Friday, August 10, 2018

There are human beings among us - D'var Torah - Parashat Re'eh - August 10, 2018


“There shall be no needy among you.”
   I have been thinking, for many years, about this declaration from Deuteronomy, which is contained in this week’s Torah reading.  
   Most commentaries interpret this statement in light of what we should do to care for those who are in need, whose poverty has become so pervasive, due to their own particular circumstances, that they can’t shake it.
    Moses Maimonides, in his eight degrees or levels of Tzedakah, identified ways in which we can give.  The ultimate and most effective approach to giving, he said, is to offer whatever is necessary to help the person in need be come self-supporting.   
    This passage which I am about to read from Chapter 15 of Deuteronomy requires that we not harden our hearts – calling to mind Pharaoh of the Exodus story, the main purveyor of cruelty in the Torah.
    Rather, the Torah says, we should open our hand and provide what is sufficient to meet the needs of people who are in dire straits.
    We live in a time now when communal programs and policies, which could fulfill the commandments in this section, are looked upon with disdain and contempt by some people in our society.  There are those who proclaim that everyone should be able to take care of their own needs.   No programs of assistance are necessary to raise up those individuals and families who have come upon hard times through layoffs, changes in home values, the high costs of medical treatment and prescriptions, and other challenges.   
    There are some members of faith communities who believe that a person is assigned a particular lot in life by God, and that giving more than modest assistance to them may counter that divine plan.     I would admit, though, that most religious groups teach their members to do what they can to provide assistance when they can.
     All of this is relevant to the plain meaning of this passage from Deuteronomy about helping people caught in poverty.
      Today, something else occurred to me – another level of significance of this passage that I had never thought of before.
       My new insight likely derived from the upcoming first anniversary of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Last year’s right-wing protests resulted in one death and the sounds of hatred and definite anti-Semitism being chanted on the streets of that city.    Neo-Nazis and white supremacists who called out “Jews will not replace us” and “you will not replace us” as they marched through the center of town defined their place in society.  First, they made it clear that they begrudge the persistence of a vibrant American Jewish community, represented well in Charlottesville.  Don’t think that the rally last year didn’t give Jews in that community concern.  It did, enough that several local citizens who were not Jewish came to offer members of the congregation visible support outside their synagogue during and after their Shabbat morning service.
     “You will not replace us” was a phrase that expressed an all-encompassing contempt for our society that accepts in our country the humanity, presence and participation of people of all races, faiths, and backgrounds.     Yes, these “unite the right” demonstrators first dehumanized Jews, but then, they did the same to everyone else who was not part of their movement.
     I don’t think many people in our country realized that they, too, were being targeted.   On August 24, 2002, a White Unity Rally at the Kansas Capitol building in Topeka brought a handful of participants and Neo-Nazi activists together.   I was among the many peaceful counter-demonstrators standing outside a fence placed on the Capitol grounds to prevent any direct physical confrontation.      We who were outside the perimeter knew on which side of the fence we wanted to stand, and we were proud that we were standing there together. 
     My realization about Deuteronomy Chapter 15, verse 4, “there shall be no needy among you,” somewhat relates to the dehumanization expressed in these “unite the right” rallies.   It is about labels and how we think and speak about people.  It is about which side of the fence on which we choose to stand: lifting up all people with respect and compassion or taking them down and isolating them with words of denigration and prejudice.
      “Needy’ is a word that describes a person’s socioeconomic status.  I think we would all agree that the term has the potential to rob people of their dignity or to create a stigma about them.  I believe that part of the message of this verse in Deuteronomy was that we should not see people as “needy.”  We should consider them to be fellow society members who could benefit from our concern and our help.   They are people like us, who have fallen on hard times. Their difficultie could be alleviated if we followed Maimonides teaching of helping them find a way to support themselves. 
     With a “Unite the Right” rally planned for Washington, D.C. this weekend in Lafayette Park near the White House, I believe that this is a time when Americans need to choose the side of the fence on which they will stand.   Some may join with those who claim that only they have the proper solutions, while their proposals may not actually address the dire situations in which some people find themselves, all the while accusing people facing challenges of creating their own plight.   Some may decide to stand with fellow community members who seek to create approaches than can benefit everyone and raise up every individual as a person of value who can contribute something unique to our world.
      We are members of a community and tradition that values every person, every life.  Let us conclude with the passage from the Mishnah on the handout, one that includes one of Judaism’s central declarations about what binds us together.  It reminds us that we can transcend our differences so that we can see what we continue to hold in common as move forward on our life’s journey:
This is why humanity was first created with a single human being:
to teach you that whoever destroys one life, Scripture accounts it as if he had destroyed a full world;
and whoever saves one life, Scripture accounts it as if she had saved a full world.
And for the sake of peace among people, a single human being was created in the beginning so that one should not say to his or her fellow "My lineage is greater than yours."
And a single human being was created in the beginning to declare the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be God: for when one human being stamps out many coins with one die, the coins are all alike,
but when the Sovereign, the Ruler of rulers, the Holy One, blessed be God, stamps each person with the seal of the first human being, not one of them is like his or her fellow, [yet they all still come from the same place].  (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5)
   May we always remember what brings us together every moment of our lives.

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