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.