Welcoming in 2021: The Best & Worst of Times

In an article by Michael Rosenwald in the Washington Post (Dec. 30 issue), he reported on a question posed to 28 professors of history at major universities:  What was the worst/most stressful year in world, U.S., British history?

The strong consensus was the worst year in world history was 1348 when the Black Death claimed 200 million lives.  2020 ranked sixth among the worst years for the world.

 

For families who have lost loved ones to Covid-19, 2020 will likely rank at the top of worst years for them without any mental comparisons to other historical moments including plagues, wars, and the like.

 

The reasons for these feelings need no explanation, but we can benefit from perspective on just how painful such losses are and how we should avoid thinking of individuals in terms of ‘statistics’.  In the Mishnah, the fundamental text of Rabbinic Judaism, we find this perspective in a section about how judges question witnesses in capital cases.(Sanhedrin 4:5)  Because the justice system of the time relied on witnesses, judges admonished those coming forward with testimony that the results of false testimony would be catastrophic.  The judges would say:

 

“Adam was created alone to teach you that anyone who destroys one soul…the Torah condemns him as if he destroyed an entire world.”

 

One life is an entire world, a world of love, friendship, experiences, contributions to the world, and more.  While fewer people have died from Covid19 than the Black Death, the loss is no less painful to each victim’s loved ones and this pandemic has already changed the fabric of our societies just as the Black Death transformed European society.

 

While the world around us is changing, one element that can help prevent changes for the worse is, given the recognition of “every life is an entire world”, that we continue to take action to protect ourselves and others.  By protecting ourselves with masks and distancing we help ourselves and we also help others, and the reverse is true as well.  We can be responsible for ourselves and for others at the same time without compromising our freedoms or individuality.  In the Talmud, the Rabbis make a statement that clarifies our responsibility to sanctify and protect the lives of others from threats, no matter who they are:

 

A certain person came before Rabba and said:  An official of my place said to me:  ‘Go kill so-and-so, and if not I will kill you.’ (What shall I do?)  Rabbi responded:  Let [the official] kill you and you should not kill.  Who is to say your blood is redder?  Perhaps that one’s blood is redder.

(Sanhedrin 74a)

 

Rashi (France, 1040-1105) explains ‘blood is redder’ to mean, “Who knows that your blood [your life] is preferable and more pleasant to Your Creator that the other’s…”

 

If neither person’s life is “preferable and more pleasant” than another’s, then we are all responsible for ensuring the health and safety of others when pressed into action by an outside force.  The outside force in the teaching is an official with local power and influence, but we can easily translate the teaching to name Covid19 as the outside force.  The difference with Covid19 is no self-sacrifice is demanded other than taking reasonable precautions even for people who must go out of the house for work every day.  

 

As we enter 2021, we now have two ways of thinking about responding to the pandemic that can guide us as we take actions to protect that one life that multiplies exponentially to many more.  If every person we see is that ‘one life’, and we’re able to protect that ‘one life’, then hopefully 2021 can be at most a year of anxiety and inconvenience rather than a world-destroying tragedy.  The pandemic is bigger than us, bigger than our country, and transcendent of the world, but we are each an integral part of the world and the limits we place on ourselves now can help us to live into the future in ways that are unlimited.  

 

May 2021 be a year of healing and blessings, and if not one of the best years ever, then let it be a year when hope grows a little stronger each day.

 

 

The Post-Chanukah, Post-Hasmonean, Dilemma

On this Shabbat of reading Parshat Mikketz, we are invited to contemplate the fact that the Hasmonean dynasty did not last long after the events that we celebrate as Chanukah.  Looking at the history this way may cause us to feel a dilemma that our ancestors sacrificed and fought for religious freedom only to see that freedom dissipate.  Inspiration from the Torah reading in Mikketz and the Haftarah about King Solomon can help us with a fresh, and energizing perspective, not to remove the dilemma but to see ourselves in a more dynamic way such that we can live with, and beyond, the way this dilemma makes us feel.

The last Chanukah candles are now just colorful wax on the menorah.  Our family menorah has gathered up so much multi-colored wax over the years, but we never chipped away at it since it was evidence of years of prayers, singing, a reflection of our family’s story, a journey through time, similar to the wine stains on Passover Haggadahs.

 

The remains of the candles also tell another story, a story that unlike the Chanukah miracle, tells of a reality that occurred after the miracle days ended.  The Hasmonean regime that grew from the sons of Matityahu remained in power for a little over 100 years until the Romans came in and then there was no sovereign Jewish presence in the Holy Land until 1948, just under 2,000 years later.  

 

And so we might begin to wonder what is the justice of such a great victory both of faith and of armed struggle to happen and then to flicker on for such a short time compared to a much lengthier period of foreign rule and oppression?

 

Our readings today offer two helpful perspectives on the big picture of justice in history, one comes through Judah, not the oldest, but the emerging leader from among Joseph’s brothers, and the other comes through King Solomon in today’s Haftarah.

 

In the Maftir reading today, Judah steps forward to Joseph, who he does not know is his brother Joseph at that time, and responds to Joseph’s accusation that someone has stolen his special cup.  None of the brothers took the cup, Joseph had it put in Benjamin’s bag.  Now Joseph tells the other brothers to leave while he will hold Benjamin in Egypt, since he is responsible for the crime.  

 

To this, Judah says Ma nomar ladoni?  Mah nedaber Uma nitztadak?  What can we say to My Master?  What is there to say and how can we prove our innocence? God has discovered our sins.

 

Rabbi Shmuel David Luzzato makes an observation here that clarifies Judah’s thinking, Luzzatto explains Judah knows if he presses their innocence, Joseph, here disguised as vizier, will get even more angry.  How could he not?  The brothers are travelers, outsiders.  He realizes in that moment he cannot save Benjamin, and so instead he takes up the guilt for stealing the cup on all the brothers so that it will not fall on Benjamin alone.

 

In thinking on the short lived Hasmonean dynasty following the dislodging of Antiochus and the Seleucids from power, instead of lamenting how relatively short lived it was, Judah’s example reminds us of the power of unity, the strength of the Am, the Jewish people, when we strive for unity, and hold true to a sense of purpose even when other great empires or events push and pull against the Jewish people and the countries where we live.  Joseph’s brothers choose to be a ‘we’ instead of an ‘I’, and years like 2020, when it can be tempting to focus on the ‘I’ and the survival instinct kicks in, it’s even more important to stay connected to the ‘we’, the anachnu, if we take a closer look at the 2^nd paragraph of the Shema, we’ll see the responsibility to keep the covenant falls on us as a people.  God is telling us we’re responsible for each other both during the times when it’s easy to do this and when it’s not.  As a colleague of mine taught me, the Hebrew word for life, Chayim, is in the plural, we might feel alone sometimes but we’re not, and if anyone in our communities is feeling this way then it’s up to each of us to bridge the gap.

 

The second perspective on justice comes from the famous story of King Solomon, Shlomo Hamelech, in today’s Haftarah, the story of two women, one woman’s child dies in the night and she places the dead child in the arms of the other woman and takes the other woman’s living child for her own.  When the dispute comes before Solomon and the women cannot be reconciled, he decrees, cut the child in half and give one half to each.  One says, please don’t kill the child, give the other the living baby!  And Solomon now knows who the real mother is.

 

The real mother’s feelings are raw and real.  Solomon is clever enough to find a way to bring them out.  A lesson here about justice in the fall of the Hasmoneans just a few generations after the Chanukah story is that our emotions also tell a story through us.  On Chanukah we still feel keenly and deeply the pain of losing our holy places, the pain of being subjugated, the pain of not being able to be who we are and who we want to be.  The sufganiyot and latkes are delicious, the songs are beautiful, but there is a feeling of righteous indignation that is discomforting, and that is a good thing. When the Hasmonean dynasty fell, that feeling became lodged in the Jewish soul, and as uncomfortable as it is, it’s a spur to action, to connection, and it’s needed.  Sometimes we rub a bruise or a wound long after it’s gone, and the memory is bittersweet, and can be painful, and it can also remind us of strength we have that we thought we lost.

 

The Chanukah candles may have burned down for 2020, for 5781, but they are lit up inside us, inside us all, when we look at each other we can see them, and each of us is a shmash, here to relight the flame in each other when inevitably it will temporarily go out from time to time.  Perhaps this is what the Rabbis were thinking of when they composed the words, or chadash al tziyon Ta’ir, may a new light sine on Zion, because every time the light wanes or goes out, we’re there and ready to light it again.