Blogroll | Congregation Darchei Noam

Two weeks ago, we read parashat Shoftim, including Devarim (Deuteronomy 21:1-9), we read the story of ha’egla ha’arufa – the innocent heifer, a young cow who has not yet known the yoke. The story unfolds between two cities, where a corpse is found and the perpetrator cannot be located. The elders of each city take a heifer to the valley and sacrifice it. The elders wash their hands over the heifer and say, “Our hands have not spilled this blood, and our eyes did not see it.”

The Rabbis in the Talmud ask a most obvious question: why would the most respected men in the community have to make this declaration of innocence? Who had accused them? And who would even have suspected them of this terrible deed? In answering their own question, the Rabbis explained that: the elders were not denying outright murder. They were denying any contributory negligence on their part – they needed to assure their communities that they had not failed to do anything that might have prevented the tragedy: “The victim did not come to us hungry and we sent him away without food; he did not come to us alone and we offered him no protection,” we read in their Talmudic response (after Sidney Greenberg, Lessons for Living: Reflections on the Weekly Bible Readings and on the Festivals).

The lesson of this teaching is clear: we are each morally responsible for every wrong we have the power to prevent but fail to do so.

May I refresh your memory about the terrible shooting of Michael Brown that took place in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9. This young man was out with his friends, walking in the street, when a confrontation occurred between him and a police officer. The confrontation resulted in Michael running from the scene. He had no weapon. However, he was shot six times and died of his wounds. What followed was an eruption of dismay, anger, frustration and violence. For days, people marched, demonstrated and cried. Their slogan became “Hands up don’t shoot”.

Rabbi Susan Talve, the spiritual leader of Central Reform Congregation in the City of St. Louis, the only synagogue that has chosen to stay in the city, despite a Jewish migration to the more affluent suburbs, to face and respond to all its problems of poverty, despair, racism and oppression, has been on the front lines of the protests in Ferguson. She is truly an inspiring community leader, and was honoured by T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights as a Human Rights Hero in 2013. She wrote these words:

“Standing on the steps of the Old Court House in St. Louis the night before the funeral of Michael Brown, many who have been on the front line of the protests stopped marching and chanting, and prayed quietly for his family and for the families of so many black men who have been shot by police.

“Michael Brown’s death and his mother’s grief touched the nerve that shot across the racial geographic and economic divides of our region. Enough of us got the message tha a threat to our children anywhere is a threat to our children everywhere. The gun violence was crossing the divide and it was time for us to do more than talk.

“We have been living under the illusion of separation in America.  Two Americas, two St. Louis-es, two Fergusons.  We are divided by gender, race, and class.  Driving while black, shopping while black, just walking in the street while black, is a crime in many municipalities across the country.  Talk to any parent of a black male and they will tell you about the “talk.” everyone has with their child.  “Keep your head down, be polite, don’t run from the police and lose the attitude.”

“It will take all of us to change this culture, all of us to challenge racial profiling and the poison of racism and economic disparities that sicken all of us.

“And there is but one fragile degree of separation between us.  On Shabbat afternoon I marched in Ferguson to lift up the voice of the wonderful young people who have emerged to keep the peace on the streets as only they can.

“I marched with a tall black 16-year-old who lives in Ferguson and celebrated his Bar Mitzvah and confirmation at our synagogue, Central Reform Congregation. 

“As we were marching together, I heard a shout-out from the side of the road.  It was a white ex-marine St. Louis City police officer who had come to help keep the peace.  For a moment I thought, what had I done?

“’Rabbi Talve! Don’t you remember me? You did my Bar Mitzvah!’

“So there I was marching between two young men who shared common ground in Torah, one a kid of color from Ferguson who just wants to get back to school and the other a police officer whose job it is to keep him safe.  These relationships are what blurs the lines of separation and will eventually help us to change the culture of profiling and militarized policing.” (Shalom Centre)

Ferguson, Missouri may be the United States, but we have Fergusons in Canada as well. Ferguson is a result of poverty, of unemployment, of substandard school systems, of poor urban planning in low income areas, of lack of affordable housing, of no green space for our children to play in... Every big city – even in Canada – shares these sins. There is nothing particular about St. Louis.

My husband, who was born in Montreal, had a father whose profession was a schochet. A schochet, in the religious community, is a very valued Jewish professional whose skill is to ritually slaughter animals fit to be eaten by kashrut-observant Jews. He told me about the time that, as a child, my husband visited his father at work, and found short Jewish men with white beards studying Mishnah texts in a small room adjacent to the slaughterhouse. When it was time to perform the mitzvah of the schochet, that is, slaughtering the animal in a particular ritual manner, the cow was brought into the room. At this point in his story, my stomach in the knots, I asked my husband to describe the scene. He remembered the details of the room, but above all, he remembered the eyes of an animal filled with fear; an animal that felt the impending danger. There is a striking resemblance between the fear in the eyes of ha’egla – the cow – in both stories, the one from the Torah and the one from modern-day Montreal.

This fear would have also been in Michael Brown’s eyes. He is ha’egla ha’ arufa: the innocent calf that has been sacrificed over the many dead bodies of vulnerable young men, especially young men of colour. And just like the sages of the Talmud said, we may not have caused these deaths. However, we are responsible for them just the same if we did nothing to prevent them. However there are always luminous exceptions to the sadness of these situations. Out of this pain and misery, a light shined when Rabbi Talve came together with Jewish, Christian and Muslim clergy to offer solace, prayer and solidarity to Michael’s family and all of the people of Ferguson. It is in these moments that we see the hope – that a tragedy like the one that befell this young man can be the spark that ignites the connections between communities, minorities and two cities, so the next time there is no body of a young man found dead between two separate communities. 

Rabbi Tina Grimberg has been the rabbi of Congregation Darchei Noam since 2002. Read her full biography here.