Stealing and Lying in America

Rabbi Noa Kushner 

June 5, 2020 / Parashat Nasso

1.

No one who was close to George Floyd, called him ‘George.’

They called him Floyd. 

His little brother Philonise remembered sharing a bed when the two were little, making banana and mayonnaise sandwiches. 

“Knowing my brother is to love my brother,” he said. “He’s a gentle giant.”

George Floyd’s second grade teacher told the mourners at his funeral that decades ago, in his homework, a young Mr. Floyd had written about wanting to be a judge. 

He was a bouncer at Conga Latin Bistro, and the bistro’s owner, said. “…He would dance badly to make people laugh. I tried to teach him how to dance because he loved Latin music, but I couldn’t because he was too tall for me.” 

More recently, Courtney Ross, his other half and mother to one of his daughters, said, "He stood up for people, he was there for people when they were down, he loved people that were thrown away,”

She said, ”We prayed over every meal, we prayed if we were having a hard time, we prayed if we were having a good time."

See it is important that we know the life of George Floyd, and not only the great injustice that caused his death. 

We’ll get to the injustice. 

But I want to start with the life. Because if we only talk about his death, we rob him of his life in yet another way, for he was more than his death. Even in death, he is not allowed to have a life. And as for us, we don’t really have to grieve the loss of this life, because we don’t treat him as a person, only a symbol. 

Think about it, if George Floyd were our friend, our father, our partner or our son, at this moment we would not want to talk about his murder again and again, no matter how unjust.

In fact, I am increasingly worried that we have started to believe that by being shocked, by witnessing extreme pain and injustice, and our expressing our own horror, we have somehow fulfilled our obligation in the matter. We think we have done our part.

So tonight we begin with the image of George Floyd as a gentle giant, one who wouldn’t hurt anybody, who couldn’t learn to dance because he was too tall, who prayed at every meal, no matter what. 

2. 

I’m working on a theory, see. Hear me out. 

It isn’t perfect, but it starts with the idea that the words we use to describe our problems, our current national situation, even words like ‘racism’ are so euphemistic — they sometimes obscure the problems rather than reveal them. 

So, just for tonight, instead of the word ‘racism’ I’d like for us to substitute:

“Stealing from people we think are less powerful and then lying about it.” 

Not catchy but I think you get the point. 

What do I mean by stealing? I mean stealing all kinds of things:

Stealing money and all the things that would lead to the accumulation of money and all the things that money can buy

Stealing chances, hoarding all the chances to get jobs or go to schools and whatever dignity or sense of accomplishment that might come from that

Stealing chances for a person to have a fair crack at an award or accolade or credit or a spot in a program 

Stealing chances to have access to powerful people

Stealing votes 

Stealing chances to live in safe neighborhoods, with secure have places to live

Stealing health care 

Stealing family. Stealing parents and locking them up. 

Stealing life itself. 

And if you have not been a part of stealing anything, you have been working on these issues, you are a Jew of color / a person of color doing Jewish, you get the night off — but I hope you’ll still listen with the rest 

Because the stealing is just the start. 

That is, in my definition, after we steal, then we lie and deny all that we have stolen. 

The lying is a key piece of the whole thing. Because if enough people lie in enough clever ways for a long enough time, many of us can “forget” that we have stolen and that we can continue to steal all kinds of things. 

We stop seeing the stealing, our heart no longer pounds at what we’ve done. 

“Stealing from people we imagine to be less powerful and then lying about it.” 

I got this idea from this week’s Torah. I swear. 

It is right in parashat Nasso. As if it was written for us in this moment. 

3. 

In the middle of our parasha,

We get three verses describing what happens when someone does something wrong to another person and

what must be done to repair the situation.

First, the wrong-doing, the rabbis insist — is stealing. 

They compare verses and determine: this stealing includes all oppression, robbery, violence, trespassing, defaulting on what is owed, finding something that doesn’t belong to a person and, of course, in all of the above, lying about it.

Second, 

This stealing is considered a break with none other than God. 

אִ֣ישׁ אֽוֹ־אִשָּׁ֗ה כִּ֤י יַעֲשׂוּ֙ מִכָּל־חַטֹּ֣את הָֽאָדָ֔ם

 לִמְעֹ֥ל מַ֖עַל בַּיהוָ֑ה 

If a person commits a sin (doesn’t say what) toward an Adam / a human / 

if a person commits a human offense

לִמְעֹ֥ל מַ֖עַל בַּיהוָ֑ה / they break the trust with God…

In other words: Even if you seem to be getting away with something, all human crimes involve God.

Next,

Even though the end of our verse it says

וְאָֽשְׁמָ֖ה הַנֶּ֥פֶשׁ הַהִֽוא 

“the person realizes their guilt” 

Right in the next verse, it says 

וְהִתְוַדּ֗וּ אֶֽת־חַטָּאתָם֮

“And this person confesses their wrong-doing.”

“Realizes” / then “Confesses.” 

We know there are no extra words in Torah 

So the rabbis understand that these phrases back to back 

Must be teaching us about a situation when someone does something wrong and denies it, perhaps for a very long time, and only confesses later. 

Otherwise, why mention the confession? 

If you realize you were doing something wrong or right after, you just go and fix it, no big vidui / confession required. So it is clear there is a cover up. 

See, especially if lies are involved over time, confession is important, then and now. 

It is the key that unlocks all the other gates. 

We use this verse to understand how to make t’shuvah for what we’ve covered up on Yom Kippur. 

And so maybe now too, in our wrong-doing, a confession is required. 

And we know our participation in the rallies, our saying and wearing the words “black lives matter,” our publicizing our support is important. We know we won’t get very far if we are not able to verbally, physically demonstrate our anger and concern. Some of these protests require us to risk all kinds of capital. Many require courage. It could be easy to understand our public activism as a kind of confession. We’re talking, even shouting out loud about the problem, putting ourselves out there, aren’t we? 

But, as a confession, protests are inadequate because, although we cry or witness the pain of others or learn, or exhibit courage or get on our knees, in the language of Jewish law,

A protest not ask us to articulate our own personal complicity — not to ourselves nor to anyone else — we can hide in the crowd. 

And, even as a solution we know, protests are only a piece. 

Phelicia Jones — the keynote of Monday’s rally said, she wants to see us after the protests, that is when she told us it will matter.

4. 

The rabbis bring a fourth interpretation 

They are clear the crime is stealing but they want to know, 

Who is being robbed? All we have is the word Adam / human. Could be anyone. 

The rabbis decide that Adam is a ger, someone who dwells with the community but was designated differently, not born in the camp. They decide this because they notice that after the theft, 

this person does not fight back against the wrong doing or try to surface the lies, 

and so they reason this person does not have the same material or political resources or power.

But rather than designating this person as a two dimensional victim, 

Just the recipient of a crime 

They create a story how this person was wandering in the wilderness and had the spiritual strength to find the community

Not only that the rabbis point out this Adam / this person has great value to God, 

And is of special interest to God. 

In other words, this person may not have material power, an army to back them up but that has nothing to do with the reality of this person’s spiritual power

In fact, the rabbis teach we don’t describe this person as “the one from whom something was stolen”

We say, “this is the one to whom we are indebted.” 

I think, this week, just as the rabbis made an effort to identify this Adam / this human for their time, so must we. And I think we can understand this Adam / human in our Torah as representing many in the African American community in America, to be sure a huge and wide, complicated variety of people, who bore the brunt of our thievery and lies, 

And so to whom we are indebted

And who, as human beings, are of special interest to God.

George Floyd is gone. His murder is a grave injustice. But he was a human being first. Let us remember his death but let us also remember that he prayed with God at every meal, whether things were hard, or whether things were good.

4.

Before we try to repair anything 

We’re going to have to ask ourselves some hard questions.

We’re going to have to ask ourselves what we personally receive from this system and what it is we are so afraid of losing. 

Isoke Femi, an educator at GLIDE who many of us know and love

Told me that until we each can integrate all the voices involved in the murder of George Floyd we will not heal 

We have to be able to connect to the part of us that is George Floyd, we have to feel the oppression and powerlessness and pain

We have to be able to connect to the part of us that is the Policeman, Derek Chauvin, we have to connect to the fury and our unwillingness to relent, we have to find a way to forgive that which is violent and angry in each of us

And we have to connect to the bystander who is afraid to risk her precarious status, who feels she could fall prey in one million ways, at any moment, and so, averts her eyes 

Isoke teaches: We can no longer foist these unwieldy, unwanted, overwhelming parts of ourselves on other people, races, stereotypes, scapegoats. 

“We can no longer insist that someone else carries for us what we cannot carry in ourselves.”

If we want to begin to solve our national problem, our personal problem, we must make room for these emotions and aspects in ourselves 

Only then can we try to relieve our own shame and learn to quell our own fury

Only then will the stealing and lying no longer be an available option for us. 

5.

Finally, 

I told you Torah demands a specific solution. Here’s what Torah offers us:

Remember — Confession of guilt, verbal, personal is non negotiable. (And there is a class with Reed and Sara Beth that is starting that can help with this)

But there’s two more obligated acts:

Restitution is required, the principal that was stolen must be returned, and Torah points out that for the time that went by with the crime unacknowledged, the one who stole adds 20%, and I have to imagine that interest accrues 

This is between us and those to whom we are indebted. 

Third, the one who stole also makes a guilt offering, a sacrifice which is made in addition to returning the money.

Notice, the repayment, the restitution is not the same thing as the guilt offering. 

The ones to whom we are indebted are not obligated to absolve us.

Instead, the guilt offering is between us and God. 

Because ultimately, if we do all the commands, fulfill our obligations

Confession, Restitution, Guilt Offering

If we do this and everything it involves

If we do this personally, and as a nation, 

Not one week but many weeks

It is possible that 

God may forgive us.