Post by Rabbi Neil on May 27, 2022 22:34:56 GMT
What is the value of a human life? Our Torah portion this week talks of the value of differing kinds of people, demonstrating distinction between men and women and between young and old. It would seem from our Torah potion, then, that Torah values human life differently, and Sonia will speak on this rather beautifully tomorrow morning. In fact, it’s talking about who is most useful to serve in the Temple, but regardless of the intention, it seems that Biblical Judaism says that some people are worth more than others. It doesn’t actually say that, but it certainly seems that way. The most remarkable thing in the Louvre in Paris is, in my opinion, the black obelisk of Shalmaneser III. It is a law code that predates Torah that shows that the value of a free man and the value of a slave is different. Torah refutes that, as we saw a few weeks ago, by saying that both have the same value. So, we find ourselves in an interesting situation in which Biblical Judaism seems to recognize that everyone’s life is valuable in theory but not necessarily in specific situations. Sometimes value is equated with usefulness.
In later Rabbinic commentary, (Talmud: Sanhedrin 37a), we learn of how the court must intimidate someone who has witnessed a murder, with intimidation meaning ensuring that they provide appropriate testimony and not be afraid of the punishment of the court if they testify honestly. One suggested phrase to the witnesses is the following: Adam, the first person, was created alone, to teach you that with regard to anyone who destroys one soul from the Jewish people, i.e., kills one Jew, it is as if he destroyed an entire world, as Adam was one person, from whom the population of an entire world came forth. And conversely, anyone who sustains one soul from the Jewish people, it is as if he sustained an entire world. (Sanhedrin 37a)
That sounds great, except that it doesn’t say “whoever destroys one soul is as if they had destroyed the whole world” but “whoever destroys one Jewish soul.” Because the non-Jewish world exists, that specificity could easily be read as differentiation – that a Jewish soul is somehow worth more than a non-Jewish soul. And that is how some medieval commentators read this text.
Nachmanides, however, spoke very clearly on this in his 13th century writings. He says that the Levitical verse that says “the stranger and the citizen shall live with you” means that we have an obligation to save the lives of non-Jews as much as we do Jews. Of course, there will always be those in the Jewish community who believe that the Jewish soul is a special unique soul that needs to be preserved more than any other, but most contemporary Jews follow Nachmanides that all people are valued equally.
If that is the case, what is the value of a person? The answer is enormous, almost infinite because Genesis 1:27 talks of God creating humanity in God’s image. Rabbi Akiva (Avot 3:14) talks of God’s special love for human beings coming from this particular verse. Human beings exist so that God may be revealed to them. Every human being has the potential to increase the Divine revelation through a new reading of our tradition, which means every human being has enormous, almost infinite, value.
Except, it seems, in America. Pastor Dave Barnhart has become famous in social media recently for stating that the unborn are a convenient group to advocate for since they never make demands of us and they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted or chronically poor. Unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education or childcare, unlike immigrants they don’t bring all the racial, cultural and religious baggage that so many Americans clearly dislike. The unborn, claims Pastor Barnhart, allow people who fight for them to feel good about themselves without any work at creating or maintaining relationships because when they are born, the people who insisted they must be born can then forget about them because they cease to be unborn. In Judaism, the value of a person starts when they are born and not before – until they are born they are still part of the mother. And yet here in America millions of people value the life of the unborn over the actual living, especially mothers. As Pastor Barnhart says, “Prisoners Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.” The value of the life of the mother? Totally irrelevant.
And yet the value of life faces us not just in the question about reproductive rights which has been brought even more to the fore recently, but also regarding the continual regular targeting of children, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, members of the LGBTQ community, Jews, Muslims and other minorities at the hand of other Americans. There is something deeply perverse – evil, actually – about any Senator or Member of Congress who forces a mother to give birth to a child who then gets gunned down in school because that person didn’t want to pass sensible gun laws to protect that child they forced to be born. You can’t try to protect life before it is born and then fail to protect it after it is born and accurately call yourself a moral human being. Uvacharta l’chayyim says Deuteronomy (30:19) – “Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.” If you force someone to be born, you have a moral duty to ensure that they remain alive. So that you and your descendants may live… in peace, in their supermarkets, in their schools, in their places of worship, in their homes. Over 45,000 Americans died in 2020 from gun violence, of whom 47% - over 19,000 Americans - were murdered by a gun. Every one of those people had infinite value. Every one of them was made in the image of God.
Whoever saves one life saves the world. No judgment, no rich or poor, no male or female, no young or old, no this ethnicity or that ethnicity. Whoever saves one life saves the world. We can save lives. We, all of us, can save lives. We can force the government to pass sensible gun legislation, such as background checks. There have been over 200 school shootings in this country in the first 147 days of the year alone. Why are we not marching in the streets about this? Why are we not breaking down doors to demand change of those legislators who stand idly by the blood of their neighbor (Lev. 19:16)? Maybe it’s because we don’t really believe that every life has value. Maybe we secretly value the lives of innocent people whom we don’t know as less than our own. Maybe something is only important to us once it has the potential to affect us directly. Maybe the direct consequence of the radical individualism of American society has reached the point that we are sad when children are slaughtered in schools, but not sad enough to actually do anything to stop the next slaughter.
Our tradition teaches that God first created only one person so that everyone could say that they are descended from the same being, and that therefore no one person is more valuable than any other. Now is a time for choice. If we continue to live our lives as we have done so far, then we demonstrate a differentiation of value in human life. If we want to show that we have grown as our tradition has grown – from seemingly expressing differentiation between differing values of human life to expressing the infinite value of every human life, then we need to totally reorganize this society around that value. That’s no small task, but that is why we learn lo alecha ham’lacha ligmor v’lo atah bein chorin l’hibatel minena (Avot 2:16) – it is not our duty to finish the work, but neither are we free to desist from it. It’s time to start that work, to reorganize this society around the absolute, infinite value of every human life. It’s an enormous task, but it is our task.
May God guide us and strengthen us in that task, and let us say, Amen.
In later Rabbinic commentary, (Talmud: Sanhedrin 37a), we learn of how the court must intimidate someone who has witnessed a murder, with intimidation meaning ensuring that they provide appropriate testimony and not be afraid of the punishment of the court if they testify honestly. One suggested phrase to the witnesses is the following: Adam, the first person, was created alone, to teach you that with regard to anyone who destroys one soul from the Jewish people, i.e., kills one Jew, it is as if he destroyed an entire world, as Adam was one person, from whom the population of an entire world came forth. And conversely, anyone who sustains one soul from the Jewish people, it is as if he sustained an entire world. (Sanhedrin 37a)
That sounds great, except that it doesn’t say “whoever destroys one soul is as if they had destroyed the whole world” but “whoever destroys one Jewish soul.” Because the non-Jewish world exists, that specificity could easily be read as differentiation – that a Jewish soul is somehow worth more than a non-Jewish soul. And that is how some medieval commentators read this text.
Nachmanides, however, spoke very clearly on this in his 13th century writings. He says that the Levitical verse that says “the stranger and the citizen shall live with you” means that we have an obligation to save the lives of non-Jews as much as we do Jews. Of course, there will always be those in the Jewish community who believe that the Jewish soul is a special unique soul that needs to be preserved more than any other, but most contemporary Jews follow Nachmanides that all people are valued equally.
If that is the case, what is the value of a person? The answer is enormous, almost infinite because Genesis 1:27 talks of God creating humanity in God’s image. Rabbi Akiva (Avot 3:14) talks of God’s special love for human beings coming from this particular verse. Human beings exist so that God may be revealed to them. Every human being has the potential to increase the Divine revelation through a new reading of our tradition, which means every human being has enormous, almost infinite, value.
Except, it seems, in America. Pastor Dave Barnhart has become famous in social media recently for stating that the unborn are a convenient group to advocate for since they never make demands of us and they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted or chronically poor. Unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education or childcare, unlike immigrants they don’t bring all the racial, cultural and religious baggage that so many Americans clearly dislike. The unborn, claims Pastor Barnhart, allow people who fight for them to feel good about themselves without any work at creating or maintaining relationships because when they are born, the people who insisted they must be born can then forget about them because they cease to be unborn. In Judaism, the value of a person starts when they are born and not before – until they are born they are still part of the mother. And yet here in America millions of people value the life of the unborn over the actual living, especially mothers. As Pastor Barnhart says, “Prisoners Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.” The value of the life of the mother? Totally irrelevant.
And yet the value of life faces us not just in the question about reproductive rights which has been brought even more to the fore recently, but also regarding the continual regular targeting of children, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, members of the LGBTQ community, Jews, Muslims and other minorities at the hand of other Americans. There is something deeply perverse – evil, actually – about any Senator or Member of Congress who forces a mother to give birth to a child who then gets gunned down in school because that person didn’t want to pass sensible gun laws to protect that child they forced to be born. You can’t try to protect life before it is born and then fail to protect it after it is born and accurately call yourself a moral human being. Uvacharta l’chayyim says Deuteronomy (30:19) – “Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.” If you force someone to be born, you have a moral duty to ensure that they remain alive. So that you and your descendants may live… in peace, in their supermarkets, in their schools, in their places of worship, in their homes. Over 45,000 Americans died in 2020 from gun violence, of whom 47% - over 19,000 Americans - were murdered by a gun. Every one of those people had infinite value. Every one of them was made in the image of God.
Whoever saves one life saves the world. No judgment, no rich or poor, no male or female, no young or old, no this ethnicity or that ethnicity. Whoever saves one life saves the world. We can save lives. We, all of us, can save lives. We can force the government to pass sensible gun legislation, such as background checks. There have been over 200 school shootings in this country in the first 147 days of the year alone. Why are we not marching in the streets about this? Why are we not breaking down doors to demand change of those legislators who stand idly by the blood of their neighbor (Lev. 19:16)? Maybe it’s because we don’t really believe that every life has value. Maybe we secretly value the lives of innocent people whom we don’t know as less than our own. Maybe something is only important to us once it has the potential to affect us directly. Maybe the direct consequence of the radical individualism of American society has reached the point that we are sad when children are slaughtered in schools, but not sad enough to actually do anything to stop the next slaughter.
Our tradition teaches that God first created only one person so that everyone could say that they are descended from the same being, and that therefore no one person is more valuable than any other. Now is a time for choice. If we continue to live our lives as we have done so far, then we demonstrate a differentiation of value in human life. If we want to show that we have grown as our tradition has grown – from seemingly expressing differentiation between differing values of human life to expressing the infinite value of every human life, then we need to totally reorganize this society around that value. That’s no small task, but that is why we learn lo alecha ham’lacha ligmor v’lo atah bein chorin l’hibatel minena (Avot 2:16) – it is not our duty to finish the work, but neither are we free to desist from it. It’s time to start that work, to reorganize this society around the absolute, infinite value of every human life. It’s an enormous task, but it is our task.
May God guide us and strengthen us in that task, and let us say, Amen.