flaws, of evil living within a person.  This morning, thousands of learned leaders will stand in their pulpits and try to draw some lesson that their congregation can use, from today’s reading.  Especially in Reform and Progressive congregations, where few of our religious leaders are ‘tied’ to a traditional understanding of the text.  This is one of the more difficult portions for a progressive preacher in particular.  It will make many of my colleagues go to extreme lengths to try to make sense of it.  We rabbis will, collectively, earn our pay this morning.

            Underlying the discomfort with this portion is the sense that the Torah is, at times, seen as a commentary on life.  As I like to say, it is not a history or geology text.  It is also not a Physician’s Desk Reference on illness and disease.  It is a textbook on morality, in the guise of a grand narrative about a people’s experience.  And since we tend to see the latter today as being rather subjective, that means that the Torah’s authority is much-diminished.  This, even if we see it as offering keen insights into the human condition.

To see how this ‘commentary on life’ works, look at the third chapter of Genesis as an example.  Eve has been duped by the serpent to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  She has influenced Adam to eat as well.  God proclaims, among other things:  “I will increase your pain in pregnancy.  It will be with pain that you give birth to children.  Your passion will be to your husband, and he will dominate you.”  (Gen. 3.16)  Now, a biblical literalist might read this and conclude that women are inherently evil.  They might think that the unique suffering that women go through, is their payback for Eve’s sin.  And we know that there are such attitudes extant in our world.  We call it misogyny.  Although most of us do not subscribe to this, you can see that vestiges of it survive in popular culture.  And, when I was in the Persian Gulf and saw that traditional Arab dress is white for men and black for women, I thought of this.  Especially since the women were also all covered up, as if they were evil and needed to be hidden from view.

But the advocate of the Torah as being a ‘commentary on life’ sees the above verse of Genesis coming to us as a commentary on an observable phenomenon of life.  As an attempt to explain an existential reality.  The ancient man observed that women are subjected to certain suffering, and more.  In the ancient world many women died in childbirth.  That condition exists even today, especially in societies whose medical practices are not up-to-date.  And we acknowledge the danger of pregnancy and childbirth when we say prayers of thanks for the deliverance from danger of a woman who has recently given birth.  Perhaps the sentiments expressed in Genesis 3.16 were an ancient attempt to perform eisogesis – to read in to the text.

So we read this week’s portion and we can similarly see it, if we so choose, as a commentary on the phenomenon of people manifesting skin conditions.

If you read the weekly drash on the Torah portion featured on the UPJ website (upj.org.au/parashat-hashavua) – and I recommend that you do weekly – then you probably read my colleague Stanton Zamek’s take on the phenomenon discussed in Metzorah.  Using an ancient commentator’s read of the portion, he gives a wonderful drash on the danger of evil speak.  As you know if you follow my own pulpit speaking over time, wagging tongues are a pet peeve of mine.  I therefore certainly recommend the remarks of my colleague, who serves our congregation in Hong Kong and was my classmate.

But I’d like to go – perhaps it could be said – beyond my colleague’s read of Metzorah as being a commentary on the danger of gossip.  He points out that the sage Resh Lachish sees the skin infection metzorah as a ‘penalty’ for evil speak.  What I would like to comment on is our obsession with physical appearance and our deep-seated belief that ‘flaws’ in our appearance are automatically attributable to character flaws, or at least to unsavoury behaviour.

Having seen me in person, you need no explanation as to why this is a concern of mine.  (If you’re reading this online and we’ve never met, know that I have deep scarring on my face from a case of cystic acne as an adolescent and young adult.)  Because I am used to being judged negatively based on the way I look, I am particularly sensitive to this all-too-human tendency.  Anybody who does not meet whatever are the current criteria as to how one should look, has probably felt the sting of this judgement.  People who are overweight, or underweight for that matter, or who are ‘too’ short or ‘too’ tall.  People with skin conditions.  Unattractive hair.  Whatever.  Watch even a small amount of television, or a few movies, and you’ll see how the media typecasts such people as the ‘bad guy.’  The ‘good guy’ is most of the time attractive according to whatever measure is currently in vogue.  But the usual criteria are tall if a man, blonde, blue-eyed, athletic, with a glowing complexion.  It’s interesting that we criticise the racial preferences of Germany in the Nazi era – but tend to emulate them.

So the truth is that, our contemporary world is not that different from the ancient world in this respect.

My challenge to you this morning then, is to try to transcend this prejudice concerning outward appearance, whatever the precise operative criteria.  Most of us prejudge in this way to some extent, even if we intellectually reject such prejudice.  Even those of us who have felt its sting in our own lives, are not immune from the pitfall of applying it ourselves.  The social cues supporting the practice, are just too powerful – and too subtle – to escape completely.  We therefore must, each one of us, work hard to ignore physicality when judging the content of a person’s character.  Some would say that the entire enterprise of judging character is uncalled for.  I would not agree with that sentiment at all, but that’s another sermon for another day.  Most of us remember the sage words of the Reverend, Dr Martin Luther King, Junior.  He expressed hope that someday, man will judge his fellow man not by the other’s outward appearance but by the ‘content of his character.’

To go beyond the ‘problematic’ element of this week’s reading by seeing it as a commentary on evil speak, is helpful.  But perhaps more helpful – certainly to our social condition – is to read it and decry the tendency to judge according to appearance in its entirety. To understand that the text reflects this ancient tendency.  And to understand that we, some four thousand years later have yet to transcend it.  But it’s not too late.  We, as individuals, can work to go beyond this prejudice.  We can teach our children a better way.  We can reject the cues from popular culture, subtle or not, that bombard us daily.   Let’s make up our minds to do so.  Amen, ken yehi ratson.

Drash for Yom Hashoah

I will deliver the following drash during the GOld Coast Jewish community's commemoration of Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day - on 7 April.

Neo- Nazi rally in Germany

The Shoah as a ‘Call to Arms’

I want to tell two you stories, about two periods of my residence in Germany, separated by 18 years.

The first time, in 1986, was for three months.  This was when there were two Germanys.  I was in West Germany, the Federal Republic, in Munich to be precise.  It’s the city that is generally acknowledged as the Birthplace of Nazism.

I suppose I expected to see a Nazi behind every lamppost.  But I didn’t.  On the contrary.  I repeatedly struck up friendly conversations with Germans.  And when it came out that I was Jewish, the German was often immediately apologetic for what his or her parents and grandparents had done to the Jews of Europe.  And then they would often quiz me about Jewish this or that.  It seemed that many Germans of my age – too young to have experienced the war – had a genuine curiosity about the Jewish world that their parents had destroyed.  At the time, there was a weekly program about Judaism and Jewish culture, on Bavarian State Radio, on Friday afternoons.  Many Germans told me that they listened to this program religiously.

I returned to Germany in 2004 and lived there until 2008.  It was a completely different country.  East and West Germany, the Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic, had been reunified.  I remember seeing the images of the Berlin Wall coming down, and the jubilation of everyday Germans, both Ossies and Vessies, at the time – in 1989.  I knew that the Germans had struggled since then with the financial costs and social tensions resulting from reunification.  And that was not the only big change in the country.  The advent of the European Union also brought profound change.  The entire landscape of Europe, not just Germany, seemed different. 

Germans were turning increasingly inward.  They were searching for a positive national identity.  This was something that the introspection following the Second World War had largely denied them.  There was still some curiosity about Jews and Judaism.  But with the rise of a new generation farther removed from the horrors of Nazism, Germans generally didn’t want to be bothered. 

But that’s not all.  During the years 2004 to 2008, and in the years since then, there has been an increasing amount of anti-Jewish violence in Germany.  I personally know several Jews who were attacked, or threatened during these years.  These attacks and threats get lost in a general atmosphere of distrust and violence aimed at various groups of perceived ‘foreigners’ in the country.

The renewed voices of hate and intolerance in Germany are dismaying at the very least.  This, in a country whose hate and intolerance has not availed her, or the world in the past.  It is inexcusable.  But I don’t blame the Germans for their inward turning.  I long wondered what it would be like to be a citizen of a country, in which one could not feel pride.  A citizen of a ‘pariah’ state.  But of course, the solution to overcoming a troubled past is to transcend it.  To take it and become better because of it.  Not to forget it.  But that’s what is happening among Germans today – they are forgetting the past.

We Jews understand the importance of memory, even if we apply it selectively at times.  This is why we must continue to remember the Shoah, the Holocaust.  And this is why we must make remembering the Holocaust not just about us Jews and how we suffered under Nazi tyranny.  If we hold these events year after year, and do nothing else, what have we achieved?  We can feel a bit of the righteousness of the victim.  We can feel aggrieved once more.  We can take some perverse pride in thinking that the world, at the very least, doesn’t care about our suffering.  And we can make some of the handful of non-Jews who attend these events feel guilty.  This, even though they had no hand in the atrocities that we remember tonight.  Look, I enjoy throwing a little Jewish guilt as much as the next person…but we can accomplish far more!

So let me offer a challenge.

Let’s remember the Shoah, and let’s keep the images of the genocide of the Jews of Europe alive.  Let’s continue to gather annually at events such as this one, to re-acquaint ourselves with these images.  And then let’s use the renewed horror, and let it motivate us. 

Let the horror motivate us to allow historians and archivists such as tonight’s speaker, Jayne Josem, to really educate us about the Shoah.  Then we can respond rationally when confronted by those who deny it ever happened, or by those who just honestly want to know more. 

But let’s also let the horror, motivate us to know how to respond, and to respond respectfully but forthrightly regarding the State of Israel.  To respond to those who attack what is arguably one of the most tolerant and multicultural countries in the world, as an ‘Apartheid State’ and worse.  To those who demonize Israel for defending her people and her sovereignty.  Is ‘anti-Zionism’ simply a more socially-acceptable form of anti-Semitism?  You know, one could make a convincing case that, often, it is. 

Let’s let the horror motivate us to get more involved in the national conversation about how to create in Australia a country where all citizens are welcome.  Is Australia a ‘racist country’?  I doubt it, but there is some element of xenophobia that shows itself here from time to time.  Let’s be one of the loudest, and clearest voices in Australia to argue against this tendency.  Since we were victims of xenophobia, let us work to build bridges of trust between citizens. 

Finally, let’s let the horror motivate us to work to expose genocides that are going on in the world even now.  This is the biggest tragedy of the Shoah.  Even in its wake, genocides have wracked various parts of the world.  Cambodia.  Rwanda.  Bosnia.  The Sudan.  It has happened again and again.  Have we raised our voices loud enough when it has?  We must ask ourselves this difficult question.

The Shoah should be more than a tragedy for the Jewish and German peoples, with other groups of Europeans such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, gay men, and the Romany people serving as minor players.  It should be more than something to cry over, something to make us build monuments and museums and hold ceremonies.  It should be a ‘call to arms’ to work for a better world.  (And of course, I use the phrase ‘call to arms’ metaphorically, not literally!)  Because it is popularly seen as a ‘Jewish issue,’ it must start with us.  I know that it can seem to be a daunting task.  There are less than 100,000 Jews in this country of 22 million.  And less than 14 million Jews in a world of seven billion souls.  Such a big task for such a small people!  But it’s a task that must be done.  Are we going to wait for someone else to do it?

So today I challenge you.  Let’s remember.  And let’s let our remembering lead to something positive.  Let’s sit down in the days to come, and have a conversation about what that ‘something positive’ might be.  Let’s let the Shoah serve as a ‘call to arms’ to motivate us toward ever greater positive acts to make the world a better place.  Even though we are few, and we are tired, and we wish someone else would do it.  As Rabbi Tarfon proclaimed:  It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it. (Mishnah Avot 2:21)  What can we do?  Let’s discuss and see.  Perhaps next year, when we gather again to commemorate Yom Hashoah, we will be able to point with pride to some new work that we will have started.  This, in honour of the memory of the six million Jews who perished.  In honour of the memory of the 17 and a half million total victims of the Nazi Holocaust.  May their memories live on and inspire us.

Drash for Shabbat Shmini

Holy Slaughter

Our Torah reading this week recounts some of the details of the slaughter of animals and their consumption on the altar of the Beit Mikdash.  If you were listening to the English translation as it was read, and unless I miss my guess, your reaction may well have been:  Ugh!  We are, after all, conditioned to find such things distasteful.  And we probably wonder why our distant forebears found the sight of such carnage uplifting.  And possibly, we think that our reaction this morning reflects that civilisation has advanced since then.  After all, we find it difficult to imagine this raw butchery to be uplifting.  Doesn't that make us better, or at least more finely developed than the ancient Israelites?  In a word, no.

No, we don’t slaughter bulls and rams and offer them up as burnt offerings.  We don’t watch the smoke of a holy barbecue waft heavenward and hope that it will satisfy God’s need for…whatever.  But the truth is, we don’t offer very much to God at all.

And we allow much slaughter to occur on a daily basis without any intervention.  Or even feeling particularly bad about it. 

I’m not talking about the slaughter of bulls and rams.  We’re allowed to kill animals for food, and to use their skins and organs for clothing, pharmaceuticals and other things.  Oh, there are those among us who are vegans, who refuse to use animal products for any purpose.  And I’m not knocking vegan-ism   I’m just pointing out that it’s definitely a minority position.  Jewish law, and most other systems of ethics, do not forbid the use of animals.  In the case of Halachah, there are constraints on the slaughter of animals for food or other use.  Traditionally, the purpose for these constraints is seen as being twofold.  Firstly, to ensure that when animals’ lives are taken, they are taken with a degree of reverence so as to keep us aware of the value of life.  And secondly, to ensure a minimisation of animal suffering.

But I’m talking about the slaughter of human beings.

How many more millions must die in wholesale slaughter, such as in Darfur, before the world truly awakens?  How many Tibetans?  How many Christians, Baha’is and Zoroastrians in Iran?  How many Syrian rebels against the ruling Alawis?  Most of the human race sleeps well at night, even knowing about these things.  Look, I’m not suggesting that, if we don’t constantly wring our hands over this, then that’s evidence that we’re heartless individuals.  But if we’re informed about it, then we do have some responsibility to at least think, and talk about it.  And to try to find ways, even if they seem pathetic, to keep these atrocities in the public eye.

We Jews are uniquely positioned to help our neighbours, and our country in this area.  Every year we gather, as we will tomorrow night on the eve of Yom Hashoah.  Our purpose is to keep alive the memory and recognition that we were the primary targets of a xenophobia and ethnic cleansing that ran amok for over two decades.  This fear and loathing of The Other was Utopian and racist at its heart.  Before it was stopped, Nazism spread its net to catch many other groups in European life in its grip.  Recent revelations have shown that the Nazi Holocaust killed no fewer than 17.5 million souls, of whom six million were Jews.  And this is in addition to the casualties, military and civilian, of the world war that raged contemporaneously.  It’s staggering to think of.

So, we Jews see ourselves as being in the ‘business’ of keeping the history of the Nazi era alive, especially as we see the pool of actual victims and eyewitnesses shrink each year now that we’re approaching the seventieth anniversary of its end. But if we wish to remind our neighbours annually about how we suffered, we cannot remain silent about those who are suffering from present-day manifestations of tyranny of a similar nature.

So we don’t sacrifice animals on an altar today, and we do tend to think ourselves better because of it.  But we do seem content to allow the sacrifice of human beings to happen, continually, without much protest over it.

Some anthropologists have suggested that ancient rites requiring the sacrifice of animals to please a group’s god or gods, stem from man’s essential violent nature.  That having such rituals was a way of channeling the violence that is in each man, to better purpose than constantly creating violence between men.

I don’t know about that, but I’m sure that our fascination with barbecues also has something to do with this.  Being an omnivorous carrier of a Y chromosome myself, I love tending the barbecue as much as the next man.  In addition to providing a tasty meal at the end, there’s just something elemental about it.  This is why the guy tending the meat on the fire is seldom alone; the other blokes tend to gather around, libations in hand, to share the experience.  And it is something approaching a religious experience…make no mistake about it!

So violence, killing and bloodshed come naturally to us homo sapiens…certainly those of the male persuasion, and surely some of our sisters as well.  And if we’re honest, most of us indulge in activities that allude to this instinct, in various ways.  I’m therefore proposing that we drop our contempt, if that’s what it is, for the ancient cultic practices of the Israelites.  Maybe our ancient forebears were not so far off, after all.  When we read sections of the Torah such as this week’s reading, let’s drop the pretence that, because we don’t do it, we’re better.  Tell me you find these sections boring, since they reflect practices that we haven’t done for 2,000 years.  But don’t tell me you find the idea of animal sacrifices loathsome.

And iff we can have an honest conversation about the place of such sacrifices, and what they provided for our ancestors then we can better understand human nature.  And iff we can better understand human nature, then we can have an honest conversation about why episodes of violence reaching proportions of genocide continue to happen.  And we can begin to address these continued tyrannies that we see, and work to make them a thing of the past.  I'm not suggesting that we return to holy slaughter - only that we also work to address un-holy slaughter.  Ken yehi ratzon.