Rabbi's Derasha

In 2000, the Shabbat before the election was also Parashat Noach.  It wasn’t Rosh Chodesh, so the Haftora was the regular one for the Parasha.  At Seuda Shlishit, someone pointed out that there was a verse that began, “Hen Gor.”  It wasn’t a statement, it was just the beginning of a sentence, “Hen Gor Yagur,” but the two words say, “yes, Gore.”  That was the end of such predictions for a while.    

It’s hard to avoid the time we are in, not in terms of candidates but in terms of the general deterioration of politics.  There’s something to say about this in a relatively small detail in the Parasha.  When I teach, I like to emphasize the drama which lies  just below the surface of even small details.  Drilling down on a word or even a letter can yield real gold.  

One of the letters that often yields something is the Vav. The Gemora in Kiddushin says that Vav is the center letter of the Torah. Vav is always a connector, so it tells us that the Torah is about reaching out and connecting.  The Torah begins and ends with Chesed, as Hashem brings Adam and Chava together and also buries Moshe Rabenu.  That’s one meaning of the Vav.

But Vav also connects disparate sections.  If it’s the middle letter of the Torah, it connects side A with side B.  Rashi says about the Vav at the beginning of Parashat Mishpatim that it comes to yoke together two sections one would not have thought to put together.  The giving of the 10 statements at Har Sinai does not read like the list of laws in Mishpatim, but the Vav yokes both of them together at Har Sinai experiences.  

The Zohar says that the difference between the first tablets and the second tablets was that the first lacked a Vav and the second had plenty of them.  What does that teach us?   There’s also a funny use of Vavs in a verse in this week’s Parasha.  When Hashem sets up the new system after the flood, He announces that the new cycles will be -- “Zera v’katzir, vkor vchom vkayitz v’choref, vyom v’laila lo yishbotu” -- sewing and reaping, and cold and hot, and summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.  One doesn’t need to put a Vav in front of each.  

By connecting each one, the Torah is announcing that all of the cycles are forced now to blend and mix with one another. Opposites have to deal with the constraints and limits that each presents to the other.  This is the new reality after the flood.  There will be no unrestricted growth.  Now it’s a world in which opposites have to blend and deal with constraints.  

If you look at the second side of the tablets, the Torah says don’t kill, which puts a limit on power.  Fair enough -- we’re not allowed to obliterate someone else.  But what about the instinct not to obliterate but to connect.  The next commandment, against adultery, puts a limit on connections.  The introduction of a Vav in the second tablets means that the constraint on power and the constraint on connection -- opposites -- have to blend with each other and mix.  

This is a new world.  Not of either/or but of yes/and.  This is a politics that allows for the other to exist instead of being canceled.  

I’m not going to speak of how things work in Israel but I can mention what happens when Israelis come here.  One of the prime advocates of judicial reform was brought to the area a couple of months ago.  He was not brought by Israelis but by an American organization that loves to set up these kinds of confrontations.  The organization’s function, at least locally, is to bring right-wing speakers to Northern California to spark outrage and make peoples’ brains explode.  It might be constructive to have one’s head explode sometimes, but constructive or destructive, that’s the goal of the organization.  The speaker was supposed to speak in Berkeley but he was forced to switch to Zoom by protesters.  Those protesters, who were from Palo Alto, have supporters who would expect them to shut him down and would consider anything less to be a misuse of their donations.  This is the world we live in.  A world without Vavs.  Unrestrained, uninhibited, speaking past one another.  

In a democracy, the right exists to temper and constrict the excesses of the left and the left exists to move society off of its complacent comfort zone, and to spur change where things have gone awry.  Both sides are needed in a healthy body politic and both sides should recognize the essential role of the other.

I remember R’ Sacks, a”h, saying in a Shabbat Shuva Derasha toward the end of his life that in a world where there is no restraint, no inhibitions, only the shameless thrive.  

Election cycles of this kind have become the norm, unfortunately.  What we need is the restoration of a sense of responsibility for one another, and a sense of how a healthy society understands the rolls of opposing sides.  It is to constrain, but not to obliterate.