~ Parashat Sh'lach has the famous incident of the spies, which leads the Children of Israel in their 40 year trek through the desert, and lets us know that no one with the exception of Yehoshua Bin Nun and Caleb Ben Yefuneh will continue to the Promised Land, not Moshe, not Miriam and not Aharon. The current leadership will not work, and the greatest symbol of this is that the 10 scouts drop dead, and only the two survive. The Children of Israel then realize their wrong and try to make battle, just to be, of course, defeated.
~ Our triennial cycle begins in the middle of what is considered the silver lining in all this - the requirements of the sacrifices for "when you come into the land," which opens chapter 15. Meaning, after 40 years the children of Israel will, indeed, come into the land.
~ How many times does our portion compares the resident with the stranger residing with us? [5-6]
What do you make of it?
And Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says: When a person is found slain between two cities and it is not known who killed him, a heifer whose neck is broken is brought. This occurs only because of ungenerous people. As it is stated: “And they shall speak and say: Our hands have not shed this blood” (Deuteronomy 21:7). But did it enter our hearts to think that the Elders of the court are murderers? Why it is necessary for them to publicize that they did not kill him? Rather, they are declaring: It is not that this victim came to us and we dismissed him, and it is not that we saw him and left him. In other words, he did not come to us and we in turn dismissed him without food, and we did not see him and then leave him without an escort. It is ungenerous people who do not provide others with food and shelter, and cause them to travel to places where they might be end up dead.
~ I bring this text trembling within with emotion. With sadness and anger, due to a picture of a father and his daughter, found dead, in the middle of two countries. The picture of innocence. Like the elders, we are not guilty. Our hands did not spill this blood. But like the elders, we are responsible. It happened in our midst. We are off in a mere technicality: we did not see these people, they did not come directly to us - otherwise we would have given them shelter, food and protection, and sent them safely to their destination.
How many pictures, and what kind of pictures, will it take to move us from complacency? How many pictures, and what kind of pictures, will it take for us to pretend we have not seen, and not escorted, and not helped, and we have no guilt? How many pictures, and what kind of pictures, will it take to make us call our representatives and write emails to pressure for a real change in an untenable situation?
Pictures of families being torn apart did not make it. Pictures of mothers and babies in diapers receiving tear gas did not make it. Pictures of children sleeping in cages with silver blankets did not make it. Maybe this picture will do it - there is always hope for the human condition.
And I want to add a second point. I have no interest whatsoever in discussing what kind of name best describes the places where the immigrants or migrants are being held captive. Whether they are called the immigrant detention centers, or concentration camps; whether this name can be used or a better name should be used. I know how much of a fight within the Jewish community at large this has been in the past week, and how much energy has been squandered on disputing what I regard as a technicality.
The fight about what to call these places is a fight without end, and it is a fight about whether our people has the sole rights to use a certain term. And that is why this is a technicality. Because what this fight does is that it that averts your eye from the gruesome reality, and to the abuses being done to the migrants or immigrants.
People can come up with all the loopholes they want, and say "this is not what it is." I know a loophole when I see one. I have seen it been used when the discussion was whether those things we saw in pictures were cages or pens or holding spaces with chicken wire on top. That is why the name is a mere technicality, a mere loophole to keep your energies away from what is not a technicality.
What is not a technicality is what we read about these centers. The pictures. How we know what life is like in them, actually. How, when you arrive, your belongings are taken from you, and you are only allowed to have literally the clothes in your back - the rest is burnt. How the food is little, and of bad quality. How sexual misconduct by guards is rampant. How violence towards the inmates goes unchecked. How it is expected that children will take care of children. How hygiene products are not given. How many children are dying, how many people are getting sick and going hungry. How the conditions of life in these places are described as subhuman. How this is all done in the name of the United States. And how there are people cashing in with this misery. Those are not technicalities.
It is on the things that are not technicalities that we should focus our energies. When the reading ends with the portion of tzitzit, asking you to look at them and remember God's law, it does so after comparing the stranger and the citizen so many times, and saying so many times how we are to be seen as equal, and treated equal. The text is screaming: this is not a technicality, strangers, migrants, immigrants are to be treated as well as citizens under the law. Would you accept what is done to them if it were done to a citizen?
In a free society, said Abraham Joshua Heschel z"l, no one is guilty, but all are responsible.
Can we actually say "our hands did not shed this blood?"
Sure. But only by mere technicality.
Shabbat Shalom.