It has been a terrible week. Rabbi, Dr. David Lieber passed away this week. It is no exaggeration to say he was a gadol hador – a giant of this generation – who possessed that rare combination of enormous intellectual depth and gentle, kind humility. With his passing, an era comes to a close and I have felt a sadness in the shadow of his death this week.
Too, we keep Talya Bat Devorah Shira v’Avraham Baruch – Talya the youngest daughter of Avi Havivi and Deborah Schmidt – in our prayers for a refuah shleimah – a complete recovery after her surgery this week to remove a brain tumor.
There are some things we can do little about. Death and sickness are part of this world; some hold God responsible, but the rabbis taught, " – the world goes according to its way." Trying to explain sickness and death often hurts more than it helps so let us take a moment of silence for remembering Dr. Lieber, and for to pray for healing for Talya and her family.
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Death and illness are part of this world, and it is true – " – the world goes according to its way," and there is little we can do other than pray and offer strength and support to one another. But it has been a terrible week for another reason: Bernie Madoff. When I think about his name, it is not true that the world merely goes according to its way. His crimes were not just part of this world, an unavoidable part of life, and because they were not unavoidable, I want to take some time this Shabbat to think about them with you to try and ensure they are not overlooked or excused, and so they will never happen again.
NBC ran a story on Dateline NBC Thursday night: "Scam of the Century – Bernie Madoff and the $50 billion heist." A heist is exactly what it was. Our community, through the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles lost $18 million. In Rob Eshman’s words from the Jewish Journal this week:
"It really is a shame we Jews don’t believe in hell. Madoff took in the Elie Wiesel
Foundation for Humanity. Elie Wiesel! When I heard that news, I had to laugh so I wouldn’t cry. The man survives Auschwitz, lives to serve as the moral conscience of the world, then in the twilight of his noble life sees his charitable wealth destroyed by a fellow Jew. No one could plumb the darkness of a soul that could do such a thing, not even Wiesel. He battered the foundations of the Jewish community. He attacked the lifeblood of
community – nonprofit boards, clubs, friendship itself...In doing all this, Madoff soiled the very word, Jew."
To which I add, he committed a Hilul Hashem – a desecration of God’s name. The greatest privilege and responsibility of being a Jew is to sanctify God’s name. To walk through this world and, through our behavior and character, to be an example of God’s goodness in the world. In
this season of Hanukkah, we light the hanukkiah to proclaim God’s miracles to the world, but Bernie Madoff’s actions have made us a source of darkness, not light, have brought shame upon us.
The next thing I want to say about what Madoff did may be so obvious it need not even be said, but it must be emphasized clearly. What he did is wrong, unqualifiedly wrong. I want to emphasize this because I admit that in preparing this dvar torah, I thought I might talk about why Madoff did what he did, about what influences in his environment and maybe his childhood contributed to such a giant moral failure. To be sure, understand bad behavior is a critical element in being able to correct it and prevent it in the future but I worry that sometimes our emphasis on trying to understand what is wrong risks excusing it, or at least sounding that way. So let me be clear – there is no excuse. None. " – those who love God hate evil," declares the psalmist in words we pray each Friday night. I registered with the Gift of Life Foundation, and encouraged other Jews to send in their cheek swab to The Gift of Life Foundation, an organization that matches Jewish bone marrow donors with patients afflicted with leukemia fighting for their lives – and I hate the actions of the man who stole from the sick, who took from orphans and the poor and from those most in need. In Tractate Shabbat, the rabbis teach that of all the questions that we will be asked by God after we die, the first one will not be about our belief in God, nor about our ritual observances. The first question we will be asked is: "Were you honest in business?" Melville wrote about Hawthorne that he knew how to say "No!" in thunder. We must say no in thunder. It was wrong. Period. No excuses.
I want to highlight one bright spot amidst the darkness of this week and that is that news reports say Madoff’s sons turned him in. According to their lawyer, they had no prior knowledge of the scheme and when they found out, they immediately turned him in. In this, at least, there is hope. Leviticus 19:3 teaches, " each person should fear his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Shabbats." The rabbis teach that these two ideas – fearing ones’ parents and keeping – are juxtaposed to teach that one should honor ones’ parents, but if they demand you break Shabbat, you need not heed their request. Without exploring the specific issues of honoring ones’ parents and Shabbat observance, it is important to notice the larger value being taught: children may disobey their parents because everyone, parents and children alike, is subject to God’s laws. Put another way, loyalty to family does not supersede fealty to God’s demands, especially in the face of moral corruption.
Why did the Jewish people descend to Egypt, not just a place of physical slavery, but a symbol of spiritual degradation? In this week’s parsha, the brothers famously sell their brother Joseph into slavery. There are many sins in the story, but perhaps the most severe sin is not the one committed in the moment when they dump Joseph into a pit, but the sin committed over and over again by each and every brother – the conspiracy of silence not to tell their father the truth of what has happened. Every one of them, day after day, week after week, year after year, allow their father to suffer and mourn without end. They choose loyalty to each other over morality, over doing what is right.
Thankfully at camp we rarely deal with matters of life and death or with sins of the magnitude that we are discussing this morning. But each summer at camp something happens and I have to interview kids at camp to get to the bottom of it. In those moments, kids are faced with an important moral choice: should I tell on my friends, or should I be loyal to them conceal the truth? In practice, of course, it’s complicated. Sometimes we rightly choose to preserve a person from harm over a upholding a lofty principle. But those times should be the exception, not the rule, and I worry that complexity too often clouds our moral compass and handicaps our ability to know when justice must triumph over loyalty.
The test of a moral individual is not whether you can do what is right when everyone around you is doing what is right. Jewish day schools and religious schools and camps are a blessing – we create environments in which, hopefully, kids are praised and excel when they make good choices that exemplify the values of our people. But if these institutions merely insulate Jewish children from moral choices, then a blessing can become a handicap in creating a child with a strong moral fiber. To do what is right when the community is doing it too is little challenge – that is just following along. The test of whether you are a person of character is when you doing what is right is unpopular, even painful. Could you turn in your father, immediately? Are we teaching our children that we too are accountable to God’s law?
When Chancellor Eisen took over as head of the Jewish Theological Seminary a few years ago, he initiated a movement-wide focus on the concept of mitzvah being not just a good deed, but a commandment, as something obligated by God to Whom we are responsible, even, in fact, especially when doing the right thing is unpopular, or unloyal. Mitzvah can be a powerful term for cultivating a moral compass, for reminding ourselves and our children that however important we are in God’s world, we are not its purpose, but rather we have a duty to improve it. Fifty billion dollars were lost; it was too late. But thank God at least two children knew right from wrong, did not repeat the sins of Joseph’s brothers.
Let me conclude with an insight that Rabbi Brad Artson, Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, shared with me when I discussed this drash with him. He pointed out that actually, the choice Bernie Madoff’s kids made to turn in their father was really not a choice between doing what is right, and hurting their father because, of course, in turning him in, they actually demonstrated the highest kind of loyalty to him. Madoff was clearly lost. His children understood that the right thing to do – for the Jewish community and God, and even for their father – was to make sure justice was done, that God’s law and name were restored. We are reminded of the second blessing before the Shema which begins, "with a great love you have loved us Adonai our God," and then the content of the blessing continues to describe how God gave us the Torah and law. We experience God’s love through demand God makes of us in loving covenant. The duality of God’s love and law, compassion and judgment are really one. In turning him in, Madoff’s sons brought him from darkness into God’s light, a light that now will be harsh as it shines upon the sins Madoff brought upon himself. But by bringing him to justice, Madoff’s sons demonstrated true loyalty by returning their father under the wings of the Shechinah. God’s justice and love may seem to manifest themselves in separate ways in this world but truly, they are one in God’s light.
It has been a terrible week. The light of a great Torah scholar and human being has been lost. An innocent child is ill – the world goes according to its way, and we pray for God’s comfort and strength. Bernie Madoff stole from us and did great damage to God’s name – that is not out of human control. It is something we must declare wrong and resolve to educate ourselves and our children to have moral strength so that it is not tolerated or excused, and so that it does not happen again. When the world is upside down, we return the simple things, to God, and his mitzvoth which he gave us in love, and we return to the hope that things will get better soon. Shabbat Shalom.