Shabbat Rosh Hodesh Av 5785

In the Mishna in Taanit, we learn “When we enter Av we decrease in joy.”

This could be a statement about the season we find ourselves in at this time of year – we are now past the midpoint of the Summer, the days are growing shorter as is the season of abundant harvest that accompanies these long, warm days.

Yet, beyond the natural cycle of the shifting of the seasons, our tradition teaches that this month – Av – has been a season of great calamity for our people in many generations.

• The Mishnah teaches there were 5 tragedies on the 9th of Av, including the destruction of the first and second temples.

In a way that escapes comprehension, this time of year has continued to compile tragedies for the Jewish people and the world over the centuries

• Crusades

• Spanish Inquisition

• Beginning of World Wars

Even the tragedies – the brokenness and destruction – that did not occur in this season have been intertwined with our observance of this season. We call this time Bein haMetzarim – between the narrows – as a reflection of the many places of narrowness which reverberate through our history and which we are meant to be aware of in this season.

When we fast on Tisha b’Av, we remember not only the destruction of our ancient temples but the many ongoing chapters of history which have taught us again and again about the cruel ways we can abuse each other as humans.

This year, as we enter Av, I personally feel a sharp damper on my joy – a strong sense of sadness and heartbreak.

Yesterday, again, the Reuters announced that negotiations towards a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas have been abandoned – and our hopes of an imminent deal that would release Israeli hostages and bring food into Gaza have suffered a severe blow.

Like most of the world, lately each day, several times a day, I see with horror stomach-turning pictures of starved children in Gaza … pictures that remind me of the horrific images of starved Jewish bodies in the Holocaust.

Our Av this year – our Bein haMetzarim – must have room for us to grieve these horrors of this ongoing war in our ancient homeland – at least – I feel it is a moral imperative of our tradition to allow ourselves to be shocked and saddened by the conditions of the collective life of the Jewish people today – and the suffering and death which we have played a part in bringing about for others – particularly for the Palestinians in Gaza today. Of course, we as American Jews are not a primary responsible party, and Hamas deserves much blame, but the State of Israel is a powerful responsible agent contributing to this ongoing disaster. This should be a part of our grief this Av – because this is how we are taught to relate to instances of disaster. We grieve and we shed tears and we ask moral questions which are meant to guide us towards taking responsibility for the underlying conditions which led to this disaster.

In a sense, our Torah portions today provide us with the opportunity to practice this difficult emotional-spiritual-intellectual avodah. As we encounter passages which are disturbing, and even tragic, they can prompt us to dig deeper for moral guidance.

As I studied our parsha today – Mattot-Masa’ey – the conclusion to the bewildering book of BaMidbar – I was struck by two passages that further contribute to my sadness, two sets of verses which could be read – and undoubtedly are being read by some this year – as religious imperatives to total conquest and revenge.

Yet, I attempted to do the work to which the ancient sage Ben Bag Bag exhorts us in Pirkei Avot – Turn it over and turn it over, for all is within it.” And, I found that precisely these same verses form parts of the foundation of Judaism’s core vision of moral responsibility – which above all is dedicated to the preservation and sanctity of human life.

In BaMidbar chapter 35, after we receive the mitzvah of establishing cities of refuge for accidental killers to escape to in the hopes of a fair judicial process, we come at the end of the chapter to these two verses:

You shall not ruthlessly profane the land in which you live; for blood profanes the land, and the land cannot atone for blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of the one who shed it. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I Myself abide, for I, ‘ה, abide among the Israelite people.

First, it is important to see that these verses describe the spilling of blood as a ruthless profanity – a defiling, desecration or pollution of the Land of Israel. Yet, the implication of this rejection of the spilling of blood that the verse elucidates is that, when someone has been murdered, the only way to atone for that murder is through taking the life of the murderer.

We could read these verses as a religious sanction – or even exhortation to seek out revenge. However, Hazal, our Sages, of Blessed Memory, invoke these verses to convey a very different conclusion: any spilling of blood is a desecration of the earth that drives away the Presence of G-d from our midst.

In the Talmud Shabbat 33a: we learn:

בַּעֲוֹן שְׁפִיכוּת דָּמִים בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ חָרֵב, וּשְׁכִינָה מִסְתַּלֶּקֶת מִיִּשְׂרָאֵל, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״וְלֹא תַחֲנִיפוּ וְגוֹ׳ וְלֹא תְטַמֵּא אֶת הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַתֶּם יוֹשְׁבִים בָּהּ אֲשֶׁר אֲנִי שׁוֹכֵן בְּתוֹכָהּ״. הָא אַתֶּם מְטַמְּאִים אוֹתָהּ — אֵינְכֶם יוֹשְׁבִים בָּהּ, וְאֵינִי שׁוֹכֵן בְּתוֹכָהּ.

Due to the sin of bloodshed, the Holy Temple is destroyed, and the Divine Presence leaves Israel, as it says: “So you shall not pollute the land wherein you are; for blood, it pollutes the land; and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it. And you shall not defile the land which you inhabit, in the midst of which I dwell; for I the Lord dwell in the midst of the children of Israel” (Numbers 35:33–34) If you defile the land, you will not inhabit it, and I will not dwell in it.

In this ancient midrash, our rabbis emphasize that the sin of spilling-blood – has drastic consequences not only for those whose blood is spilled but also for the people who tolerated a culture where the spilling of blood became commonplace. In this season of Av, because we were habituated to death and killing, our connection to G-d was severed – our temple was destroyed and the Shekhina abandoned us.

Clearly, this teaching reflects a strong demonstration of the style of prophetic rebuke which I discussed last Shabbat. In the Torah and the Prophets, we encounter messages of rebuke that blame disasters that befall the Jewish people on our own sins as a way of conveying to us our ethical and spiritual ability to respond – to take responsibility in a less than perfect world.

Even as we may question the historicity of this teaching from the Talmud in Shabbat, we are clearly meant to take from it a belief that the spilling of blood is a disastrous and horrific sin that we should take severe measures to avoid.

In another passage from the Talmud, this time in tractate Yoma which discusses Yom Kippur, the great Sage Rabbi Yishmael acknowledges that despite that fact that any spilling of blood is a desecration of creation, there are certain situations in which Torah permits us to kill, namely for self-defence, even in a moment of doubt.

However, this is not his point – not the moral that he hopes to convey. Rather, Rabbi Yishmael makes this acknowledgement in order to underscore a different, fundamental principle of the Torah:

פיקוח נפש דוחה את השבת
Saving a life overrides Shabbat.

He reasons – if we can save our own life through the extreme profanity of spilling blood even in a case of doubt, then of course it should be an imperative to profane Shabbat in order to preserve a life!

Many – if not all of us – are probably familiar with this concept – that while Jewish tradition places great importance on observing Shabbat, if we have any chance of saving a life, we should violate Shabbat for the sake of Pikuach Nefesh.

Yet, the way in which this principle is introduced is striking. We are told that five great rabbis were walking together, and one of them asked: where do we learn that preserving life overrides Shabbat? Then, each rabbi provides an answer and they debate each other’s responses.

This story suggests that these early Talmudic rabbis all already took for granted as an axiomatic moral truth that preserving life overrides shabbat – even without being taught a justification for this idea from a verse in the Torah.

They understood intuitively that – of course – the preservation of life is a sacred value – and of such importance that it overrides even other concerns that we generally regard as important – like keeping Shabbat.

In Jewish tradition, there are only 3 sins which are so grave that one should allow oneself to be killed rather than violate them:

• Gilui Arayot – Sexual deprivations such as adultery or incest
• Shfikhut Damim – the spilling of another’s blood – i.e. murder
• Avodah Zarah – idolatry – or a fundamental distortion of proper worship.

After seeing how our parsha underscores the severity of Shfikhut Damim – spilling blood, let us begin to conclude by seeing a passage which underscores the severity of Avodah Zarah – of corrupting and distorting the proper path of worship.

This passage too seems to be deeply disturbing:
In BaMidbar 33:52, we read:

וְה֨וֹרַשְׁתֶּ֜ם אֶת־כׇּל־יֹשְׁבֵ֤י הָאָ֙רֶץ֙ מִפְּנֵיכֶ֔ם
You shall dispossess all the inhabitants of the land

This seems like a straightforward statement to expel every non-Israelite in the land; essentially an imperative to what we could call today ethnic cleansing.

Yet, the verse continues with further instructions that reveal a higher-order value underlying the instruction to dispossess the Canaanites:

וְאִ֨בַּדְתֶּ֔ם אֵ֖ת כׇּל־מַשְׂכִּיֹּתָ֑ם וְאֵ֨ת כׇּל־צַלְמֵ֤י מַסֵּֽכֹתָם֙ תְּאַבֵּ֔דוּ וְאֵ֥ת כׇּל־בָּמוֹתָ֖ם תַּשְׁמִֽיד
You shall destroy all their figured objects; you shall destroy all their molten images, and you shall demolish all their cult places.

In other words, “you should uproot and destroy the objects of idolatry.”

If we understand the latter parts of this verse as an explanation for the opening clause, then we must come to the conclusion that this dispossessing of the inhabitants of the land is not a value unto itself.

Rather, the Torah is deeply concerned about Avodah Zarah, Idolatry – or the distortion of the sacred. I would suggest that the Torah is so concerned about the distortion of the sacred that it legislates a form of violence which runs counter to the broader moral force of the Torah. We should not read this verse as a positive endorsement of the dispossessing of others but rather as a statement that emphasizes the great lengths we should go to in order to prevent our sacred path from becoming distorted and undermined.

At the same time, as we mark this month of Av, we should know that there are others who read this verse differently within our people – and this should be a part of our grief.

Let us make room in our hearts this Av to truly feel the scale of brokenness and suffering in our world today.

And at the same time, I invite us all to embrace wholeheartedly the moral clarity of our tradition – that the spilling of blood in any context profanes the Land – and I pray that G-d should fulfill the prophetic promise recorded in Zakhariah to remove the spirit of profanity from the Land.”