D'var Torah

Listening to (the shofar's) blasts, we hold so many good intentions about the year to come... That is why the robust structures for anti-racism work... are so important. They give us a path to walk, a process to follow, and so they seek to avoid backsliding into complacency.

For the sake of the food insecure in these difficult days, and for the future health of our country, I hope that Ki Tavo’s powerful linking of sacred space and religiosity to the obligation to give to those in need can be strengthened. As Americans increasingly seek spirituality and community outside of organized religion, community builders, religious and non-religious alike, must work to cultivate cultures of giving.

Our belief that there is a divinely inspired, ethically enacted pathway for living embedded in a sacred text we reread every year for contemporary relevance makes the entirety of the Jewish project rather queer from its very inception. It is and has always been our greatest strength.

Our hearts and bodies want to give, but our brains get in the way. 

...the Torah teaches us that the particular and the universal are inextricably intertwined. Just as we need partners in the fight against antisemitism, we must use our power to become partners to others in the fights for social, racial, and economic justice. As the Talmud says, ​​even a poor person who is sustained from tzedakah must also perform tzedakah (Gittin 7b). When we feel the fragility of our power, when we feel we need help, even then – precisely then – we must share what we have with others.

We were told earlier in the Torah to love our neighbor and even the stranger as ourselves. But these commandments are included and yet reframed in our mitzvah, "V’Ahavta et Adonai," love everything/everyone. Signaling, perhaps, that we are also to understand love differently, that we are ready to learn a higher level of embodying love.

Today a fierce battle rages over the telling of American history. Politicians on either side of the political spectrum are fighting to control the historical narrative taught to children in schools. Is the story of America one of heroic struggle and benevolent, exceptional rule? Or is it a story of a colonizing power that exploited, oppressed, and exterminated non-white peoples?

The lesson of Matot-Massei is very simple: If we want to move forward, we must first begin to acknowledge the people behind the comforts and luxuries of our everyday lives. We must acknowledge that our healthcare system is no longer truly about care, but about profit.

According to the Netziv, the brit is meant as a healing salve. God knows the ways committing acts of violence may leave a permanent scar on those who commit them. Perhaps God is speaking from experience. 

For the rest of us, it took ground penetrating radar, and other technologies which render the invisible visible, to wake us up. But for the Indigenous communities most directly affected, none of that was needed. The voices we most desperately need to be listening to already knew. They already saw.