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.

