From Sinai: Imagining a New World, Parshat Behar in the time of COVID-19

Arundhati Roy, contemporary Indian author, says: “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through it lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”

This teaching has been carrying me through the past few weeks. And it is keenly related to the torah portion we read today, Parshat Behar.

The words of Parshat Behar are spoken on the journey — yet are directed to a future time in which the Israelites can establish their own laws and even more significantly their core values and ethos as a society. And they truly do as Roy speaks: they envision a world that leaves behind the injustice and harshness of Egypt and the chaos of the desert in favor of a society that is generous, protective of the earth and all its creatures, and ensures the basic dignity of each person. Parshat Behar comes to offer a utopian vision for their future.

It is a vision of a humanity that recognizes its dependence on and interdependence with the land and considers the needs of the land itself- for rest, which necessitates a human relationship towards the land as one of service and honor, not exploitation.

It is a vision of society that plans for and mediates wealth inequality through a series of radical steps including debt forgiveness (every seven years) and land purchase forgiveness (every 50 years) where people can go back to their original land holdings even if they do not have the money to buy it back.

What I want to emphasize today is not as much the content of our ancestors’ vision rather about the very notion of imagining a better world into existence and its implications for us today, in this challenging moment in which we live.

For us, we may feel so consumed by the daily challenges of managing our anxiety and social isolation or the tremendous responsibility of taking care of children, friends, or parents, or getting our work done in the face of tremendous distraction and pressure. We may feel it is nearly impossible to move out of the psychic space we occupy towards imagining a better world.

It is helpful for us to remember that our ancestors were in a similar place when they envisioned the peace and justice of the Shemita and Jubilee years.

After all, Parshat Behar begins with a very peculiar phrase: “Vayidaber Adonai El Moshe B’har Sinai Lamor: Adonai Spoke to Moses on the Mountain of Sinai.” (25:1)

“Bhar Sinai” — In the mountain of Sinai, in the wilderness of Sinai.

Commentators throughout the ages have asked: Why did this text need to say “Bhar Sinai” — were not all torah laws given at Mount Sinai? Some traditional commentators say that this phrase is here to let us know the torah is actually out of order and this should have been in Exodus! Others suggest it was to reinforce the importance of these rules.

I believe we can learn a vital and timely lesson from this emphasis on Sinai: that perhaps the most opportune time to dream big and bold about our future, to imagine a new and better society when we are in the wilderness — and at the beginning of our journey.

The revelation on Mount Sinai was early into this long 40 year journey — the beginning really. It is never too early to ask: what kind of world do we want to build when we get to the other side?

Sinai is a mountain in a wilderness. The wilderness is a liminal space between where we WERE and where we are GOING. As our ancestors have also described it, it is also a place of chaos, disorder, displacement. The wilderness could be a place of despair, but instead, it was a place of imagination.

I cannot think of a more timely torah for us today.

We are in our wilderness: in a liminal phase between what WAS and what will BE. The world will not be exactly the same or perhaps nearly the same as it once was. There is no returning to “normal.” And while that is disquieting, it is also an opportunity for us to re-imagine.

And like the Israelites, we are towards the beginning of this journey. While we do not know the exact timeline and there will likely be intermediate phases of re-entry, we know now, this will not be over nearly as quickly as would like.

And both of these truths are disquieting. But as our ancestors taught us, being in the wilderness at the beginning of a journey is also an opportunity. An invitation to imagination. To dreaming big and bold, about the values we want our society to embody, those that are different from our present moment.

Because as we see as loudly and clearly as ever, the present tense world of extreme economic disparity, exploitation of the earth and more, is not sustainable (not conducive to human thriving).

If we are going to confront a very different world when we are done with physical distancing, let’s not let that new world happen “to us.” Let’s re-imagine it now.

Author Rebecca Solnit has spoken about the societal shifts that occur at moments of collective crisis: She offers a difference analogy than the desert:

“When a caterpillar enters its chrysalis, it dissolves itself, quite literally, into liquid. In this state, what was a caterpillar and will be a butterfly is neither one nor the other, it’s a sort of living soup. Within this living soup are the imaginal cells that will catalyze its transformation into winged maturity. May the best among us, the most visionary, the most inclusive, be the imaginal cells — for now we are in the soup. The outcome of disasters is not foreordained. It’s a conflict, one that takes place while things that were frozen, solid and locked up have become open and fluid — full of both the best and worst possibilities. We are both becalmed and in a state of profound change.”

Solnit also speaks to the concept of personal transformation- that idea of chrysalis applying to our own lives:

“I have found over and over that the proximity of death in shared calamity makes many people more urgently alive, less attached to the small things in life and more committed to the big ones, often including civil society or the common good.” (The Guardian, April 7, 2020)

Our ancestors demonstrated: at the beginning of an unknown journey, in the midst of a chaotic wilderness, we can and should dream up our utopia. It is precisely the right time to consider what might be on the other side and what we each might do to bring that new world into being.

Shabbat Shalom.