Parashat BaMidbar 5772
The Ford Pinto was a subcompact car produced by the
Ford Motor Company for the model years 1971–1980, during which time 2 million
cars were manufactured. The Pinto was the brainchild of then Ford CEO, Lee
Iacocca, who wanted this car to weigh less than 2000 pounds and cost less than
$2000 to manufacture. In 1978, the Pinto was recalled over issues pertaining to
the gas tank design. Apparently, if the Pinto were hit from behind, the car
would explode upon impact. Originally, it is rumored, that when Iacocca heard
of this flaw and discovered that its correction would raise the cost over $2000
and raise the car’s weight over 2000 pounds, he decided to calculate the
difference between the cost of settling lawsuits and fixing the flaw. When it
was discovered that the largest demographic of Pinto buyers was over 60,
African American women, and that these women were not highly valued by courts
and insurance companies, Iacocca decided not to fix the Pinto.
When I first
heard this story, I was appalled. As an American, I always took seriously our
Declaration of Independence when it states, quite emphatically, “We hold these
truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
As a Jew, I
don’t have to read far into the Torah to understand that, “God created man in
his image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created
them.” It’s right there in Genesis one, verse twenty seven.
But last
week, in Parshat B’Chokotai, Leviticus twenty seven, I read something very
different. The text tells me that,
[T]he
Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel, and say to them,
‘If a man shall make a special vow to give to the Lord the estimated value of
persons, Then the estimation shall be: for a male from twenty years old to
sixty years old, fifty shekels of silver, according to the shekel of the
sanctuary. And if a female, then the estimation shall be thirty shekels.’”
Appalling?
I’m not sure. It doesn’t exactly match my 21st century
sensibilities, but, in context, the Torah can be seen as a progressive
document. Just think about the daughters of Zelophchad, who we will also read
about in BaMidbar, the book of the Torah we just started to read from. In this
story, Moses petitions God for the right of these five women to inherit their
father’s land despite their gender, and God agrees.
In Parshat
BaMidbar, we get another sense of how the Torah counts humans. When God
instructs Moses to take a census, he says,
Take
a census of all the congregation of the people of Israel, by families, by the
house of their fathers, according to the number of names, every male by their
polls; From twenty years old and upward, all who are able to go forth to war in
Israel; you and Aaron shall count them. (Bamidbar 1:2-3)
When I think
about the entirety of examples of human value, whether they come from the Torah
or from our modern society, I can make one clear conclusion; being counted is a
function of purpose.
·
The
Torah tells us that every human is made in God’s image because the text aspires
to sanctify human life.
·
When
God elevates Zelophchad’s daughters as worthy of inheriting their father’s
land, He is trying to make justice.
·
And
when God instructs Moses to count the men over twenty, he is trying to build a
strong army to protect his people.
In other
words, we cannot generalize about the value of human beings from our texts
because context is everything, and each example has a specific purpose.
So now let’s
take this forward about three thousand years. Today we are writing new Jewish
texts. We write them with our pens and we write them on our iPads. Most
importantly, we write them with our deeds. So let’s examine some modern ways in
which we count our people.
One area of
progress is the Minyan. Today it is almost ubiquitous among liberal Jews to
count women in a prayer quorum. In this dramatic change, we modern Jews have
created justice just like God did for the daughters of Zelophchad. Likewise, we
can say that the institution of Bat Mitzvah is a big step in equalizing the
value of men and women in Jewish society. Unfortunately, however, the entire enterprise
of bar and bat mitzvah and counting thirteen year olds as “adult Jews” has
backfired. Instead of creating a stronger sense of Jewish commitment in
adolescence, we have created a population that consider a seventh grade
education adequate for adult Jewish living. I’m sure none of us would be
amenable to this limited training if the subject were law or medicine, so you
can understand why I am astonished by the acceptance of such an early terminal
point in Jewish education.
In modern
times, another area of counting is related to citizenship. Just like Parshat
BaMidbar asks us to take a census, the American Constitution makes the same
demand - every ten years. Now if we examine patterns of modern counting with
the same lens as we did for the Bible, then we can assume the same conclusion;
counting people is purposeful. Counting slaves in early America was for
purposes of representation in Congress and for the distribution of taxes, thus,
our foundational document is stained with the loathsome words of the
Three-Fifths Compromise.
In the modern
Israeli context, we haven’t even been able to achieve “loathsome” compromises. This
is hard to say in a crowd of people who care deeply about Israel and have made
great efforts to assure her existence as a democratic, Jewish country and a
light onto the nations. Honestly, we can stand with Israel, right or wrong, or
we can help her become the country we all hope that she can be. A country that
reflects our particular values alongside our universal concerns for the world. The
Israeli Declaration of Independence promises a constitution, “which shall be
adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October
1948.” Sixty Four years later, we still run our Jewish state without agreed
upon guidelines. Some of you may know that Israel has a constitutional
framework in its collection of “basic laws.” What you might not know is that a
basic law is legislated in the same exact way as a law of the Knesset, by the
same exact legislators. In practical terms, this means that there is no
constitution for Israel because a governing coalition that doesn’t like a basic
law can change that law with a simple majority. This is far from the checks and
balances of American democracy. Israel may be the only democracy in the Middle
East, but it is far from perfect, and it started with such promise.
The Israeli
Declaration of Independence, a document that traveled with me in my wallet as I
graduated agricultural high school near Tel Aviv and as I was drafted to the
Israel Defense Forces during the first Lebanon War, was full of promise for a
great society. Here is part of what the fledgling democracy promised to do.
it
will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its
inhabitants;
it
will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of
Israel;
it
will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its
inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex;
it
will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and
culture;
it
will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and
it
will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
Regarding
non-Jewish citizens of the state, the Declaration has the following message.
WE
APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months
- to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and
participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal
citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent
institutions.
Israel hoped
to be a country that fulfills the values expressed in the Bible.
Exodus 22:21, “Do not mistreat an alien or oppress
him, for you were aliens in Egypt.”
Leviticus 19:34, “The alien living with you must be
treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens
in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.”
Deuteronomy 23:7, ”
Do not abhor an Edomite, for he is your brother. Do not abhor an Egyptian,
because you lived as an alien in his country.”
Ezekiel 47:23, “In whatever tribe the alien settles,
there you are to give him his inheritance," declares the Sovereign LORD.”
Unfortunately,
it hasn’t lived up to the Biblical commandments or its own founding document.
·
According
to The Guardian, in 2006 just 5% of civil servants in Israel were Arabs
despite the fact that Arab citizens of Israel comprise over 20% of the
population.
·
The
New York Times reported,
in February 2007, that 53 % of the impoverished families in Israel were Arabs.
Since the majority of Arabs in Israel do not serve in the army, they are
ineligible for many financial benefits such as scholarships and housing loans.
·
Of
the 40 towns in Israel with the highest unemployment rates, 36 are Arab towns.
·
According
to the Central Bank of Israel statistics for 2003, salary averages for Arab
workers are 29% lower than for Jewish workers.
·
Hebrew
University's School of Education, in an August 2009 study, claimed that
Israel's Education Ministry discriminated against Arabs in its allocations of
special assistance for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds.
On a more
human level;
·
Dr.
Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of Knesset, has been physically attacked and had
water thrown on him on the Knesset floor, but when he responded with a
whimsical poem, members of the governing coalition called for his censure.
·
My
close friend Muchamad Darawshe, a senior executive at the Abraham Foundation,
told me the horrors of experiencing the Second Lebanon War, in the Yezreel
Valley below Nazareth, when the closest warnings of incoming missiles could
only be heard from the neighboring Jewish villages and kibbutzim.
These are
just some of the ways in which Israel does not count its Arab population as
full citizens. But maybe the most appalling is the unstated, unofficial, yet
consistent boycott of Arab parties from participation in a coalition
government. Yes, we have an Arab on the Supreme Court, we have Arab deputy
ministers and ambassadors and we have Arabs in Israeli Jewish parties, but even
Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who made some of the grandest gestures toward the
Arab citizenry of Israel, was unable to extend coalition agreements to Arab political
parties, despite the fact that they stood by him as he made peace with Jordan
and initiated the Oslo Peace Accords. This is a stain on Israeli democracy.
So today, as
we start reading Bamidbar and read about the census, and tonight when we stay
up to study and recall the giving of the Torah, we could respond to these
problems in Israel by saying that ours is the only democracy in the Middle
East, which it is, but what purpose does that serve?
Speaking as
an Israeli and as a Jew, I want my country to hold itself to higher standards.
Democracy is clearly not a panacea. Churchill has said that it “is the worst
form of government except for all the others that have been tried.” But I want
to believe that when God says, “You shall not follow a multitude to do evil,
(ex.23:2)” His intention is to protect the interest of minorities and to serve
justice. This is what I want for Israel, and as good as Israel may already be,
I always strive to be better.
Shabbat
Shalom
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