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LECH LECHA 5783
Kanye, Jews are a Blessing
Do you believe in curses? Yiddish speaking Jews were renowned for their curses. I found a few colorful ones translated into English. Let me share some of them with you:
May you never be alone in bed: you should always have bedbugs, lice and fleas with you.
May you win the lottery, and spend it all on doctors.
I love this one: May you never have to visit such a filthy place as a bathroom.
You should be like a chandelier—you should hang and burn.
May they name a baby after you! Which really means, “You should drop dead!” because, in the Yiddish speaking world, babies are named after dead relatives.
Your head should be full of lice, but your arms should be too short for you to scratch.
May you lose all your teeth, except for one—and that one should hurt!
May you live in a house with 100 rooms, and may each room have its own bed, and may you wander every night from room to room, and from bed to bed, unable to sleep.
And finally, my favorite: May you grow so rich that your widow’s 2nd husband never has to worry about making a living.
In the beginning of our Torah reading, the blessing Gd gives to Abraham at the start of his career contains an interesting reference to curses (Gen. 12:3): Va-avarcha m’varchecha, umkalelcha aor, “I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you will I curse.” Rabbi Harold Kushner in commenting upon this verse asks: “Why would anyone curse Abraham? After all, he’s such a fine person, a tzadik, in fact!”
But evidently, not everyone appreciated being taught about morality and Gd. It implied that the gods they were worshipping were fakes. And some people resent the demands that Abraham’s Gd makes, like: Don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, show compassion for others.
Kushner quotes Oscar Wilde who said: “One of the hardest things in life is to forgive someone who did you a favor.” Listen carefully to Kushner’s comment: In this verse Gd counseled Abraham: “Some people will resent your help. It will call their attention to their ignorance, or their powerlessness, so they will curse you. But when they curse you, don’t curse them back. Umkalelcha aor, I will curse those that curse you—leave them to Me. Your role is: V’heyey b’racha, “Be a blessing.” Do what’s good because it is good, not for the applause or for the thanks. After all, those things may or may not come.
My favorite pundit, may he rest in peace, Charles Krauthammer, once published an opinion essay in Time Magazine, called, “To the Rescue of Ingrates.” He wrote: A foreign policy carried out in our country’s own national interest will justify itself…America fled Somalia after 18 Army Rangers died, because the cost of the operation became apparent. But there was a more visceral reaction propelling our retreat: a sense of betrayal. Here we are, doing this for the Somalis, for no benefit to ourselves, and this is how they repay us!
I remember more than 30 years ago, there was growing hostility towards Jews by radical segments of the African American community—emerging as full-blown anti-Semitism in the Nation of Islam and the Reverend Louis Farrakhan. I heard some Jews say: “After all those years of our support for the civil rights movement, the Jewish students who died in voter registration activity in Mississippi, and the Jewish financial support for black organizations—is this how they repay us?”
Well, those Jews were just wrong! The vast majority of African Americans were not followers of the Reverend Farrakhan and his views. And those Jews who felt that way would have been wise to remember Rabbi Kushner’s reading of Abraham: “Don’t do what’s right for the gratitude or the applause. If the recipients of your goodness curse you, Umkalelcha aor, leave that to Gd.” And by in large, this is what Jews did. To prove it, over 70% of Jews voted for Barak Obama—America’s 1st African American president!
So, what should we do about Kanye West? Recently his antisemitic remarks were so outrageous that Adidas severed ties with him along with a growing list of other companies like Foot Locker, Gap, TJ Maxx, and JPMorgan Chase bank. Kanye recently echoed Farrakhan in a podcast saying: “Jewish people have owned the black voice…being signed to a [Jewish-owned] record label, or having a Jewish manager, or being signed to a Jewish basketball team, or doing a movie on a Jewish platform like Disney.” Well, not only is Disney NOT a Jewish platform, but it has also been accused over the years of antisemitic practices. West also claims that Planned Parenthood was founded by Jews to control the black population—to give them as many abortions as possible. There’s more, but you get the point.
So, what should we do about Kanye West? Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say that this type of rhetoric is grossly misinformed. And, at the same time, stand up and challenge it with the truth. In so many circles today, people are proclaiming antisemitic tropes openly without challenge—and this type of behavior is growing! But this is not pre-WWII Germany or the former Soviet Union. We can raise our voices. So, let’s challenge them and then, Umkalelcha aor, leave it to Gd.”
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi tells the story about when he was a young rabbi in a small congregation. A young man once came to the morning minyan to say Kaddish for his father. Reb Zalman asked if he wanted to put on tefilin. The young man refused, saying, “I don’t believe in it.” Thinking the young man might have said this because he didn’t know how, he called the young man and offered to teach him privately. The offer was accepted, and Reb Zalman went on to teach him how to daven and all about Jewish life and study Torah with him. He was elected to the Board and eventually became President of the shul. His 1st act as president, was to fire Reb Zalman!
Reb Zalman was deeply hurt by that betrayal. Psychologists might speculate that the man felt embarrassed at the presence of the Rabbi who knew him when he was ignorant of Judaism. Devastated, Reb Zalman stayed away from synagogue life and went back to school, got a PhD, became a professor, helped found the Jewish Spiritual Renewal movement—teaching a mystical approach that attracted many non-observant Jews. He wrote: “I owe it all to that man. If it weren’t for him, I’d still be Rabbi of that small shul!” He didn’t curse him. He left that to Gd. He just went on to become a blessing.
Growing up, one of my favorite tv shows was “The Lone Ranger.” How many of you remember it? How did every episode end? Someone asks after the Lone Ranger saves the day, “Who was that masked man? He didn’t wait around for us to thank him.” That’s right. He didn’t wait around, expecting thanks. He just rode off into the sunset to help someone else—to be a blessing.
At the very beginning of the Jewish People, Gd gave us, through Abraham, wise advice (Gen. 12:2): V’heyey b’racha—your role is to be a blessing.” Do what’s right because it’s right. If people are grateful and bless you, great. But if they mistreat you, Umkalelcha aor, stand up, speak the truth, then leave them to Gd. And it could be that you might later even need to thank them for your life of blessing that came about as a result.
So, Kanye West, or “Ye” as you now like to be called, if you truly search for the truth, you will find that no people on earth has been more of a blessing to humanity than the Jewish people. It’s not even close. Amen!
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