Love and Justice

Love and Justice

In addition to Shabbat Shalom, I want to wish everyone today a happy Tu Be’av.

What is a Sadie Hawkins dance?  

Today is Tu Be’Av, the 15^th day of the Hebrew month of Av, the day the Rabbis considered one of the two happiest days of the whole year.

What is the other happiest day of the year?  (Yom Kippur)

This day, the beginning of the ancient grape harvest, was also a Sadie Hawkins day when young women would dress in white, go out to the vineyards to dance, and invite the young men to dance with them.

Tu BeAv really sounds like a day of celebration, happiness, and love.  How is Yom Kippur, the most solemn day of judgment and purification before God a happiest day?  Yom Kippur is about justice, responsibility, and recognizing our humanity and mortality.

What’s the relationship between love and justice?

We ask this question still reeling from two terrible incidents that occurred in Israel this past week, both perpetrated by Jewish extremists – one act against fellow Jews in Jerusalem and one act against a Palestinian family in Duma.

Yesterday in Jerusalem, it appears that Yehuda Schlissel, the same man convicted of stabbing at the pride parade in 2005 again committed the same savagery at the same event 10 years later, having just been released 2 years prior to the end of his prison sentence.

And overnight, extremists firebombed the Dawabsha family home in the city of Duma, near Nablus, badly burning family members and killing 18 month old Ali Saad, leaving the word ‘revenge’ written in Hebrew in spray paint on a wall of the house.

Will Herberg, the great 20^th century Jewish theologian, argued that justice is at the heart of the Jewish notion of love, and the foundation of Jewish law, he wrote, “The ultimate criterion of justice, as of everything else in human life, is the divine imperative, the law of love, Justice is the institutionalization of love in society…this law of love requires that every (person) be treated as a…person…and end in himself, never merely as a thing or a means to another’s end.  When this demand is translated into laws and institutions, under the conditions of human life in history, justice arises”

Love then for us, unlike the fluffy Valentine’s Day version, is a commitment to see the humanity and holiness in each of us.  If as our ancestors teach, the Messiah was born on Tisha B’Av, the day of tragedy a week ago, then we can better understand this teaching on this day, the day of love.  When we look at each person, that person may be the Messiah, or a Messiah, one who will redeem us, if not in a cosmic way, perhaps by teaching us, opening our eyes to higher awareness, or giving us a helpful critique so we can fulfill our potential.

And if we can internalize this idea of love, then we may receive two gifts.  The ability to love God even when evil occurs around us.  This week we chant the Shema from the Torah and Ve’ahavta, Love Ado-nai Your God.  When we see love as the potential for human beings to be holy, to create holiness, and to share it with others, we know that no enemy can ever, ever, shake us, or douse the flame of courage forever.  And we also receive the gift, a reminder that we should never take our loved ones and friends for granted.  The words of Isaiah in this week’s Haftarah, “All flesh grass; grass withers, flowers fade when the breath of God blows on them…”  Our lives can feel like they move so slowly.  Days may be long, but years a short; and in these 7 weeks until Rosh Hashanah we have the chance to show how important our loved ones are to us, a more important High Holiday preparation and activity than any prayer we could recite in the Machzor.

May those injured in the parade have a refuah shlemah, a healing of body and of spirit.

May the Dawabsha family members burned in the attack find their way to healing of body, and may the memory of their little Ali Saad remind us those would perpetrate such horrific attacks that each of us was once the age of Ali Saad, and in need of the love and tenderness of others.