South Palm Beach Federation Annual Meeting Dvar Torah 2013/5773
by Rabbi David Baum
How many people have a
Facebook or Twitter account? Keep
your hands up. How many had one
three years ago, five, eight, ten, fifteen?
Social media, through Facebook,
Twitter, and other social media sites has revolutionized the way we connect to
others. We have access to friends
from high school, our neighbors, and we can follow celebrities on Twitter
giving us access we could not have dreamed of just 10 years ago! It seems like a great blessing – we can
connect to millions of others now more easily than ever!
But this new connectedness is
not always the blessing we think it is because often times, we still have our
old world tendencies in play.
Unfortunately, most of us only
latch on to the people who we feel are most similar to us and who validate our
own world views, and if we agree with them, if they are part of our
socio-economic group, only then are they a part of our community; but this is
not what the Torah teaches us.
Our double parashiot this
week, Behar-Behukotai, teach us another side to how we should live in this
world: together, not just with
people who just like us, but others as well.
In the book of Leviticus, we
have been bombarded with lessons on how to worship – the various types of
sacrifices, how the priests give them, how they dress, and more. Leviticus tends to focus on the minutia
of worship, that add up to the collective answer of how we should serve
God.
One would think that at the
end of this book, God would sum up it all up, but that’s not the message that
they receive as they still hover at Mt. Sinai, about to embark on their journey
to the promised land.
So what is the final message
they receive?
Leave your fields alone.
In this week’s parashah, we
learn about the important institutions of the Shmittah years and the Jubilee
years.
Think about it, you have one
opportunity to leave a lasting message, as we know, the last thing you say is
often the most memorable, and this is the message that God wants to give His
people?!?
Throughout the ages, our
commentators have wondered, why talk about Shmitah now and why are these laws
so special?
According to these laws,
landowners are forbidden from farming their own lands every seventh year; they
must let the land lay fallow.
Put yourself in this farmer’s
shoes: Can you imagine looking at
that field for a year, and not doing anything? Better yet, imagine being told, “for one year, you are not
allowed to touch your financial portfolios. Nothing goes in, nothing comes out.” That feeling you have hearing those
words - that is how the farmer felt.
There is a certain message
that the farmer internalized, that God articulated in the Torah:
“The land is Mine; you are but
stranger residents with Me.” (Leviticus
25:23)
Even though we might have a
deed on the land, this land is not really ours, it is God’s land.
Shmittah is God’s last message
to His people before they leave Sinai, when they owned no land – this is the
type of society that I want you to build.
The laws of Shmittah and the Jubilee year are perhaps the most
aspirational laws of the Torah.
The laws of agriculture which
we read about last week in Emor, like the laws of Peah, of leaving the corners
of your field for the poor, and not picking up those crops that you dropped,
gives us a certain message as well – your community isn’t just your family, or
your friends, or those people your age, or those people in the same
socio-economic status, it’s also others, the widows, the orphan, the
stranger.
During the Shmittah year,
everyone had a chance to eat, and everyone meant everyone.
God wants us to think
differently about a concept – community.
When people ask me what South
Palm Beach County is like I often tell them, it’s wonderful, but one way to
explain the landscape is gated communities – almost everyone lives in one. Gates open and close and keep us safe,
but gates also run the risk of being walls, and walls cannot be opened. When we erect barriers, we might think
we are safe, but, all too often, we close ourselves off from others.
In my opinion, our Federation
breaks down barriers in order to bring us together. It makes us re-think the very definition of community,
connecting us with Jews who may look and be different than us; people who we
would not normally run into on the street, in our gated communities, or even
online.
People like those living at
the JARC facility, where some members of Shaarei Kodesh live, or maybe its the
senior whose kids live up north but who can see and connect with young Jews who
are going to school at Donna Klein or at the preschool at the JCC, and in turn,
those young people can see and connect with seniors in the community.
This parashah teaches us to
challenge the idea of who is a part of our ‘community’, because it includes the
poor, the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the Levite who could not own
land – all of these people had no other protector but God. God teaches us, these people have other
protectors also, and they are the Jewish people. This is our ultimate destiny, and I thank the Federation and
all of you for fulfilling this sacred task and helping us open our eyes to the
whole Jewish community, both within our gates, and outside our gates.
The Federation is the center
of our community. It gives us a
place to come together and fulfill the Jewish destiny together!
Since I came here just four
years ago, I have been drawn closer to this place. I have seen the walls turn into open gates, and more
collaboration between agencies and synagogues. The Federation has reached out to our synagogues and is now
the point that brings us together.
It has recognized the holy task that we perform, and we recognize the
holy task that the Federation performs. The agencies have been brought together in the Create
a Jewish Legacy program, outreach and teen education grants for our synagogues,
including Shaarei Kodesh, and our Rabbis have been asked to speak at Young
Adult Division events, and there is so much more.
So today, as a rabbi of this
great community and a native South Floridian, I thank you for the holy work
that you do and will continue to do in the future.
All of us have the task of
reaching out and inspiring those who are not yet in our gates, those who have
lived here for years but do not call this place home. Our task is to open the gates, to bring them and so many
others in, to redefine community, and to fulfill the destiny put forth in our
holy Torah – to be a nation of priests, and a light unto others, an Or LaGoyim,
an ever lasting light that will never be extinguished and serve as a guide not
just for South Palm Beach, but for the world.
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