Shabbat Vayikra March 31, 2006
Bet Shalom Congregation
Rabbi Norman M. Cohen

I want you to open your Torah commentaries to p. 757. Tomorrow morning Samantha will be reading this text, but tonight I want you to see what she will see. The very first word of the portion contains an unusual phenomenon: the aleph is smaller, not just in your book but in the Torah scroll itself. According to Samuel David Luzzato, a 19th century Italian Jewish scholar, originally the Torah was written not only without vowels and punctuation, but also without spaces between words. He claims that there was only one aleph between those first two words: Vayikra el. The aleph did double duty serving as the last letter of Vayikra and the first letter of el. So when the words were separated, another aleph was inserted, a small one so as not to violate the integrity of the holy scroll.

This is a simple reasonable explanation, yet it provided the ancient rabbis with an opportunity to make it a big thing, and through their Midrashim give us a number of moral explanations: One example: Moses could have thought – how great I am, God is calling me. The small aleph is a reminder to be humble. The Hebrew word for I is ani and it begins with an aleph. Diminish your ego. You are just doing what you are supposed to be doing. Another explanation: Moses could have been overwhelmed; the aleph also could be seen as shrinking. This is a big responsibility. How can I do this? Moses was overwhelmed. He said to God, I am of poor speech, how can I do this? Another midrashic interpretation: Without the aleph, the word Vayikra, and God called, could be read Vayikar – It just happened arbitrarily. It was an accident, a happenstance. When God calls us to speak out and act, it should be intentional.

Sometimes we think, in metaphorical terms, I hope, that God is calling. Some project, some cause, some crisis, some individual that gets our attention, spurs us to action. We are often unsure about how to respond. The small aleph represents our all too frequent response: Why me? Leave me alone; I have other things on my plate. This is common in our culture. Or we respond: Why bother? This task is so huge; I cannot make a difference. It will only lead to frustration and disappointment. All of us can relate to this. It’s part of life. Human nature. For Jews we have an especially sensitive connection to this dilemma and this month we are reminded of it in a powerful way.

Not only do we observe Passover in a couple of weeks, which is the holiday that inspires us to work for freedom and liberation. We also have Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. During the Holocaust, this moral dilemma became an issue of life and death not only for the millions who perished at the hands of the Nazis, but more significantly for the bystanders, the people and countries who could have done something and did not. The accusations and guilt which have followed the 1940’s and remain a factor in international and human politics to this day, are a reinforcement of the lesson of the little aleph. So many people looked the other way, uninterested in knowing what was going on, even when the smell of human flesh was in the air. Others asked: What could I do? My involvement will not change a thing. It is so much bigger than my ability to make a difference. I am but a tiny aleph.

There was the very defensible argument. If I do something, I put my family and myself in danger. I might be killed, too, although I am not a Jew or a gypsy or a homosexual or a handicapped person, or a … you get the picture. However, to paraphrase Martin Niemoller’s famous testimony. When they came for the labor unions, I was not a member, so I looked the other way. When they came for the handicapped, I was not one of them, so I did not act. When they came for the gypsies, again it did not affect me, so I did nothing. When they came for the Jews, I was not a Jew, so I kept to myself. When they came for the homosexuals, I was not of that group, so I went about my business. When they came for me, there was nobody left to stand up and help me.

Sadly we know that the overwhelming majority of people did nothing. That is why the Holocaust took place. The Nazis were responsible, but nobody stood up to them, and thus allowed, at the very least or collaborated in an intentional way, at the very worst. All good people have to do in the face of evil is nothing for evil to succeed. Yet some did stand up and it made a difference, even in such a horrible tragedy as the Holocaust. We are learning more and more about individuals that we call Righteous gentiles, who risked their lives and their families to help people who were often strangers to them, taking them in, helping the underground, hiding and saving lives.

The nation of Denmark did something that was so rare. As a country they organized a rescue effort for Jews, transporting them across the water to safe haven. Their attitude was that an attack against Danish Jews was an attack against all Danes. These examples of courage and bravery in the face of the Nazi evil are indictments of those who say you can’t make a difference; you are but a mere aleph. At the same time the aleph is how most of these righteous gentiles answered after the war. It was nothing to do this. What else could I do? It was the right thing to do, and that’s why I did it. Not to be a hero, not for our own ego, but to do what I know I must do. And this took place in the 1940’s before there was television, before mass communication when some could claim ignorance, although evidence has proven that if someone wanted to know, there was ample opportunity to find out, certainly by the summer of 1942 when the ovens were going full blast.

That some people did object and took action is an inspiring part of that bleak history, a glimmer of light in an otherwise very dark time. Today we can’t help but wonder why more people failed to do something? And I can imagine that the most difficult question for a parent to be asked by their child, is what did you do when that was going on, a question that must have been asked a million times in the decades that followed World War II. That is why we cannot think of ourselves as little alephs in our world today. We cannot remain silent in the face of evil. We cannot remain inactive. There is so much we can do.

As a Rabbi, as a Jew in light of the Holocaust, that we so often invoke when we say Never Again, as a human being who wants to see the spark of God in every other human being, I must turn your attention, as our social action committee is doing, to the issue of Darfur, a region in the Sudan, where a government-sponsored genocide is taking place not in the 1940’s but as we speak, 60 years after the Holocaust was supposed to teach us something about our responsibility to other human beings. Your Shabbat pamphlets contain a few of the rudimentary details about this horrible event. It has been kept out of the news in a way that is shocking to me. But a recent article in the NY Times and lots of grassroots activities will bring this issue to light.

Many of you have heard something of this tragedy and I urge you to learn more. The facts of this situation do not need to be reiterated by me this evening on the pulpit. But I want to direct you attention to some opportunities to learn more about it. Last night at Temple Israel, I saw a remarkable film “The Darfur Diaries”, documenting this conflict and interviewing some of the refugees. I hope you can see it sometime soon too. Most of you missed that, but we are providing you materials on the table in our social hall. During the oneg, please take them home and respond to them: make phone calls and send emails to our congressional representatives and senators. Send the already prepared post card to President Bush. No matter what your political affiliation let the President know you agree with him on the Darfur situation. Our own government has been at the forefront of bringing attention to this matter by calling it genocide in no uncertain terms. While America was one of the silent nations in the forties, it is leading the way to stop this significant tragedy.

Please don’t miss the upcoming opportunities. On Tuesday and Wednesday April 25-26, we will be observing Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. A few days later on Sunday afternoon April 30 we can transform the message of that day into action by attending the rally at the State capitol from 2:00 - 3:30. In Washington, DC, there will be a national rally at the same time. In ancient days our people gathered in their local communities while their sacrifice was being offered in the Jerusalem Temple. We are transforming that ancient tradition for our own time. A month later on May 21 Professor Eric Marcuson, one of the well informed voices speaking about Darfur will be here at Bet Shalom addressing us and answering our questions.

After the Holocaust many claimed that they did not know what was going on. While that could be argued in some cases based on the absence of news readily available, we cannot make that claim. We live in the world of mass communication. We have Cable News networks. We have the Internet. We have a post Holocaust awareness that must mean something. Yes, it is a major conflict far away. We might at first feel like a tiny aleph. But there is no danger in doing something. There is a large danger in not doing anything. The results of the genocide will escalate and the tragedy will continue.

But there is another danger. To lower our heads in shame when the next generation will ask us what we did during Darfur. Let us be able to say. The genocide was halted, freedom was restored, and justice was preserved. At first we thought we were tiny alephs. But we came to understand that it was not just an accident, like the word vayikar. Our response to Darfur was something in which God was present, and this is what we want to teach you about your role as God’s partners in this world. Our hope is that they will respond with another word that begins with an aleph. And that is the word Amen!!!

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