 | The Jewish people are Western civilizations first "People of the Book." Beginning with Torah, the accumulated wisdom of 3,500 years of Jewish civilization offer plenty of words to live by. That very phrase – "words to live by" – traces its roots to this week's Torah portion. The phrase is so common that we rarely stop to consider what it means to "live by" words. That question is very much on my mind and heart this week – during this pivotal time for our people, our planet, democracy and our justice system – when so very much hangs in the balance. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Parashat Aharei Mot 5784 (2024)
Rabbi David is giving this Dvar Torah as Scholar in Residence at Temple Kol Emeth (Atlanta) this Friday immediately before leading Shir Ami's civil rights trip.
Shabbat shalom. Thank you, Temple Kol Emeth and Rabbi Gottfried, for your spirited and warm welcome, and for the opportunity to share this Shabbat with you. It’s a delight to be with you.
I’m told that news of my arrival somewhat preceded me, but please allow me to introduce myself as someone who wears a bunch of hats. As rabbi, I serve Congregation Shir Ami of southwestern Connecticut and nearby suburban New York. As educator, I teach at the Academy for Jewish Religion in its rabbinic and cantorial programs. With Rabbi Gottfried, I serve on the Board of a Jewish innovation incubator called Bayit. And my day job is with the New York State Judiciary as part of a parallel career in public service.
By all accounts I’m the only pulpit rabbi in the U.S. serving in the courts. Given my double role, hopefully it’s little surprise that current events doubly hit home for me – as clergy focused on morality and peoplehood, and as public official focused on justice and fairness.
My oath to maintain judicial neutrality limits what I say publicly about current events – so I’m not going there tonight. Which I hope is okay, because that’s not why I’m here in Atlanta.
I’m here because tomorrow night, I’ll welcome members of my congregation to your fair city. We’ll attend Sunday services with Atlanta’s own Rev. Dr. Sen. Raphael Warnock at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the pulpit MLK served 60 years ago. Then we’ll set off to Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham, the soul of the civil rights movement.
Today’s times sometimes feel like they harken back to those days 60 years ago. The issues aren’t the same, but the battle being joined for the soul of our country evokes the potency, and the high stakes, of the 1960s. So much hangs in the balance, and no matter what happens, nobody – nobody – will be left untouched.
Parashat Aharei Mot 5784 (2024)
Rabbi David is giving this Dvar Torah as Scholar in Residence at Temple Kol Emeth (Atlanta) this Friday immediately before leading Shir Ami's civil rights trip.
Shabbat shalom. Thank you, Temple Kol Emeth and Rabbi Gottfried, for your spirited and warm welcome, and for the opportunity to share this Shabbat with you. It’s a delight to be with you.
I’m told that news of my arrival somewhat preceded me, but please allow me to introduce myself as someone who wears a bunch of hats. As rabbi, I serve Congregation Shir Ami of southwestern Connecticut and nearby suburban New York. As educator, I teach at the Academy for Jewish Religion in its rabbinic and cantorial programs. With Rabbi Gottfried, I serve on the Board of a Jewish innovation incubator called Bayit. And my day job is with the New York State Judiciary as part of a parallel career in public service.
By all accounts I’m the only pulpit rabbi in the U.S. serving in the courts. Given my double role, hopefully it’s little surprise that current events doubly hit home for me – as clergy focused on morality and peoplehood, and as public official focused on justice and fairness.
My oath to maintain judicial neutrality limits what I say publicly about current events – so I’m not going there tonight. Which I hope is okay, because that’s not why I’m here in Atlanta.
I’m here because tomorrow night, I’ll welcome members of my congregation to your fair city. We’ll attend Sunday services with Atlanta’s own Rev. Dr. Sen. Raphael Warnock at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the pulpit MLK served 60 years ago. Then we’ll set off to Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham, the soul of the civil rights movement.
Today’s times sometimes feel like they harken back to those days 60 years ago. The issues aren’t the same, but the battle being joined for the soul of our country evokes the potency, and the high stakes, of the 1960s. So much hangs in the balance, and no matter what happens, nobody – nobody – will be left untouched.
In the days ahead, my community will visit places that made history then. The Montgomery bus boycott of the mid-1950s, when Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back. Birmingham’s historic 16th Street Church, where bloody attacks on students in 1963 riveted the nation and turbo-charged the civil rights movement. Selma’s
Pettis Bridge, where Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel prayed with his feet marching arm in arm with Dr. King after Bloody Sunday in 1965.
Sixty years from now, I wonder, what will folks then see as today’s pivotal places that shaped history? What will they venerate, teach in schools and proclaim from pulpits? The answers will depend on what we do now. These questions are on my mind and on my heart tonight, at the cusp of my civil rights trip, at a moment pivotal to our democracy, this country, Israel, the Jewish people and our planet.
As a people, we say that Torah and the words of our sages are words we live by – a blueprint of wise and ethical living. And we mean “live by” literally, an idea from this week’s Torah portion (Lev. 18:5):
Pettis Bridge, where Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel prayed with his feet marching arm in arm with Dr. King after Bloody Sunday in 1965.
Sixty years from now, I wonder, what will folks then see as today’s pivotal places that shaped history? What will they venerate, teach in schools and proclaim from pulpits? The answers will depend on what we do now. These questions are on my mind and on my heart tonight, at the cusp of my civil rights trip, at a moment pivotal to our democracy, this country, Israel, the Jewish people and our planet.
As a people, we say that Torah and the words of our sages are words we live by – a blueprint of wise and ethical living. And we mean “live by” literally, an idea from this week’s Torah portion (Lev. 18:5):
| וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֤ם אֶת־חֻקֹּתַי֙ וְאֶת־מִשְׁפָּטַ֔י אֲשֶׁ֨ר יַעֲשֶׂ֥ה אֹתָ֛ם הָאָדָ֖ם וָחַ֣י בָּהֶ֑ם אֲנִ֖י יהו''ה׃ | Keep My laws and My rules: for in their doing humanity will live by them. I am YHVH. |
What does Torah mean in “live by”? Surely to do as Torah says, to live our creed – but isn’t that obvious? Doesn’t it go without saying?
Our ancestors imagined a bunch of possibilities. Some taught that the “life” we’d “live by” them would be life in the hereafter – more a Christian idea than a natively Jewish one. Others wrote that Torah’s call to “live by” her words implied not to “die by” them, from which we derive pikuah nefesh – our duty to violate Torah for the sake of saving life. Given a choice between violating Torah and saving life, almost always we must save life – ”live by” them, don’t die by them.
Tonight a third idea attracts my focus. Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, a Polish rabbi of the 19th century, underscored that our values, our cherished ideals – we’d better act on them if they are to live. The 19th century was an era of massive societal and political change, which perhaps inspired his understanding.
Democracy, civic pluralism, the habitability of vast swaths of our planet – these now depend on our collective action based on principle. On them depends the life of our creed, the quality of our lives, and the essence of our souls – especially when times try our souls.
I look back on history’s heroes – both headliners like Dr. King and unsung heroes by the countless thousands. In ways large and small, they all put themselves on the line – the quality of their lives for sure, and sometimes their skin and bones – for cherished principles and the public good. They did so for all kinds of reasons. Surely they were afraid and sometimes conflicted. It’s inconvenient and unsettling to run toward the heat. It’s tempting to leave the fight to others.
But when the fight comes to us, as it does today, we cannot turn away. Literally, we can’t. Where can we go? No one and nowhere will be untouched by the fate of our democracy, our justice system or climate change. How we live, and who we are, hang utterly in the balance.
So it was during the civil rights era, which shows the power of collective action to bring new life to unkept promises of equality and liberty. So it was when Jews brought the State of Israel into being. So it was every time in history that a future worth living was on the line.
How will future generations say we lived when their future hung in the balance? In the days ahead, I hope to hear echoes of ancient wisdom come alive on the streets of Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham – words they lived by.
This weekend, Torah is calling us to listen deeply and then act – hai ba-hem / live by them – so that we, and our children, and our children’s children, and our highest values, can truly live.
Our ancestors imagined a bunch of possibilities. Some taught that the “life” we’d “live by” them would be life in the hereafter – more a Christian idea than a natively Jewish one. Others wrote that Torah’s call to “live by” her words implied not to “die by” them, from which we derive pikuah nefesh – our duty to violate Torah for the sake of saving life. Given a choice between violating Torah and saving life, almost always we must save life – ”live by” them, don’t die by them.
Tonight a third idea attracts my focus. Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg, a Polish rabbi of the 19th century, underscored that our values, our cherished ideals – we’d better act on them if they are to live. The 19th century was an era of massive societal and political change, which perhaps inspired his understanding.
Democracy, civic pluralism, the habitability of vast swaths of our planet – these now depend on our collective action based on principle. On them depends the life of our creed, the quality of our lives, and the essence of our souls – especially when times try our souls.
I look back on history’s heroes – both headliners like Dr. King and unsung heroes by the countless thousands. In ways large and small, they all put themselves on the line – the quality of their lives for sure, and sometimes their skin and bones – for cherished principles and the public good. They did so for all kinds of reasons. Surely they were afraid and sometimes conflicted. It’s inconvenient and unsettling to run toward the heat. It’s tempting to leave the fight to others.
But when the fight comes to us, as it does today, we cannot turn away. Literally, we can’t. Where can we go? No one and nowhere will be untouched by the fate of our democracy, our justice system or climate change. How we live, and who we are, hang utterly in the balance.
So it was during the civil rights era, which shows the power of collective action to bring new life to unkept promises of equality and liberty. So it was when Jews brought the State of Israel into being. So it was every time in history that a future worth living was on the line.
How will future generations say we lived when their future hung in the balance? In the days ahead, I hope to hear echoes of ancient wisdom come alive on the streets of Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham – words they lived by.
This weekend, Torah is calling us to listen deeply and then act – hai ba-hem / live by them – so that we, and our children, and our children’s children, and our highest values, can truly live.
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