We Are Holy Beings

We Are Holy Beings

May 4, 2012

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

 

Some time ago at the daily afternoon minyan I mentioned that we don't count people to see if there were the prerequisite ten for the minyan. We had discussed this previously in the Talmud class. I remember growing up in shul that someone said:  "nisht eine, nisht tsvei" "not one, not two" and so on. Later I learned that we use the verse "Save Thy people, and bless Thine inheritance; tend them, and sustain them forever" which in the Hebrew is exactly ten words. The first ten people each was designated by a word, not a number. We live in a world that is all numbers. Even Skype, with live pictures and voice, is nothing more than numbers. We communicate with banks, stores, and our credit and debit cards just as an assortment of numbers. And there are those using numbers trying to detect and steal our numbers. And being numbers, we are able to be flooded by emails, even if they have some importance, and certainly spam which has none. I remember being told that I was only worth an amount created by the values of the chemicals of my body. The world we live in reduces us to numbers. Judaism does not. We are people. We are individuals. We mean something in our individuality. Our being makes a difference in the world. I am not known by my social security number. I am known by my name. To Ruby, my mother and my aunt, I am Gary. To my children I am Abbah. To my grandchildren I am Sabbah. To the rest of the world I am "Rabbi." It became my name, too.

 

In the Torah the months of the year do not have names. When the holidays are explained, it states that they occur on such and such a day in the numbered month. Only during the Babylonian exile do the months receive their names. Beginning with the narrative of creation in the Book of Genesis, we learn that the days are numbered, "first, second…" When the Torah needs to do a census of the Israelites, several times during the Wilderness period, each person gives a half shekel. These are tallied and thus the number of the Israelites is deduced.

 

The Jewish world view is so different, so at variance with the world you and I live in. We are reduced to numbers. Yet in Judaism, we can't be numbers. We are always our own person. Perhaps it was never clearer than through the prism of the Holocaust wherein the Nazis attempted to reduce each person to the number tattooed on their arm. In Israel, the original museum to tell the story of the Holocaust and extol the honor of our dead, its name was borrowed from the prophet Isaiah with the idiomatic Hebrew "Yad VaShem" which literally means hand and name. Today, there you can look up your family by their name. Judaism strives against seeing the human being as a statistic, as a number. We may count the days of the Omer, but do not lose sight of human beings. We never relinquish our being, our dignity, our individuality.

            I am not a number. I am a name.

            I am not a numeral. I am a person.

            I am not a statistic. I embody the image of God.

            From tomorrow's Torah portion, we are kedoshim, we are holy beings.

 

Perhaps because I am generally sensitive to the use of numbers, because we are counting the Omer, and because of my extremely heightened sensitivity to gun violence since our member's murder in December, it all intersected with the editorial in today's Times-Dispatch about April being the bloodiest month in Richmond. I have cringed reading the daily paper. I read every article and it is extremely painful. This editorial used the language "deviation from recent trends." That is the language of numbers. Judaism talks about souls, about lives, about people, about being holy, about being in the image of God. Numbers don't feel pain. Human beings do. The illustration of the police tape saying "Police Line Do Not Cross" did not do the editorial justice.

 

I wonder how people would feel, would it make a difference, would it change anything, if instead of words, bar graphs, or pie charts, they took a whole page of the Times-Dispatch, turned it on its side, and used the pictures of people to portray "trends," indicate "averages." Show me people, not numbers!

            Would people pay any more attention?

            Would handgun advocates see the havoc?

            Would the sellers, the makers, the distributers of guns do anything differently?

            Would it stop the bloodshed?

 

It has been interesting to watch the commercials by Bennett's Funeral Home on TV. They show a snap-shot of an individual and thumb-nail sketch of the person. I can relate to that. It speaks to me of their humanity. I am touched.

            We need to be touched and not hardened.

            We need to be preeminently human and not denigrated into being numbers.

            We need to be advocates to reduce violence and elevate civility,

                           to diminish cruelty and promote respect.

            We need to reveal the image of God that is embedded in each of us.

            We need to show the world that "We Are Holy Beings."

 

Shabbat Shalom.

 

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Temple Beth-El

3330 Grove Avenue

Richmond, VA 23221

Phone 804-355-3564

Fax 804-257-7152

www.bethelrichmond.org