An Ear For Outrage©
Mishpatim 2019/5779
Rabbi David Baum
www.thenib.com - Internet Outrage Exercises
I had an interesting experience with my father recently. We had all of his grandkids over for a dinner, grandkids who range from 3 - 9, which I would say are very loud ages. My father never had a problem with them…that is until he got new hearing aids. Now he can hear everything, which in these situations, is a problem. So his solution to our loud children? He took his hearing aids out.
Why do I bring this up? Because I feel like in this day and age, when the world and information are at our finger tips, when news events and personalities are loud and fast, that we do the same thing - we take out our hearing aids, stop listening, and act immediately.
This may sound the definition of what it means to be a Jew – after all, we famously received the Torah without hearing any of it – Na'aseh v'Nishmah, a line we actually read in this week's parashah (Exodus 24:7)
וַיִּקַּח סֵפֶר הַבְּרִית וַיִּקְרָא בְּאָזְנֵי הָעָם וַיֹּאמְרוּ כֹּל אֲשֶׁר־דִּבֶּר יְי נַעֲשֶׂה וְנִשְׁמָע׃
Then he took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to the people. And they said, “All that the LORD has spoken we will faithfully do!”
And this is a great lesson for faith in God and mitzvoth – different acts that we may not know why we do them, but find meaning in them after we perform them, but it is a terrible lesson on how to act in the world with other things.
I bring this up because of a story that literally happened last week that most of us have probably moved on from and forgot, but I'm sure that didn't stop many of us from posting about it on social media, tweeting or retweeting. It was the incident of the boys from the Covington Catholic school boys wearing MAGA hats smirking at a Native American demonstrator at the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC. The picture of the boy was spread across the internet almost immediately, and everyone started taking sides. Twitter exploded – and because they had a cell phone video, they thought they were seeing what actually happened. But it turned out, there were other things that were not seen in the original videos. A group of Black Hebrews were on the other side spewing hatred. And it may be that the boys were wrong, or right, or the Native American was right, or wrong, I honestly don't know, and now that we could fully ingest the story, no one cares, because we have consumed it and moved on to the next story. I didn't comment, mainly because I'm just way to busy, and I made the decision that I cannot be outraged about every single thing I read and see because frankly, it's not good for me. So I listened, and I realized that we are fighting a battle on a field we don't even know we are on.
Our Torah reading begins in chapter 23:20, after we get most of the 53 mitzvoth in the parashah, and it talks about the battles that Bnai Israel will face as they leave Sinai:
הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי שֹׁלֵחַ מַלְאָךְ לְפָנֶיךָ לִשְׁמָרְךָ בַּדָּרֶךְ וְלַהֲבִיאֲךָ אֶל־הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר הֲכִנֹתִי׃
I am sending an angel before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I have made ready.
It's a mysterious verse after a series of laws that govern all parts of our lives, laws of slavery, property, how to treat parents, judicial law, and more.
But as I thought more about it, I realized that it is God preparing all of us for a future that God has already provided for us, yet we are dangerously unprepared. In the Torah's example, the place is Canaan, but in our case, it is the cyberworld, a future that is here, and yet we are dangerously unprepared for.
“I am sending an angel before you to guard you on the way,” the JPS commentary explains that the angel is not a literal angel, but a metaphor for God's presence – if we follow these laws, than God will guard us on our way. If we follow those laws, and others, and realize that these laws must follow us wherever we go, even to a place so different that we don't recognize it, then we will be ok.
But I would like to go back to the beginning of the parashah to the first mitzvah this week. The parashah opens with the laws of the eved ivri (Hebrew slave), a thief or debtor who became indentured to another in order to work off what they owe. They work for however long it takes, but no more than six years, because in the Sabbatical year all debts are forgiven and Hebrew slaves are freed. But, the Torah tells us, when the time came for the slave to be freed, the eved ivri could choose to remain a slave in perpetuity: "But if the servant declares: I love my master, my wife, and my children; I do not wish to go free; his master shall take him before God. He shall be brought to the door, or the door-post; and his master shall pierce his ear with an awl, and he shall remain his slave for life." (Exodus 21:5-6)
The rabbinic sages found the very idea that someone might want to remain a slave problematic. In the Babylonian Talmud, we find two midrashim which examine the religious and philosophic significance of the ear-piercing ceremony: "Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai used to interpret this verse as something quite precious. [He asked:] Why was the ear singled out from all the other limbs of the body? The Holy One blessed be He said: This ear, which heard My voice on Mount Sinai when I proclaimed: 'For it is to Me that the children of Israel are servants' (Leviticus 25:55) - they are my servants, and not servants of servants, and yet this [man] went and acquired a master for himself? - let it (his ear) be pierced! Rabbi Shimon ben Rabbi [Yehudah HaNasi] [also] expounded this verse as something precious. Why were the door and doorpost singled out from all other parts of the house? The Holy One blessed be He said: The door and the doorpost, which were witnesses in Egypt when I passed over the lintel and the doorposts and proclaimed: 'For it is to Me that the children of Israel are servants' - they are My servants, and not servants of servants, and so I brought them forth from bondage to freedom, yet this [man] went and acquired a master for himself? - Let him (his ear) be pierced in their presence (the doorpost and the door)!" (Kiddushin 22b)
The two symbols – the ear and the doorpost, hearing and seeing, Sinai and the Exodus from Egypt, remind the servant that slavery is a choice – you can opt out for freedom.
And we too can opt out of the outrage culture. How many of us feel we must comment on everything without truly listening, that we must share and post? How many of us feel we aren't bound by the laws of decency when we are typing, and that something takes a hold of us that we cannot explain?
The piercing ceremony is a lesson to drive home the stunning significance of the choice we make when we stop listening and just act without thinking. The parashah begins with the ear, hearing, as a reminder to us – we must listen more, and think before we act.
And so, the next time you read something and become outraged, and maybe you want to be the first person to say something and act, maybe we should take the lesson of the Hebrew servant and think, do I really want to be a slave to outrage, or be a free person?
Because we are free, it is our choice.
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