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Shoftim: Be A Prophet - Preach to the Unvaccinated©
It’s wonderful to be back after 4 weeks, mainly stayed away from social media, only posted some pics, stayed away from the issues of the day, barely read articles.
As I ventured back to the news cycle, I was a bit puzzled to read the Ice Cream Wars of 2021; I don’t think ice cream has been this controversial since someone substituted pistachio for chocolate on Shavuot.
As I ventured back to the news cycle, I was a bit puzzled to read the Ice Cream Wars of 2021; I don’t think ice cream has been this controversial since someone substituted pistachio for chocolate on Shavuot.
But, the news that I was following was the outbreak of Covid-19 infections in Florida. I left Florida on a real high note: the masks were coming off, stores were opening, restaurants started packing, people were coming back to shul, things seemed to be coming back closer to normal. With so many people rushing to get the vaccine in our area, and Jews leading the way nationally with 85% receiving the vaccine, I thought, this is it, we’re back! What could possibly go wrong? That’s when the Delta Variant said, ‘not so fast’. It seems like I know more people with Covid today than I knew during the height of the pandemic. The unvaccinated people are suffering the most, and now there are many more children infected who require hospitalization, but even vaccinated adults are feeling the effects of Covid-19 in the form of breakthrough infections.
Many of us have returned back to our pandemic lives which can lead to us thinking about ourselves above all, but this week’s parashah gives us a different perspective.
Shoftim is a journey from me to we. The parashah begins with Moshe telling the people to set up a system of justice:
You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes, in all the settlements that the LORD your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. (Deuteronomy 21:10)
It is seemingly a commandment for the community, but it is written in the singular. You, each person, should appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes. The Shnei Luchot HaBrit, a Hassidic commentator, says that the gates are our bodies and souls. We must guard our mouths, lest we lie or speak gossip, our ears, that we not be eager to hear malicious gossip, and our eyes, that we not form the habit of seeing the worst in others. But it’s not enough to work on ourselves alone. There’s a story I heard from the Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (z’l) about the late Rabbi, Menachaem Mendle Schneerson.
A man had written to the Rebbe the following: “I am lonely. I feel that life is meaningless. I try to pray, but when I do, the words do not come. I carefully follow the Torah but I find no peace of mind. Please, Rebbe, I need help."
The Rebbe sent a reply without writing a single word.
The Rebbe simply sent the letter back. He had circled the word "I" in every sentence.
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me. But if I am only for myself, what am I?.."-Hillel (H/T Rabbi Victor Urecki)
What does this have to do with me? When I got vaccinated, I urged all of you to get vaccinated, but when people fought me on it, I said to myself, “I’m protected, so are the adults in my life. So if they don’t want to get the vaccine, it’s their problem.”
But, as we learned, it wasn’t ‘their’ problem, it was our problem. The Delta variant took over and spread amongst the unvaccinated, and now, it’s our problem.
It reminded me of the well-known story from Midrash (Vayikra Rabbah 4:6):
A group of people were traveling in a boat. One of them took a drill and began to drill a hole beneath himself.
His companions said to him: "Why are you doing this?" Replied the man: "What concern is it of yours? Am I not drilling under my own place?"
They said to him: "But you will flood the boat for us all!”
In America, we pride ourselves on liberty and rugged individualism, but viruses don’t care about our freedoms; in fact, they have used our individualism against us. The decision of the individual had an affect on everyone. Some decided not to get vaccinated, and I decided to stop pushing vaccines because I didn’t want to fight. My unvaccinated family and friends who were adults were not invited to our gatherings, and in my eyes, rightfully so. But did I need to cut off all contact? Should I have given up on the ‘we’?
Our parashah quickly brings us from me to we.
In chapter 18, we read an interesting passage about soothsayers, diviners, and sorcerers. Why spend time talking about wizards and witches? Because they stand in contrast to God and our prophets. They offer a false narrative; they give the hopeless false hope based on lies and mistruths so they can line their pockets. When our voices stopped, other voices filled the air. The voices of talk show hosts and TV personalities who parade themselves as sources of news. When some of them got the vaccine, they hid it from their followers, but they knew that questioning the vaccine would bring them attention and money. One AM Talk Show host here in Florida pushed the narrative to his followers; he died last week and his last wish was to tell his followers to get vaccinated. Alas, the damage is done, and I for one can’t stand by and let them fill the air. In verse 15 of chapter 18, we read the alternative to these magicians: follow the prophet.
Prophets aren’t the easiest people to get along with. The prophets of our people, beginning with Moses, tell it like it is, and they tend to be too harsh in their criticisms, often times distancing themselves from their people. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s first major work was called The Prophets.
“What manner of man is the prophet?” He beautifully and harshly describes what a prophet must be. They aren’t concerned with philosophy, they aren’t monks to sit on a mountain top to find God, rather, they are amongst the people, no matter how uncomfortable that may be. Heschel writes, “Instead of dealing with the timeless issues of being and becoming, of matter and form, of definitions and demonstrations, he is thrown into orations about widows and orphans, about the corruption of judges and affairs of the market place. Instead of showing us a way through the elegant mansions of the mind, the prophets take us to the slums. The world is a proud place, full of beauty, but the prophets are scandalized, and rave as if the whole world were a slum.”
Prophets can’t let their people sink, even though they may feel tempted to do so.
Heschel writes, “Their breathless impatience with injustice may strike us as hysteria. We ourselves witness continually acts of injustice, manifestations of hypocrisy, falsehood, outrage. misery, but we rarely grow indignant or overly excited. To the prophets even a minor injustice assumes cosmic proportions.”
Heschel goes on to say that the prophet's duty is to speak to the people, "whether they hear or refuse to hear." A grave responsibility, he writes, rests upon the prophet.
The Etz Chaim Chumash quotes Heschel further, “A prophet is someone who tells the truth. The prophet does not tell us what we want to know bur rather tells us what God wants us to know, reminding us of our covenantal obligations. “The prophet is a person who sees the world with the eyes of God, who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times.”
I’m not a prophet, nor are any of you, but we can bring a part of the prophets to our family and friends who are being led astray by the soothsayers, diviners, and sorcerers of our time who fill them with lies, and who are leading them, and all of us, to a dark future. We can’t call them stupid and denigrate them; we must consider them as if they were under the influence of these false prophets whose only interest is to line their own pockets.
As the Rebbe told the man who questioned him about himself alone, “"If I am not for myself, who will be for me. But if I am only for myself, what am I?.”
On our doors, we have placed the following words, “Achreiyut Zeh Al Zeh B’Kehilah - we are each responsible to one another in the community. Whether we like it or not, we must all be prophets, for who else will look out for our children and those who cannot get vaccinated, or for those with poor immune systems who are vaccinated but can still get very ill from this unrelenting virus? But we must also care for the misguided, those who are hurting themselves because we are commanded to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
As Heschel wrote in his book the Prophets, “Above all, the prophets remind us of the moral state of a people: Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”
Achreiyut Zeh Al Zeh B’Kehilah - we are each responsible to one another in the community - don’t give up on anyone; preach like your like depends on it, because it may, but preach because their lives depend upon it. We are all in the same boat, and our destiny is in our hands. It’s time to ride the wave to a brighter future, let’s sail off together.
Shabbat Shalom
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