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Jewish Journal

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April 21, 2023

Fear and The Remedy: Comments on Torah Portion Tazria Metzora

Seeking the Good /

Fear and the Remedy

Thoughts on Torah portion Tazria-Metzora 2023 (adapted from previous years)

 

This week’s Torah portion is about mass fear, or better put, how to stave off mass fear. Mass fear makes people, and groups of people, think, say and do irrational and destructive things.

 

You wouldn’t know that this Torah portion is about the fear that produces irrationality and destructiveness, personal up to national, from a first read. On the surface, most of this week’s double Torah portion (Tazria-Metzora) is about a skin lesion called “tza’ra’at.”  In older Bibles, this skin disease was translated as “leprosy,” but modern medicine has ruled that out. What is described in most of these two combined Torah portions is a frightening growth on the skin (and toward the end of the portion, on the walls of dwellings) that would have caused fear, disgust and revulsion.

 

The natural reaction of a group of scared people would have been to banish the afflicted person, for fear of contagion. An overreaction on the part of a group of fearful people would have been to kill the afflicted person, the skin disease being thought to be a result of some demonic possession. A person with some disease or condition that marks them as different can quickly become “other” – less human than the rest of us, to be marked off, excluded, banished, or killed. Nowadays, we don’t need a skin disease to prompt the fear that produces the will to destroy someone. Sometimes, deep prejudices (and even merely disagreeing) can be enough to produce the will to obliterate.

 

The Torah portion describes a process that effectively gets ahead of the mob, a process that is boring and strange to the reader, until you understand the deeper thing going on – preventing people from acting on mass fear.

 

The impartial priest who is charge of the case only needs to find out if tza’ra’at is actually afoot. The priest more or less says, “Everyone calm down. I’ve got this one.”

 

Then we have detailed instructions for dealing with the outburst of the frightening skin condition. The Kohen acts as a physician, diagnosing the unsightly, severe scurf as to whether it is tza’ra’at or not.  If the Kohen determines that the rash is not the feared condition, the person is declared “clean.”  Everyone can relax. The inciters of the mob skulk off until the next opportunity.

 

If the Kohen decides that the scurf is actually tza’ra’at, a detailed ritual, including the afflicted person’s temporary removal from the camp, kicks in. The precision of the ritual and the time it consumes would weary any mob (or most readers of this Torah portion, for that matter).

 

Mob violence coalesces around fear, hatred, judgmentalism and action based on fear. Precise thinking kills that energy. Nothing ruins the ecstasy of the mob more than deliberate cogitation, rational debate, the careful weighing of all points of view. Feelings such as fear do matter, of course, if there is real, immediate danger. That rational fear must be translated into a rational plan of action. Fear is bad when it becomes bad, when it takes us to a place without reason, without clarity, without a just and humane way forward.  Then good thinking can become our salvation – our salve.

 

The precise, boring and even disgusting details of this Torah portion are like a balm to the burning itch to fear, hate, expel, banish, silence and kill. Calm, rational, careful, and compassionate thinking can be a remedy for the most dangerous condition of all – the human condition.

 

Life on earth can be randomly cruel and destructive and often there is little we can do but try to respond wisely and compassionately. Whatever other people do, our role is to make things better.  Our character doesn’t depend on what other people do; our character depends on what kind of person we want to be become. In a crisis, be the solid, wise one, not the one who joins in caustic chorus.

 

I go back to the priest in our Torah portion dealing with the outbreak of an ugly and fearsome skin disease. The ultimate job of the priest was to calm the nerves of the mob, to get to the truth of the matter, to protect the group if they indeed need protection, to let the afflicted know they were being cared for, and ultimately to get society back to its stasis, until the next time.

 

There is great beauty under the rather repelling surface of this week’s Torah portion, a beauty that can be found in each of us.

Fear and The Remedy: Comments on Torah Portion Tazria Metzora Read More »

UCSB Student Senate Passes #EndJewHatred Day Resolution

California, News /

The UC Santa Barbara (UCSB) Student Senate passed a resolution on April 19 urging the university to proclaim April 29 as #EndJewHatred Day.

The vote breakdown was 16 in favor, one against and eight abstentions, according to a source. The resolution stated that one of the reasons the day is necessary is the various incidents that happened on campus in January, citing “the vandalization of a classroom with false allegations that the State of Israel, the only Jewish State, a perpetrator of genocide, femicide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and white supremacy, as well as the dissemination of flyers with heinously antisemitic propaganda and tropes impacting the emotional and mental well-being of Jewish students throughout the community.” The resolution also noted that the student senate held a meeting on Yom Kippur in 2022, thus “senators, public forum speakers and spectators were unable to participate due to religious observance.”

Therefore, as part of #EndJewHatred Day, the campus will provide “a safe space for Jewish students on campus” and “add the Jewish Holidays named above to the academic calendar to make it easier for Jewish students to schedule make-up exams and assignments with their professors.” The resolution urged the university to “sign binding commitments by the conclusion of Spring Quarter, 2023, to prosecute antisemitic behaviors … with the same intensity as other racial, religious, misogynistic, homophobic, and otherwise bigoted acts.”

“This resolution was carefully crafted over the period of several months. I do believe that something significant has been achieved through the support of this Senate and I feel proud to be part of the legislative body of this university,” Alexa Grines, an End Jew Hatred UCSB fellow, said in a statement. “This resolution explicates the demands of the UCSB Jewish community and symbolizes our passion to work towards being safely integrated into the broader student community. I believe that a student community that is welcoming to its Jewish students is a better campus environment for all students. This achievement is significant, but it is also only the first step on a path to making real progress to our campus life. I look forward to continuing to work towards ensuring the safety of each and every Jewish individual on this campus.”

Yehuda Jian, campus coordinator for End Jew Hatred, also said in a statement, “This is only the first step as we have much more work to do before the Jewish community is given a level playing field on college campuses and has the same protections granted to other minorities.”

April 29 was declared #EndJewHatred Day in 2022 after the Holocaust Museum and Center for Education and Tolerance in New York suggested it to End Jew Hatred, the nonpartisan grassroots organization. April 29 was the day after Yom HaShoah in 2022.

UCSB Student Senate Passes #EndJewHatred Day Resolution Read More »

House Dem Leader Jeffries: I Don’t Share Uncle’s “Controversial Views”

News, United States /

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said during an April 20 press conference that he does not share his uncle’s “controversial views” after being asked about a recently unearthed op-ed in which he defended his uncle and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.

CNN reported on April 12 that they had discovered a 1992 op-ed written by Jeffries in the Black Student Union’s (BSU) newspaper at Binghamton University where he defended BSU’s decision to invite his uncle, Dr. Leonard Jeffries, to speak on campus. At that time, his uncle was under fire for saying in a 1991 speech that “rich Jews helped finance the slave trade” and there is a Hollywood “conspiracy” to disparage Black people and it’s being carried out “by people called Greenberg and Weisberg and Trigliani.” “Dr. Leonard Jeffries and Minister Louis Farrakhan have come under intense fire,” Jeffries, a board member for BSU, wrote in the op-ed. “Where do you think their interests lie? Dr. Jeffries has challenged the existing white supremist educational system and long standing distortion of history. His reward has been a media lynching complete with character assassinations and inflammatory erroneous accusations.” The CNN report noted that Jeffries has previously stated to various media outlets that he didn’t know much about his uncle’s controversial remarks.

When the UK Daily Mail asked about the op-ed during the April 20 press conference, Jeffries replied: “I’ve made clear consistently that I did not share any of controversial views that were expressed by my uncle more than three decades ago. Not now, not ever. As I’ve said, my track record and public service and professionally more than two decades of bringing people together and standing up for every single community, including the Black and Jewish communities that are proudly represented in Brooklyn.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition was not convinced. “Hakeem Jeffries still refuses to give the Jewish community an explanation as to why he lied and attempted to cover up his defense of his antisemite uncle and notorious bigot Louis Farrakhan,” they tweeted.

Representative Max Miller (R-OH), who is Jewish, previously tweeted, “From Louis Farrakhan to Ilhan Omar to members of his own family, Hakeem Jeffries has spent his adult life defending people who make antisemitic remarks. Those hateful views have no place in the House of Representatives, let alone defended by the Democratic Leader. His pattern of behavior is deeply concerning and worthy of further scrutiny.”

Representative Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), who is also Jewish, has defended Jeffries. Per the Daily Mail, Gottheimer told Punchbowl: “I can personally attest American Jews and Israel are lucky to have [Jeffries] as an unflinching supporter and champion.”

The Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA) has also defended Jeffries, tweeting on April 14 that Jeffries is “an unwavering partner of the Jewish American community and ally of Israel in Congress.” “We are grateful for his leadership defending democracy, fighting antisemitism and right-wing extremism, and standing with Israel,” they added. “His long record in Congress on these issues is beyond reproach and we condemn any assertions to the contrary. We are proud to call him a friend.”

Though they did not reference Jeffries’ remarks in his April 20 press conference, the JDCA tweeted: “Donald Trump calls us disloyal. Marjorie Taylor Green [sic] claims we have ‘space lasers.’ George Santos insults us by claiming he’s ‘Jew-ish.’ Kevin McCarthy promotes antisemitic conspiracies and extremists. Remind us – which other Republicans promoting antisemitism did we miss?”

House Dem Leader Jeffries: I Don’t Share Uncle’s “Controversial Views” Read More »