D'var Torah By: Rabbi Laurie Rice for ReformJudasim.org
Lemmings Be Gone!
Recently, I sat with one of my congregants, a beautiful, smart, and funny 12-year-old girl who told me about the social challenges she is having in school. Likely because she is so beautiful, smart, and funny, some of the other "popular" girls in her class do not like her. They have taken to convincing the rest of the girls in her class to stop speaking to her. The Torah tells us that we have an obligation, a responsibility, to not stand by while others are threatened: "Lo ta-amod al dam rei-echa" (Leviticus 19:16). Interestingly, the word rei-echa means neighbor--not Jewish neighbor, but any neighbor. We have a responsibility to take care of any person we see in trouble. What strikes me as more disheartening than the two "mean girls" instigating this behavior (mean girls are everywhere) are the actions of the other girls who simply follow suit, like lemmings. It's a tall order to expect of ourselves and our children to speak out when we see injustice or to speak truth to power when the majority seems to feel otherwise. Yet, is this not our mandate as Jews, to be rodfei shalom, "pursuers of peace"?
I always ask my mother-in-law for suggestions on what book I should be reading. She is a prolific reader and, without realizing it, serves as a sifter between what's worthy of reading and what's not. I generally call her from the airport bookstore, suddenly aware that I am about to board a multi-hour flight without any children and panicked that I didn't think ahead to bring a book. Recently, she gave me The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. The Help is a story about black women serving as maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the 1960s, just 50 years ago. It's a story about black women and the white women they served. As I read about the segregation, the attitudes of whites toward blacks, the depraved lines of distinction that were drawn, and the brutality and cruelty that was so very socially acceptable, I had to remind myself that I was not reading a fictional take on a time 200 years ago. This was just 50 years ago, down the road from where I live in Nashville, Tennessee.
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