When a stranger resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt; I the Lord am your God. - Leviticus 19:33.
Torah Reading: Leviticus 16 - 20
Haftarah: Amos 9:7 - 15
This week the parshot focus on the social contract.
We begin with ritual purity and the observance of Yom Kippur, including the scapegoat. I first thought about writing about Azazel, a word only used in this section of Leviticus, though folklore identifies Azazel as one of the sons of God who wed the daughters of men in the book of Noach before the flood, resulting in a race of giants. The scapegoat is, however taken to the wilderness to Azazel, which here is identified as a place.
Then recent events in Massachusetts happened.
Chapters 18 - 20 deal with laws about how we are to live together. It includes the sexual laws including the relationships considered incestuous. This is the social contract of the basic social unit, the family. They include the two verses cited by the religious right against homosexuality, but include laws against adultery, marrying two sisters (one instance of God learning from the experience of Leah and Rachel) because of the harm to the relationship between the sisters, and forbidding sex trafficking.
But these exist within a larger social contract which includes the care of the poor (leaving the corners of your field for the poor), the disabled (insulting the deaf, placing a stumbling block before the blind), the elderly (reverence for parents), immigrants including migrant workers (see above), fair dealings in business, including fair treatment of laborers, equality before the law, and not profiting from others' blood as in war profiteering and dealing arms. There are other laws, but these deal with making a just society. We should love our neighbors as ourselves, treat immigrants as neighbors, and care for those who need help.
I took part this morning in a protest outside Senator Jeff Flake's office, protesting his vote against expanding gun checks. On the drive down, I listened to news about events in the Boston area. I lived there for most of my life, and though I have heard from some friends in the area, I still feel tied in knots.
Lost in all this, a bipartisan committee on immigration reform presented their bill which actually will do something to fix our broken system. Other legislators are sending out signals that we need to discuss immigration especially in view of events in Massachusetts.
In times of stress, we look for people to blame, for scapegoats that will take our problems away into the wilderness, for some "other" so we do not have to look at ourselves. But we need to look into ourselves and our society. We know almost nothing yet about these two young men, and as NPR kept saying, we are far away from anything resembling a motive. But already, indeed as soon as the Marathon bombings happened, we were trying to avoid having to think seriously.
Both issues, gun safety/control and immigration, are addressed in this week's reading, as part of the code of holiness, of what it means to be holy because God is holy. We should show compassion and empathy to the stranger among us because we know what it is to be a stranger. That is so true in this country where most of us were strangers at one time. Exploiting laborers is not holy, whether they are citizens or immigrants; justice should not be different for the rich and the poor.
And no one should profit from the shedding of blood. That means the gun manufacturers who profit from making sure gun sales remain high by exploiting people's fears, and the politicians who profit from the gun lobby. That means those who profit by selling arms to dictatorships, by assuring military contracts that put us in a state of perpetual war.
When we have done away with these great injustices, we can discuss questions of some of the lesser issues others seem to focus on.
Shabbat shalom.