Rabbi Charles P. Sherman
Breila Holloway Bat Mitzvah
May 4, 2002
Expectations Fulfilled
The Texan was a big man — big in size and a big man in town — with a big problem, so he thought. He went to his big church built in part by his big contributions to pour out his big heart.
What were his troubles? The output of his oil wells had declined 5%, an epidemic hit 3% of his 100,000 head of cattle, a drought parched a corner of his half million acre ranch. In the next pew, an elderly lady was sobbing. Her welfare check was late; she had no money to buy her next meal.
The Texan overheard the woman’s lament. He reached into his wallet and peeled off a hundred dollar bill. "Here lady," he said impatiently, "go buy yourself a meal. This is no place to be taking up God’s valuable time with such piddling problems."
That Texan did not understand God’s priorities. The Hebrews finally win their freedom. They leave Egypt en route to the Promised Land, about to plunge into a hostile wilderness, not knowing where or whether they will find food and water, or be attacked by marauding wild men or beasts. Surely these were problems which should have been given top priority.
So God instructs Moses at Sinai. "Speak to the Children of Israel and say to them . . ." Say what? Fill up their canteens? Amass an army? Forge weapons? Prepare battering rams to smash the walls of Jericho? Considering the big problems the Children of Israel were about to face, logically those should have been their priorities.
But God had different priorities for the Israelites. God was concerned with the little person, with problems which probably seemed trivial to the generals. "You shall hallow the 50th year. You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants. If your brother becomes poor and his means fail . . . you must support him . . . let him live by your side . . . do not exact interest from him." God’s priority was to start an anti-poverty program.
Some 3,000 years later our government is still tinkering with welfare reform, with the problems of the little person, the family which has no access to doctors and hospitals when it desperately needs them because it has no health insurance; the homeless who sleep under bridges in cardboard make-shift shelters on cold winter nights; the jobless who, through no fault of their own, cannot find productive employment.
This morning, I’d like to examine four big principles of God’s anti-poverty program as it is revealed in the 25th chapter of Leviticus, from which Breila chanted so beautifully. Perhaps our generation, our country, our congregation can still learn from it.
As the Children of Israel were preparing to enter the Promised Land, they were told that each and every family would receive a land holding of equal value, and that land would be theirs forever. Throughout the ancient world, people customarily sold their land if they needed food or other goods. Land was just about their only form of wealth; there was no "money in the bank." Therefore God tells the Israelites that they may sell their land, but not permanently. Every 50 years a Jubilee would be declared; all land would revert to its original owners, everyone would get a fresh start and equality would be restored.
The principle underlying this commandment of the Jubilee Year is that the land does not ultimately belong to its mortal owners. The land — representing all wealth, indeed all material possessions — belongs to God. God asserts ownership by claiming the right to distribute and redistribute wealth as God sees fit. Now this principle may trouble those Texas oil men and ranchers who stridently claim the primacy of individual land-owner’s rights not to mention the talk-show callers who claim that all taxation is thievery. But our Torah clearly establishes that achieving God’s purpose takes precedence over allowing individuals to hold on to whatever property or wealth they have acquired.
Judaism believes and teaches very practically that everything belongs to God. For Divine purposes, God gives each of us gifts and God desires that we share our gifts with others. Now in some areas we recognize the truth of this very easily. What is the use of having a great musical gift if you do not want to share it with people, if you do not want people to come and hear you play or sing? What is the use of having great oratorical gifts if you do not want people to hear you speak? What is the use of having great athletic skills, if you do not exercise them? Well, wealth too is a gift and God tells us that we must share it with others. We do not say as Tineius Rufus, the Roman governor of Judea, said to Rabbi Akiba. "If your God loves the poor, why doesn’t He support them?"
To which Rabbi Akiba replied, "Didn’t God tell us to deal our bread to the hungry?" God wants our help to repair this world. If Tineius Rufus was right, then there would be no need for doctors. God made them sick; let God cure them. There would be no need for old age homes. If God made them old, let God take care of them. Tineius Rufus’ attitude is reminiscent of the attitude of many people today and it is anathema to Judaism. None us gains our wealth unaided. We all have a silent partner and that partner is God.
We can work and do everything right and still fail. Farmers are the best example I know. They can get up early, plant their crop, tediously weed their fields, put down insecticide, and yet still fail because the rain didn’t come or too much rain comes, or hordes of locusts come, etc. We can do everything right and still fail.
So let the haves never feel superior to the have-nots and think that it is only by their own work and ability that they have more than someone else. Everything belongs to God. We are but temporary stewards of whatever we possess, and it is our responsibility to share with those in need.
Principle two. If I drive too fast, there is a good chance that a policeman is going to stop me and give me a ticket. If I don’t pay my taxes, the IRS will come looking for me and take appropriate action. If I violate the law, I’ll be appropriately punished after a fair trial. So there are legal obligations we all have.
Yet every society also has social expectations. For example — that I will be polite, that I’ll be a good citizen and good neighbor, that I’ll take action when I see someone in need of help. I cannot be held legally responsible for not doing these things, yet they are societal expectations none-the-less. We understand that the needs of the many sometimes take precedence over my personal desires or needs. I have certain obligations to the community.
This Book of Leviticus, which we complete reading today, deals with societal expectations. Unlike American law, Torah law places more stringent expectations upon us. Where American law tends to be concerned about protecting the civil rights of the individual, Jewish law is more deeply concerned with addressing our responsibilities to God, to our fellow human being and to our community.
Nowhere is this as clear as it is in this double portion from the Torah for this week. For example, in just the first sedra — B’har — from which Breila read, there are 57 verses; 39 of them deal with how to help the widow, the stranger, the orphan and the slave. In Judaism tsedakah, our obligation to one another, requires more than just a good heart; it requires a good head as well. So the Torah gives us 39 verses of guidance in how to give wisely and well. Again, the principle underlying this is that the earth belongs to God, not to the individual; therefore, we have no right to do with it whatever we wish. We have obligations and responsibilities to the land and to our neighbors. To be a member of the Jewish People means to accept these expectations and limitations.
How often have parents heard their teenagers respond when we ask them to straighten up their bedroom — "It’s my room! I don’t have to clean it!" The Torah offers a very simple answer to this challenge. "No it is not. You live here by my grace and kindness. If you want to live here, you have to live by my expectations."
That is why we say at the Torah — asher bachar banu mikol ha-amin — who chose us from among all the nations, v’natan ianu et Torato and gave us His Torah. Being chosen is not unconditional. It is based on our meeting the expectations outlined for us in the Torah and elaborated on by the sages. This is what makes us a community. Without it, we simply become a group of people without any sense of kinship or unity.
In ancient Israel, they gave away more than 25% of their crops to the Kohain, the Levites, the poor, etc. — even before they paid their taxes to the king. According to Judaism, we only own what we own after we have fulfilled our charitable donations. In ancient Israel, nobody was permitted to buy our crop until our charitable obligations were first taken care of. We Jews do not say, as some wag put it, "God must love the poor; that is why God made so many of them." No. For Jews, God wants us to make sure that we create a society in which there are hardly any poor. There will always be the physically challenged, the sick and elderly, the emotionally ill, orphans and widows among us. There will always be some poor, but our Torah commands us that we must do everything possible to eliminate poverty. Being chosen carries with it expectations of communal responsibility. We call this a covenant; this is what makes us a community. Rabbi Hillel says: al tifrosh min hitzibur — do not separate yourself from the community.
Principle three. Verse 35 of chapter 25 says that if your brother is about to become poor, you should help him. Rashi says the time to help someone is before he becomes poor. If you see an overloaded donkey, it only takes one person to lighten or rearrange its load. But if you wait until it collapses under the burden, it will take several people to lift the donkey up. And so it is with tsedakah. "The lesson of this verse," says Rashi, "is that the time to help a person is before he or she goes broke.
It seems such an obvious truth and yet obvious truths are the ones we tend to neglect. Let’s act pro-actively instead of re-actively. We Americans spend fortunes propping up military alliances in countries where we are disliked. Somehow we always find funds to do so. What if we had sent teachers and nurses and food and medicine to some of these places before we needed them as bases for our military. How much more welcome we might be. How much less it might cost had we done so, as Rashi puts it, "before the donkey collapses under the weight of his burden."
Too often we are like people who live on the edge of a cliff. Every day people fall off the precipice, so what do we do? We build a hospital at the foot of the cliff instead of building a fence at the top.
Principle four is how we give. I share with you once again one of my favorite stories by the Russian writer Turgenev. He says that he was once walking in the street when a beggar approached him. The beggar was a frail old man in rough rags with inflamed eyes, blue lips, disgusting sores. Oh how terribly poverty had disfigured this poor soul. He stretched out his red, swollen, filthy hand and whimpered for alms.
Turgenev said: "I reached into my pocket and found that I had left my money at home — I had no purse, no change, nothing. The beggar waited and his outstretched hand twitched and trembled slightly. Embarrassed and ashamed, I seized his hand and pressed it with my own. ‘Don’t be angry with me, brother. I have nothing to give you.’ I said."
"The beggar raised his blood-shot eyes to me, his lips smiled and he returned the pressure of my hand. ‘Never mind,’ he stammered, ‘thank you for this. This too is a gift; no one has ever called me brother before’."
This poignant story makes the point that when you give to the poor, as important as how much you give, is how you give. If you give with respect for the individual’s dignity, if you give with kindness and concern, that matters as much as how much you give. Perhaps that is why in the Jewish tradition, out of consideration for the feelings of the poor person, we do not make a bracha when we give tsedakah. Shall he or she have to listen to us thanking God for having sent him to us. Shall he have to say amen to our blessing over his poverty.
The Hebrew language is rich in synonyms for poor people. There is "dal", "oni", "evyon", "rash", and other terms as well. And yet in this week’s sedra, which contains the laws for helping the poor, none of these words is used. Instead the Torah uses only one word to describe the poor person; over and over again he is called "achicha", which means "your brother".
What the Torah is teaching us by using this term is that we should never look down upon the poor person or treat that person with contempt. If we throw him a coin or a bill — like you throw a dog a bone — you crush his spirit no matter how much money you give him. Let us be aware that this poor person is made in the image of God just as we are; she therefore deserves not only some tsedakah but some kindness and respect. This poor person could be you.
Please note that our Torah does not say anywhere: if your kinsman is in dire straights, it is his own fault and he needs to fix it. Nor does our Torah portion lecture that your kinsman is the victim of social structures beyond her control and, therefore, the system needs to be changed. What is noteworthy is that our Torah does not address itself to how the kinsman’s poverty occurred in the first place, nor the social or economic forces which have conspired to keep him there. All it does, speaking with the perspective of the personal and sacred, is to tell us we may not abandon anyone to poverty. From God’s perspective there is no "them" and "us"; there is only our kinsman.
Somewhere in Virgil’s Aeneid is a prophecy about Rome. He says that others may excel in art or in science or in philosophy, but you, Rome, will always excel in the art of governing. I believe that if Virgil had known the Torah and if Virgil had studied this week’s sedra, together with the commentaries on it, he would have said — others may excel in art or in science or in philosophy, but you, O Jewish People, will always excel in the art of philanthropy. You will always be masters of the art of when and how to give charity in a human and humane way.
Hillary Clinton wrote that "It Takes a Village to Raise a Child." She understood that as individuals we cannot do it all, no matter how capable we may be — we need one another. We must be willing to forego some of our self-interest in order to be part of the community.
In a sense, a synagogue is a Jewish village. It is nice to have professional staff — rabbis, cantors, programers, teachers — but they do not make a community, You do!
To paraphrase the famous expression of John F. Kennedy: to make this a vibrant and healthy Jewish village, you must not ask what the community can do for you, but what you can do for the community. With due respect to Dickens, I must say that, as your rabbi, I have great expectations of each of you. This is what it means to be a Jew: to believe in each and every human being; to have faith not only in God, but in ourselves. Dear Temple Family, today you have exceeded my expectations. Thank you. May God bless you. Amen
In preparing this message I have benefitted from the writings of Rabbis Bradley Artson, Barry Block,
Mark B. Greenspan, Israel Jacobs, Joseph R. Radinsky and Jack Riemer.
