This Dvar Torah is dedicated to the memory of two people, one of whom I knew very well and one of whom I knew not at all. To my friend Jay Rosen, who passed away this season 7 years ago at the too young age of 26 years old after a life long battle with Leukemia. And to a girl who I did not know at all named Deanna Moran. If you do not remember Deanna Moran, let me read to you from the LA Times what happened to her just three years ago, at a party on Thayer Avenue in Westwood, just a few miles from here. At the party Deanna Moran confronted a 15 year old Brentwood girl who apparently had broken two backyard flowerpots and damaged a stairway railing at the home where the party was taking place. The girl who Moran had confronted called her half-sister to come pick her up and take her home. The Times reports that when the half-sister arrived a fight ensure between her and Deanna Moran the person who was trying to stop the vandalism from taking place. And Moran was held to the ground by another girl and then stabbed with an unknown object, while some of her friends looked on. When that happened, I was interning at Sinai Temple and remember my job that week was to meet with a group of USYers for a “Rap With the Rabbi” session. I began by telling them we could talk about whatever they wanted to talk about to give them an opportunity to ask questions of the Rabbi that they may not have had before. But I was relieved when the USYers told me that they would like to talk about what happened at the party because that was what I wanted to talk about with them. We talked about a few questions I asked them without judgment or condemnation. Things like why do you think that the people there didn’t help? Deanna Moran was willing to stand-up and defend somebody’s property and when her own life – thought nobody knew at the time it – was at stake, people didn’t seem to be able or willing or to stand up.
We talked about what could be done differently next time and why people did not help Deanna. Some were afraid, afraid perhaps of getting into trouble with the police, with parents. Others wanted to feel accepted, accepted by friends and others still, at the moment, didn’t really understand exactly what was happening. As I looked around the room that night with the USYers, I saw a lot of people in that room who were suffering. There is no easy answer to this question for the people who were at that party and for the people who saw what happened to Deanna.
For all of us, there is a feeling of confusion. We shelter our children, we try to protect them and yet here in our own backyard this can and did happen. And while that was probably the first time the people at that party were confronted with such a situation which questions and challenges one’s moral instincts, which leaves you feeling confused, and places you in the moment, while it was the first time for many of those kids, in a way it was not.
I am reminded of the story of Judah in this week’s Torah portion. As it appears that Joseph will hold Benjamin captive and take him away from his father, Judah steps forward and says, “No, we can’t let this happen again.” The commentators ask the question, “Why is it that Judah of all of the brothers steps forward.” Does he feel more guilty for what happened because after all it was Reuven, and Judah of the brothers who spoke up and said, “No, let’s not kill him.” Judah suggests selling him into slavery – not a great thing – but at least an attempt to save his life. So Judah should not feel more guilty than the others who sold his brother into slavery and seemed to have wanted to have him killed. Why is it Judah who steps forward? The commentators answer this question by noticing that we are told something about Judah between when Joseph is sold into slavery and when he steps forward, that seems to indicate why it was he who stepped forward.
Judah you see, in the story of Judah and Tamar, loses two children and Aviva Zornberg suggests that it is this experience of loss, of suffering which shapes his moral vision so that when he sees Jacob faced again with the unbearable prospect of losing yet another child, it is he who knows how it hurts. He can feel it within him. “A pristine arrogance is punctured when one brings children into the world to whom anything can happened,” writes Zornberg. Judah is the one who says, “This cannot stand.”
We do not how we will react in such situations. But as Jews we know what it is to suffer. And while it was the first time for some of the children in that room, it was not the first time if we have taught them something of communal and cultural and religious history. We may not have suffered but we are Jews, the children of Judah.
We should feel within us pain and suffering and it should cause us to stand up when things like this happen. And I don’t know whether we have one a good enough job of transmitting that communal history so that our children know to stand up for Deanna. That is the story of Chanukkah. If you read Ma’at Zohr, not just the first stanza, but the rest of the stanzas. It reads as a litany of the times the Jewish people have suffered and been persecuted. The Greeks and the Romans and the Babylonians. And we could add to that list Spain, Germany. We put the Chanukkiah in the window not to proclaim to world, “Look, we won, you lost.” That is not the message. We put the Chanukkiah in the window as a way of saying to those who are persecuted and those who suffer and those who are weak, “There is hope! There is light in times of darkness! We know what that darkness is, we feel it within us, and here is the light! Here is the light not to tell you that we won and you lost, but to say that we won and you can too!” But the Chanukkiah does not just show to the outside, it also shines to us. And though Hanukkah has past, we need to remember the candles and be reminded in the coming weeks and months of what it is to suffer, not for sufferings sake, but for the sake of lifting up that history, of redeeming it, making us better people so that these sorts of things don’t happen again. May each of us dedicate ourselves to making sure that our children know from where we have come so that we can move on with a sense of vision for where we shall go. Shabbat shalom.