Shabbat HaGadol
Saturday, March 24, 2018
1.
At heart is the question: what place should guns have in our culture? In our
self-conception? This is not a new question. The Mishnah raises this question
in the context of figuring out the religio-legal boundaries of the Shabbat. May
one carry weapons on Shabbat from private to public domain? The Rabbis differ.
One Rabbi, Eliezer, says that weapons are a man’s adornments. (“Man’s
adornment” is intentional, the rabbis see weapons as gendered male. This too is reflected in current discourse.
Men are overwhelmingly the shooters. Women,
in domestic disputes, are overwhelmingly the victims of intimate gun violence.)
“Sages,”
the collective voice of the rest of the rabbis push back, saying that “they are
nothing but shame,” and then, as a proof text, quoting this famous verse from
Isaiah 2: And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears
into pruning-hooks: a nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither
shall they learn war any more. The Shabbat, goes the thinking, is a performance
of the world to come, the ideal world. In that world there will be no guns,
therefore bringing guns into Shabbat is shameful, degrading, both to the arms
bearer and to the Shabbat.
The
outlines of this debate are not that different from the current debate. A
weaponized society is not a subtle society. A gun stops discourse. The NRA
folks like to say that “an armed society is a polite society.” This may or may
not be true. (It could easily be a society of constant gun battles, with body
counts even higher than today’s.) However, it is not a “polite” society that we
want or need. Democracy, for it to work, needs to be boisterous not quiet. The
shooting of nineteen year old Jordan Davis in a gas station by a man who
thought his music was too loud, or the shooting of a father of a three year old
in a movie for inappropriate talking on a cell-phone, gives us a glimpse of
what the “polite” society might look like. An intimidated society is not a
polite society. It is a society in which everybody lives in fear.
We
can gradually walk ourselves back from the brink. Common sense gun regulations,
regulations which rise above the ineffectual but won’t scare politicians too
much, can and do make a difference. The most basic of these is making
background checks obligatory in all gun sales. There is convincing evidence
that this works. In those states in which background checks are the law in all
handgun sales, there are fewer women killed with a gun by an intimate partner,
there are fewer suicides with a gun, there are fewer police officers murdered
with a handgun that was not their own. It is a small step but a step in the
right direction.
This
is how redemption happens. One step at a time. Never losing hope. Next year in
the Promised Land. Aryeh Cohen,
www.rabbisagainstgunviolence.org
2.
"If a person eats a lot of maror (bitter herbs), his/her innards become
swollen and crushed, and eating karpas is the remedy. We eat the karpas before
the maror as a reminder that God sends the remedy before the injury. The
redemption of Israel was already prepared before the people went down to
Mitzrayim and entered into slavery." (Haggadat Yalkut Tov, Rabbi
Eliyahu Ki Tov)
In
the midst of the bitterness of this plague of gun violence, we may struggle to
believe in redemption. But perhaps the remedy for the maror lies before us. How
can we find the strength to move beyond our cries of pain to seeking redemptive
solutions?
What
are some responses to gun violence that might move us toward redemption? Rabbi Jill Jacobs, www.rabbisagainstgunviolence.org
3. Shabbat rest, while the most holy of days (yes,
that includes Yom Kippur), can be set aside for a variety of reasons, the most
well known of which is "pikuach nefesh," saving a life.
This Shabbat is called HaGadol - the GREAT Shabbat
- and is the Shabbat immediately before Passover. On Passover, we are obliged
to see ourselves as though we personally had been taken out
of Egyptian bondage. Our putting ourselves into the shoes of
the oppressed helps us see and cry out against the oppression of others.
This is the epitome of the Torah verse: Do not stand idly by while your
neighbor bleeds (Lev. 19).
This Shabbat, God willing, our act of
"pikuach nefesh" will be the small step of walking to tell victims of
gun violence that they are not forgotten or abandoned as to urge our elected
officials to legislate realistic and common sense gun laws. God willing, our
youth, who are leading us by example, will know that we stand with them,
praying that they will realize the words of Micah 4:4: Every one shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and no one will make them
afraid,
And as we do, we recall the prophetic words
of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel after his historic march
with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from Selma to Montgomery in
1965: "Legs are not lips, and walking is not
kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march
was worship. I felt my legs were praying."
May
our prayers for Shabbat peace now and always be heard. Baruch Atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech
ha-olam, shomei'a t'filah. Praised are You, Holy One of Blessing, Who hears
prayers. Cantor Penny Kessler, www.cantorconfidential.com
Oseh shalom
bimromav,
Hu ya’aseh shalom
aleinu v’al kol Yisraeil
v’al kol yoshvei teivel,
v’imru: Amen.
May the Source of peace
Who makes peace in
the heavens
make peace for us, for all Israel,
and for all the
nations of the world,
and let us say: Amen.
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