In this week’s Parasha, Bo, we find
the commandment to wear tefillin. Tefillin are small square black boxes that
contain certain biblical verses. These boxes are attached to straps. We attach
one box to our arm, and one box to our head by means of these straps. Each day
during morning prayers, except on the Sabbath and on holidays, traditional Jews
wear these tefillin in observance of this commandment
The precise commandment is, “You
shall place a sign upon your hand, and a reminder between your eyes, in order
that the Law of G-d shall be in your mouth.”
The first part of this verse is
quite clear. The tefillin are a sign and a reminder. But a sign and a reminder
of what? Since this commandment is given in the context of the Exodus story, we
deduce that the tefillin are reminders
to us of G-d’s role in bringing our people from slavery to freedom. They remind us of the values of Justice, of
Freedom, of Kindness – the values by which G-d wants us to live our lives.
However, the second part of the verse is
a bit more difficult. What does it mean that “The Law of G-d shall be in your
mouth?”
The contemporary Rabbi Jack Riemer
has taught me that this means that we must speak up on behalf of the values
that Judaism teaches. The verse teaches that it is not sufficient to merely
“remember” these values, but to stand up for them in our daily lives. We not only
must live by these values ourselves, we need to speak up when we see these
values violated in our community, in our nation, in our world.
One of these values is respect for
one another. We are to remember that our fellows are created “BeTzelem Elohim”
– in the image of G-d – and treat them accordingly. We have recently been
reminded of our failure as a society to do this by the spread of the #Me Too
Movement. This movement calls attention to the ways in which we have failed to
treat everyone with the respect every human being deserves.
The #Me Too movement was founded in
2006 by an African American woman named Tarana Burke. A survivor of sexual
abuse herself, she became convinced of the need to develop a community of
survivors on social media using the hashtag #Me Too. The movement exploded in
2017 when Hollywood actresses and actors began to reveal the sexual abuse and
harassment prevalent in the movie industry. Suddenly, many women, and men, were
coming forward with posts on Facebook saying “me too” – I have experienced
sexual abuse and assault.
I should not have been surprised
when I saw posts by congregants on Facebook with the hashtag #Me Too. I should
not have been surprised when I saw posts from family from friends and from neighbors
with the hashtag #Me Too. I should not have been surprised to learn about the
prevalence of sexual abuse and assault in our country and our world. I knew that
this happened. I just didn’t realize that it happened to the people I knew.
In April of last year I received a
notice through the Chicago Board of Rabbis that the Jewish United Fund of
Chicago – the JUF – was funding an initiative called “Sacred Spaces”. Five
congregations in Chicagoland would be chosen to participate in this ground
breaking program. The core of the program is a series of five half-day
workshops held in Chicago that would educate us about abuse, harassment and
bullying and prepare us to write a policy and develop a standing committee to
address these issues in our own community should they occur.
I want to make clear that when I
applied for our congregation to participate in this program I did not do so
because I thought there was abuse and harassment occurring in our synagogue. I
applied because I was very aware that abuse and harassment can occur in any
institution, whether it is a sacred community like a church, mosque, or
synagogue, or whether it is a secular institution or business. The #Me Too
movement helped make me, and others, more aware of the magnitude and
devastating effects of this problem in our society. The question was, and is,
what can we do about it?
Congregation Beth Shalom was accepted as one
of the five congregations in Chicagoland that would undergo this training. Our
Board of Directors gave us the official stamp of approval to participate. A
group of five synagogues in the Washington DC area are also participating in
the same program in their community.
The 10 people on our committee
represent a cross section of our congregation. Besides me, Cantor Perman, Dore
Tarr, Jill Lexier, Ann Rabin, Julia Rabin, Al Barshevsky, Chris Igo, Erica
Scott, and Eric Forster are the members of our committee. We have attended four
of the half-day seminars – our final meeting is this Wednesday at Spertus. Aside
from these seminars, our committee has met numerous times on our own. Thus far
we have written a values statement, a description of the roles and
responsibilities of a standing committee and procedures for screening and
hiring new employees.
Our goal ultimately is to expand beyond this committee
and involve the entire congregation in creating a culture that is more aware of
the potential for abuse and harassment, in putting policies into place that
will help minimize the chance of it happening here, and in developing the tools
to address it in respectful, lawful, confidential and professional ways should
it occur in our congregation.
Our Torah reading this week describes the
final three plagues that afflicted Egypt. The ninth plague is described as a
“thick darkness” that descended on Egypt; a darkness so severe that “a man
could not see his fellow.” Some have understood this metaphorically, as
describing a society in which a person could not see the pain of their fellow
human being. The #Me Too movement has helped shed light on an on the private suffering
of our fellow human being and the shame they had to endure. It has helped pull
the curtain back on an area of life that had heretofore been hidden. Now that
we have seen it, we have the responsibility to speak up and do something about
it. The Sacred Spaces initiative is our opportunity to do something about that in
our small corner of the world.
Shabbat Shalom
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