Tazria – Metzora Sermon 2021 – Finding Our Way Back
Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue
Over 80 years ago, in Greece, sixty thousand Jews lived peacefully in Thessaloniki, also known at Salonika. It was a valued and vibrant community. Many of these Jews worked in the port. So much so that the port of Thessaloniki was even closed on Saturday, Shabbat.
In 1941, Hitler invaded Greece. Of the 60,000 Jews in Thessaloniki, around 50,000 were murdered at the Birkenau concentration camp.
Very few had the chance to make it. But among the survivors there was a family known as Bourla. After the war, in 1961, a son was born into this fortunate family. His parents called him Israel – Abraham. He grew up and studied veterinary medicine in Greece. Abraham gained his doctorate in biotechnology at the veterinary school of Aristotle University in Salonika.
At the age of 34, he decided to move to the United States. He changed his first name Abraham, to Albert. He progressed quickly and joined a pharmaceutical company. Abraham (Albert) rose through the ranks and was appointed as CEO of this company in 2019. Throughout the year 2020 Albert directed the efforts of the company to try to find a vaccine against a new virus (Covid) which had just struck the world. He expended great financial and technological efforts to achieve his goal, producing the vaccine in great quanitities long before its official approval so that it would be ready for rapid distribution.
A year later the WHO (World Health Organization) validated his company to produce the long-awaited vaccine .
This vaccine produced in conjunction with a German company founded by two Turkish immigrants, which will save the lives of millions of people around the world including many Germans, was led and pushed by a Jew from Thessaloniki, son of Holocaust survivors.
And so it is a beautiful coincidence that Israel became the first country to receive the vaccine. Albert Bourla, the Jewish boy from Salonika, is CEO of Pfizer.
Now in, one of those ways in which we Jews in the Disapora can be proud of Israel, the vaccine rate in the Jewish state is the highest in the world. 116 doses have been administered to date per 100 people and, as a result, with the use of the green pass, to let people know you are ready to mix again, the country is opening up to normal life.
Yes there has been controversy about how Israel has worked with the Palestinian Authority, and vice versa to distribute vaccine in the West Bank, but within the internationally recognised borders of the state all of her citizens and residents have had equal and highly succesful access to the vaccine.
There are many reasons why Israel has been able to achieve this. Being able to order the vaccine early, short distances in a small country making transporting it more straightforward than in larger nations, an excellent network of public health and community centres and a spirit of voluntarism and national mission making communication and giving the vaccine easier. Moreover, of course in the Jewish state, the value of Pikuach Nefesh, saving life, being so high on the national agenda has made sure this happened.
It is also there in the Torah, in the portion that we heard today.
Tazria-Metzora is a challenge to examine who we place “out of bounds” in our society because they are perceived as some kind of threat. Tazria-Metzora challenges us to be like the priests–accepting the responsibility to go out and see these people, examine and understand their experience, look for some way to bring them back in.
Tazria-Metzora challenges us not to turn away in our fear and vulnerability–not to let our fear or anger motivate us to push such people out, washing our hands of any sense of connectedness or responsibility. And, because there ARE tragic times when danger to the community legitimately requires isolation, Tazria-Metora also challenges us to open ourselves to the grief that should accompany such a terrible necessity and to do everything we can to alleviate it.
Our ancestors understood the need for isolation and quarantine in the case of contagious diseases. While the Torah provides for such precautions, it never completely isolated the individual who suffered from this condition. Just the opposite: the person most respected in the community, the Kohen, was called upon to examine the afflicted person’s sores and to diagnose his disease. It was his job to get his hands dirty. And when the person was finally cured of Tzara’at, the Kohen again came forward to bring the patient back into the tabernacle and the presence of God with offerings and immersions. In this way the stigma of his illness would not remain with the person. If the Kohen, who was called on to live by the highest standards of purity could be in the presence of the patient and even touch him then surely others could do so as well.
Rabbi Mark Greenspan notes that the priest here was not a doctor. The Kohen was called on not to cure the Metzorah, the person with let’s call it leprosy, but to heal him. His job was to establish the person’s relationship with God and with the community during his illness and after as well. Cure was in the hands of God and the medics. Healing was a matter of wholeness and holiness. It had more to do with confronting the crisis when it began and overcoming the stigma of illness when it ended.
We are a mamlechet cohanim a Kingdom of priests as Jews in the diaspora and of course in Israel. We are all responsible for healing in whatever way we can, by quarantine when necessary, by vaccination, by finding ways to come back to being together that are safe and caring. It is a Jewish imperative.
Yesterday afternoon here at EHRS was wonderful. It was the first time that we have invited our children back to the building for B’nei Mitzvah classes since March 2020. About a third of our class were present in person, with two thirds of our class of 22 on zoom. Marian Cohen, our Head of Education and Youth was here to help and she and I duly took our Covid tests earlier in the afternoon to be certain that we were safe to be there. The classroom was set up with distance and good ventilation and everything worked.
The delight for our young people in being there, the buzz of participation and working together to learn was beautiful, as we learned about the Jewish value of Chesed, care for each other.
The afternoon before our 3rd Edgware Cubs had returned too to meet in the car park with care and delight. We posted a picture of what this looked like on our ERHS Facebook page, as each cub stood or sat at their own marker to keep safe but together. Next Friday we will enjoy the first Kuddle Up Shabbat in person since December and already ten families are booked to come to the EHRS community centre with their under-fives for Jewish learning and community. Safe and socially distanced, booked in for track and trace but above all together.
Our Nagila Kindergarten and Bookies Babes have been running all the time that it has been possible for them and we are able to learn a great deal for the whole Synagogue from Milissa and Sarah who have led these safe and welcoming environments.
What’s coming next as we all act as the Kohanim, bringing each other back from isolation? In response to a brilliant idea from EHRS member Ruth Gordon we are going to hold an alternative shortened Shabbat service called Kitzur Shabbat, once a month in our community centre for people who would like to come back to our campus for Shabbat worship but need a shorter experience to test for themselves if they are ready to gather in person. The first of these will take place on Saturday 15th May from 09:30-10:15. If you need a gradual return it can help.
Meanwhile we will welcome booking in to our regular service just as around 25 have today. Once we are through June 21st, assuming that opening up to greater numbers for our community centre activities is permitted, we will hold plenty of outdoor activities to help us all get used to being together again, and of course to help us to learn and gauge what to do for the High Holy Days.
Our Torah portion today tells us to find ways to welcome each other back once we know that we are safe. It asks us like the State of Israel to work very hard at this. To be careful but also to be positive and welcoming.
Many of the people who have been here to an activity or service at EHRS comment on how well set up we are for Covid safety. We do so not just because we are so determined to bring community back, but because Jews throughout history after plagues, wars, and the Shoah have always had to find a way to be back together again, to enjoy the very best of what community brings.
