What are you afraid of? As a kid, I was afraid of the dark. When I would finally turn the lights off in my bedroom, I would have to run from the light switch to my bed and get under covers, as if the thin fabric of my blanket would protect me from would-be pursuers. Our brains are powerful like that.
When faced with fears, whether real or perceived, they go into hyperdrive, allowing us to assess the threat around us. Our amygdala and sympathetic nervous system activate and signal how we should behave. So when your heart jumps out of your chest, you start to sweat, and your pupils dilate, that’s your animal brain turning on and saying, hey, beware.
Those neural pathways are ancient. They’re found in rodents, antelopes, and humans. In part, this is survival at its finest. If you didn’t feel fear, you did reckless things, and you’d be removed from the gene pool. So, there’s something beneficial in feeling fear.
We tag that threat so that the next time we face it, we know how to best confront it. This all makes perfect sense when we’re talking about a physical threat like a grizzly bear, or even an emotional threat. But what about threats that aren’t threats in an obvious way? That too is a question that has ancient roots.
Our parshah this week, Bechukotai, details a long list of terrible punishments we will face as a people if we fail to obey God’s decrees. There’s all the ones you might expect: famine, violence, and drought among others. Then, there’s this curious line in Leviticus 26: 36-37:
וְהַנִּשְׁאָרִ֣ים בָּכֶ֔ם וְהֵבֵ֤אתִי מֹ֙רֶךְ֙ בִּלְבָבָ֔ם בְּאַרְצֹ֖ת אֹיְבֵיהֶ֑ם וְרָדַ֣ף אֹתָ֗ם ק֚וֹל עָלֶ֣ה נִדָּ֔ף וְנָס֧וּ מְנֻֽסַת־חֶ֛רֶב וְנָפְל֖וּ וְאֵ֥ין רֹדֵֽף׃
וְכָשְׁל֧וּ אִישׁ־בְּאָחִ֛יו כְּמִפְּנֵי־חֶ֖רֶב וְרֹדֵ֣ף אָ֑יִן וְלֹא־תִֽהְיֶ֤ה לָכֶם֙ תְּקוּמָ֔ה לִפְנֵ֖י אֹֽיְבֵיכֶֽם׃
As for those of you who survive, I will cast a faintness into their hearts in the land of their enemies. The sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight. Fleeing as though from the sword, they shall fall though none pursues. With no one pursuing, they shall stumble over one another as before the sword. You shall not be able to stand your ground before your enemies…
There is a lot to dissect about this verse. That word for faintness appears only here in all of the Torah and is related to the word for softness, in this case a weakness that I think is best understood as fear. In part that is because of the next verse, where we are told that a driven leaf will make them flee. When faced with fear, we’re told we have three options: fight, flight, or freeze. Fleeing from a driven leaf sounds a lot like fleeing, but how does it work?
This question is asked by Rashi:
a leaf which the wind pushes along and beats it against another leaf, so that, in tapping it, it produces a sound.
In other words, all you hear is one leaf rustling against the other but because you’re so afraid, you perceive that you are in moral peril. We all know this feeling. When you’re taking the trash out at night and you hear the can shake and you jump, only to realize it’s a stray kitten. That’s the horror of this punishment, according to Rashi. Something as slight and fragile as a leaf will have you shaking.
Then, I came across another commentary that stopped me in my tracks. It was penned by the Kli Yekar, Rabbi Shlomo Ephrayim Lunschitz, an esteemed teacher who served as the Chief Rabbi of Prague and lived during the 16th and 17th centuries:
The sound of a blown leaf will put them to flight. This is what it says (v. 37): “They will stumble over one other.” This is speaking about discord, which is more common among the people of Israel than any other nation in the world. It says (v. 33): “I will scatter you among the nations.” Israel is scattered as by a winnowing fan, as when a person winnows barley with a fan, and not one of them (the barley grains) clings to the next; so too, the people of Israel are detached from one another even while in the land of their enemies. Although exiles usually console one another, the people of Israel are not that way, for they are scattered and separated even when they are in exile.
Each one pushes his fellow man with a strong arm and seeks to depose him from his situation, to incriminate him and fall upon him. Achiyah the Shilonite cursed them in this fashion (Melachim I 14:15): “And Adonoy shall smite Israel as a reed sways in the water.” Each reed is pushed and sways from the wind blowing on it, and in addition to being blown by the wind, each reed pushes the other one. So too, each Jew is pushed by the wind, which refers to the kingdoms … and in addition to gentile nations’ pressure on the Jews, each Jew pushes his fellow into his pit.
Therefore, they were compared here to a blown leaf, for the leaf is very fragile and blown around by the wind. Yet despite this, each leaf pushes the other one and hits against it. So too, the Jews strike one another with the whip of their tongue, either by informing against one another to the gentile nations, or with malicious slander in the Jewish neighborhood. The verse refers to this when it says, “the sound (voice) of a blown leaf.” Therefore, it says immediately after, “They will stumble over one other.”
The Kli Yekar combines the two images from these two sentences, that of the falling leaf with the stumbling of each individual, to paint a stark image. As a people, we are unique in our ability to fight among ourselves. Even when we are in exile, the worst existential place to be, subjugated by external forces, we continue to struggle with internecine strife.
Unlike Rashi who sees the leaf imagery standing in for our ability to be constantly in a state of panic, the Kli Yekar sees the leaf as a stand in for our fragility and even in that state, having a penchant to knock down others. Our stumbling over one another happens not only because other nations cause us to stumble but because we push each other down.
It’s noteworthy that the Kli Yekar sees this fighting as divine punishment from lack of connection to adhering to the Torah. Read conversely then, we can note that by doing our best to follow the words of the Torah, we can create harmony. What underlies that is the notion that when we have a collective endeavor, it allows us to feel like we are united.
Amid all these tragedies that will befall the people, this infighting is seen as on par with the aforementioned famine, violence, and drought. We don’t need to look far to note that this is still a problem plaguing the Jewish people. I don’t know enough about the Kli Yekar’s life to know how much the Jews were plagued by this type of fighting but it’s clear how fear inducing this would be.
Jews, since our inception, have faced external enemies and we have dealt with it with some success. But more painful is our infighting. Part of why the leaf imagery is so powerful here is because our fragility is felt acutely when we fight among each other.
There are things that we are afraid of that turn out to not be worthy of our fear. That is part of life. What’s scary about the Kli Yekar’s interpretation, written somewhere between 400-500 years ago is that we’ve been grappling with this for centuries. We never seem to learn the lesson.
I generally feel optimistic when thinking about the way the world is headed even with a healthy dose of realism mixed in. When it comes to the Jewish world, I am of two minds. On one hand, I am slightly encouraged by the fact that we’ve survived this long as a people, in much worse times in fact, even though we get caught up in infighting. On the other hand, it’s clear that our external enemies grow more brazen in time and our lack of togetherness weakens us.
There are real reasons to be in disagreement as a people. Our tradition actually demands it of us. What it doesn’t demand is a cutting down of the other, especially when the other that is Jewish.
This Sunday, I will be marching in a parade that I normally feel quite jaded about, the Israel Day parade in New York City. For a period of my life, it felt a bit performative and jingoisitc. There are people marching in it with whom I have deep ideological disagreements who think my Judaism is illegitimate. This year, there are Israeli government officials marching who bear deep responsibility for much of the quagmire that Israel finds itself in, and yet I will be there.
In part, I think that’s due to this text we’re reading this Shabbat. We need each other more than ever. We have to find ways to be together. In finding that common ground, we can realize what we really have to fear. It’s not the dark in our bedrooms (although I still move pretty quickly when turning off the light!) and it’s not the stray cat in the trash can. It’s our fracturing as a people. Beyond many other calamities, that is an endeavor for which we can activate our animal brain. Instead of running from it, we have to choose to fight against it.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Weekend
Really strong. Message and writing.