Holding a Grudge

“Holding a grudge is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.”  That quote has been attributed to Buddha, St. Augustine, and Nelson Mandela. The axiom begs the question, “How do we let go of resentment?” Torah suggests that rituals can help. Still, reconciliation requires the engagement of two parties. What if only one is willing to try?

In Parshat Chukat, when people become impure, they are separated from the community. For example, contact with a dead person is one way of becoming spiritually tainted, as if the living person is a bit deadened. To restore that person to the community, another person sprinkles the waters of lustration on them, a spiritual cleansing through the physicality of splashing water. Notice the relational properties of the process. The corporeal act of touching the dead has spiritual implications. The physicality of washing removed the spiritual impurity. However, it takes two to restore a person to the community, pure and impure, and both willing participants.

This Parshat challenged me to reconcile with someone who has caused me pain. Here’s how I made that connection. When angered, I sometimes write off my foe as if creating a virtual death for that person. Don’t we sometimes say of an enemy, “That person is dead to me?” They are impure in our worldview.

Ideally, forgiveness is the highest resolution of personal conflict, which can lead you to physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. By reconnecting and repairing a relationship, we restore the humanity and soul of the other person in our view. Yet, I find it hard to forgive people whose actions have caused pain to me and those I love. Having a ritual seems an integral part of restoring a relationship. Without waters of lustration, I’ve discovered other potential rituals. Simply meeting for coffee or a drink is such a ritual. The getting-together and sharing of food works to overcome my resentment.

Recently, while attending a Zoom Shabbat service, I saw a person who had once been a friend and later became my antagonist. We are both rabbis, running in similar cohorts.

In the past year, I thought to reach out to bring closure to my ill feelings. I saw the person passing me at a meeting, and I said hello.  Their response was an awkward head gesture as if I had startled them from a nap. Later, I tried again. I sent an email asking to begin a conversation and received no reply. I gave up.

Seeing this person on my computer screen put a knot in my stomach. Having been rebuffed, the hurt doubled. No tangible ritual for reconciliation came to mind. I thought a virtual sprinkling of “the waters of lustration” would work. I attempted to focus my energy on that person in their Zoom box, summoning and “sprinkling” my sense of decency, compassion, and amnesty. The virtual “sprinkling” did not work.

Nonetheless, I learned (perhaps relearned) valuable lessons. Holding a grudge may be poisonous, but there is not always an antidote. Other faith traditions teach us to love unconditionally, turn the other cheek, and offer forgiveness. Nelson Mandela spoke of such reconciliation. Martin Luther King preached that loving your oppressor was fundamental to our humanity.

Judaism takes a middle ground between resentment and release.  Our tradition teaches that physical engagement and rituals are critical steps. Yet, a willing partner is also essential. The other person must show up and be ready to receive your offer of reconciliation and be re-ensouled in your thinking.

I no longer anticipate reconciling with this Rabbi who offended me. But knowing that I tried has lessened the intensity of my resentment. Seeing their face on my computer screen reminded me that prior attempts to engage them added to my spiritual strength. Although rebuffed in my attempt at reconciliation, I seized an opportunity to improve my character. With that understanding, I discovered that a grudge could be diminished if we attend to our well-being with spiritual cleansing, even if no one else is willing to try.

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Higher-archy

The civil rights movement suffered a leadership crisis during the Freedom Rides in 1961. Student-organized groups tested the segregation laws affecting interstate travel by riding buses and visiting white-only sections of bus stations. By the time they reached Montgomery, Alabama, the efforts came to an impasse. This historical episode calls to mind a populist revolt from the Torah, teaching us an enduring lesson about leadership.

In the Torah, Korach was born into a priestly family. Korach and his followers challenged Moses’ and Aaron’s leadership. “You have gone too far! The whole community is holy, every one of them, and the Lord is with them. Why then do you set yourselves above the Lord’s assembly?” Korach was correct that each member of the Hebrew community was holy. Korach was incorrect that Moses was elevated above the people. Instead, Moses was a humble leader whose obeisance to God governed his leadership style.

A similar confrontation occurred in Montgomery. The freedom rides began without Martin Luther King, Jr’s leadership. After a bus burning in Anniston and physical attacks in Birmingham, the riders retreated to Montgomery, where King held a pulpit. The bus companies did not wish to risk losing any more buses. The drivers feared physical assault. Yet, the students knew that the rides had to continue as press coverage of the savage attacks was vital to propelling the civil rights movement. The students were willing to risk expulsion from school and even death for this cause. They implored King to join them.

King demurred. King had already served jail time for various purported offenses, which caused him great mental stress. King’s role as the best-known civil rights leader made him the best fundraiser and spokesperson. As King declined to join them on the busses, the students griped and called him “da Lord.” They believed that King set himself above the assembly. Like Korach and his followers, I think the students were wrong.

Most Freedom Riders, like John Lewis, aligned with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The organizational ideology of SNCC was for members to share leadership. However, James Forman was SNCC’s senior leader by his maturity and organizing skills. Forman occasionally criticized King. He disliked King’s top-down leadership style and King’s melding of Christianity with Ghandian non-violence. Forman feared harm to the entire Civil Rights Movement if King was crowned with a Messiah complex.

Great leaders like Moses or King manage competing demands. Each knew there were times to lead from the front or behind. Their decision-making included an awareness that their lives might be sacrificed for a greater cause. Sometimes the threats were from within the very ranks of their people.

Korach and his followers never backed down and met a gruesome fate. Unlike Korach’s followers, the Freedom Riders met with success. They left King and returned to the busses. This time SNCC’s James Forman climbed on board. Alabama provided security for the buses to the Mississippi border.

Leadership challenges can be for holy purposes. Only with egos in check and devotion to improving the world everyone can benefit from challenges offered in a reverential fashion. Holy action is a shared endeavor that can be pursued respecting varying leadership styles.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

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Other Promised Lands

John Doar was not the Justice Department’s first choice for his position. Yet, his appointment as the number 2 man in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice lasted seven years. After the election in 1960, Doar was a hold over Republican in the Democratic Kennedy administration. Doar, began his work by investigating the plight of Black Americans in the South. Like Joshua and Caleb of the Torah, he went into hostile territory and returned with the determination to reclaim a promised land.

In parshat Sh’lach, twelve “spies” scoped out the promised land. Ten saw danger. Only two, Joshua and Caleb, saw opportunity.

John Doar visited the South to determine if the land was ripe for change. Doar investigated the extent to which civil rights were denied to African Americans. Despite the dire situation, Doar believed that segregation could end. His reconnaissance and leadership helped transform the America.

Doar was the rare white government official in this regard. Others despaired or resisted advocating for civil rights. The Federal Bureau of Investigation enquiries into civil rights abuses were intentionally inept. J. Edgar Hoover believed communists to be in control of the civil rights movement. Nonetheless, Doar tried to engage the FBI’s support as African Americans increasingly advocated for their rights. Even as men, women, and children were jailed, attacked, beaten, and sometimes killed, the FBI’s bureaucratic approach was generally unresponsive to the crisis.

During the early 1960’s, the nation’s leaders were reluctant to engage in promoting civil rights. Democrats wanted to hold onto their support in the South and feared alienating white voters. Initially, the Kennedy Administration had little interest in civil rights. President Kennedy visited southern states to sure up his support among whites. Kennedy was preoccupied with Russia’s challenges to world peace – from the Berlin Wall to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy, seeking a moderate approach, promoted voting rights advocacy as the best way to upending segregation. In pursuit of that plan, Doar uncovered shocking registration data from the South. Some counties in Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama had no or nearly no Black registered voters. His research informed the voting rights efforts of Black leaders. Their nonviolent advocacy was confrontational and produced precisely the headlines that the Kennedy administration hoped to avoid.

Doar not only scouted out the situation in the South but also made his presence known. In the years to come, Doar was the rare Government official who put his life on the line for the sake of civil rights. For example, Doar escorted James Meredith through the doors of the University of Mississippi, the first Black man to attend the segregated school. After the murder of civil rights leader Medgar Evans, Doar stood alone between the white police and an angry mob of African Americans. With calm reassurance, Doar quelled a possible revolt.

When Doar left his job in 1967, the South was forever changed. His toughness, honesty and diligence helped Blacks gain their rights as citizens. Doar helped guarantee all Americans their rights to vote, to travel, and to be educated. While the task is not yet completed, Doar saw promise in a forbidding land and guided us all toward realizing this nation’s promise of freedom.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

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Retirement (R)age

Recent protests in France rattled that nation. Prime Minister Macron proposed raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. Oh mon Dieu! Despite this attempt to address a looming economic crisis for the French economy, labor unions organized massive protests. The opportunity to stop working and get paid for idleness seems unsatisfying to me. As an alternative, I wondered about the potential rewards of shifting gears later in our working lives.

The American attitude toward retirement differs from the French. The AARP reports that twenty percent of Americans are now working past age 70.  The average retirement age now exceeds 65 years. Our laws were amended to defer full Social Security payments until age 67 and no one rioted in the streets of Washington, DC. People of different nations can have diverse attitudes toward lengthy careers. Perhaps the Jewish approach to work, first seen in Torah, is something altogether different.

From Torah, we know that Moses worked until he was 120! Not everyone was so employed. Something that resembles retirement appears once in the Torah, in Parshat Behalotecha. A priest’s term of service began at 25 and ended at age 50 (so young!)

A retirement at 50 rule was challenging for me to ponder. I’ve already exceeded that date by a decade and a half.  I have no plans to retire.  I’d be frustrated by a profession that demanded I retire after only 25 years of service.

I believe that the one mention of forced retirement in the Torah is not at all about retirement. The priestly job was to tend to the sacred objects and other holy tasks. After serving God with piety and obeisance, the priests were required to switch gears.

Imagine if we all undertook a second career. The skills, caring, and responsibility we learned in our first career would undergird our second employment venture. In fact, people are staying in the workforce longer and switching to second and even third careers.

Instead of retiring from work, Torah is teaching that we can redeploy our skills. We grow when we meet new challenges. Holiness can be found in new workplaces and in new roles. More importantly, the essence of our lives as workers is not just what we do, but if we perceive our work as a contribution to this world. Work should be a holy endeavor, whether hauling trash or suing for justice. And if work ceases to be meaningful or detaches from any holy purpose, then a change of employment is good for your psychological and spiritual well-being.

When the time to retire arrives, we still can improve this world. All we need to do is employ the holy skills we learned in our working lives. Instead of a time to receive a salary, retirement can be a time to compensate the world for all we have received. In that way, we might retire from work but not from doing Jewish!

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

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Pitching the Jewish Tent

I’m still traumatized by the first, and only time, I went camping. We had to shlep heavy tenting materials, bars, posts, and connective joints, up a sandy hillside. With a combination of teamwork and desperation, we pitched our tent! But then a violent storm blew through that night. Was it a miracle or was it the quality of our construction that the tent stayed put? Then I understood the metaphor of pitching a tent to appreciate how the Jewish community persists.

The Levite families in Torah transported the bars, posts, and connective joints used to set up the holy Mishkan, the tent of meeting. No tent magically appeared like the manna falling from the sky and water gushing from Miriam’s well. Ordinary people crafted a dwelling place for the Divine using objects fashioned from wood or metal. To create a durable yet movable tent structure, the objects fit together precisely.

Just as these physical objects relate to one another, they are potent symbols of how we interact through Judaism. Moreover, the tent imagery represents how Judaism is both durable and portable.

Let us first consider the metaphor of bars. The Torah is a set of guiding principles and moral boundaries, much like the bars that surround and define a structure. The Torah provides a framework for living a righteous life, outlining the values, commandments, and ethical guidelines that shape Jewish belief and practice. These bars instill a sense of focus in our lives. Just as bars provide structure and stability to a building, the Torah provides the foundation to build Jewish life.

Next, we turn our attention to posts. In the context of Judaism, posts are pillars of support. The pillars of Judaism include the ethical teachings of our sages and the strength of communal bonds fostered by our leaders.  Verticality is associated with concepts of power and moral uprightness.  The upright posts provide a sense of divinity. While the posts are rooted in the wisdom and traditions of generations past, they are spaced apart to leave space for the exigencies of the present. Like tent posts keeping the tent aloft through the windy night, these pillars help to sustain Jewish life.

Finally, we consider the metaphor of connective joints. Joints serve as the points of connection between different parts of a structure.  They are the meeting point between the righteousness of our intentions and the boundaries of our actions.  The joints also represent the interconnectedness of the Jewish people. The Torah teaches the value of community, and mutual support, through the ethical construct of collective responsibility. It reminds us that we are all connected. Our actions have an impact on ourselves, on the broader Jewish community, and on the world at large. Through acts of kindness, charity, and social justice, we strengthen the connective joints of our community, forging bonds that transcend differences.

When we use the metaphors of bars, posts, and connective joints, we gain a deeper understanding of the principles that guide Jewish life. The wisdom of our tradition offers the bars that define, the posts that provide support, and the connective joints that bind us as a holy community. We can always reassemble as a Jewish people with these building materials, bars, posts, and joints. And maybe it is time for me to try camping again, metaphorically speaking.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

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Anti Loneliness

Surgeon General Vivek Murtha recently issued an advisory on the public health crisis of loneliness. Even before the Covid pandemic, Americans reported enduring periods of profound loneliness. Murtha’s report calls for a renewed effort toward social connections. Judaism offers insights into this challenge and some opportunities to combat loneliness.

From the start of the Torah, we learn that loneliness is not healthy. In Genesis 2:18 God said, “It is not good for humans to be alone; I will make a fitting helper for the man.” Pirke Avot 1:6 directs that we acquire for ourselves a friend. The rabbis understood the desperate condition that is loneliness. In tractate Taanit of the Babylonian Talmud we learn the story of Honi HaMe’aggel, the famed circle drawer. He fell asleep for seventy years and when he woke no one recognized him. He said to everyone he met, “I am Ḥoni HaMe’aggel.” They did not believe him. Ḥoni became so upset that he prayed for mercy and died. Talmud quotes Rava who said: “This explains the folk saying that people say: Either friendship or death, as one who has no friends is better off dead.” Judaism values human connection.

Yet, Judaism also asks that we make time to disconnect. There are periods in our life when we should be separate and apart, even alone. The metaphor often used is that we should retreat into the wilderness, BaMidbar.

Transformative experiences happen in the wilderness and when we are alone. Alone in the wilderness, Moses saw the burning bush and heard God. At Sinai, Torah was given and Moses ascended the mountain unaccompanied. Hagar heard God only when alone, having sat down a bowshot away from her suffering child. Jacob had an experience of angels and of wrestling with God while alone in the wilderness. Even the Moabite prophet Balaam seeks God’s counsel by stepping out alone in the wilderness.

Alone in the wilderness, the Prophet Elijah found God in the still small voice. While the wilderness may seem desolate or empty, the wilderness offers the opportunity for better reception in hearing God. As the Hasidic story goes, the small boy who demanded that his father let him pray in the forest explained, God may be the same everywhere, but I am not. In the wilderness, we have fewer distractions. In the wilderness, each person may connect with their truest, most refined selves. And in the wilderness, we experience the potentiality of being alone.

Bamidbar, the fourth book of the Torah opens with the words “God spoke to Moses in the wilderness.” God speaking hyperlinks us to the story of Elijah who fled from the evil King Ahab and hid in a cave. There he sat, alone, meditating. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah perceives God when he finds stillness, both in the world around him and within himself. We too are apt to find God when we can withdraw from the distractions, whether we are in the Sinai, the forest, or in the solitude of our homes. Accordingly, when asked of an experience of God, many report that they felt the divine when alone in nature.

Our tradition asks us to invite God into our thoughts. As the psalmist wrote, keep God before you always. God will be our companion in our solitude. We can mitigate the sense of loneliness if we shift our attention to seeking God and delighting in God as our creator. Solitude is the fertile soil in which God’s presence can grow in our lives.

The Hasidic masters encouraged us to make time for solitude. They instituted the spiritual practice of hitbodedut, going out into the forest or fields alone to seek conversation with God. Alone and away from distractions, we can best set aside our physical desires and repair our bad character traits. In our aloneness, we can moderate the concerns that muddle our minds and stain our souls.

Loneliness is a health crisis in America. Judaism has long recognized the need for companionship. Yet, the Torah also offers a corrective for loneliness, by creating a spiritual practice out of being alone. Both friendship and solitude are critical for our physical, mental, and spiritual health.

Rabbi Evan Krame

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Slavery and Torah

After visiting civil rights memorials in Alabama, I’ve been reading about the history of slavery. The facts are shocking. The arguments made and justification for slavery are appalling. Some of them come straight out of the Bible.

As I read Behar-Behukotai, the history of slavery in America was called to mind. Slavery was almost as old as the arrival of Europeans. The first slaves arrived in 1619. The arguments to support slavery were often made by the Christian clergy. One popular argument was based on Leviticus 25.

כִּֽי־לִ֤י בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ עֲבָדִ֔ים עֲבָדַ֣י הֵ֔ם אֲשֶׁר־הוֹצֵ֥אתִי אוֹתָ֖ם מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם אֲנִ֖י יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶֽם׃

For it is to Me that the Israelites are servants: they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt—I, your God יהוה.

The modern-day Israelites of the new world were the European interlopers. Many of them were Puritans and Quakers who themselves were escaping religious persecution. Their subjugation of the Indians and the use of Africans as slaves posed a dilemma. How could they justify their degradation of other human beings?

Turning to scripture they argued that all people were God’s servants. Servitude was the natural state of all human beings. Accordingly, different degrees of enslavement were fashioned in their arguments. White Anglo-Saxon people lived a life of servitude to God alone, while people of color would be servants to their white masters.

The biblical arguments also included references to the children of Noah. After the flood, each of Shem, Ham, and Japheth became the progenitors of a race of people. Ham was thought to be black-skinned. As we read in Genesis 9, Noah became drunk and was naked. Ham saw his father and did not act. His brothers covered their father. Noah cursed Ham to be a “servant of servants.” If African Americans were descendants of Ham then their place in civilization was to be servants of servants.

Jews believe our Torah traditions that support a compassionate and lawful civilization.  And the Torah also supported slavery. Perhaps the lesson for us is that even the holiest of books is not always authoritative. No scripture, no gospel is without interpretation and proper application. No person should limit their understanding to the simplest read of any written work, not even the Torah.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

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My Heroes

My American history teacher asked our high school class to offer the name of a hero. I recall my answer vividly and I’ll share that with you at the end.  Thinking about the need for Jewish heroes, I worry about the lack of inspiring leaders for us and future generations.

I grew up in the 1970s; not a time of inspirational leaders. John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy were assassinated in the 1960s. In the next decade, heroes were harder to find. The American military conceded the Vietnam War.  Israeli leaders were unprepared for the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Pol Pot was responsible for the death of 25% of the Cambodian people. In 1979, Brezhnev sent Russian troops into Afghanistan. No, the 1970s were not known for heroic leadership.

In the 1970s, Jewish leadership shifted from rabbis to rabble-rousers, some holy and some unholy.  Meir Kahane brought a radical approach to demanding freedom for Soviet Jews. Michael Strassfeld, Sharon Strassfeld, and Richard Siegel published “The Jewish Catalog: A Do-It-Yourself Kit.” And “Battling Bella Abzug” was a representative from New York.

Reading Parshat Emor, we learn a lesson about how we regard leadership. The priests were elevated among the Israelites. The priests were holy to us because they are holy to God. Yet, the heroes of the Torah whose names we remember were national leaders – Moses, David, and Deborah. Later heroes were brilliant Rabbis, like Maimonides, Rashi, and Luria.

Who are the Jewish heroes of today? Perhaps they are the 212 Nobel Prize winners who claim Jewish ancestry. Or Perhaps the Jewish heroes of today are the philanthropists like Michael Bloomberg, David Rubenstein, and Lynn Schusterman.

I’ll apply the test of Parshat Emor. A hero to me is a person holy to God. Here are two heroes of our time.

Rabbi Mike Moskowitz has brought holiness to this world as an orthodox rabbi advocating for the health and dignity of gay and trans people. There is no room in his heart for prejudice. He sacrificed his pulpit job and jeopardized his personal life because he could not fathom rejecting a member of his family who had a different understanding of their gender identity. Over the past five years, Mike has saved lives, rescuing people from despair. Moreover he is repairing the frayed ties to Judaism for LGBTQ+ people and their families. He does this holy work wearing his black hat and sporting a full beard from a reform synagogue.

Another hero is Rabbi Michael Pollack. As a co-founder of March on Harrisburg, Michael sidestepped from a career as a rabbi to a career as a holy rabble-rouser. Michael speaks a holy language to legislators in Pennsylvania endeavoring to end corruption. His skills are based on Jewish values and he has made lobbying a holy profession. His selflessness is miraculous to me because Michael’s devotion to humanity is unending.

And my Jewish hero when I was a teenager in High School was Geraldo Rivera. Then he was a local newscaster uncovering the horrors of Willowbrook State School, an institution that warehoused people with disabilities. Sadly, he departed from that holy work to find “The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vaults.”

I hope that my current heroes don’t desist from being holy to us and to God.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

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The Archeology of You

Think of an archeologist with a sieve in hand. She sorts through piles of debris and detritus. Through the sieve falls the dirt. Treasures hidden in the earth are captured in the mesh. And that sieve is a metaphor for Judaism!

Schmutz fills our lives. Ill feelings like anger, jealousy, and greed clog our brains. Through the filter of Judaism, we shake ourselves down to the essential good-naturedness.

The steps are simple with Torah as our instruction manual to operate the sieve. Scoop yourself onto the wire mesh.  Apply 3,500 years of principles for a good life.  Shake.

Enmeshed in Torah and distilled in Parshat Kedoshim are rules for refined living – “holinesses.” Do you take time off from work for Shabbat? Do you revere your parents, both in life and in memory? Are your sexual urges controlled to honor other people?

The challenge for us is not the sieve but embarking on the mission. Do we have the passion of an Indiana Jones to find the treasures of our souls? Or are we content to leave buried the artifacts of a pure soul?

To unearth our finest selves, we understand the purpose of the Torah’s holiness code. The observance is not for the sake of observance and ritual is not for the sake of ritual. Otherwise, we are merely sifting through dirt. Shabbat offers a time for reflection. Honoring parents is a foundation for finding dignity in all relationships. Controlling sexual behaviors refines our passion from cravings to aspirations.

If the archeologist fails to unearth a treasure in the first scoop, another is set on the mesh. Our souls are buried in the detritus of daily living, the struggle for safety and sanity. The goal of Judaism, as described in Torah, is to expose the sanctity of our lives. Every day of the calendar, every week of the year, is a process of separating out the shining treasures of who we can be from the accumulations of who we have been.

Just in case you thought I was original, the prophet Amos offered this image nearly three thousand years ago:

“For I will give the order
And shake the House of Israel—
Through all the nations—
As one shakes [sand] in a sieve,
And not a pebble falls to the ground.”

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

 

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Lepers, Jews and Prostitutes

Lepers, Jews, and prostitutes had a lot in common in Medieval Europe. They were all reviled. All were forced to wear distinctive clothing. Imagine the plight of a leprous Jewish prostitute! Some things change with time. Today, leprosy is curable with antibiotics. A major motion picture featured Julia Roberts as a prostitute. But prejudice against Jews thrives.

In Parshat Tazria, we learn about people afflicted with skin disease. The common lore is that Tazria describes leprosy. That is a misnomer. In fact, the Bible does not describe Hansen’s disease, commonly called leprosy or tzaar’at in Hebrew. Nonetheless, skin afflictions must have been common and alarming.

The treatment for tzaar’at, the skin disease, was to place the afflicted person outside of the camp. After a week, the Hebrew priests, serving in a medical role, would carefully reexamine the skin. If cleared, the person bathed and reentered the camp.

As a disease, leprosy persisted for millennia. Moreover, the nature of the disease remained misunderstood. In medieval times, Catholic priests would ostracize lepers, banning them from participating in religious activities and society. So too, were Jews excluded – sometimes forced to wear distinctive clothing, banned from owning land, or mandated to live in ghettos. Their isolation defied biblical principles.

The Torah’s approach to tzaar’at considers the humanity of the ill person. In Torah we find a methodology to restore them to society. By contrast, a society that groups lepers, Jews, and prostitutes as outsiders is a failing model of civilization.

Whether they are judging people by their skin or by their faith, the world is plagued by hateful people, filled with fear and loathing. A primal need to exclude and dominate fills some souls. While medicine can cure leprosy, the world needs an antidote for anti-semitism, racism, and xenophobia. Perhaps we should be hopeful that as anti-biotics fight disease the world will discover the love and caring to end baseless hatred.

Rabbi Evan Krame

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