Seventh Day of Passover

What is the message conveyed by the Torah portions that we read on Passover?

On the first day, we read about the first Passover. We read about the Tenth Plague and Israel’s miraculous liberation from bondage. Today, Israel reaches the sea, and God parts the waters, and once again, Israel is miraculously saved.

What is the message? What is the lesson to be learned from these passages that we read over Passover?

The obvious answer is that we learn about the origins of Passover, we recall the formative events that established Israel and shaped Judaism. We might also suggest that we learn about God’s greatness, and the centrality of God in Jewish history.

A less obvious answer might be that we learn about the essential insignificance of miracles, of revelation and of divine intervention.

That might seem an odd conclusion to draw from a narrative that revolves around miraculous intervention and revelation. Those elements would seem to be essential to the story, and therefore fundamental to Judaism.

They are central.

They are essential.

But I would argue that their expression in Judaism is quite different than what would seem the obvious conclusion. I would suggest that although revelation and wondrous deeds make for a riveting tale, they are not essential to our belief.

Why do I say that?

The answer is simply that to say otherwise is to ignore the context of what we read, and the connection between the two stories.

In the first reading, Israel is miraculously liberated from Egypt. God’s hand in that liberation is undeniable. Yet they do not leave Egypt by the direct route. At the very beginning of today’s reading we are told that:

“God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although it was nearer; for God said: The people may have a change of heart when they see war, and return to Egypt.”

These people who had just experienced the Ten Plagues couldn’t be relied upon to maintain their faith just days later.

Israel is miraculously led to Yam Suf - the Reed Sea - by a “pillar of cloud” during the day, and by a “pillar of fire” in the night. And no sooner do they arrive at the sea than they entirely lose hope, and cry out to Moses:

“Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, saying: Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness?”

Suddenly, all faith is gone.

Of course, today we read about how Israel is saved, and how God’s presence is manifest. Israel is delivered and they had faith in the Lord, and in his servant Moses, until they rebelled again three days later.

My grandfather must have understood exactly how Moses felt at Yam Suf.

By the autumn of 1943, he had managed to lead his family and friends safely from Belgium, through France, to the Italian Alps.

They were in Italy. The Allies had captured Sicily. Mussolini had been deposed. An armistice had been signed.

Just days before, they had been surrounded by German soldiers who had asked to search their baggage for contraband. Thanks to my grandfather’s faith and presence of mind, they had escaped, and had watched helplessly as hundreds of Jews were then rounded up and marched off at gunpoint.

In the intervening days, the Allies landed in Reggio, Taranto and Salerno, and began the push north. The end seemed near, but so did the cold of winter.

Then, after miraculously escaping time and again, my grandfather stood alone as his family and friends argued that with winter approaching, it would be best that they all return to France.

My grandfather was a man of great faith. He was not going back. Besides, it was Shabbat, and he would not travel on the Sabbath.

But not everyone shared his faith.

And so, like Moses, he turned to God. That night, he stood under the clear, cloudless sky and said:

“Master of the Universe, I can no longer make decisions for my family, or for my friends. I cannot take it upon myself to tell them what road to take, when every road may lead them to death.

You, my dear Lord, You must make the decision for us.

God, hear me! I place myself in Your hands.

Tomorrow morning I ask for a sign. Tomorrow is the Sabbath, if you want us to return to France, then let the sun greet me in the morning. But, if You want us to remain here, then let there be torrential rain.”*

You are all here because Moses got his miracle. I am here because my grandfather got his.

But both stories, that of the Exodus and that of my grandfather, carry the same message:

No amount of logical arguments, wondrous interventions and revelations will make us truly believe. Miracles do not make us believe in God. The desire to know God – the willingness to believe - must come first.

If you are unwilling to believe, then no amount of miracles will convince you of God’s presence in our lives, our world, and our history. But if you sense God’s presence and seek Him, then you know that just being here, alive and well, right now, is a miracle.


Avinoam Sharon


© 2005 Avinoam Sharon




* Excerpt from Albert M. Sharon, Walking To Valdieri, (New York: M.S. Finan, 2003) page 156.

Passover: Freedom or Independence?

On Saturday night, we will all sit at the Seder table once again to reenact the Exodus from Egypt. Some of us will use the Seder primarily as an opportunity to get the whole family together for a festive meal. For others, it will be a nostalgic return to a childhood memory. Some of us may try to understand the text of the Haggadah as an historical document, while others may wish to examine its relevance to our own lives, or even choose to update the Haggadah by adopting readings and themes they find more relevant or meaningful to their conception of freedom. After all, Passover is Hag HaHerut, the Festival of Freedom, and the concept of freedom is certainly one that should concern our thoughts when we read the Haggadah.

I can remember quite a few attempts at infusing the Seder with new meaning by giving new interpretations its symbolic elements. One of the most popular methods is that of reinterpreting the significance of what has come to be referred to as the “Cup of Elijah.” Time and again, this traditional Cup of Elijah has been identified with another missing guest at the Seder, and assigned to another suffering or enslaved victim, or another aspect of hope.

Once, it was Soviet Jewry. At another time, it was the Jews of Syria. More recently, it has evolved into the Cup of Miriam as a sign of feminist consciousness raising.

But before we assign yet another identity to the Cup of Elijah, perhaps we should consider what it may be meant to symbolize in the context of the traditional Haggadah, and the retelling of the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

I know that many of us have been brought up to think that the Cup of Elijah is merely a game, a ruse for keeping the children awake until the end of the Seder. We fill the cup, send the kids to open the door for Elijah, and then one of the adults takes a surreptitious sip so that the level of the wine is a little lower when the youngsters return. Not surprisingly, if that’s what it’s all about, then it is certainly an element of the Seder in need of reinterpretation.

But that’s not really what it’s about.

Traditionally, each cup of wine at the Seder is said to symbolize a divine promise. The cup of Elijah is no different.

I know that we commonly speak of the “four cups”. We know that at the Seder we are each required to drink four cups of wine, each cup representing one of God’s promises to Israel, one of the four expressions of salvation (Exodus 6:6-7):

I will bring you out
I will deliver you
I will redeem you
I will take you

These are Israel’s four freedoms, and each cup of wine is said to represent one of these promises.

Of course, anyone who reads the text through to the next verse should immediately become suspicious of that explanation of the deeper symbolic meaning of the four cups. After all, five promises are stated, not four. The fifth is: “I will bring you unto the land.”

We, living here, in a sovereign state of Israel, should find that fifth promise especially significant. Its absence is a little troubling. The biblical narrative does not seem to be saying that God freed Israel from bondage in order that they be free, or in order that they may wander the desert, or receive the Torah, or worship God and keep his commandments. The Bible appears to be saying that God freed us from slavery in order that we might inherit the land of Israel, the land of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Yet, the Haggadah seems to downplay that aspect entirely.

A cynic might say that the reason that the Haggadah ignores the “Zionist” message is that the Rabbis who gave us the Haggadah resided in Babylonia, and they had no interest in delivering a message that would require that they “make aliya.” But that argument does not ring quite true. While I do not doubt that nearly 2000 years of exile affected the Haggadah and the messages and values it imparts, I am also aware of the fact that the Haggadah draws primarily upon the Mishnah. The requirement of drinking four cups of wine is a Mishnaic one, and the Mishnah was composed in the Land of Israel.

Moreover, the idea of linking the four cups with the four promises doesn’t come from the Babylonian Talmud, but from the Jerusalem Talmud.

And so it would seem that if we wish to find that fifth promise, we have to look elsewhere. I would suggest that the most obvious place to look is the fifth cup of wine, the so-called Cup of Elijah.

The Rabbis were not sure whether we should drink four cups or five. It was that lack of certainty that led to establishing the custom of the Cup of Elijah – a cup of wine that, due to the uncertainty, is poured but not drunk. But what is there to be uncertain about? There are, after all, five promises.

While there are indeed five promises, I believe our ancestors may have been uncertain as to the ultimate nature of freedom and the correct interpretation of the symbolism of Passover. What is the true message of Hag HaHerut? What is the fundamental aspect of freedom? Is it personal autonomy, or is it national sovereignty? Is the primary message of Passover one of individual liberty, or one of national independence?

Either option can be argued. One can certainly maintain that the main purpose of the Exodus from Egypt was to free Israel from slavery in the sense that each Jew became free as an individual. Each person became free to keep God’s commandants. Each person became free to live a Jewish life wherever he may choose. That is the essence of freedom: personal autonomy. That is the foundation upon which a free society is built.

On the other hand, one might plausibly argue that personal autonomy was not the objective, but merely the means for achieving a higher goal, that of national identity and sovereignty. The purpose of the exodus from Egypt was to make it possible to establish an independent Jewish society. The ultimate goal was to attain sovereignty in the land of Israel, so that we might establish a society in which we would be free to live full Jewish lives, a society founded upon Jewish values, in which we would be responsible for our own destiny.

Which is more important? Which is more fundamental? Which facilitates which? Does freedom of the individual make it possible for us to establish a free society, or is a free society a prerequisite for individual freedom and autonomy?

I don’t know. And I think our Sages didn’t know either. Perhaps there is no right answer. Perhaps the answer depends upon who you are. Perhaps there is one right answer for us, living here in Israel, and another equally right answer for Jews living abroad.

I don’t know. But I believe that the idea behind the Cup of Elijah may be to raise those questions in our minds, and to allow each of us to answer them in our own way.

The Cup of Elijah is a symbol of uncertainty. We pour five cups in recognition of the five promises. We drink four cups in acknowledgement of the four promises. We pour five cups because Passover is about national liberation. We drink four cups because Passover is about personal freedom.

By setting aside the untouched Cup of Elijah we allow ourselves to say that simultaneously we have four cups and we have five cups. The Cup of Elijah validates both answers. The Cup of Elijah leaves the ultimate answer with each of us. We must all choose for ourselves. Perhaps, in the end, the Cup of Elijah tells us that the most important element of freedom is the right to choose.

Avinoam Sharon

© 2005 Avinoam Sharon

Aharei Mot (Leviticus 16:1 - 18:30)

I am a Jew.

I am a Jew. I suppose that statement doesn’t really surprise anyone. It isn’t meant to surprise or shock or annoy. It is a simple statement of fact. It is a statement that I am proud to make.

I am proud that I am a Jew. For me, being Jewish – saying that I am Jewish – is a statement of who and what I am. It is an expression of my essence. I say it with pride because for me, when I analyse it, I realize that it is a statement that reflects both my personal history, and my ancient national heritage. It says that I am the son of parents who sacrificed and suffered hardship because of their identity. It says I am part of a civilization that has given the western world its culture. To be a Jew is to be part of an aboriginal nation that enjoys a history unlike any other. Should I not be proud? When I say, “I am a Jew” I am saying a lot more than three words. I am speaking volumes.

Of course, that statement of pride is very personal. It says a lot about me as an individual, about the society in which I was raised and in which I live, and about how I view myself and the world. But that is what it says to me. To the world it is just a statement of fact.

The statement “I am a Jew” is very different for me than for my parents. When my mother says, “I am a Jew,” it is the statement of a proud woman who was raised as a Jew in America, when being Jewish still meant that you were a member of a “targeted” minority group singled out for discrimination. When she says that she is a Jew, she speaks as a person who was born before the establishment of the State of Israel, and who served in a pre-State underground to help make Israel a reality. Her statement of Jewishness speaks of a kind of pride that is missing from my use of the identical words. For me, being Jewish did not present any obstacle. I never had to overcome any stigma or stereotyping. I did not have to prove myself equal. So when my mother says that she is a Jew, it is not the same as when I say so. Even if for the rest of the world that difference is invisible, once that was not so. Once, saying that she was a Jew was no small matter.

My father was born in Europe. He spent his teens avoiding the gas chambers. For him, being Jewish meant a series of false papers, assumed identities, narrow escapes, service in the Jewish underground in France, in the British army in Italy, and working for Aliya Bet to help survivors of the Shoah reach Palestine despite the British restrictions upon Jewish immigration to the land of our ancestors. For my father being Jewish comprised fear and defiance. It meant deprivation, loss and triumph. When my father said, “I am a Jew,” the statement was founded upon endless levels of emotional and philosophical complexity that are beyond my comprehension.

I caught a glimpse of what it meant for my father to say he was a Jew when one Shabbat I asked him why he wore his tallit to synagogue, rather than carry it in a tallit sack. He answered that he wore it “because I can.” He wore his tallit because, living here in Israel, he finally felt that he could walk down the street wearing his tallit, and no one would assault him, or jeer at him, or even think he was odd. For my father, saying “I am a Jew” meant something entirely different than what I mean when I say those words. But if we were standing side by side, saying the words in unison, the statements would be identical to an observer. Sixty years ago, my father’s statement meant something quite different than mine does today.

It almost goes without saying that those three words mean something else entirely for my daughters. For my daughters, they are words in a foreign language. My daughters were born in Jerusalem. The statement “ani yehudi’a” is far different than its English equivalent. To say, “I am a Jew” in Hebrew is essentially different. It is self-referential in a way that the statement cannot be in any other language. For all of the deep personal meaning that the statement must have for a person with an awareness of Jewish history, for an observer, the statement is no different than mine.

When I say that I am a Jew, I am making an intensely personal declaration of who I am and of what I am. Of course, it is no different for a person who declares: I am an American, I am Canadian, or English, or Italian. It is true, as well, for people who say I am Catholic, or Anglican, or Baptist, or Buddhist. It is also true for a person who says I am Indian, Black, Chinese, or Native American. But I wonder if it is equally true for a person who says, “I am gay.”

There has been a lot of talk over the last few weeks about the possibility that this year’s Gay Pride Parade may be held in Jerusalem. This week, the press ran articles about the leaders of “liberal” movements who came out in support, and there was no lack of bashing of religious leaders who oppose the parade. Some people wonder how a Jew could be against an expression of equality and democratic values, others cannot understand how a rabbi could accept, and even condone holding such a parade in Jerusalem.

Those are not the questions that I wish to pursue here. I will only note that Conservative Judaism is not a form of “liberal” Judaism, and that although Ehud Bandel is an ordained rabbi, when he speaks as President of the Masorti Movement, he speaks as a lay leader who heads an organization of synagogues. Newspapers may not make that distinction, but the rest of us should bear in mind that Rabbi Bandel does not speak for the Rabbinical Assembly, or for the Committee for Jewish Law and Standards, or for the Va’ad Halakha.

Be that as it may, what interests me on the eve of Passover – Hag HaHerut – the Festival of Freedom, and on the Shabbat on which we read Parashat Aharei Mot, in which we read the Torah’s prohibition upon homosexual behaviour, is what is meant by Gay Pride – what is meant by the statement “I am gay.”

I cannot honestly say that I know what it means. But as I have tried to understand what I mean when I speak of Jewish pride, and since I have conjectured what my family means by it, I will allow myself to speculate at what is meant by Gay Pride, and what the message of a Gay Pride Parade might be.

The fact that the newspapers have shown such keen interest in the subject certainly shows that being a member of what is termed the LGBT community is not something that is taken for granted. If you Google LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) you will get nearly two million hits on sites that deal with support groups, statements of non-discriminatory practices, lobbying efforts, community centers, help hotlines, and you name it. Clearly, to be gay is to be a person who feels that he or she is a member of a targeted minority. Surfing some of those web pages, you cannot help but realize that if you are gay, you feel that you are discriminated against because of your sexual orientation.

It should not come as any surprise, therefore, that if you are a member of the LGBT community, you will feel that any and all opposition to holding a Gay Pride Parade is clearly an act of bigotry and of gay bashing, and I doubt that any argument to the contrary will convince you that opposition to the parade may have nothing to do with gender issues or sexual orientation.

I also imagine that when a person declares pride in being gay, it is not a statement about cultural history, national origins, ethnic history or social contribution, but a statement of self worth. In that sense, it is the same as my statement that I am a Jew, or anyone else’s self-defining statement, except that for the rest of us, nowadays, that aspect of our statement is not explicit. Because of the way society views homosexuality, the statement “I am gay” is not just a statement of fact that comprises myriad personal meanings, it is an open declaration, an admission, a confession, and a revelation. That’s how it once was for my parents to say “I am a Jew.” That, I imagine, is what it is now to say “I am gay.”

I have a feeling that that is really what the Gay Pride parade is all about. It is about the explicit statement. When I say that I am a Jew, it is a statement of fact that implicitly says a world of things about me, but it bears a very limited explicit message about my identity. I read a lot into it, but others don’t know or even imagine all that it implies for me. For them, it is the same as the statement made by any of the members of my family. Society – at least Israeli society, and I hope society in general – reads nothing into it. When a person says, “I am gay” that person is making a very explicit statement about their place in society. That should not be so, and the fact that it is constitutes the reason for holding the Gay Pride Parade.

And so, I think that perhaps more than we should be worried about whether or not the parade should be held, we should be concerned by the fact that is still perceived to be necessary. The fact that the gay and lesbian members of our society feel the need to hold a parade to express their sense of identity means that we are not doing a very good job as a society. That need to explicitly claim gay pride should make us hang our heads in shame.

Avinoam Sharon

© 2005 Avinoam Sharon

Metzora (Leviticus 14:1-15:32)

This Shabbat falls a week before Shabbat HaGadol – the Great Sabbath preceding Passover. When Shabbat HaGadol falls on the eve of Passover, it is customary to deliver the traditional Shabbat HaGadol sermon about Passover a week early.

Read literally, today’s Torah reading – Parashat Metzora – seems to have nothing whatsoever to do with the nature and spirit of Passover. It is about tzara’at – what we loosely translate as “leprosy.” But I think that by the end of my talk, you may, nevertheless, wish to consider how intimately connected the two subjects really are.

The first hint at a connection between Passover and Metzora should be obvious. The Exodus from Egypt begins with tzara’at. When God reveals Himself to Moses at the burning bush, He says:

“Go and assemble the elders of Israel and say to them: the Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has appeared to me and said, ‘I have taken note of you and of what is being done to you in Egypt, and I have declared: I will take you out of the misery of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, to a land flowing with milk and honey.’ They will listen to you. Then you shall go with the elders of Israel to the King of Egypt…”

Moses is understandably hesitant: “What if they don’t believe me?”

And so God gives him a sign. Moses’ rod is transformed into a snake. Yet God does not stop there. He gives Moses a second sign: “The Lord said to him further: ‘Put your hand into your bosom.’ He put his hand into his bosom; and when he took it out, his hand was leprous, as white as snow (metzora’at kashaleg).”

The explicit connection between Metzora and Passover should now be clear. But it would be legitimate to ask why? Why tzara’at? The Midrash answers that it was meant not only as a sign but also as a punishment. God told Moses: “They will listen to you.” But Moses responds: “What if they don’t believe me.” According to the Midrash, the tzara’at has a double meaning. It is a miraculous sign, and it is also a punishment for slandering the elders of Israel.

The Bible explicitly prohibits slander, and our Sages constantly stressed the severity of the transgression. Every day, we recite a personal prayer that the Talmud (Berakhot 17a) attributes to Ravina: “My God, keep my tongue from evil, my lips from lies. Help me ignore those who slander me.” We say that three times every day, and four times on Shabbat. It may well be the prayer we say most often, and the one to which we pay the least attention. We say it so often, because slander is so common. We pay it no attention, because lashon hara – slander – is so common that we don’t even recognize it. I imagine that if we were more aware of it, we would have a hard time saying the words of that simple prayer that concludes the Amida.

Despite the emphasis that our tradition places upon the severity of slander, there is no specified punishment for an individual who commits the offence. The punishment for slander comes from the heavens.

While the Talmud lists a number of forms that the punishment for slander may take, the most commonly referred to punishment is tzara’at – the “leprous” infection of the skin and clothing that we read about in last week’s Torah portion of Tazri’a, and the plague that infects the walls of houses that we read about this Shabbat in Metzora. There are several reasons for making this association. The most obvious are that Miriam was stricken with tzara’at after she spoke against Moses, and it was inflicted upon Moses when he doubted the faith of the elders of Israel.

(At this point I should probably set your minds at ease. Although Miriam contracted tzara’at for slandering Moshe Rabbeinu, and Moses became metzora for defaming ziknei yisrael, that divinely decreed punishment is not meted out in the case of speaking ill of Torah scholars. As opposed to every other case of slander, the Talmud prescribes specific punishments and monetary damages for saying nasty things about a rabbi. Perhaps, knowing that a building afflicted with tzara’at must be torn down, the Sages feared that if they left the punishment for slandering rabbis to God, not a single synagogue would be left standing).

As I said earlier, tzara’at is taken to be a miraculous sign. One of the other reasons that led the Sages to view tzara’at as some form of miraculous occurrence, rather than a natural disease, is that it was one of the signs given to Moses. Another reason is found in a strange verse in Parashat Metzora. The Torah says:

“When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I inflict an eruptive plague (nega tzara’at) upon a house in the land you possess, the owner of the house shall come and tell the priest …”

What is odd about this verse is that it seems to imply that you can only get tzara’at in a house that you own. If tzara’at is a natural occurrence, what possible difference could it make whether you owned the house or not? But if tzara’at is not a simple disease but a form of divine retribution, it makes sense that it should attack only things that belong to the transgressor. It would be unjust that your house be torn down because you rented it to a rumour monger. Therefore, tzara’at can only infect your own home.

However, there is something else implied by the Sages’ reading of the verse. The verse says: “When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a possession, and I inflict an eruptive plague (nega tzara’at) upon a house…” It would seem that tzara’at could only infect a house in the land of Israel.

Why is that?

It has been suggested that the reason may have something to do with the holiness of the land of Israel. The land of Israel will not tolerate certain kinds of behaviour. While that is a nice idea, it leaves us wondering why it is that outside of Israel, tzara’at can affect your body or clothing, and only your house is immune. That would seem to lead us to some interesting conclusions about slander and about ownership.

The first conclusion concerns how slander affects us. Slander – lashon hara – is unlike other offences. Slander has no physical expression. You don’t take anything, or break anything. You don’t profit, or gain any apparent physical pleasure. Slander is all in the mind and in the heart, both for the perpetrator and for the victim. Slander is intensely personal. The slanderer’s enjoyment is entirely psychological, and it comes wholly at the expense of causing another person mental anguish and shame. Therefore, there would seem to be poetic justice that the punishment for slander should be acutely personal, and that its physical manifestation should cause anguish and shame.

It is also entirely appropriate that the treatment for tzara’at is separation from society. What better way to treat the addiction to slander than by placing the offender in a place where he has no one to talk to?

Of course, we don’t see a lot of tzara’at around, but we should bear in mind that the eruptions on skin and the infection of clothing and walls are merely signs that allow us to identify tzara’at. Slander is purely psychological, and in the eyes of the Sages, tzara’at is a spiritual affliction. Tzara’at affects the soul.

As for tzara’at of our houses, the message may simply be this: Tzara’at can affect our bodies wherever we are. It can infect our clothing regardless of where we may be situated. But it can poison our houses only when we are truly home - when we are in the Land of Israel. An affliction of the soul can destroy the fabric of our surroundings only when we are spiritually home.

When I began, I said that I would show you how intimately connected Parashat Metzora and Passover truly are.

Passover is the holiday of freedom – Hag HaHerut. It is the holiday that marks our exodus from Egypt and our delivery to the Land of Israel. It is a holiday that celebrates our spiritual freedom – liberation from bondage; it represents our national independence – restoration to the land of our ancestors. Tzara’at represents the diametric opposite of those freedoms. Tzara’at results in our spiritual exile from society; it leads to our physical exile from our homes and the severing of our connection to our land. It was the slander of the trees and stones of Canaan by the ten spies that first denied Israel entry into the Promised Land. Through Parashat Metzora, the Sages warn us that it is slander of our fellow human beings that can deny us the fulfilment of the final promise of Passover: “I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession.”

Avinoam Sharon



© 2005 Avinoam Sharon

Tazri'ah (Leviticus 12:1-13:59): Humanism & Holiness

My sermon, this Shabbat, is dedicated to some thoughts I had in the course of the week about Pope John Paul II. The thoughts were prompted by questions that were asked about him, questions I was asked about last week’s Torah reading, and this week’s as well, and questions that I had to ask myself about what I believe, so that I could provide myself with answers to those questions that I could live with.

This week, I was asked the usual question about the logic and relevance of the many chapters of VaYikra – Leviticus – that treat of laws of impurity. How can the ashes of a red cow make you clean? How can a natural event like childbirth make a woman dirty? Why do we care about these ancient conceptions of hygiene? A variant of those questions goes like this: Okay. Admittedly these often-preposterous rituals may actually have staved off infection and illness before the discovery of microbes, but what possible relevance do they have for us today? What truth is there in all of this ancient magic and superstition? How can we accept a religious tradition that is inconsistent with our modern worldview?

All of these questions, and many others like them, are based upon certain underlying assumptions. They assume, for example, that cleanliness and purity are the same. They assume that something that is clean is pure, and that something that is impure is dirty. They confuse the temporal and the spiritual. They apply the rules of one system to the phenomena of another, and then question the validity of the other when its phenomena refuse to conform to those rules.

These observations are pretty trivial. In the physical world, we understand that the rules for blending colours apply differently to light. If you mix all the colours in your paint box together, you will not get white. We accept that there would seem to be no unified field theory that applies to everything. Different systems appear to operate according to different rules.

But somehow, our understanding breaks down when it comes to society, morality and spiritual truths. When it comes to our humanistic views of justice, our personal assessments of fairness, and our cultural opinions of what is socially acceptable, we allow no deviation. We reject the idea that there may be some moral ideals that do not conform to our sense of what is right, or that there may be truths that are not consistent with our subjective definition of honesty. We cannot accept that a right-thinking person could possibly disagree with our sense of justice, equality, and fairness. We cannot imagine how our religious heritage might present a logically consistent ethical position that rejects one of our current beliefs.

That was made particularly clear this week, when people raised questions and voiced opinions about the late Pope John Paul II that were not at all unlike the questions I was asked about the logic and relevance of Leviticus.

How could the Pope be a political liberal and yet hold conservative views on marriage? How did the Pope’s love for humanity jive with his views on homosexuality, abortion, and the ordination of women? How could Karol Wojtyla be so modern, and John Paul II be so medieval? Perhaps most importantly, how could I use the head of the Catholic Church as a role model and an example of righteousness when I disagreed with him on fundamental issues?

Apparently, we have a problem when the spiritual conflicts with our conception of the temporal. We have a problem when our sense of social justice seems to require one thing, while our religious heritage appears to demand something else. We want everything to operate by the same rules. We want all the systems to agree. But they don’t always agree, and we really can’t expect them to. Let me try to demonstrate.

A person can champion gay rights, and support the right of the gay and lesbian community to hold a conference or a convention anywhere in the world, and yet object to the holding of a Gay Pride Parade in Jerusalem, or in any other place. After all, based on the behaviour we have witnessed in the past, the parade is not just people walking down the street with posters and balloons. It is not hypocritical to support equality and freedom, and yet object to what we fear may be a public exhibition of lewd conduct. Political correctness does not transform public indecency into protected speech or an exercise of freedom of expression.

Opposing the parade in Jerusalem or in the Vatican is not a form of gay bashing or of discrimination. It is a legitimate moral stand that does not deny anyone’s God-given equality. The problem is that we tend to confuse the issues, and to characterize them according to who holds what position. If the Orthodox, the Catholics or the Christian Right are against, then we Jewish liberals must be for. But that is not a principled form of consistency. It is simply a different form of discrimination.

A person can view all human beings as God’s children, created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and yet legitimately object to attempts at redefining the concept of marriage. One can be a political liberal, and an advocate of equality for all, and yet maintain that same-sex unions do not reflect the biblical ideal of matrimony, without questioning or doubting that such relationships may truly express a deep, valuable and enduring relationship of love and commitment.

The ideals concerned are not the same, and our assessment of them need not be identical for the sake of consistency. The fact that our fundamental religious belief in the Torah, and our devotion to normative Judaism may lead us to take a position that coincides with the view of politicians we may have voted against, or of religious groups that we disagree with, does not require that we adopt a position that negates Jewish values.

Even if one disagrees with the late Pope’s absolute opposition to termination of pregnancy, it is possible to view the idea of abortion-on-demand as immoral. A person can take a broad or narrow view of the considerations that might justify the termination of a life, and be steadfast in the belief that a foetus is alive, that life is not a relative value, and that a feeding tube is not an extraordinary measure.

These moral questions have been debated by philosophers and theologians at least since Carneades was Scholarch of the Platonic Academy in Athens in the second century B.C.E. They have been resolved in a variety of ways without requiring that we view life as a relative value, and without the need to view a foetus or a person in a vegetative state as a lump of flesh, and without the need to be a Catholic. The fact that my Jewish view of the sanctity of life may coincide to some degree with the Pope’s view makes me neither a hypocrite nor a Catholic.

I can insist upon the moral imperative of equality between the sexes, while accepting the view that a woman cannot be a kohen. I can also understand why a Church that views its priests as representing kohanim would prohibit ordaining women. Yet consistency does not require that I relinquish my support for the ordination of women as rabbis. The issues are different, and in none of them is the question one of equality or women’s rights. Our desire for equality may prompt us to consider the issues, but they must be decided through an assessment of the roles and symbolism of rabbis, priests and kohanim.

Indeed, if the issue of “who is a kohen” were simply one of equality, we should sooner abolish the priesthood than increase the number of people who can call themselves kohanim. Certainly, we do not further the objectives of equality by selectively increasing the size of the privileged minority. But my belief in equal rights does not require that I abandon all legitimate distinctions.

When the Equal Rights Amendment was put to a referendum, I remember an anti-ERA activist trying to convince my grandmother that if the Amendment were adopted, there would be no separate public toilets for women. That’s the kind of thinking that defeated ERA. That’s the other side of the kind of superficial logic that leads us to abandon our moral principles in favour of consistency.

What may seem to be contradictions of the logic of liberalism may also be consistent moral positions that derive from an honest assessment of religious values, and of the message that those values are meant to communicate. They are not wrong or immoral simply because they appear inconsistent with other deeply felt convictions. Deep feelings and persuasive slogans cannot replace a sincere assessment of those values. To allow that is to permit demagoguery to supplant honesty and judgment. As Disraeli once said: “Justice is truth in action.” It is truth that concerns a person of faith. It is the commitment to truth that guided John Paul II. It is truth that must ultimately decide what is just.

What is truth? With all due respect, for the secular humanist, truth is no more than a currently fashionable opinion. For humanistic religion, those opinions are God. The religion of humanism is a relativistic morality that allows us to posit our personal biases as ultimate truths, but that is to mistake fashion for ideals. That may seem a strong way of putting it, but it is an accurate definition, nonetheless. Couching it in fancy terminology, or calling it a categorical imperative will not change it into what it is not. What it is not is what we commonly think of as truth.

What confuses us in understanding John Paul II is that he did not reflect the standards of humanistic religion; he lived by the ideals of religious humanism. Those ideals place us at the center of the universe not because of our absolute worth in our own eyes, but because we are God’s creations, made in God’s image. Our respect for life is an expression of our reverence for God, Torah and tradition. Our love of mankind speaks of our desire to emulate God. That is the humanism of religion. It is not about being the best person we can imagine; it is about striving to be what we believe to be God’s conception of the ideal human being.

That is the humanism that allowed a devout Catholic traditionalist to visit a synagogue and embrace a rabbi as his brother, that is the humanism that allowed the head of the Roman Catholic Church to visit England and pray with an Anglican bishop. That is the humanism that helped bring down communism, and that inspired people around the world to freedom. That is the humanism that allows me to embrace John Paul II as a role model, even if I do not embrace his dogma. The humanism of John Paul II was not born of a modern liberalism that views the individual as an ultimate goal, that sees freedom as an end in itself, or that deems equality to stand higher than any ideal. Indeed, he is reported to have said: “When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society.”

The rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women is not a dictate of current fashion. The voice of conscience is not the battle cry of contemporary society’s political correctness. It is the still small voice of truth that you can only hear when you allow yourself to be alone with God. If you listen to that voice, you will understand that John Paul II was neither modern nor medieval, he was not liberal or conservative, not right or left, nor right or wrong. He was true. If you listen to that voice, you will appreciate that Leviticus is not about red cows and disease, and that it is about something beyond cleanliness. It is about holiness. It is about being true. That is all that John Paul II asked. It is all that he was. It is all that any of us can be.

Avinoam Sharon

© 2005 Avinoam Sharon

In memory of His Holiness Pope John Paul II.