Rabbi Safman's Weekly Message
Dear Friends,
As we join together to celebrate Shabbat we invite you to bring a kiddush cup or any glass filled with wine or grape juice and join together with us at the end of services to share in a l'chayim.
I look forward to celebrating Shabbat with you.
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Shemini 2025
Our Torah reading for this Shabbat, Shemini, includes the historical reality of the death of two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu. The Torah shares with us that their death occurred in the sanctuary of God, as they were preparing an offering to Hashem. According to the text, Nadav and Avihu brought a strange fire, one which was not acceptable to God.
Needless to say, the pain of a parent is one that we all sense at that moment. How can one not sense the grief of Aaron? The Torah provides for us an explanation as to why these two young men perished, as though that might provide us with an answer if not some comfort. It even goes on to suggest that their deaths had a sanctified component to them: “Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘This is what the LORD meant when He said: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people.’” (Leviticus 10:3)
While these words might have been acceptable during the time of the Torah, the Holocaust changed that reality. Innocent people perishing for the sake of sanctification of God, does not reach my logic, even as a religious individual. Needless to say, since October 7, 2023, the words become even more shallow. In actuality, the words were not acceptable to Aaron either. The Torah states, וידם אהרן “vayidom Aharon,” and when Aaron heard these words, he remained silent.
This week we commemorate Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. A recent article suggests that within six years, there will be very few survivors left to recount their stories. When we were children, we remember seeing the survivors. We were witness to their being witness. As a child, I didn’t fully understand. Unfortunately, today I do, not only as I recall the stories told to us by my mother-in-law as we sat around the seder table and by so many others who experienced the Nazi persecution and atrocities, but by what we are experiencing as Jews globally around the world.
In the Facebook group “Everything Jewish Toronto,” a woman shared with us her tears of walking into a Shopper’s Drug Mart Store in downtown Toronto to pick up a prescription. She was wearing a free the hostages necklace, which has a Magen David on it. The pharmacist noticed the אנחנו ננצח necklace and from behind the counter told her to leave the store immediately and that he wouldn’t serve people like her. When she stated that she was picking up a prescription, he continued with the same hatred. She left in tears. In the group, people commiserated with her. And they gave her advice. Did she know that the company (which started when I was a kid) was created by a Jewish person? Did she know that the current CEO of the chain (which is similar to CVS, but is franchised) is Jewish? And the recommendations were strongly worded to contact both the head office as well as the Toronto Police as a hate crime. I am hoping that she did both.
Thankfully, we do not experience the same here in the greater New London Jewish community. However, the stories we hear give us a clear understanding of how difficult it was to live in Nazi Germany and Europe, at the beginning of the rise of the Nazis. October 7th, 2023 became the lightning rod for all of us to understand the Shoah, not only for that time, but also a lesson and a wakeup call for today.
I cannot accept the Torah’s explanation of the deaths of Aaron’s two sons as a sanctification of God and that through their deaths God will be sanctified. And there is no explanation that is satisfactory for the Shoah and October 7th. I share the sentiments of Aaron.
What I can accept is that we must change the commentary from that of “I, God, will be sanctified through the deaths,” to that of those who perished will remain sanctified as a symbol of anti-Semitism and that their memories should never be forgotten. Their memories will be kadosh, sanctified to us and to God.
In the same breath, we must also understand the narrative of the Torah in reference to the passing of Pope Francis. While we in the Jewish community may have differing opinions as to whether the Pope was a friend to Jews and to Israel, we must take a moment to reflect on his messages related to anti-Semitism around the world. In his last message delivered on Easter Sunday, the Pope condemned anti-Semitism stating: the “growing climate of antisemitism around the world is worrisome.” It was one of many messages both as the Pope and coadjutor bishop of the Buenos Aires archdiocese that he had both penned and stated
An article in the Forward following his death reflected upon Pope Francis’ understanding of the Shoah. “The memory of the Shoah and its atrocious violence must never be forgotten,” the Pope said in 2018 in a message through the Vatican’s secretary of state in Berlin. “It should be a constant warning for all of us of an obligation to reconciliation, of reciprocal comprehension and love toward our ‘elder brothers,’ the Jews.”
At the same time, in his final message to his faithful, the Pope also condemned the Gaza situation, hoping for a ceasefire. Some of his words and actions, including permitting a keffiyeh at the nativity scene in Rome this past Christmas season, have brought condemnation. Some suggest that even though the keffiyeh was removed, a political statement was made by the Vatican and the Pope allowing the scene crafted in the West Bank city of Bethlehem to be originally displayed. Some say that the display gave credibility not only to the Palestinian cause, but also to give credence to the anti-Israel and antisemitic violence that we are seeing throughout the world.
Yet others, remember the Pope for his interfaith dialogue between Jewish and Christian leaders. Rabbi Burton Visotsky, my Midrash professor at JTS, was one of the 2500 who were invited and attended the service for the Pope this past Wednesday in Rome. He writes: “I had the opportunity to meet the Holy Father several times in Rome and again when he visited New York City. On each occasion I was struck by his humility and the twinkle in his eye. Here was a man who loved his fellow human being—the very embodiment of the command to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). He was beloved, even as he was outspoken. He was not shy about rebuking the State of Israel for their treatment of Palestinians, especially in Gaza. But to those who knew the Pope, we understood that he did so out of love and caring for Jews and non-Jews alike.”
I hope that the Pope’s words related to anti-Semitism become the message that will be the one that will be more referenced and remembered. And I pray that his message that was one of hope for peace in the Middle East will soon become a truth.
At this moment, what is important is that we recognize the Pope for who he was, as a messenger of God to the Catholic world. And to our Catholic neighbors, we express our condolences to them.
Bring them home now!!!
Am Yisrael Chai!!!
Shabbat shalom.
Rabbi K