Shabbat Shalom. This
week’s Torah portion is Parashat Vayikra, the first reading in the Book of
Leviticus (also called Sefer Vayikra in Hebrew). Leviticus is mostly about the
laws concerning the priests and Levites (go figure), and this parasha opens us
up to the Sefer with the rules regarding the sacrifices that will occur in the
Mishkan, and later, the Temple. God tells Moses to tell all the people of
Israel when they need to bring which kind of sacrifice, which the priest will
slaughter and generally facilitate the ritual for those coming to make obeisance
God. There are mandatory sacrifices for personal atonement and sacrifices for
communal atonement. There are optional sacrifices of good-will offerings, in
case someone just wants to get in good with God. There are different sacrifices
for different times of the day. Each sacrifice has a different suggested animal
(though there is a sliding scale so that those who cannot afford to sacrifice a
bull can still atone for their sins and get in good with God by burning up some
grain meal or a dove), and a different blessing to be said with the sacrifice. These
sacrifices are called “korbanot,” which comes from the word “karov,” to draw
near, as it was believed that sacrifices helped people draw near to God.
Throughout this
list of different types of sacrifice, the Torah uses the word, “If”. If a
person sins, if the community sins, if someone wants to make a good-will
offering. Toward the end of the parasha, the Torah reads, “When a prince sins …
he shall take a kid of his goats. And he shall lay his hand upon the head of
the goat, and kill it in the place where they kill the burnt offerings before
the Lord; it is a sin offering” (4:22). First, I want to point out that there
is no sliding scale option for this one. After all, we’re talking about the
prince or otherwise leader of the land, here. He can afford the goat, and he
should pay according to his privilege. More importantly, where all the other
people get an “if”, the leader gets a “when.” It is inevitable that every
person sins at some point in their lives, but the pressure and temptations put
onto and in front of a person in power opens up more opportunities to sin, as
well as higher visibility for getting caught. The fact that the Torah
recognizes this and offers an absolute for this case, shows a wariness toward
power, and a responsibility that goes along with leadership. Rashi comments
positively one this: “Fortunate is the generation whose leader applies themself
to atone for their own sin.” He’s playing with the Hebrew because the word for “when”
in this context is “Asher” which sounds like “Ashrei”, meaning happy or
fortune. But Rashi is right, and the Torah is right. Leaders are just as prone
to mistakes as the rest of us, if not more so, and often their mistakes have larger
ramifications. How great it is when leaders see where they have erred in the
past and want to atone for it and do better in the future.
Today is
Transgender Day of Visibility. Too often our leaders (political, community, and
spiritual) fall short on doing right by the trans community, and the LGBT
community as a whole. Just last week, a Queer Jewish student group at Ohio
State University was kicked out of the Hillel family for co-sponsoring an event
that advocated for LGBT refugees because there were pro-Palestinian
organizations involved with the event as well. Now, these LGBT Jews are facing
a sudden loss of a major chunk of their funding and a physical space over a
pretty minute political detail. Many Jews and leaders of other Jewish
institutions have rallied to B’nai Keshet’s side to pressure Hillel to take
them back. Some of you know I was dealing with some issues with this at the
school where I teach. It was coming from certain families, but I was initially
told that I have to “respect everyone’s political opinions.” To me, anti-LGBT
sentiment is not a legitimate political opinion, and if it is to be accepted as
such by a particular institution, that institution needs to understand that it
is no longer a safe space for members of the LGBT community. It is simply not
possible for the same space to claim to respect and accept both queer and trans
people and the people who think they deserve fewer rights under American law or
less access to Jewish ritual. They are completely incompatible. Luckily, this
situation has cleared up a bit at the school, and the administration is making
efforts to move forward with me next year so that we can make the school safer
for students or families that fall under the LGBTPQIA umbrella. Our state of
Virginia, despite efforts by some to introduce legislature that stigmatizes
queer and trans folks and strips away hopes for equality, has managed to keep
some of those laws at bay. Business owners are not allowed to refuse service to
people simply for being gay or trans, and the so-called bathroom bill has
thankfully not yet come to fruition.
All this is to say,
our communities and our leaders have some atoning to do for the ways queer and
trans people have been discriminated against, cut off from resources, silenced,
and erased. The good news is, I do believe the majority of the Jewish community
is ready to do that atoning, and I hope as part of that atonement many know to
look directly to queer and trans leaders to help lead the way forward, so that others
do not keep making the same mistakes out of ignorance. It is time for more than
just visibility. It is time for us to be sure we are being fully inclusive of
LGBT Jews, that we are meeting the needs of our whole communities, that we are
drawing nearer to holiness as a welcoming Jewish community.
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