Dear Friends,
Everyone matters. Period. Black, white; young, old; female, male; rich, poor; native, immigrant; professional, laborer. Differences don’t matter.
So teaches the opening verses of this week’s Torah portion. But first, to me it is concerning and even tragic that we have to discuss this or learn it anew. Yes, our Torah is reread every year in its regular cycle of weekly Torah portions. For 2500 years these verses have been recited every year around September, and are so important, that they also are read on Yom Kippur morning. I guess, even though it is concerning to me that we need to reiterate these basic messages of the value of every human being, our ancient sages nevertheless felt similarly, and enshrined these verses in our recitation cycle for double reading every year.
We read in Deuteronomy this week: “You stand this day, all of you, before the Eternal your God – your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your women, even the stranger within your camp from woodchopper to water drawer – to enter into the covenant of the Eternal your God.” (Deut. 29:9-11)
Wow! This is the ultimate message of the value of every member of the human family, and of the nation or community!
The distressing concern is that this message is so self-evident – why should it be a crowning declaration of Moses in Deuteronomy, and read not only at its natural rotation in our cycle, but also on Yom Kippur? Perhaps, being a child of the middle of the last century, when civil rights mantras were learned as easily as breathing, where being valued citizens in a post-Holocaust world which learned again to cherish the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, I would have thought that these verses had taught their lessons already.
But no. We realize that the Torah and the sages had it correct: these messages need to be taught again and again, that communities can descend into indecent nativism and corrupt elitism if we are not diligent and vigilant in safeguarding the sacred value that everyone is valued. Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Orwell’s 1984 certainly came to warn us. So does Torah!
Everyone matters. Differences don’t.
Shabbat Shalom and L’Shanah Tovah!
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
Everyone matters. Period. Black, white; young, old; female, male; rich, poor; native, immigrant; professional, laborer. Differences don’t matter.
So teaches the opening verses of this week’s Torah portion. But first, to me it is concerning and even tragic that we have to discuss this or learn it anew. Yes, our Torah is reread every year in its regular cycle of weekly Torah portions. For 2500 years these verses have been recited every year around September, and are so important, that they also are read on Yom Kippur morning. I guess, even though it is concerning to me that we need to reiterate these basic messages of the value of every human being, our ancient sages nevertheless felt similarly, and enshrined these verses in our recitation cycle for double reading every year.
We read in Deuteronomy this week: “You stand this day, all of you, before the Eternal your God – your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials, all the men of Israel, your children, your women, even the stranger within your camp from woodchopper to water drawer – to enter into the covenant of the Eternal your God.” (Deut. 29:9-11)
Wow! This is the ultimate message of the value of every member of the human family, and of the nation or community!
The distressing concern is that this message is so self-evident – why should it be a crowning declaration of Moses in Deuteronomy, and read not only at its natural rotation in our cycle, but also on Yom Kippur? Perhaps, being a child of the middle of the last century, when civil rights mantras were learned as easily as breathing, where being valued citizens in a post-Holocaust world which learned again to cherish the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, I would have thought that these verses had taught their lessons already.
But no. We realize that the Torah and the sages had it correct: these messages need to be taught again and again, that communities can descend into indecent nativism and corrupt elitism if we are not diligent and vigilant in safeguarding the sacred value that everyone is valued. Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Orwell’s 1984 certainly came to warn us. So does Torah!
Everyone matters. Differences don’t.
Shabbat Shalom and L’Shanah Tovah!
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
