Think of a phone call that made a difference in your life. Reflect on what it feels like to be the subject of someone’s care and concern and love and how empowering and supportive that can be. Can it feel the same way if someone bumps into you on the street by accident? Sometimes it can feel just as good, right? Nobody set out to find you. Nobody wanted to reach out and offer friendship and love. But the serendipitous encounters of urban life can mean so much. The reason why an accidental encounter can mean so much is that we can decide that the encounter is meaningful. That is a choice that we can make.
Sefer Vayikra, which we finished just a few minutes ago, begins with a call. Literally the word “Vayikra” means a call:
וַיִּקְרָא אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וגו׳
“And God called to Moshe and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting.”
Rashi points out that the call, the “Vayikra,” is a sign of God’s special love and affection for Moshe and Israel. Instead of rudely delivering a message, God calls, and invites us for a rendezvous. In contrast, Billaam, Moshe’s great foil in the Torah, does not merit a call. Rather, God just appears to him in a sudden or even random way.
וַיִּקָּר אֱ-לֹהִים אֶל בִּלְעָם וגו׳
There is an allusion to this dichotomy in the very orthography of the Torah itself. The letter aleph at the end of that “Vayikra” is written in a smaller font in the Torah scrolls to emphasize the connection between a call and an appearance or a keriah and mikreh – a call, on the one hand, and mere happenstance on the other.
That choice between a calling and random happenstance returns at the end of Sefer Vayikra in the frightening series of curses and warnings known as “the tokhekha” or “the rebuke.”
The primary spiritual and psychological description of the rejection of God which, the Torah warns, brings death and destruction, is walking with God in a random and happenstance way.
וְאִם־תֵּלְכוּ עִמִּי קֶרִי וְלֹא תֹאבוּ לִשְׁמֹעַ לִי
“And if you walk with me “keri” in a random and casual way and refuse to listen to me, then I will continue,” God says, “to smite you sevenfold for your sins.”
Note the contrast between וְאִם־תֵּלְכוּ עִמִּי קֶרִי and לִשְׁמֹעַ לִי. The two options are an attitude of casual detachment and listening for God’s message. And this process continues. The Torah warns against a vicious cycle of cynical detachment in which the punishment and suffering and death and destruction, do not cause us to change our path and do not cause us to listen to the message we must hear, but rather cause us to cling even more strongly to the sense that the world is filled with random violence and unspeakable suffering that all mean nothing and signify nothing.
And so, the Torah warns, again and again about this pattern of our acting in a קֶרִי sort of way.
וְאִם־בְּאֵלֶּה לֹא תִוָּסְרוּ לִי וַהֲלַכְתֶּם עִמִּי קֶרִי׃
“And if this isn’t enough,” God says, “and you walk with me in a keri fashion then I will do the same.:
וְהָלַכְתִּי אַף־אֲנִי עִמָּכֶם בְּקֶרִי וְהִכֵּיתִי אֶתְכֶם גַּם־אָנִי שֶׁבַע עַל־חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם׃
וְהֵבֵאתִי עֲלֵיכֶם חֶרֶב נֹקֶמֶת נְקַם־בְּרִית וְנֶאֱסַפְתֶּם אֶל־עָרֵיכֶם וְשִׁלַּחְתִּי דֶבֶר בְּתוֹכְכֶם וְנִתַּתֶּם בְּיַד־אוֹיֵב׃
I will bring a sword against you to wreak vengeance for the covenant; and if you withdraw into your cities, I will send pestilence among you, and you shall be delivered into enemy hands.
And then the Torah continues in this pattern:
וְאִם־בְּזֹאת לֹא תִשְׁמְעוּ לִי וַהֲלַכְתֶּם עִמִּי בְּקֶרִי׃
But if despite all that has happened you continue to refuse to hear my message לֹא תִשְׁמְעוּ לִי (note that contrast again between listening vs. acting in a random way) and continue to treat me in a “keri” sort of casual and cynical fashion, then I will treat you with בַּחֲמַת־קֶרִי a wrathful indifference.
How can indifference be wrathful? Maimonides, as we have discussed before, was embarrassed by miracles. A perfect God who created the world according to a master plan would have gotten things right the first time without the need to go back and intervene. And so the miraculous and supernatural events in the Torah need to be explained as having occurred during a dream or having been the outcome of natural events, like a fortuitous shift in tide causing the sea to split. Maimonides is open to the reality that especially pious people who perfect their minds with true knowledge of God can, in that way, obtain insight and protection that cannot otherwise be explained. But, we can then ask, if any escape from the normal laws of nature can only be obtained by a wise and righteous person, how can God ever punish the wicked?
For Maimonides, God’s punishment of the wicked is to leave them to the consequences of their own actions. I think this is the meaning of בַּחֲמַת־קֶרִי a wrathful indiference which is the consequence of our own commitment not to listen and not to hear and not to change despite wave after wave of destruction and suffering and death.
The Catholic journalist Elizabeth Bruenig published a vivid description yesterday of what it looks like to live in a society that has slid down that vicious cycle of וְאִם־תֵּלְכוּ עִמִּי קֶרִי
Violence begets injury begets death, and any culture debased to vacillating between violent struggle and idle nihilism is shuddering toward its end as a culture of death. And a culture of death is like a prophecy, or a sickness: It bespeaks itself in worsening phases. Right now, we find ourselves foreclosing upon our own shared future both recklessly and deliberately—and perhaps, gradually, beginning to behave as if there is no future for us at all….
In the aftermath of the unspeakable sadness and frustration and anger and fear that have washed over me since the news out of Texas on Tuesday, the most demoralizing and debilitating feeling has been despair that anything will change. There is no grand policy debate taking place, just a search to find someone to blame. There is no expectation that we will organize as a society to stop this from happening, as every other relevant nation has done. The sadness is compounded by the mourning for the next attack that we already know will not be prevented.
The author of the Netivot Shalom, the Slonimer Rebbe from Jerusalem who died over 20 years ago, offers a reflection on the Vayikra with the small aleph at the beginning of the book we finished today. The Torah wants us to understand that things which appear to be random and without cause are actually a calling from God directly informing us where and how to focus our spiritual energies. Things that happen (VaYikaR) can be a calling (Vayikra) and the more things keep happening, the greater confidence we can have that God has assigned us a task to accomplish.
The tokhekhah ends with a prediction that one day we will reach rock bottom, acknowledge our sin and the sins of the generations before us, which will then inspire God to remember God’s covenant with Avraham, and with Yitzhak, and with Yaakov. The cycle of cynical indifference and wrathful indifference and suffering and obtuseness comes to an end with a taking of responsibility.
One day we shall take responsibility for ourselves and for the communities in which we live and the country they comprise. When we take responsibility, redemption follows.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 