Each year, I find myself at this moment wishing for just a few more hours to study with you, regretting that our time together is coming to a close. Learning with and from you has been such a gift, and I’m hopeful we will stay connected and have opportunities to learn together in the future, wherever our paths may lead.
At its core, Confirmation is about choosing to continue making Jewish practice and community a meaningful part of your lives as you grow to become independent young adults. That’s why we traditionally celebrate Confirmation on – or this year as near as our schedules allow – to Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates when our ancient ancestors received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. At that moment, the Children of Israel agreed to embrace the Torah’s wisdom, follow its commandments, and pass it on as an inheritance to their children. Today, you confirm your willingness to be the next link in that unbroken chain of tradition, freely accepting the gift of Torah that your ancestors hand to you today and taking responsibility for, God-willing, passing it on to your descendants.
You have each written so eloquently about what accepting that responsibility means to each of you. This week’s Torah portion, Parashat Aharei Mot, from sefer Vayikra, the book of Leviticus, offers a provocative claim about the meaning and nature of belonging to the Jewish people and committing to a life guided by Torah. In chapter 18 of Leviticus, we read:
כְּמַעֲשֵׂ֧ה אֶֽרֶץ־מִצְרַ֛יִם אֲשֶׁ֥ר יְשַׁבְתֶּם־בָּ֖הּ לֹ֣א תַעֲשׂ֑וּ וּכְמַעֲשֵׂ֣ה אֶֽרֶץ־כְּנַ֡עַן אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֲנִי֩ מֵבִ֨יא אֶתְכֶ֥ם שָׁ֙מָּה֙ לֹ֣א תַעֲשׂ֔וּ וּבְחֻקֹּתֵיהֶ֖ם לֹ֥א תֵלֵֽכוּ׃
You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you; nor shall you follow their laws.
אֶת־מִשְׁפָּטַ֧י תַּעֲשׂ֛וּ וְאֶת־חֻקֹּתַ֥י תִּשְׁמְר֖וּ לָלֶ֣כֶת בָּהֶ֑ם אֲנִ֖י יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶֽם׃
My rules alone shall you observe, and faithfully follow My laws: I am The Infinite your God.
In other words, we are called to be something distinct, not Egyptian, not Canaanite but uniquely ourselves; to embrace our particularity and walk in the world in ways that are especially Jewish.
According to our parashah, that difference must be more than just skin-deep; it’s not simply about embracing distinctive ritual practices or other stereotypically Jewish behaviors, but rather, perhaps more importantly, making it a point to do what’s right even if it’s not what is commonplace or popular.
For example, according to our parashah, Jews are not supposed to kill any animal, even for food, except under specific religious circumstances, and couches this prohibition as part and parcel of the instruction not to emulate the practices of the Egyptians or Canaanites. Similarly, chapter 18 of Leviticus forbids many different kinds of relational abuse, such as sexual violence and child sacrifice, warning that these behaviors were commonplace among the Egyptians or Canaanites. And finally, we are told that the land itself is vulnerable to our mistreatment, and we must take care not to desecrate it, unlike the Canaanites, the land’s prior inhabitants, who irreparably sullied it and made it impossible to live on any longer.
At first blush, these three sets of prohibitions may not appear to have much in common. What do relational abuse, killing animals, and destroying the environment have to do with one another? Furthermore, what makes these behaviors uniquely un-Jewish? And what makes the Torah think that these are popular practices among other nations that we might otherwise be tempted to follow?
What these behaviors have in common is that they are all examples of abuses of power, of might making right, of people using anyone or anything however and whenever they want simply because they can, flagrantly disregarding what is good for others – even what is morally right – if it doesn’t serve their own self-interest. A person with such a mentality believes that nothing is more important than their own power and wealth, that there is no higher morality than their own position, and will therefore do literally anything it perceives as being to their own benefit, no matter who or what may be harmed in the process.
The Torah’s contention that this mindset is popular among other nations is less a moral indictment than an objective observation. In his masterful book Moral Man and Immoral Society, the great 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr convincingly points out that this mentality has characterized every society that has ever existed. Think of where our ancient ancestors fled from, Egypt – a nation that seemingly had no problem enslaving an entire population of foreigners, even if it had to kill every newborn baby boy to enforce its policies of subjugation. So too Canaanite society, where people apparently raised no objections to the various abuses that were apparently widely practiced by the privileged and powerful.
Thankfully, those civilizations no longer exist. Yet the exploitative mindset that characterized them is still just as commonplace. And when something is popular or widely practiced, we tend not to challenge it all that much, or think about the larger consequences. It becomes part of the air we breathe, the way things are done. Just to give a fairly obvious example, for more than two centuries, very few white Americans questioned or opposed the institution of slavery, which resulted in untold suffering and bloodshed. And even though slavery officially ended after the Civil War, we know all too well that our country generally, and Black Americans specifically, in many ways still experience the consequences of our thoughtless acceptance of a great evil.
That’s why the Torah doesn’t just believe we might be tempted to follow the practices that are popular in the cultures that surround us – it knows it. In fact, according to tradition, many of our ancestors did participate in those abhorrent, but popular, Egyptian and, later, Canaanite, practices. The Torah knows that we are likely to act just like everyone around us without some countervailing force.
So the Torah comes along to teach us that the Jewish thing to do, in contrast to a culture dominated by this “might makes right” mindset, is to make our world more loving, more just, and more peaceful, and therefore warning us not to blindly accept or follow those who act as if “can” and “should” are not the same thing. Being Jewish, then, means not only standing out but also standing apart – distancing ourselves from the surrounding culture so that we can recognize and counter the consciousness and systems that produce inequality, oppression, bloodshed and environmental disaster – and steadfastly, stubbornly committing ourselves to doing what is right, even when it would be easier, or more personally beneficial, to just go with the flow and follow the crowd.
We do this by recognizing that each of us is a part of something bigger, that other people’s needs and dreams are just as important as our own, that not just we but everything in creation has intrinsic divine value. We are called to cultivate a sense of broad responsibility, a recognition that the wellbeing of others is no less important than our own and that, in fact, our welfare is bound up together. To be distinctly Jewish in the world is more than just celebrating Jewish holidays, observing Shabbos, or keeping kosher. Rather, it is to resist the selfishness and greed that are so widespread in our unjust world, and instead work to dismantle oppressive systems and advance a perfected world of pervasive inclusion, justice, and peace.
My dear students, our world will do everything it can to push you to conform and relinquish what makes you special. Today, then, is about readying yourself to mount spiritual resistance in the face of that oppression by rooting yourself in your Jewish identity.
And just as a tree – no matter how deep and strong its roots – has to be nourished with sufficient water and sunlight in order to thrive, so too must you nurture your sense of and connection to your Jewish identity, strengthening your awareness of and commitment to this aspect of who you are. This includes nurturing your relationship with Jewish tradition -- through increasingly embracing Jewish spiritual and ritual practices; deepening your understanding of Torah through ongoing, lifelong study; fostering your connection with the Jewish people through belonging to and active involvement in Jewish community; and doing your part to fulfill the Jewish mission to repair the world.
I pray that you not only embrace your roots, but commit to cultivating them, striving to strengthen your Jewishness as a core part of your identity all the days of your adult life by deepening your relationship with Jewish community, wisdom, and practice and participating in the Jewish work of repairing the world.
You are blessed to have parents and loved ones who model those commitments; may they continue to teach you, and may you continue to learn from them. You have a loving community who share in those commitments; I pray that you stay involved in and indeed become the liberating leader our congregation, community, and world needs.
And may you continue to teach us, through your Torah, and more importantly by your example.
Mazal tov, and may you go from strength to strength!
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