The Power of #metoo – Lekh Lekha 5778

I am grateful to be the spiritual leader for a large and growing congregation. I am always honored to be there for people in need, members who are grieving, congregants who need guidance. It is a very special part of my work that few see, but that gives me a great amount of satisfaction with my job.

Frankly, I hope that Harvey Weinstein has gone to his rabbi for counseling.

I concede up front that it is far too easy for me to say from this comfortable position that Mr. Weinstein, and a host of other celebrities who have recently been named in similar incidents, need to do some teshuvah, to seek repentance. Perhaps Mr. Weinstein should have spent more time learning some of the messages of our tradition regarding respect for others.

But what are those messages, exactly? And here we encounter a slight difficulty.

Whenever possible, I try to remind Jews of the essential value of Jewish tradition, the most fundamental aspect of Jewish life and learning: that our ancient wisdom teaches us to elevate the holiness in our relationships with others. That the primary benefit to learning the words of our tradition is that they will improve our marriages, our friendships, our work/life balance, our parenting insight, and our society.

But sometimes, the way that some of the female characters are treated in the Torah does not match our understanding of human relationships today. Times have changed; gender roles have changed. And so, we have to read the Torah with contemporary eyes, sensitive to the way that these stories might be read today.

Most of these tales hit the cutting-room floor in Hebrew school, edited for the sake of decency, or for the complexity of trying to explain them. But to me they speak of two things:

1. There is no human experience that is not captured in our holy texts.
2. We have to continue to learn not only from the admirable traits of our ancestors, but also from their failures.

Consider the unnamed wife of Noah, from last week’s parashah, who must have been a saint to have managed 40 days and 40 nights of human and animal chaos, but is barely acknowledged in the story of the tevah / ark. For everything that she did, she gets no credit. (Gen. 6-8)

Or the tale of our matriarch Sarah, who has no choice but to be taken into the harem of the Egyptian Pharaoh with the apparent blessing of her husband Avraham so that he can save himself. (Lekh Lekha, Gen. 12:10-20)

Or the story of Lot’s wife, also nameless, who exercises some individual agency in looking back in pain and/or longing at her home town as it is destroyed in fire and brimstone, and is punished for it. (Vayyera, Gen. 19:23-26).

Or the story of Jacob’s only daughter Dinah, taken by force by Shekhem the Canaanite and slurred in the Torah as a yatz’anit, effectively a streetwalker, in what amounts to a classic case of blaming the victim. (Gen. 34)

Or the tale of Tamar, daughter-in-law of Judah, who is denied Judah’s third son after his first two die, in violation of the Torah’s law of the levirate marriage. In desperation, Tamar resorts to dressing as a cultic prostitute to fool Judah into lying with her himself, arguably a foil to Judah’s “male privilege.” (Gen. 38).

And we also should not forsake an obvious case of harassment in the Torah, the tale of Yosef, who is coerced by the wife of his employer Potiphar in Egypt, and imprisoned when he does not fulfill her desire. (Gen. 39).

For most of Jewish history, nobody read these stories as being about “blaming the victim” or “male privilege.” But we are living in different times. One principle, which you have all heard me say by now, is that we have to read the Torah in the context of today, as a text that brings meaning to how we live right now.

A few weeks back, when the accusations against him began to emerge as numerous women came forward, Harvey Weinstein stated, “I came of age in the 60’s and 70’s, when all the rules about behavior and workplaces were different. That was the culture then. I have since learned it’s not an excuse…”

When I read that, I had two thoughts: (a) many decades have passed since the 1970s; did it really take him this long to get the message? And (b) the changing of the times and what is acceptable behavior is something that we, the Jews, are acutely aware of.

Jews have survived for thousands of years precisely because rabbinic Judaism, our belief system as conceived by the rabbis of the Talmud, was conceived to be malleable.  From generation to generation we have been charged with reviewing our tradition and figuring out how to apply them in every new age.

You might even make the case that it is the series of changes that have made us who we are today: the Babylonian Exile in 586 BCE. The destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. The paradigm shift from Israelite religion and sacrifices to study and prayer of rabbinic Judaism. The expulsion from Spain. The establishment of the State of Israel. Each of these reshaped the contours of the Jewish world dramatically.

And when was the very first such change? In Parashat Lekh Lekha, which we read from today. At the beginning of the parashah, Avraham was given the command to pick up and leave his homeland and his family behind and head from Mesopotamia to Canaan, which would ultimately be known by the name given to his grandson, Israel. But it’s not yet Israel, and Avraham cannot properly be called an Israelite. Instead, he was referred to today (Gen. 14:13) as “Avram ha’Ivri,” Abram the Hebrew. It’s the first time that anybody is given this label.

There are midrashim that suggest etymologies of the Hebrew word for “Hebrew,” that is, “עברי” / “ivri.” It comes from the shoresh / root meaning “to cross over.” Avraham is the first ivri, the first Hebrew, because he crossed over the river Euphrates to get to Canaan, but also because he crossed over from an idolatrous society to a monotheistic one.

We are the people who have metaphorically crossed many rivers to get to where we are today, and every time we do so, things change: language, dress, foods, of course, but also, society changes; what is socially acceptable changes; the understanding of gender continues to change.

What has not changed is that our tradition understands that each of us has a certain spark of the Divine within us; that every person deserves love and respect; that there are good, solid reasons for boundaries in our behavior, boundaries that protect the qedushah / holiness that exists between us in all our relationships.

The Talmud teaches us (BT Sanhedrin 82a):

כל מקום שיש חילול השם אין חולקין כבוד לרב

Wherever the desecration of God’s name [hillul hashem] is involved, one does not show respect to the teacher.

It comes in the context of a discussion of prohibited liaisons. The suggestion is that, no matter the power or rank or knowledge of the transgressor, the subordinate is forbidden to allow inappropriate behavior to continue; rather, the teacher or manager or politician or celebrity must be called to account for his/her actions.

God help us if “the casting couch” at which Mr. Weinstein hinted in his statement was at one time considered acceptable in Hollywood or anywhere else. The very idea is revolting. Such behavior can only be described with the rabbinic term, “hillul hashem,” a desecration of God’s name.

But if we are to truly prevent people from the kinds of abuse that have been splashed across headlines in recent weeks, we have to make sure that the abusers know that those whom they abuse will not be silent. We have to ensure that the power dynamics that enabled Mr. Weinstein and others to do what they have done to so many is eclipsed by the strength of #metoo, by the strength of knowing that if all of us speak up, then the power of the abuser is broken. That those of us who have been abused can take the control away from the abusers.

We cannot be rendered anonymous and silent, like Noah’s wife, or powerless like Sarah; we cannot allow people to be shamed, like Dinah, or forced into desperate situations like Tamar, or harassed like Joseph.

Instead, we have to stand up and raise our voices. To say, “Me too.” “Gam ani.” To make sure the abusers of this world are cast out of the shadows and into the light. To make sure that the young women (and young men) who are called to the Torah this year are not victims in the next.

And whatever happens with Harvey Weinstein, I just hope that he has an opportunity to reflect on the words of our tradition, about changing times, and about how his actions have caused such damage to so many.

If you have been a victim or know somebody who has, speak up, even if it is just a phone call to the right person. I or my assistant Audrey can put you in touch with somebody who can help. Change does not happen overnight, but Ani veAtah neshaneh et ha’olam – you and I will change the world.

 

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Shabbat morning, 10/28/2017.)