Parashat B’Shalah/Shabbat Shirah/Tu BiSh’vat
Exodus 13:17 – 17:16
Our Torah portion tells of the first steps in freedom taken by the fledgling nation of the Children of Israel. Aside from miraculous salvation from terrifying danger (- the splitting of the Red Sea), God also gives the people some advice and guidance: “If you will take care to listen to the voice of the Eternal, your Almighty God, and you will do that which is right in His view, and if you give ear to His commands and guard all His laws, then all the sickness that I put on Egypt I will not put on you, for I am the Eternal, your Healer.” (Ex. 15:27)
God presents the Torah as a healing prophylactic, saving us from the disease suffered by the Egyptians. But what disease was that? The plagues are called “plagues” not illness. So what illness can be meant? I suggest the disease is the affliction of hard-heartedness. That was the chronic condition that prolonged Israel’s bondage and Egypt’s suffering.
Our Torah is meant to be an antidote to hard-heartedness. But the Torah can accomplish this purpose only if those who study and follow the Torah do so with that goal in mind. Otherwise the Torah can be used to justify and exacerbate the very illness it is meant to dispel.
As I suggested last week, we can distinguish between two types of hard-heartedness. One is the base cruelty evinced by powerful people who can only feel powerful through inflicting chaos and suffering on others. The other type is that hardness of heart adopted by those who support or enable the cruelty of the powers that be. This includes sycophants who aid and abet the tyranny. And it also includes those who choose to make excuses for the crimes, the betrayals of principle and the aberrations of the ruling elite.
We live in a time of hardness of heart. Does our adherence to the Torah help us fight that disease?
This week we witnessed two horrendous failures of democratic values in two countries that pride themselves in their representing democracy at its best to the world. These are the two countries I love and am devoted to, the United States and Israel.
In our country we saw the majority party in the Senate vote to silence a member of the opposition so as to prevent that senator from reading a letter written 30 years ago, a letter that testified to the disqualification of the government appointee to the high office of Attorney General. This may sound like an inconsequential crime compared to the present administration’s attacks on human rights, the environment, education or people’s health. But the importance of this misdeed is precisely in its gratuitous cruelty. What was a new shock in the rapid deterioration of our democratic process was the brutal and senseless decision to stifle debate on the Senate floor. Although their victory was guaranteed, for it was already expected that the nominee would be confirmed along party lines, the ruling party simply could not abide hearing criticism, criticism rooted in historical fact, from the losing side. Such moves are supposed to occur in totalitarian countries, not in our blessed United States of America. This was a depressing example of the continuing hardening of hearts among our rulers and their supporters.
The other instance of anti-democratic cruelty, and craven support for it, occurred when the Israeli Parliament voted to adopt a new law that would legalize the theft of land held by Palestinians so as to allow Israeli settlers to build more settlements. The point of the law was to expropriate private property without having to answer to the Supreme Court, which had repeatedly ruled that settlements were built through stealing and brute force. The hard-heartedness of the Israeli governing coalition should be plain for all to see. The support of the Israeli public is a sad commentary on the decline of democratic values in that society.
But do we, here in the States, choose to see it? The tragic truth is that the American Jewish public has been in hard-hearted denial for too long about the growing dimensions of this problem. We have not wished to abandon our memories of an Israel that was once a beacon to the world. Furthermore, there is a quite sizable segment of the Jewish public that has chosen to excuse and support the American shift to anti-democratic tyranny precisely because our morally bankrupt ruler supports Israel’s anti-democratic policies. And this support is often justified by appeal to the Torah and to Jewish self-interest.
But it is not Jewish self-interest to steal other people’s property. It is not the goal of the Torah to harden our hearts to the plight of others. Indeed, we need to feel horror and pity for two once healthy bodies, bodies that we love, that are both now stricken with terrible disease. In both places the disease is the same. In both places the need for healing is urgently critical. One cannot care about one without caring about the other. One cannot care without being moved to action. One cannot be moved to action in regard to one without moving to action with regard to the other.
What actions can we take? The treatments and therapies will be complex, difficult and prolonged. How can we choose the right approach? There is one criterion. Any treatment or solution we adopt must be based on upholding the goal of the Torah – to soften our hearts rather than harden them.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein
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Image: “Blindness” © Yaniv Golan used with permission via Creative Commons License
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I look forward to Rabbi Greenstein and Shomrei Emunah leading the way in softening our hearts. A good start is supporting the CWS and IRC as they welcome refugees to Jersey City.