"The Wise Child Reconsidered: A Letter to the Author of the Haggadah"

Dear Author of the Haggadah,

As Passover approached, I feel compelled to revisit a section of the Haggadah that has always troubled me. The Haggadah tells of four different types of children, and I’m concerned particularly about what you label as the “wise child,” the chacham. I’m bothered that we characterize such a child as “wise,” when they asks a question that seems nothing more than trivial and boring.

״מָה הָעֵדוֹת וְהַחֻקִּים וְהַמִּשְׁפָּטִים אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה ה' אֱלֹהֵינוּ אֶתְכֶם.

What are the testimonies, the statutes, and the laws that God, our God, has commanded you?”

One not even need to begin to answer this child, simply direct him open up a book, or better yet, type his question into Google, which will spit out a list of enumerated laws and statutes that are as bland and dry as the taste of matzah. If you’re going to ask the same question year after year, your question should at least be expansive and generative, provoking new thoughts and interpretations on the narrative of the Exodus. Even if the criteria for wisdom were to be knowing a finite set laws and statutes, the fact that you need to ask your lame question annually proclaims your ignorance and inability to learn.

I raise my children to ask thoughtful questions, and to add value to the conversation. I care little whether they are able to give me correct answers so long as they generate curiosity and intrigue. Ironically, the only person who asks a question worthy of the label of wisdom is the child who you call rasha, wicked. מָ֛ה הָעֲבֹדָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את לָכֶֽם. What is this ritual that you are doing? You call this child wicked because they say “lechem,” referencing the 2nd person plural, and thus, as you suggest,  excluding themself from the community of the Jewish people. Did you forget that he is quoting the Torah directly? God tells Moses, וְהָיָ֕ה כִּֽי־יֹאמְר֥וּ אֲלֵיכֶ֖ם בְּנֵיכֶ֑ם מָ֛ה הָעֲבֹדָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את לָכֶֽם׃

It will be that your children ask you, “What is this ritual that you are doing (Exodus 12:26)?” This is a question that should not only be lauded, but should be the spark of a conversation worthy to be had each and every year at the Passover Seder. We should consistently be asking ourselves what these rituals mean to us, and how we might be making them relevant in each and every successive generation. The “wicked” child’s question is perpetually relevant.

Perhaps we shouldn’t blame the “wise” child for their lackluster performance. The parents surely bear a great deal of responsibility in raising their child. Knowing and following all the laws and statutes of Passover is not a marker of wisdom, but obedience, and for some parents, this feels paramount. You might say that the seder, which means order, should value order. But we Jews are troublemakers of the best kind. We are the disruptors of that which is normative, we set ablaze the social order with ingenuity. Going all the way back to Moses, who demanded that Jews revolt against slavery. Einstein, Freud, and Marx, all took a hammer to conventional wisdom and smashed it. They were all the wicked child who called everything into question, who saw the world differently, and were thus compelled to change it.

Society hates those who defy the established order, and we Jews have been persecuted for millennium because we don’t always fit into a normative box. We are a tradition of counter-culture, pushing the status quo to think. Our persistent and endless questions demonstrate our freedom, and inspire movements that forever impact the world at large. We created Shabbat in a time when tyrants demanded that slaves work without rest to build their great cities. We proclaimed one God in an era of idols and vain deities. And we reinvented our identity through Zionism when everyone told us that we were a people that simply belonged to nowhere. And for all of our questions that challenged authority, we became subjected to libels, pogroms, ghettoization, expulsions, and genocide. Yet we never stop questioning, we persist in the forward thinking mentality that seeks a world more perfected.

“I think, therefore I am,” wrote Decartes. We are Jews because we think for ourselves and question what is, even when we are persecuted for it. Our currency is thought, and our most valuable bill is the question. The child who asks simple queries requiring  little contemplation is not our paradigm of wisdom, but of complacency. I reject the label of the “wise child,” and I pray that my children should never grow to be such bores. Let us remember to never reject the child who many call wicked, for they often emerge the genius. For as the Psalmist wrote, אֶ֭בֶן מָאֲס֣וּ הַבּוֹנִ֑ים הָ֝יְתָ֗ה לְרֹ֣אשׁ פִּנָּֽה׃ The stone that the builders rejected shall become the chief cornerstone.

“אזהו חכם, who is wise?” asks the rabbinic sage Ben Azai. He answers himself: “משלומד מכל אדם,” the person who learns from everyone. But there there needs to be more. Learning from all those around you is a start to wisdom, but wisdom also requires the ability to synthesize different ideas, world-views, and opinions, in order to elevate any given conversation. The key lies in the simple task of asking the right question. “Who is wise?” The one whose question pierces our soul, who can generate an idea that shakes the foundations of society, who is far too often confused to be wicked, when they are really just a revolutionary genius.

Your’s truly,

A “wicked” child.

Why Are There 5 Questions in the Haggadah, Not 4?

There are two significant problems with the Four Questions in the Haggadah. Let’s start out with the fact that there are really 5 questions, or 1 header, and 4 sub questions. Why do we call them "Four Questions" when there are really five? Perhaps it’s so that someone will ask about it, thus leading to more questions. The four questions originally functioned as a guide for the child at the table who didn’t know how to ask questions, thus enabling him to fulfill his obligation to ask questions even though he didn’t have any of his own. Eventually, these four questions morphed into a prescribed part of the Passover liturgy. Nonetheless, questioning at the Passover table isn’t limited to the 4/5 questions; the rituals are meant to provoke questions. The rabbis in the Talmud say that during a Passover Seder, someone should pick up and remove the table from the room. This bizarre ritual, the rabbis note, is meant to elicit the children who are no longer at the table to ask: "What’s going on here?" or "Why is this night different than all other nights (Pesachim 115b)?" Why do we have two hand washings in the Haggadah (Urchatz and Rochtzah), the first of which has no blessing, yet the second one does? For the very same reason it seems; to confound participants into inquiry. In other words, we should build in strangeness into the narrative in order to provoke questions.

But here’s another important point: The Four Questions aren’t gramatically questions, they’re answers. The only part that is actually a question is "Why is this night different than all other nights?" The preposition ש, which prefaces each of the "Four Questions" means "that," or "which," and never introduces a question, only answers and statements of fact. מה, which means “what” or “why” at the very beginning of the preface is the only question. Each of the four points are actually answers to the prefacing question. We might read this part as such. The Four Questions act both as answers and questions, teaching that the best kinds of questions are the ones that speak answers in and of themselves.

?מַה נִּשְׁתַּנָּה הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה מִכָּל הַלֵּילוֹת

1. Why is this night different from all other nights?

שֶׁבְּכָל הַלֵּילוֹת אָנוּ אוֹכְלִין חָמֵץ וּמַצָּה, הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה – כֻּלּוֹ מַצָּה.

2. On all other nights we eat matzah and chametz, but tonight only matzah

שֶׁבְּכָל הַלֵּילוֹת אָנוּ אוֹכְלִין שְׁאָר יְרָקוֹת – הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה מָרוֹר.

3. On all other nights we eat all sorts of vegetables, but tonight we eat a bitter one in particular

שֶׁבְּכָל הַלֵּילוֹת אֵין אָנוּ מַטְבִּילִין אֲפִילוּ פַּעַם אֶחָת – הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה שְׁתֵּי פְעָמִים.

4. On all other nights we don’t dip even once, but tonight we dip twice

שֶׁבְּכָל הַלֵּילוֹת אָנוּ אוֹכְלִין בֵּין יוֹשְׁבִין וּבֵין מְסֻבִּין – הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה כֻּלָּנוּ מְסֻבִּין.

5. On all other nights we eat either upright or reclining, but tonight only reclining.

Pharaoh Has No Name

It seems odd that in a book of the Bible entitled “Shemot,” or “Names” in English, the Torah omits the name of the Pharaoh who enslaved the Israelites. Instead, the Pharaoh is simply called “Pharaoh.” The opening of Exodus (Shemot) begins with genealogical details about each of the seventy children of Jacob who go down to Egypt, and even takes the time to name two Hebrew midwives, Shifra and Push, but the Pharaoh goes unidentified. Why does Pharaoh’s name go unmentioned? The answer, I believe, is because the paradigm of Pharaoh plays out in every generation. Pharaoh is not just one person, Pharaoh is every tyrant who subjugates people.

Pharaoh is every leader more concerned about themselves, than about the people who he or she leads. Pharaoh is the person so obsessed with power, that they can’t imagine not having it. We see Pharaohs all the time, and everywhere. Remember the Passover Haggadah which declares: 

הִיא שֶׁעָמְדָה לַאֲבוֹתֵינוּ וְלָנוּ

This stood true for our ancestors as it does for us

שֶׁלֹּא אֶחָד בִּלְבָד עָמַד עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנו אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר עוֹמְדִים עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ

It’s not just one person who stood to destroy us, but in every generation there stands a tyrant to destroy us. 

In every generation, there is a Pharaoh. That Pharaoh has a name, but we need not use it. Because using a name tells us that they are a unique individual, when in fact they are not. Their names don’t deserve to be glorified. Like Amalek, another Pharaoh who the Israelites encounter, a Pharaoh’s name deserves to be blotted out.  תִּמְחֶה֙ אֶת־זֵ֣כֶר עֲמָלֵ֔ק, you shall blot their memory out. לֹ֖א תִּשְׁכָּֽח, But do not forget their legacy, teaches the Torah, do not forget that Pharaohs seek to destroy the foundations of our way of life, and sometimes destroy us (Deuteronomy 25:19). Blot out their name, because these megalomaniacs believe they should be glorified, whereas Pharaohs deserve to have their names erased from history. We know that they are not unique, they are just another iteration in a long line of Pharaohs. 

Later in the Hebrew Bible, the prophet Ezekiel is charged with speaking to another non-distinct Pharaoh who is the king of Egypt at his time. 

הִנְנִ֤י עָלֶ֙יךָ֙ פַּרְעֹ֣ה מֶֽלֶךְ־מִצְרַ֔יִם הַתַּנִּים֙ הַגָּד֔וֹל הָרֹבֵ֖ץ בְּת֣וֹךְ יְאֹרָ֑יו אֲשֶׁ֥ר אָמַ֛ר לִ֥י יְאֹרִ֖י וַאֲנִ֥י עֲשִׂיתִֽנִי׃ 

“Behold, there is a Pharaoh, a king of Egypt among you, who is a great serpent that crouches in the Nile and says: “This is my river, and I created myself (Ezekiel 29:3).”

The mega ego of the Pharaoh believes that he or she not just owns the natural elements, according to Ezekiel, but this Pharaoh believes that they created themselves. The Pharaohs believe that they are all powerful, that they are Gods, and that they are beyond reproach. The Torah reminds us, they are none of these things. Only God is all powerful, there is only one God, that’s Adonai, and every generation with a Pharaoh–– be it a person or a system of tyranny–– requires a Moses.  

Just as we shouldn’t see Pharaoh as an individual, but as paradigm of tyranny across time and space, we might find that every generation has its own Moses or Moseses. The man Moses might have been special in regard to his relationship with God and his ability to bring about God’s wonders. But, there have, in fact, been many Moseses, men and women, who have stood up to Pharaohs in their times to relieve the yoke of oppression, subjugation, and hatred. Whenever there arises a Pharaoh, it’s the responsibility of individuals to become liberators, redeemers, and justice seekers. Those who passively accept the reign of Pharaoh perpetuate his or her tyranny. Historian Ian Kershaw to this end famously remarked: “The road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved with indifference.” 

We omit Pharaoh’s name from our narrative because Pharaoh wasn’t a man who ruled once upon a time; Pharaohs exist all the time. Some people may find life under a Pharaoh comforting, but our tradition demands that we play Moses to every Pharaoh around us. The Psalmist asks the rhetorical question:  “Can a wicked ruler [a Pharaoh] be allied with God when they frame injustice as the law? (Psalm 94:20) The answer of course, is: No! For every Pharaoh that arises, God calls us to be Moses. 

Shammai's Chanukkah Menorah Explained

Lately, I’ve been rethinking how we light the Chanukkah menorah. For thousands of years, Jews have been starting with a single candle on the first night, and increasing each successive night of the holiday. This tradition stems from a well-known talmudic debate between the houses of Hillel and Shammai as to how one should light the Chanukkah menorah. For the most dedicated observers of the holiday, the House of Shammai teaches that a person should start with eight lights, and each night they should reduce one light until there are no more. The House of Hillel, by contrast, teaches that a person should light one candle on the first night, and increase by one light each night of Chanukkah. The reasoning behind the divergence of opinions seems unclear, and a later generation of rabbis debate the rationale for the two approaches. 

Rabbi Yosi ben Avin and Rabbi Yosi ben Zevida (4th Century CE) offered two explanations: “Shamai’s custom corresponds to the days which are entering, and Hillel’s to the days that are going out,” claimed the first. The other reasoned that “Shammai’s custom corresponds to the bulls offered on Sukkot, and Hillel’s reminds us that we raise up in holiness and we do not lower (Shabbat 21b).” The latter view has always been given deference in explaining Beit Hillel’s practice, but I’ve always felt Shammai’s opinion has been shortchanged and not properly explained. The association of Shammai’s ritual with the sacrifices of the bulls on Sukkot seems a bit contrived. We find in Numbers 29 that on the 15th day of the seventh month (Sukkot), one is to bring 13 bull offerings to begin the seven day holiday. The following days count down the number of bulls from twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, and then seven bulls. On the eighth day, one is to bring a single bull for an offering. Other than the successive decreases in the number of bulls, the numbers don’t correspond to how Shammai lights his Chanukkah menorah. There must be some other significance to Shammai’s custom.

A hint as to the proper symbolism of Shammai’s menorah might be found in a rather obscure Talmudic tale. The Talmud relates that in at least one town, Lod, Chanukkah was lamented and not celebrated. A custom emerged in which Jews fasted on Chanukkah because in their day, the Temple was destroyed. It’s not clear as to whether the fast was an eight day fast (probably not), or just a single day. Either way, one would not be eating latkes or sufganyot on Chanukkah in the town of Lod. Two rabbis, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshuah revolted against the idea that Chanukkah should be anything but a celebration. “ You should fast for having fasted,” they tell the people of Lod. Or in other words, “you should atone for having fasted (Rosh HaShanah 18b).” Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua would have been in the camp of the House of Hillel. The people of Lod, I believe, were preserving  Shammai’s tradition of understanding the lights of Chanukkah differently. 

The lights of Chanukkah from the perspective of Beit Shammai seem to be a representation not of holiness, but destruction. When one looks at the lights of Chanukkah, according to this view, one sees that the Temple is no longer standing, that the Maccabean story is one of war, and that fire is often more destructive than it is holy. Shammai’s tradition recalls that we pray each night of Chanukkah that the fires of destruction and violence will diminish until they are no more. 

Should we light our Chanukkah menorahs differently? Probably not, but Shammai’s view certainly feels a little more appropriate in this light. 

The Things That Endure Forever

The Medieval poet Chaucer famously said: “All Good things must come to an end.”

Last year during Sukkot, I learned this lesson when a wind storm tested the strength of my sukkah. I had spent time decorating it with my daughter Lilah, placing branches on the roof, and carefully hanging gourds and other decorations on its walls. The flimsy structure was no match for 50 mph winds. Although the sukkah was staked down, the gusts were so strong that the metal structure sheered into pieces. Not much could be salvaged. 

When I called my sukkah retailer this year, the Sukkah Project, I relayed what had happened to my sukkah. The man on the phone told me that he had received calls after the storm complaining about the integrity of their sukkot. People felt that the structure should have endured the strong winds. I shared with him my view that any sukkah that could survive such a storm, probably wasn’t a kosher sukkah. A sukkah by definition is a temporary structure. If it rains, you're supposed to get wet. If there is wind, then your sukkah might get blown over. A sukkah isn’t a shelter, as much as it’s reminder that life is fragile and ephemeral. 

That’s why on Sukkot, we read the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiasties). Kohelet uses the word Hevel, meaning breath or vapor, 38 times. 

 הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ אָמַ֣ר קֹהֶ֔לֶת הֲבֵ֥ל הֲבָלִ֖ים הַכֹּ֥ל הָֽבֶל׃

Merest breath, says Kohelet, all is but mere breath (Kohelet 1:2)

Life is ephemeral. Our days our fleeting. Even the best of people eventually die. All good things must come to an end. That is the reminder of Sukkot. 

But then comes Simchat Torah immediately following Sukkot, and we come to realize that Chaucer isn’t exactly right. Life is ephemeral, yes! But there are good things in this world that are eternal. Simchat Torah is the reminder that the Torah never ends. As the prophet Isiah teaches: “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the D’var Adonai, the word of God endures forever (Isaiah 40:8).” We come to the end of Deuteronomy, and then we go right back to Genesis without missing a beat. We don’t count how many times we’ve finished the Torah, because we’ve never really finished the Torah. It’s pages extend to infinity, because it’s words are never meant to be concluded. And that makes it different than your run of the mill book. 

There are those of you out there who read books over and over. I’ve read the Harry Potter series a few times. Same with several of Dan Brown’s books. I’ve watched certain TV shows multiple times. But the series finale or the closing chapter is always an ending. The Torah doesn’t conclude the way that typical books do. The Torah doesn’t have an ending, rather it has a restart point. Simchat Torah is the reminder that not everything is ephemeral, that there are things that are eternal. Objects and things are ephemeral. But ideas and concepts can be eternal. A torah will eventually break down, fade, tear, and need to be buried. But the Torah, will endure.

It’s not just the Torah that’s eternal. I want to share two additional eternal and timeless concepts. The first is the idea of the soul. While our bodies grow old, sick, and are limited in their life span, Judaism teaches that there is a part of us that lives on into eternity. The soul, or the neshama. I’m not referring to some ectoplasmic substance that has weight, or is composed of measurable energy. Judaism has many views as to what this soul actually is, but it is clear that it’s something that lives beyond the physical.  I like to think of the soul as the memory and the legacy of our lives that continue to impact the world long after our bodies are gone. 

The Psalmist asks: “Shall we live forever and avoid the sight of the grave?” Of course the answer is NO. “Alike the wise and foolish end their days, leaving their wealth to others. . . . Human splendor does not last . . . we pass away. But God, taking me, will redeem my soul.” (Psalm 49:10–11, 13, 16). Something lives on in each and every life. Something that gets passed on to others. The memories of our loved ones are spiritually always present in our lives. Their memories never fade, their legacies grow in the world as we carry out the lessons they taught us, and  as we see their qualities in our lives, and in our children. Something from them endures. Their neshama, lives in our lives. 

On a Jewish gravestone, you often see the acronym: .ת.נ.צ.ב.ה. These letters stand for  תהא נפשו/ה צרורה בצרור החיים (t'hay nafsho/ah tzrurah b'tzror hachaim), "May his/her soul be bound up in the bond of life. This means that the souls of our loved ones will continue to live on in our lives. The memory of our loved ones continue to inspire us, and we keep them alive through memory. The the neshama, like the Torah, is eternal. 

What else is eternal? Hope! The obscure and relatively unknown poet Naftali Herz Imber (1856-1909) wrote a single line of poetry that became engrained in the consciousness of nearly every Jew of the latter part of the 20th Century. His 1878 poem “Tikvateinu (Our Hope)” included the line “עוד לא עבדה תקותנו, “Our hope is not yet lost.” These words were a part of the two stanzas from Imber’s poem that were eventually put to music and adopted as the national anthem for the State of Israel. Those two stanzas are now well known as “Hatikva (the Hope). The power of these terse words comes not in their eloquence, but in that they speak to an age-old feeling that has nurtured the Jewish people through millennia of persecution. Hope has been a part of the our crisis toolbox, and has helped us weather even the darkest times of history. 

It’s not that our hope is not yet lost. Our hope is never lost. It’s what sustains us.  The Psalmist writes:

מַּעֲמַקִּ֖ים קְרָאתִ֣יךָ יְהוָֽה׃

Out of the depths I call to you

קִוִּ֣יתִי יְ֭הוָה קִוְּתָ֣ה נַפְשִׁ֑י

I hope for you O’ God, My soul sits in hope for you

פְשִׁ֥י לַֽאדֹנָ֑י מִשֹּׁמְרִ֥ים לַ֝בֹּ֗קֶר שֹׁמְרִ֥ים לַבֹּֽקֶר׃

My soul hopes for you God like the night watchman hopes for the morning, like the night watchman for morning (Psalm 130:1, 5-6)

Hope, is what gets us out of the depths and out of the darkness. Hope doesn’t die, though it can be repressed. Hope is tenacious, persistent, and eternal. Our hope is not yet lost. Our hope is never lost. Because hope isn’t an object that’s ephemeral, it’s a concept that is eternal. Hope has kept us alive through destruction, pogrom, antisemitism,  and the Holocaust, and our hope is not yet lost. Hope will get us through whatever it is we struggle with. 

Sukkot reminds us that things and our physical lives eventually come to an end. But Judaism forbids us from taking this bitter pill without a chaser. The chaser is Simchat Torah. Yes, physical things always come to an end; But eternal concepts keep us alive, sustain us, and bring our lives meaning, purpose, and tools to get through whatever it is we might face: The Torah never ends, the soul never dies, and our hope, is not yet lost. 

Purim is a Spatula

Purim as a Spatula

One day when I was living in Jerusalem, I felt a little homesick. I decided to make some American comfort food for breakfast, which for me, was pancakes. The only problem was that I didn’t have a spatula, nor any ingredients in my apartment. While I knew how to say “eggs,” beitzim, and “flour,” kemach, I had no idea about the Hebrew word for “spatula.” This was before the days when you could pull out an iPhone and simply look it up, and I didn’t think to grab a Hebrew-English dictionary from my library shelf before I headed to the market to purchase eggs, flour, and a spatula.

On my way over, I used my Hebrew grammar to construct a word that I believed would mean “spatula.” The root הפך, meaning to flip, combined with the grammatical construct for a tool, should yield “spatula.” At the market, I asked someone אני מחפש מהפך, which judging by the person’s perplexed face, I knew did not mean what I thought it meant. I was asking for a מהפך (mahpach), a revolution. 

The Hebrew word for “spatula” is actually מריט (marit), which is derived from the Aramaic מר (mar), meaning a garden spade. That day, I learned two new words in Hebrew: 1. מהפך (mahpach), a revolution, and 2. מריט (marit), a spatula. Both words offer us insight into understanding the upcoming holiday of Purim.

When we read from the Megillah, one of the key lines that has stood out for generations reads: “וְנַהֲפ֣וֹךְה֔וּא (nahafuch hu), the opposite happened” of everything that Haman had intended. Haman sought to execute the Jews, whereas he and his family ended up with the fate he decreed for them. Purim has thus become a day of opposites, where, like a pancake, everything gets flipped upside down. Or perhaps, to put it another way, Purim is the ultimate spatula (marit) of Jewish holidays. It flips everything we do upside down. But most importantly, Purim flips us upside down. 

One custom on Purim is that Jews are supposed to become intoxicated. The tradition offers that Jews should drink to the point that we don’t know the difference between Haman and Mordechai. In other words, drink so much that we become our upside down selves. And of course, we are supposed to dress up on Purim. But maybe dress “up” is not the right turn of phrase. On Yom Kippur, and at other major life events, we dress “up.” In other words, we dress to be more like ourselves, or better versions of ourselves. The rabbis note that Yom HaKipurim (Yom Kippur) is the nahafuch, the opposite of Purim, because on Yom Kippur we dress up, but on Purim, we dress to be the opposite of ourselves. We aren’t masking ourselves, rather, Purim transforms us into someone we are not. You might simply conclude that we dress up because it’s enjoyable. After all, it’s novel and fun to pretend to be someone that we are not. And, yes, Purim is to a large degree about having fun. But the rabbis again note the similarities not just in name between Purim and Yom HaKipurim. Both holidays, they point out, teach us about who it is that we really are. When things in our lives get turned upside down, we discover a truer sense of what is really right side up.

Ask anyone who has gone through an experience in their lives when the world seemed turned upside down. The story will likely end with a conclusion of self-discovery. The Talmud tells a story that echoes the experiences of many people whose lives get turned upside down through death, illness, injury, or some other catastrophe. Rabbi Yosef becomes critically ill and goes into a coma. Miraculously, he comes to, and makes a full recovery. His father asks him, “What did you see when you were unconscious?” “I saw the world upside down (olam hafuch),” he responds, “what was above was below and what was below was above.” His father said to him, “My son, you have seen an olam barur (a clear world), you have seen the world clearly (Talmud Bavli, Pesachim 50a).”

As we approach Purim, I want to encourage you to use the holiday as a spatula for flipping your life upside down. It’s not supposed to be comfortable, though it may be a little fun. Be someone you are not for the day, or just for the evening. Purim may seem like a kids holiday, but it isn’t. No one is too grown up for Purim. We could all use a little nahafoch hu, life turned topsy turvy at least one day of the year.

The Lesson of Auschwitz - Moral Responsibility in the Face of Suffering Around Us

When I was in college, I enrolled in the class, "Rescue and Resistance" with my mentor, Dr. Debórah Dwork, who co-taught the seminar with a woman named Marion Pritchard. Pritchard was a Dutch teenager when the Nazis invaded Holland, and throughout the course of the class, we began to learn her story. She was not Jewish, but she rescued hundreds of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland. 

Pritchard's entrance into this line of work began when she witnessed Nazi soldiers loading Jewish children into the back of a truck. Appalled by the scene unfolding, several women ran to the aid of the children, beating the Nazi soldiers to try and do something in the face of this moral horror. Pritchard looked on as the Nazis picked up the women and loaded them onto the truck, as well. This would be the only time she was paralyzed in the face of Nazi barbarism. Though she was only a teenager, she knew that she couldn't ever stand idly by again. Throughout the war, Pritchard registered Jewish infants as her own children, helped falsify papers so that Jews could flee Nazi-occupied Europe, found homes for people to hide in, obtained ration cards for Jews, and she even shot dead a Dutch collaborator who sought to expose a family who she had been hiding.  By her estimate, she helped rescue 150 Jews. She risked her life and put herself in harm's way on countless occasions, because she felt that it was her responsibility to help others in need. 

Pritchard's story has always stuck with me. Her lesson, and the lesson that we all should take away from the Holocaust is one about how we act when the world around us cries out for help. I thought of Mrs. Pritchard this past week when I read an appalling article in The New York Times. "The Road to Auschwitz WASN'T Paved with Indifference," read the headline, a negation of the aphorism coined by the historian, Ian Kershaw.  The author, Rivka Weinberg, argued that Auschwitz wasn't paved with indifference, it was paved with collaboration. That is, if only the gentile communities of Europe hadn't collaborated with the Nazis, if only Jewish leadership hadn't been a part of the Nazi machine, the Holocaust would have been less horrific. In the article, she argued:

"It's hard to be a hero, to risk your safety and personal commitments in order to help a stranger. That's a big ask. And by asking people too much, we make being moral too hard."

"Heroism is exceptional, saintly; that's not who most of us are, nor who most of us can be, so we're kind of off the hook."

"Heroism is aspirational and worthy of admiration, but it is a pedagogical, moral and historical error to spend our moral capital insisting on it."

"What history teaches us is: Don't perpetrate; don't collaborate. If you can be heroic, that is laudable."

"Next time the murderers come, it's understandable if it's too much to ask for us to risk our lives, our children, or even our jobs, to save others."

And if you read this article and nodded in agreement with Mrs. Weinberg, then perhaps I can shake you out of the comforting notion that our responsibility in the wake of Auschwitz is simply "don't collaborate." On the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, our takeaway from all that we have reflected on over the last three quarters of a century, should instead be a reminder of the very morals that Judaism teaches when we face tyranny, peril, and suffering.  

לא תוכל להתעלם  

You cannot abdicate your responsibility, even if it's inconvenient for you, even if it's a burden, even if it puts you at risk. (Deuteronomy 22:3) 

לא תעמוד על דם רעך

Don't stand idly by the blood of your neighbor. (Leviticus 19:16)

These two laws from the Torah are the basis for a law the rabbis later established in the Talmud called, the Din Rodef, the Law of the Pursuer (Sanhedrin 73a). If you see a person pursuing another to kill him or her, you are responsible to put yourself in harms way in order to save the life of the victim. Your responsibility includes killing the pursuer, if necessary, before he or she is able to commit murder.  "Don't stand idly by," the rabbis emphasize. This includes rescuing someone from drowning, from being attacked by a wild animal, or from being robbed by bandits. You must intervene to save a life. It's not enough to simply "not collaborate." Your moral mandate is to help, no matter what.  

If you thought being Jewish was a piece of cake, then you thought wrong. It's not! Being Jewish requires an enormous amount of responsibility. Helping others almost always requires making self-sacrifice. Sometimes, it's putting yourself in danger, at other times, it may be a commitment of time. And there will be times where helping others means putting ourselves and those we care about at risk. The obligation is nonetheless to help. 

Think for example of Moses who sees an Egyptian striking down a Hebrew slave 

ויְהִ֣י ׀ בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵ֗ם וַיִּגְדַּ֤ל מֹשֶׁה֙ וַיֵּצֵ֣א אֶל־אֶחָ֔יו וַיַּ֖רְא בְּסִבְלֹתָ֑ם וַיַּרְא֙ אִ֣ישׁ מִצְרִ֔י מַכֶּ֥ה אִישׁ־עִבְרִ֖י מֵאֶחָֽיו׃

Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their labors. He saw an Egyptian striking down a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen (Exodus 2:11)

It would have been easy for Moses not to care. He had a comfortable social status; after-all, he grew up in Pharaoh's house.  Why would he intervene to help this Hebrew?

וַיִּ֤פֶן כֹּה֙ וָכֹ֔ה וַיַּ֖רְא כִּ֣י אֵ֣ין אִ֑ישׁ וַיַּךְ֙ אֶת־הַמִּצְרִ֔י

Moses turns this way, and then the other way, and sees that no one is going to help, and so he strikes the Egyptian, and kills him (Exodus 2:12).

When Pharaoh hears what Moses has done, Moses needs to flee to Midian. In his leaving Egypt, he loses his home, his family, and his status. People often say that the reason Moses wasn't allowed to enter the Promised Land was because he had killed someone. That's false! Moses wasn't allowed to enter because he later disobeyed God and struck a rock to bring out water, when he was supposed to speak to it. 

The killing sounds like a much more problematic sin, but Moses was actually fulfilling the obligation of Din Rodef, interceding when a pursuer is seeking to kill another. This incident demonstrates the character that enables Moses to be qualified to lead the Jewish people. Moses does not stand idly by.

The big takeaway from Moses's behavior is not that he is an exceptional hero. Rather, Moses is our example of required moral behavior in such a situation. To be a Jew, is to be like Moses. To be a Jew is to take on the obligation of helping others even when it's not in our own best interest. That's what you sign on for when you choose a Jewish life. And it's not just for Jews. Marion Pritchard was the most Moses women that I've ever met! 

The best way to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, is not to simply remember. If you want to remember the liberation, then play the role of the liberator. If you want to commemorate the Holocaust, do so by making sure that it doesn't happen again. Being a bystander isn't morally normative, as Weinberg argues, it's morally unacceptable. The maxim, "Never Again" sounds nice, but it's meaningless without the pledge to intercede in injustice. And Never Again, doesn't just mean "Never Again to us," it means "Never Again to Anyone."

Freedom of Gun Ownership is Enslavement to Guns

We often talk about freedom as if there were only one flavor. I want to suggest that freedom comes in different varieties. The fact that we have two Hebrew words for freedom––חופש (chofesh) and חירות (cheirut)––give us an indication that there are nuanced differences between the freedoms that exist. 

So what’s the difference between the two kinds of freedom? I’ll start out by describing חופש (chofesh). חופש is the freedom to do whatever you want. When I went to Jewish summer camp, my favorite part of the day was חופש, which is free time or freedom. After a very regimented schedule, campers could wander around and do whatever they pleased. Leave a bunch of kids to do whatever they want in camp, and obviously, kids get into trouble because it’s hard to deal with complete freedom.

חופש is the freedom that is granted to slaves when they are set free. In the wake of bondage, there is an excitement to exercise our individual right to choose. Yet there is a problem in a society where everyone is free to do as they choose. It’s a collective chaos. You might describe this kind of freedom as an anarchy, or to use another hebrew word, a בלגן (balagan), a mess. In the days of the Judges, when the Israelites first begin to take hold of Canaan, the closing verse of the book of Judges describes the state of things:

בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵ֔ם אֵ֥ין מֶ֖לֶךְ בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אִ֛ישׁ הַיָּשָׁ֥ר בְּעֵינָ֖יו יַעֲשֶֽׂה׃

In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did as he pleased.  (Judges 21:25)

Israel, in other words, lived in anarchy, a state of disorder due to absence or nonrecognition of authority. With this chofesh freedom, they go worship idols and other gods, and they fight one another. Israel is plagued with chaos. Chofesh is a slave’s idea of freedom, not a collective society’s. This begs the question: What do you need for collective freedom? The answer is laws, and for the Israelites, they need Torah.  Cheirut is the special kind of freedom in which laws help us live orderly, democratic, and empowered lives. During Passover, we rejoice that it is זמן חירותינו, the time of our freedom. Note that it is not the time of our חופשינו, our chofesh, but rather our cheirut.

לחירות ציון

When my brother Andrew got married, my gift for him was a set of cufflinks from Israel. The cufflinks were made from coins minted in the year 67 CE by the Jews as they were rebelling against the Romans. The Hebrew on these coins reads לחירות ציון (L’Cheirut Tzion), to the free society of Zion. That’s a bold statement when living in the Roman Empire. But notice, the word cherut, freedom, is different than the word chofesh, which also means freedom. The freedom that the rebells sought after was the free and autonomous society of the Jewish people living in Israel. 

The word חירות, interestingly, does not appear in the Hebrew Bible. We do, however, get a hint of it’s meaning from a well known passage in Exodus. The two tablets that Moses brings down the mountain are described as:

וְהַמִּכְתָּ֗ב מִכְתַּ֤באֱלֹהִים֙ ה֔וּא חָר֖וּת עַל־הַלֻּחֹֽת׃

God’s writing charut (engraved) on the tablets. (Exodus 32:16)

The rabbi’s note the parallel between the word חרות (charut) and חירות (cheirut) by saying: 

אַל תִּקְרָא חָרוּת אֶלָּאחֵרוּת, שֶׁאֵין לְךָ בֶן חוֹרִין אֶלָּא מִי שֶׁעוֹסֵק בְּתַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה

Don’t read it as charut (engraved), instead, read it as cheirut (freedom). For whoever doesn’t follow the laws of Torah, is not really a free person. 

Laws create this kind of free society that enable us to live with the joys of life, to make conscious and good choices, to protect each other and hold one another accountable. That’s a society that’s free, versus an individual who is free from laws in an anarchy. 

I wonder, when Americans talk about freedoms, what kind of freedom are we referring to? By the way, when Americans are asked what makes America great, one of the most popular responses according to Gallop is freedom. It’s an inherent value, but perhaps it’s also a potential problem if we mean chofesh, the ability to do whatever we want. 

I would remind us that our first amendment rights are still regulated freedoms. Free speech is curtailed to prevent an individual causing a panic or danger to other Americans. Free speech doesn’t permit an individual to incite violence. We have freedom of religion, freedom of the press, the freedom to peacefully assemble and petition the government. And yet all of these freedoms are regulated in such a way that they provide societal harmony. They are in essence, חירות cheirut, the freedoms that are regulated by law. 

When we see these rights as chofesh, complete individual freedom, then we begin to have problems. This is especially true when Americans interpret the second amendment of the Constitution as an individual freedom to own a gun. This kind of idealized freedom is not cherut, where laws enable us to live with rights that protect us. It’s chofesh, the freedom that slaves dream of, it’s a giant mess, it’s everyman for themselves. Freedom of gun ownership is enslavement to guns.

I don’t believe gun ownership is inherent in the Constitution of the United States. “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” To me, this appears as a societal right to form an armed military or police force, and not an individual right. But in practice, the interpretation of freedom for an individual to own a gun has become the common practice, and it is valued by millions of Americans. Unregulated choice to make decisions will ultimately lead to people making poor decisions. 

And when it comes to guns, Americans have somehow gone down the path of deregulation and upholding individual freedom at the cost of the 33,000 gun related deaths each year. These deaths have very little to nothing to do with video games and mental health. It has everything to do with the amount of guns in our country, and freedoms which we have granted to own guns without significant regulation. Too much individual freedom leads to too much societal enslavement. Too much individual freedom leads to far too many mass shootings, gun deaths, suicides, accidents with children, and anxious students at schools who don’t feel safe. The individual freedoms of gun ownership brought us Colombine, Newtown, Pulse Night Club, Las Vegas, The Tree of Life Synagogue, Aurora, Parkland, San Bernardino, Dayton, El Paso, and Gilroy, Ca. What we need more than individual freedoms is law! We need to restrict gun sales, ban assault rifles, close gun-show loopholes, tighten background checks, and I would go as far to say that we should require a license for anyone who wants to own a gun in our country… and even then, I think we would have more individual gun ownership freedoms than any other civilized country…. perhaps even still too much freedom. 

I value the lives of my children over anyone’s individual freedom of gun ownership. I value the lives of the tens of thousands who could be saved annually, over someone’s unnecessary desire to own an assault rifle. I value a specific kind of freedom which is cheriut, a free society regulated with laws, because whoever isn’t living under laws, is not really a free person.

Questions for thought:

When are we going to realize that an individual freedom to own a gun, is the enslavement of American society?

When are we going to enact laws that protect our citizens from gun violence, that protect our schools from school shootings, that protect our community from antisemites who want to do us harm?

When is gun legislation going to be a bipartisan issue?

When will we transform our chofesh, our individual freedoms, into cherut, our free society with laws?

When will I be able to stop speaking about gun violence, because I really don’t want to have to keep speaking about it?

Be Obscure So That You Can Endure (Tzaraat and Pesach)

One of the scariest things to discover as a homeowner is mold growing on or in the walls of your house. Mold causes an array of health problems. Remediation of mold can also be expensive, and might not even correct the moisture issue that caused the mold in the first place. So what’s the best solution when you’re a home owner and you suspect that you might have mold? While I generally suggest using the Talmud as a guide to living life, the rabbinic sages’ advice might seem hard to abide. I want to introduce a rabbinic discussion that isn’t about mold, but about tzaraat, the bizarre affliction that can appear not just on human skin, but on the walls of your house. One might imagine that this affliction is at least on par with the worst case of modern mold, if not worse. 

Rabbi Eliezer says that if you are in a dark house that might have this kind of tzaraat growing, אין פותחין לו חלונות לראות נגעו don’t open the windows, because if you do, you might find the tzaraat, and if you don’t, it’s better to be in the dark. One might say “See no evil, there is no evil,” “ignorance is bliss,” or “you’re better off not knowing the truth.” If I have were to have a mold issue in my house, I DO want to know, and I would expect better advice from the wisdom of our sages. But just when you think that the rabbis are out of their minds, they drop a line of brilliance that brings to light so much of Jewish thought and thinking. לעולם תהיה חשוך ותתקיים, Always be obscure, so that you can endure (Sanhedrin 92a)!

There are a few things that this obscure aphorism can mean, so let me begin to unpack it a bit. 

1. Living in darkness is better than living in a world illuminated with truth.  If you remember the movie the Matrix, which is now 20 years old, you might recall the main character Neo is offered a pill, much like the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2). He can live in the world that he thinks he knows, or, he can take the pill and be exposed to a truth about the world that will change everything! This is a truth that most people in the know wish that they had never learned. Better to live in the dark, some people think, than to be able to see the world for scary place that it actually is. 

2. Rabbi Adin Steinzaltz offers another interpretation of this saying in his commentary to the Talmud. He says that the more humble and unknown you make yourself, the longer you will live. To this end, one should “live in the shadows,” “don’t make waves,” “don’t stand out,” or “fly under the radar.” In less cliche terms, live a life of obscurity, and you will live. This seems to me a rather boring way to live. 

3. Let me now tell you what I think this seemingly obscure aphorism about obscurity is all about. Living life when the world around you is obscure helps fill our time with intrigue, wonder, and a never-ending journey of asking questions to which we may never find the answer. One saying that I find advice worth taking, is to never trust people who claim to have the truth. That is, don’t trust people who claim to have all the answers. Instead, trust people who are in the never-ending search for the truth, because truth is elusive, and obscure. 

Living in obscurity is about living life with the a question mark, and being comfortable without the answers. Because we know that life doesn’t come with definitive explanations to our ultimate questions. Living a Jewish life, is about basking in the obscurity. It’s about not opening the window to figure out whether or not you have tzaraat on your walls.

If the Torah was filled with 613 easy laws and guidelines that made perfect sense, and were timelessly applicable, Judaism would be easy, yet ultimately boring. Instead, the Torah is filled with a whole host of laws that don’t make sense, that don’t apply to our time, but we read them anyways, because obscurity helps us to timelessly find meaning in the density of difficult text. 

Tzaraat might not be profoundly relevant to the modern dermatologist or even mold remediator, but it’s important for Jews. NO we don’t actually care about the antiquated questions of whether a person or home is pure or impure, but we do care about big questions. We care about curiosity. We care about rituals that we don’t always know why we are performing. Judaism is a religion of embracing the obscure, and that’s largely why we always have something to talk about. 

There is perhaps no better example of obscurity enabling us to live better better than the holiday of Passover. Passover celebrates the act of questioning things and not expecting the answers. While most people are familiar with the famous four questions of Passover. A seder should be  filled with questions beyond merely the famous four. The rabbis teach that the ritual off Passover requires that we ask one another questions about passover. Children ask their parents, someone who is alone asks himself, and two wise sages who know all the answers already ask one another (Pesachim 116a). We’re meant to realize that it’s not all about answering these questions. For why would two people who already knows all the laws of passover ask a question of one another? Asking unanswerable questions is the ultimate form of living in obscurity. Endlessly debating ideas is the method for how Jews transform obscurity into spirituality. When Jews question on Passover: “why is this night different than all other nights,” they don’t expect an answer. Perhaps, though, one might say that Passover night is more obscure than all other nights, which makes it different. 

When life is obscure, we never stop being curious, we are always forced to think, we  continuously ask questions, we endlessly seek to uncover truth, we keep growing, the conversation goes on, and life endures. 

Sotah as an Incentive for Torah

The Torah overflows with moments that we might see as troubling amidst the #metoo movement. From Abraham’s pimping of his wife Sarah, to the rape of Dina, to the trope of stripping women of agency, we find texts troubling to our modern sensibilities. Perhaps nothing is as cringeworthy to read as the case of the Sotah, the suspected adulteress of parashat, Naso. According to the text, if a man suspects that his wife has committed adultery, even if his suspicion stems merely from jealousy, a husband can subject his wife to a trial by ordeal. The suspected adulteress would drink a sacred concoction of bitter water. If she was innocent, nothing would happen, but if she was guilty, her belly would distend, and her thighs sag. According to the Mishanh, she would turn green, her eyes would bulge, and her veins would swell (Sotah 3:4). Essentially, she would become barren and deformed. 

    We might be inclined to shy away from the horror of such a repulsive trial by ordeal. Yet in thinking about the text further, I wonder whether we haven’t been misunderstanding the true intention of the bitter waters. We might turn to the book How to Think Like a Freak, by Stephen Dubner and Stephen Levitt for some insight. In the chapter entitled “Teach Your Garden to Weed Itself,” they discuss what’ behavioral economists call “separating equilibrium.” The trick, according to the two economists, is to create incentives that will coax a guilty party into confession. Perhaps the most known biblical example of a separating equilibrium is the famous  story of Solomon’s judgment concerning the disputed rightful mother of an infant baby. When two mothers both claim to be the child’s parent, Solomon orders a sword to be brought, and the baby to be split in half. Upon seeing this, the true mother calls out for the baby to be given to other women so long as he isn’t harmed. From the reactions of of the two women, Solomon is able to discern the true parentage. 

    Dubner and Levitt go further and explore trials by ordeal as a tool for creating a separating equilibrium. They explore, in particular, the medieval cases of priests carrying out trial by ordeal upon suspected criminals. They would either dip the hand of the accused in boiling water or make them grip a hot iron rod. Out of 308 cases that entered a trial by ordeal according to 13th Century Hungarian records, 100 of the accused confessed before the ordeal. Amongst the remaining 208 people, only 78 were badly burned. So what happened here? Well, it would behoove the guilty party to confess his or her crime and receive a lesser sentence, otherwise he or she would face mutilation and a higher prison sentence. Those who were innocent and truly believed in the efficacy of the ordeal, would likely go through the trial. The kicker, it seems, is that most priests would rig the ordeal so as not to harm the accused, who they believed innocent. After all, no one but an innocent party would partake in ordeal if they believed in the system.  This might give us a clue into the psychology behind the trial by bitter waters. Just as it was easy to rig the temperature of a pot of water or an iron bar, a “magical” water concoction might be the easiest of all ordeals to fake. Perhaps then the bitter waters ordeal was a scare tactic to warn would-be adulterers. But maybe there is something more to it. 

Let us not forget that according to the Torah, women should have no agency in a case where a jealous husband suspects her of adultery. But the laws of Sotah offer them another back-handed incentive––to study Torah. In the Mishnah, we learn that if a women has merit, her fate is protected from any ordeal by bitter waters. Ben Azzai elucidates    a women gains merit through the study of Torah (Sotah 3:4). In other words, if a women wants to ensure complete immunity from the bitter waters and the potential jealousy of her husband,  she need only study Torah. In this way, the ordeal of bitter waters becomes a separation equilibrium to incentivize Torah study for women. While it might seem despicable on the surface, perhaps the case of the sotah is really a brilliant tactic to encourage universal Torah learning for women.

NO MORE SACRIFICES!

As we opened up the book of Leviticus this week, I let out a long sigh. Thank God Judaism has long abandoned the practice of offering sacrifices. I often struggle to make meaning of our the words of Leviticus, which might best be described as a priestly guide for ritual animal sacrifice. It’s not just because the material is obsolete in the wake of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem two thousand years ago, but also because the idea of butchering animals, and throwing them onto a giant barbecue seems less than appealing to me. I am grateful that we are through with blood drenched altars and blood spattering in our holy spaces. I throw my hands into the air and exclaim: "No more sacrifices!"

I cringe at the thought of ever resurrecting this ghastly ritual. If you were to try to bring back animal sacrifice, you wouldn’t even need PETA or the ASPCA to throw a protest. The level of outrage would sweep our country at lightning speed.  Why then, I ask, can we be so outraged by animal sacrifice to God, and NOT outraged by the sacrifices of our children for the sake of our gun culture? If you ask me, I’m just as  sickened by animal sacrifices as I am by our needless sacrifices of American lives!

This past Wednesday I drove to East Hampton High School and stood at 10AM outside with a group of parents to support the hundreds of students who walked out of their school. They did so  in solidarity with the victims of the mass shooting in Parkland, FL. Along with students nationwide, these teens were terrified, angry, outraged, and at the same time motivated. I was moved by their outpouring of emotion, by their courage, and by their conviction. They know that their lives are at risk of being sacrificed, because far too often, our schools are the altar upon which we sacrifice our children.

We sacrifice our children so that every American has the right to buy an assault rifle with a high capacity magazine and a bump stock. We sacrifice American lives for a laissez faire process of buying a gun. We sacrifice children for a right to bear arms. I’m done with sacrifices. No more sacrifices!

There is one sacrifice that is absolutely prohibited, even in the period of when animal sacrifices were the norm. The sacrifice of children was, and always has been an abomination!  “וּמִֽזַּרְעֲךָ֥ לֹא־תִתֵּ֖ן לְהַעֲבִ֣יר … וְלֹ֧א תְחַלֵּ֛ל אֶת־שֵׁ֥ם אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ׃, Never offer up your children as a sacrifice” declares God, “because doing so profanes the name of God (Leviticus 18:21).” The prophet Jeremiah says it clearly as well, “you are sacrificing your children, burning them, and this is a sacrifice that “לֹ֣א צִוִּ֔יתִי וְלֹ֥א עָלְתָ֖ה עַל־לִבִּֽי which I never commanded, and would never even cross my mind (Jeremiah 19:5). It was an abhorrence when the Israelites witnessed their own people sacrificing children in the valley of Hinom outside Jerusalem, and it’s just as horrendous today in the halls and classrooms of our schools. No more sacrifices! 

I’m reminded of the Jewish mandate called pikuach nefesh, the obligation to save a human life. This mandate overrides many of the most sacrosanct mitzvot in the Torah. You can violate Shabbat to save another human life, you can lie in order to save another human life, and you can break your fast on Yom Kippur, all in order to save another life. We place tremendous value on every human being, because Jewish tradition sees each life as a potential world in and of itself  (Sanhedrin 4:5). If we’re required to preserve human life even at the cost of violating some of the most sacred Jewish traditions, why on earth wouldn’t we value our childrens' lives over lax gun legislation? No more sacrifices!