Mazal
tov to Alexa Karp and family on her becoming Bat Mitzvah this Shabbat.
Join us tonight and tomorrow morning for services as we celebrate this smicha
and another lovely, peaceful Shabbat together. And remember that next Friday
night we'll be honoring our 8th and 12th grade
graduates. BTW, I've come up with a great way to ensure remarkable
attendance at services: Just change the name of "Shabbat" to
"Mah Jongg." The turnout at this week's tournament was
spectacular - wall to wall Mah Jonggers. Congrats to Sisterhood on that,
and also for TBE's continuing strong presence at the Bennett Center Cancer Walk
last week. It's also gratifying to know that we were well represented at
the Celebrate Israel Parade
in
NYC, aided by our local day schools.
To
see hundreds of photos from last week's spectacular Cantor's Concert, click
here. Also, see
the commemorative journal honoring Gary Lessen. A great time was had by
all. You can view share the photos on our TBE Facebook page as
well. And while you are there, like us! We like to be liked.
Judaism's Triple Crown
This
is a week when we are doing lots of crowning. Celebrating the Queen's
crowning achievement, crowning champions at the French Open, a marquee
basketball moment for King James in Miami (though I still believe in the
Celtics), potentially crowning a Stanley Cup champion in hockey and, until the
shocking news came out that he's been scratched from the race, there was
a potential Triple Crown winner at the Belmont. Still, lots of
crowns and kings and queens in this week's news.
There
are actually five
different Hebrew words used for "crown" in the Bible. In later sources, God is
constantly represented as wearing crown. Brides and grooms are often depicted
as wearing crowns. And of course, the Torah is as well.
Crowns
have a deep symbolism in Judaism, and in particular, in Kabbala. You
can read about it here.
The "crown" symbolizes the spiritual power to receive and integrate
into one's consciousness the pleasure of Divine revelation. Just as in
horseracing, there are three prongs to the Kabbalistic crown - these are
Judaism's "Triple Crown." These three "heads" correspond to
three meanings for "Keter" in Hebrew: "crown," "to
wait" and "to surround." Anyone
who has watched "I'll Have Another" has to be impressed with this
horse's patience, his ability to wait far back in the pack, anticipating just
the right moment to make his move, to "surround" his opponent.
So had he run, I'd have been on solid ground predicting a victory. Maybe
next year.
Meanwhile, send me some "Jewish" names for
racehorses. "I'll Have Another" sounds like a great name for a
Jewish horse (sort of akin to "Pass the Blintzes"). How about
"Thinks He's Secretariat?" "Loves his Mother?" "Glue
'Aint Kosher?" "Mr. Ed's Minyan?" Can you think of
others?
Sex Abuse Cover Ups in the
Jewish Community
There
has been considerable consternation and media coverage of late about how child
sex abuse cases are handled in the haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, community. The
Brooklyn district attorney, no doubt feeling the pressure, is now pushing for
legislation that would require rabbis to report such crimes to the authorities.
The coverage has pinpointed an obscure rabbinic prohibition as a major source
of the problem: the ancient prohibition against
mesirah, the handing over of a Jew to
non-Jewish authorities.
The
idea that Jews should be protective of Jewish sinners stems from a longstanding
mistrust of just about every government we've lived under - everything until
right now, here in America. The most obvious example was the Romans, whom the
rabbis had in mind when they advised their students, "Love work, despise
positions of power and do not become overly familiar with the government."
But the idea of protecting Jews from secular authorities has reached absurd
extremes in Jewish law. The principle of mesirah has been used
to dissuade Jewish auditors from reporting other Jews to the IRS for tax fraud
and, as Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled, to prohibit us from turning a Jew in to
secular authorities for fraudulent kashrut supervision.
It
all goes back to Moses. When he struck the Egyptian taskmaster, Exodus tells us
that fellow Israelites began taunting him about the incident, which led Moses
to become fearful that someone would turn him over to Pharaoh. Rashi posits
that Moses wasn't so much concerned about his own fate; he was concerned that
his act would lead "villains and informers" to turn him in, making
them unworthy of redemption. So he fled, not so much to protect himself as to
protect his accusers from suffering the fate of the moser.
But
change "Pharaoh" to "NYPD" and the story reads quite
differently. If Moses had struck a cop not in Egypt but Brooklyn, wouldn't it
have been absolutely appropriate for a fellow Jew to notify the authorities?
Now replace "NYPD" with "Sheriff Jim Clark," and would you
turn in Moses for striking a cop who was assaulting peaceful protesters in
Selma? Wouldn't you want your moral code to protect him?
True,
one person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist, but I can stand
behind an objective moral standard that says that Moses was right, in the
context of his times, and a child molester is wrong, anytime, anywhere, and
Pharaoh and the NYPD are not created equal.
We
can both protect Moses and turn in the molester for lots of reasons, but in
each case, the least relevant factor is that the perpetrator happens to be
Jewish. That's mesirah's fatal flaw.
It's
time to declaw this dangerous concept, so that it may never again be used to
justify the protection of those who inflict suffering on innocent children.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman
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