Pursuing Inclusion: Equal Does Not Mean Same (Korach 5775)

Each summer as students engage their assigned summer reading, my school's professional community (educators and staff) also have assigned reading. 

This summer it's Beverly Daniel Tatum’s “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria: And Other Conversations About Race.”  I selected this book to read as a professional community in order to advance our crucial Inclusion & Anti-Bias initiative.  It is essential that Jewish Community High School of the Bay fulfill its  pluralistic mission by actively pursuing inclusion and teaching that bias is corrosive to our community. Respect for difference and pursuit of inclusion also are at the heart of this week’s Torah portion and echo through rabbinic literature.  

In the Torah portion this week there is a serious leadership rebellion when Korach challenges Moses and Aaron.  Korach claims to be speaking on behalf of the inherent equality among the three of them.  But he fails to acknowledge the unique differences in their skills, abilities, relationships, and attitudes.  As expressed by Rabbi Bradley Artson Shavit, “Korach’s flaw was to confuse equal worth with equal skills. Korach was threatened by diversity.”

On Beyond Zebra: Making Meaning of Torah (Graduation 2015) (Shelach 5775)

My precious students:* Your graduation and this opportunity to offer a blessing and charge for the future that you will invent, arrives in perfect harmony with the Torah portion this week, Shelach. In it we read from the story of Moses blessing and offering a charge to twelve scouts about to enter Canaan, to begin a journey toward a future of their invention.  

We tend to think that in telling its stories Torah is limited to using only the now fixed in time 22 letters that comprise the Hebrew alphabet. This is reinforced by the very first words of Torah, “In the beginning God created et” (Genesis 1:1) What’s et? Et is a definite article in Hebrew spelled by joining the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (aleph) to the last (tav).

Some read et as a kind of synecdoche for the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. In other words, “In the beginning God created the 22 letters and with those letters God created the world.”     

Yet a Torah scroll does not limit itself to 22 fixed, uniform letters. For example, this week in one verse the letter yud is super-sized. (Numbers 14:16) That yud is but one of 16 letters that are sometimes written super large or super small. In every Torah scroll some other letters by design have decorative dots or crowns or are written upside down. The Sages of Talmud refer to nearly 100 variants for letters in the Torah.  

That there are differences is clear. But making meaning out of those differences is up to us. My graduates, just as you have made meaning out of the differences among your unique selves, making meaning out of the Torah is now up to you.

Which brings me to one of my favorite and least well-known Dr. Seuss books, “On Beyond Zebra!”  The book turns 60 this year.  It actually came out before “The Cat in the Hat” or “The Lorax” or “The Places You’ll Go.”