APRIL 20 • 2023 | 39
THE POWER OF LISTENING
In Judaism, listening is high religious art.
Or it should be. What Tom Hanks shows
us in his portrayal of Fred Rogers is a
man who is capable of attending to other
people, listening to them, talking gently to
them in a way that is powerfully affirm-
ing without for a moment being bland or
assuming that all is well with the world or
with them. The reason this is both inter-
esting and important is that it is hard to
know how to listen to God if we do not
know how to listen to other people. And
how can we expect God to listen to us if
we are incapable of listening to others?
This entire issue of speech and its
impact on people has become massively
amplified by the spread of smartphones
and social media and their impact, espe-
cially on young people and on the entire
tone of the public conversation. Online
abuse is the plague of our age. It has hap-
pened because of the ease and impersonal-
ity of communication. It gives rise to what
has been called the disinhibition effect:
people feel freer to be cruel and crude than
they would be in a face-to-face situation.
When you are in the physical presence
of someone, it is hard to forget that the
other is a living, breathing human being
just as you are, with feelings like yours
and vulnerabilities like yours. But when
you are not, all the poison within you
can leak out, with sometimes devastating
effects. The number of teenage suicides
and attempted suicides has doubled in the
past 10 years, and most attribute the rise
to effects of social media. Rarely have the
laws of lashon hara been more timely or
necessary.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
offers a fascinating commentary on an
ancient debate in Judaism, one discussed
by Maimonides in the sixth of his Eight
Chapters, as to which is greater, the chassid,
the saint, the person who is naturally good,
or ha-moshel be-nafsho, one who is not
naturally saintly at all but who practices
self-restraint and suppresses the negative
elements in their character. It is precisely
this question, whose answer is not obvious,
that gives the film its edge.
The Rabbis said some severe things
about lashon hara. It is worse than the
three cardinal sins — idolatry, adultery
and bloodshed — combined. It kills three
people: the one who speaks it, the one
of whom it is spoken and the one who
receives it.
Joseph received the hatred of his broth-
ers because he spoke negatively about
some of them. The generation that left
Egypt was denied the chance of entering
the land because they spoke badly about
it. One who speaks it is said to be like an
atheist.
I believe we need the laws of lashon
hara now more than almost ever
before. Social media is awash with hate.
The language of politics has become ad
hominem and vile. We seem to have
forgotten the messages that Tazria and
Metzora teach: that evil speech is a plague.
It destroys relationships, rides roughshod
over people’s feelings, debases the public
square, turns politics into a jousting match
between competing egos and defiles all
that is sacred about our common life. It
need not be like this.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
shows how good speech can heal where
evil speech harms.
The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the
chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the
Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings have been
made available to all at rabbisacks.org. This essay
was written in 2020.
SPIRIT
Seeing Every Person as Unique
W
hat does it mean to
be seen? This ques-
tion frames much
of this week’s Torah reading,
Tazria-Metzora.
The context for living
the laws given to us in
Leviticus has certainly
changed; for example, we
no longer offer animal
sacrifice to demonstrate
our relationship with
God and commitment
to community. Living in
such a different context,
can we find modern
relevant insight into the
teachings of these mitz-
vot?
Martin Buber wrote,
“Those who experience
do not participate in the world.
For the experience is ‘in them’
and not between them and the
world” (Buber, I and Thou, 56).
Building off Buber, my teacher,
Bible scholar Dr. Job Jindo, asks
can we encounter the text
and not only experience
the text? What mean-
ingfulness is there in
these ancient mitzvot? In
particular, what are we to
make of the laws regard-
ing skin ailments in this
week’s portion?
In Chapter 13, we
read about the kohen,
the priest, functioning
as both spiritual leader
and medical professional,
as he must look and see
deeply in order to know
if a person is ritually
permissible to participate in
sacrificial service. The root,
resh-alef-hey, for the word lirot,
to see, appears more than 30
times. The Torah is telling us to
pay attention to words with this
root. The kohen must inspect
a person to see if they have a
mark that would render a per-
son ritually unable to participate
in offering a sacrifice — the act
of coming close to God — kor-
ban, a sacrifice, has the same
root as lekarev to bring near. To
offer a sacrifice was to come
close to God.
What does it mean to see? It
can be miraculous. For exam-
ple, at Mt. Sinai we saw thunder
(Exodus 20:15). As the 13th-cen-
tury Torah commentator
explains, during such a miracu-
lous event, things not normally
seen become visible. Citing
Kohelet 1:16, Sforno, comment-
ing in the 16th century, explains
seeing thunder at Sinai similarly
to seeing with one’s heart — a
powerful embodied experience.
To bring an offering to God
meant giving over something
deeply personal, animals or
grain that takes so much time
and energy to raise or grow.
While on the surface the
instructions to the kohen are
completely different from rituals
we do today as Jews, the mitz-
vah reveals a perspective that
values human dignity. To truly
see each person as unique is a
blessing as we strive to be in a
relationship with each other and
our Creator.
Rabbi Davey Rosen is a spiritual
care provider with Jewish Hospice &
Chaplaincy Network and lives in Ann
Arbor.
TORAH PORTION
Rabbi Davey
Rosen
Parshat
Tazria/
Metzora:
Leviticus
12:1-15:33;
Numbers
28:9-15;
Isaiah 661-24.