Last Shabbat was National Gun Violence Prevention Shabbat. I tried to write to you about it here on the blog, but I'm not sure many people realized we were also acknowledging it in services. I wanted to share with you my thoughts from Friday night's service last week, in addition to my regular blog post this week.
I also included several prayers written specifically about gun violence, from an online resource called 'God not Guns,' which you can find
here. It's a Pdf document, from which I read prayers on the following pages:
Pp. 24-25, 26 ('Prayer 2'), 27 (both 'Prayer 5' and 'Prayer 6')
Here is my sermon from last Friday night:
Friday Night D’var Torah - Parashat Vayikra 5773
Gun Violence Prevention Shabbat
In the Doblitz Library
here at Ohev Shalom (just beyond the wall of our chapel), we have a statue of Moses. (We
actually have two, but this one is unique.) Those of us who spend some time in
the library affectionately refer to him as ‘angry Moses.’ We call him that,
because of the unusual choice of the sculptor, who has chosen to depict Moses
just about to smash the Ten Commandments to the ground. You can see the anger
in his eyes and in his face; he isn’t holding the tablets in the traditional
manner, cradled in his arm, but is instead raising them above his head, poised
to hurl them to the ground. And I was thinking about ‘angry Moses’ when I was
preparing to write this D’var Torah for Gun Violence Prevention Shabbat. (which,
incidentally, isn’t a name that really rolls off the tongue…)
In my blog this week, I
wrote a bit about gun violence, and what the Torah has to say on the subject,
though perhaps more accurately on the subject of guilt and innocence, of our
collective responsibility for the safety and well-being of others. In that
post, I quoted a colleague of mine in California, Rabbi Aaron Alexander, who,
in his February 14th Huffington Post article, wrote very
passionately on this issue. And in fact, Rabbi Alexander was the one who led me
to our library statue, because he connected our issue this evening to Moses
coming down from the mountain. He talked about what Moses saw when he
descended; how he was bringing the people a gift from God, and arrived just in
time to see them transgressing possibly the MOST sacred commandment, and
turning their fledgling community into a society of debauchery, idolatry, and
violence. And in that moment, Moses crashed the tablets to the ground.
The rabbis reading this
story ask themselves, ‘how do we understand Moses’ actions?’ He is never
punished by God for his rash behavior, in fact, many rabbis argue that he is
rewarded, even praised, by God, and so we are left trying to make sense
of this extremely passionate episode. And this question isn’t merely limited to
just Moses; I think you’ll see that it also carries ramifications for us and
our society today as well.
Rabbi Alexander queries: “Is this public display of frustration an
acceptable leadership paradigm to celebrate? Isn't this kind of emotional
response exactly what we strive to keep out of the public sphere?” And
he then quotes one of our ancient rabbinic teachers, Reish Lakish, as stating
that “God recognized [that] some events [are] so jarring and disruptive that
the only authentic response is outrage, astonishment and direct action -- even
if something important is lost along the way. Yes, even the Ten Commandments,
wholly Divine, became secondary to human behavior in this moment.”
Now I look at this
story, and I feel two, conflicting responses. On the one hand, I agree with
Rabbi Alexander. As Moses came down from Mount Sinai and saw the cohort before
him, and how perverted and fundamentally flawed were the standards and
expectations these people had set for themselves, he understood, in that
moment, that something was already broken. He shattered the tablets as
if to say, ‘you are living a broken system, and we cannot build on this
foundation with God’s teaching.’ When we, today, accept the senseless deaths of
children every day, gun-related violence all around us on a constant basis, and
common-sense changes that are OVERWHELMINGLY accepted by the majority of
Americans, yet they STILL cannot get implemented – that is a broken
system. And so we have to ask, what needs to be shattered for change to happen?
When will enough Columbines, Auroras, and Sandy Hooks happen for us to realize
that we have to stop hiding behind our own holy tablets; the laws that we claim
are unchangeable, that we insist are written in stone?
In that sense, I agree
with Aaron Alexander. I agree that we sometimes let the status quo deaden our
senses to the problems around us – we become numb to the violence in movies,
video games, the news, and permeating our daily lives. We have to, at the very
least, be WILLING to shatter any and all of our sacred truths, if there’s a
chance that they’ve grown stale, that they’ve remained unquestioned and
unscrutinized for too long. When we get too complacent, bad things happen.
This week’s Torah
portion, and my blog post online, try to remind us that we STILL have a
responsibility, even if we commit sins unwittingly, or think that we can stand
on the sidelines and avoid getting involved. We cannot. We are all responsible.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said “We are caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly.” So we cannot afford to turn a blind eye, or look the
other way, or hide behind the ‘stone tablets’ of how we’ve always done things
or ‘that’s just the way Americans think.’ We are all affected by the
violence that is perpetrated every day, and so we have an obligation to act
RIGHT NOW!
That is how I feel.
However, that is not ALL I feel. I mentioned earlier that I have two,
conflicting responses to Moses’ smashing of the tablets, and my other response
comes specifically BECAUSE of how much we are dependent on one another, how we
are all indirectly affected by the actions of others. Can we always respond as
Moses does? Can we tear down the fabric of society, pouring out our outrage and
fury, without concern about the consequences? What about dialogue and
communication? Finding middle ground, and reaching consensus? Yes, some issues
are more important, and in the moment it may feel as if anything and everything
is warranted, but how does Moses then go back to talking to individual
Israelites after his furious display? How does he resolve minor
interpersonal disputes and hear someone’s mundane complaint after they’ve
witnessed ‘angry Moses’?
If we are looking to
make sustainable, long-term change – and I believe we are – we need to bring everyone
with us. We need to work long and hard, and focus on the eventual goals, not
just the immediate ones, if a culture shift is ever going to occur. And we
cannot alienate others, demonize those across the aisle, or label someone the
‘scapegoat,’ and still think we’re going to reach consensus. Right now, we have
a problem. Are there deep political divides on this issue? Yes, there are.
Should we therefore avoid talking about it? No, we cannot. We simply cannot
afford to. But let’s not therefore IGNORE that it is a divisive issue, filled
with tensions and personal stories. We have to give room to all the fears and
concerns, family stories and cultural norms, frustrations and grievances. All
of it needs to be brought to the table, otherwise we aren’t cleaning out the
closets and creating a fresh start.
And as we approach the
holiday of Pesach, we must indeed focus on cleaning out those closets. And
specifically, we need to work on those issues we would perhaps prefer to leave
behind, to fester and ferment. ‘Chametz,’ comes from the same root as vinegar
‘Chometz,’ and it has to do with fermentation. We need to rid ourselves of the
Chametz that festers in our lives, and give ourselves a fresh start. We need to
work together with all members of our society, leaving behind issues that
divide and enrage us, and focusing on the real changes that need to happen to reduce
the amount of innocent deaths and instances of gun violence. To make sure that
the James Holmeses and Adam Lanzas of our county can’t get a hold of weapons
and make tragic decisions that ruin lives. Because there are solutions out
there that can lead to these changes, and most of us support them. We just
allow ourselves to get distracted, to focus instead on the Chametz, when we
really need to pay more attention to the Charoset, the mortar that we remind
ourselves of on Passover that brought bricks together and built civilizations.
At our Second Seder on
Passover, in another week and a half, we’ll talk more about that strange and
entertaining song we sing, Dayeinu. What do we mean when we sing about Dayeinu?
The verses of the song suggest that if God had brought us out of slavery but
abandoned us in the desert, Dayeinu – it would have been enough. If God had
brought us to Sinai, but somehow FORGOT to also give us Moses’ infamous Ten
Commandments, that too would have been Dayeinu, enough. Or if we’d been given
the Land of Israel but no Shabbat, no problem, Dayeinu, we’d have been fine.
But we would NOT have been fine. The song is really facetiously trying to get
us all to shout out loud, “NO! It would NOT have been enough!” We need God’s
help, because we’d have been nowhere without it.
And just as Moses’
dramatic, demonstrative act, commemorated in our friend, the statue next door,
leaves us with two possible responses, so too Dayeinu yields two responses. And
in both instances, we need BOTH paths. Dayeinu reminds us that it was not
enough then, and it’s not enough now. We cannot be complacent, and settle for a
flawed society, stuck in a proverbial desert, aimless and chaotic. We MUST keep
striving. We must work together to complete God’s work, to acknowledge how much
God has done for us, but recognize that it is now our task to keep
going, keep building, keep striving, and keep changing to get this thing right.
We’re not there yet, but we have the tools and the know-how to get there.
But Dayeinu, the word,
and the new group which was formed here at Ohev Shalom, is also a reminder that
we need to say ‘Enough.’ We have endured enough hatred, enough violence, and
enough smoke-and-mirrors; now it’s time for change. Yes, this is a complicated
issue. And yes, some people feel demonized, and we have to be respectful of
different backgrounds and approaches to the overarching issue of owning guns.
But there are also people, and specifically children, dying every day. And
that’s a problem that truly, truly affects us all, and needs to be
remedied. So we must find ways to bring everyone together, to get us all – in
this community, in this country, and around the world – to say ‘enough!’ Let us
begin to make changes.
Why would someone make
an angry statue? Why depict Moses in that embarrassing moment for us all, in
that heated, passionate, really, violent pose? Maybe because we need the
reminder. We need to know the importance of anger. It can be empowering, and it
can be strengthening. But we also need to use it wisely, and not fight
consuming, destructive fire in kind. We can be better, and we can do better. We
must act. We need to educate, we need to organize, and we need to make sure
that change begins to happen. Then we will create a more just and peaceful
society. THEN we will have earned the right to truly receive God’s
commandments, and we will finally be able to start with clean cabinets and
clean souls.
Shabbat Shalom!
