The People who Make us Uncomfortable (Tzav 5784)
A Talmudic story is told that the famous sage, Reish Lakish, was out guarding an orchard - when a man came and stole figs from the trees on the land.
Reish Lakish responded by yelling at him - Stop. You are acting wrongly. You have no rights here.
The man ignored his yells - and continued to steal and eat the fruit.
So what did Reish Lakish do?
He threatened the thief: “I will see to it that you are excommunicated!”
To which he responded, no, it is you who should be excommunicated - according to our shared tradition, all I need to do to right my wrong is pay you back!
But look at how you escalated things. Yor rushed straight to excommunicating me, and our rabbis say this perversion of justice qualifies you for the decree that you attempted to issue against me.
Reish Lakish couldn’t believe this. Could it be that this thief would school him? Was it possible that his defense was right?
So he goes to the study hall and begins to learn -
The other sages there - his peers - inform him:“yes, the thief is in fact right, and you, Reish Lakish are wrong.”
What Reish Lakish did wrong here -
Is that he jumped to excommunication -instead of allowing him to repent or make remittance, he rushed to judge, and ostracize.
And by doing so, he, himself was ostracized.
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We could swap out the details for a story today. And it would go the same.
Someone tries to rob something from us: the stories we tell ourselves to be true; our preciously-held values; the beliefs we guard so closely
Someone tries to question them, and it is as if they are stealing them away from us; diminishing a part of us.
I should say - in this retelling, this is not some paranoid delusion; we actually see and experience the other person - the proverbial thief - doing all these things.
So we yell at them.
And when they ignore our shouts.
We push them away. We say: you are outside the tent.
And they respond -
No. It is you who deserves to be pushed away. It is YOU who are outside the tent. Not only for your beliefs which I question, but now, because of your hurried attempt to ostracize me.
And suddenly, we are no longer in community.
We are no longer in conversation.
We are in a shouting match.
We are deciding who gets to be a Jew. Whose opinions are acceptable. Who is in- and who is out - or at least who isn’t deserving of repentance. And for some, this sounds like we are deciding who gets to be a Jew.
I want to be careful here.
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There are things that are being said - there are things being done - there are dangerous and immoral actors, and speaking against them Requires the activation of our collective moral voice.
There are people who pose an actual threat to the current and future well-being of the Jewish people - In Israel and in the rest of the world. They say things like that Israel isn’t the indigenous homeland of the Jewish people. They say things like only Jews should live in the Land of Israel. They say things like zionism is settler colonialism. They say things like all of Judah and Samaria should be Jewish, and only Jewish.
But these are not the people I am talking about. Instead I am talking about the people who make us uncomfortable. Who ask the provocative questions that we might rather avoid - the heated family debates. A friend of mine reminded me this week, friends get to ask moral questions of each other.
I am talking about our neighbors.
I am talking about our children.
I am talking about our parents.
I am talking about our friends.
And I am obligated to give them an answer - I owe them a response - conversation - even if I don’t want to. Even if I think that they are beyond wrong for asking. Even if I think their question stomps over everything I believe.
There are those - Jews, non-Jews, politicians, who will tell you that you will have to choose.
“Now is a time to decide who is in - and who is out,” they might say.
They are in the op-ed section telling you that you will have to choose between your liberal values or your zionism.
They are standing at podiums shaming you, and telling you that your vote determines your Judaism.
There are those who benefit from our division.
But if enough of us push each other outside of the tent,
Soon, we will look around. And there will be no one standing next to us.
And those who seek our destruction will have won - without much effort on their part.
Like so many times in our own history, we will have done it to ourselves.
We will have done it because we will have made the critical error of Reish Lakish.
We will say we tried to talk - but really we just yelled at each other.
We will say we tried to listen - but really we just ignored each other.
And then - when our yelling and ignoring failed to move the other, to change their beliefs and behaviors,
We will declare them to be outside our tent.
And they will do the same to us.
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I do not pretend that our conversations will be easy - but we have to be brave enough to have the conversation first.
We have to ask moral questions of each other, and we have to listen. It will be messy. And painful.
Maybe some of the hardest conversations we’ve ever had.
But I think the tent is worth fighting for.
I believe the relationship is worth fighting for.
What would it - what can it look like to try to stay in relationship?
What if, of jumping to ostracism -
Reish Lakish would have asked If I was me who was about to be ostracized, what would the remedy be? What could I have done to overturn the degree?
And in fact - this is what the rabbis suggest to Reish Lakish - They advise him:
You must go to the man who violated you. Talk to him. And even though you threatened him with excommunication, and as a result risked bringing the same upon yourself… You have to ask him to bring you back inside the tent.
Reish Lakish says - but I do not know him.
Reish Lakish, it turns out, jumped so quickly to ostracize the man, that the man was a stranger to him.
I don’t want to be naive here. Reish Lakish had every right to be aggrieved. The man came out of nowhere and stole from him, after all. This man, too, committed a serious transgression. So let’s be clear: Reish Lakish was right to be upset and entirely justified in feeling violated.
But… it was the rush to excommunicate before knowing anything more about whether the circumstances called for such a punishment… it was that act that stood in the way of restitution. After all, all the thief needed to do to do teshuvah was to pay for the stolen goods.
But Reish Lakish created a much wider chasm.
He did not ask why the man stole the fruit.
He did not ask if he was hungry, or in need.
He did not attempt to offer him honest criticism.
Instead - without knowing him at all, he pushed him aside.
And the only way to move forward - the only way for Reish Lakish to be forgiven -
Is to attempt to get to know him. To seek him out. To be in some kind of community with him.
Even though he was wrong.
This is the rich ethical tradition we come from -
No Jew - no priest, or prophet, rabbi, leader, or single individual alone has any more or less power to decide the contours of the tent indiscriminately.
You are not allowed to declare someone is “not Jewish” anymore. Even if they have sinned.
You are - encouraged, and required to engage with them - to tell them why and how you believe their beliefs and behaviors to be problematic or destructive.
And - we are required, in each and every place we can - do try to bring people who have been pushed outside back in.
For us right now, when things still feel so raw… Maybe not yet - but maybe one day.
This is our moral challenge.
What does it look like to stay in the relationship with those who we feel have stolen from us? I know it hurts. I am there. I feel that hurt, too.
And what does it look like to try to imagine a community - which has standards, which has values, and beliefs that we guard preciously because we know them to be sustaining and life-giving,
To imagine this community which still, allows people to engage in conversation first - which requires us to try to talk to each other?
Because if we can’t - from this place - this place of safety and privilege -
If not here, then where?