vayikra
sholem aleichem
Sefer Vayikra is named after haShem’s call to Moshe. But I want to write about our call to haShem in Hallel:
מִֽן־הַ֭מֵּצַר קָרָ֣אתִי יָּ֑הּ עָנָ֖נִי בַמֶּרְחָ֣ב יָֽהּ
By adjusting the vowels of the second-to-last word (בְמֶּרְחַב instead of בַמֶּרְחָב), we have the translation:
מִֽן־הַ֭מֵּצַר קָרָ֣אתִי יָּ֑הּ עָנָ֖נִי בְמֶּרְחַב יָֽהּ
From the narrow-place I called “Yah!”
He answered me within the expanse-of-”Yah!”
When we call out gd’s name from the narrow place, our call creates the expanse for the answer. Gd’s answer does not arise elsewhere in response to and after our call, it arises within the very space our crying-out creates.
In Isaiah’s vision of a new world, where the wolf and lamb graze together, the prophet records these words of gd:
וְהָיָ֥ה טֶרֶם־יִקְרָ֖אוּ וַאֲנִ֣י אֶעֱנֶ֑ה ע֛וֹד הֵ֥ם מְדַבְּרִ֖ים וַאֲנִ֥י אֶשְׁמָֽע
It will be [in this new world]: before they will call that I shall answer, during their speaking that I shall hear
So what do we need to do to bring about a new world, a better world? Perhaps we need to take the Compassionate One as our model: to answer people before they cry out, to listen while they are still speaking.
Before they are abducted. Before they die. Before they are killed.
We cannot create a world without suffering. But we can work to create a world where people’s needs are answered before the need is expressed. I know this, because we already have — for some people, with some needs, in some countries.
When I needed health insurance a few years ago, I could sign up for Medicaid. Because so many people had worked so hard for so many years to make sure that the answer to my need was there before I needed it. When I went a hospital last year, I received excellent care because so many people had worked for over 150 years to build and maintain that hospital — before I ever even knew I was sick.
As John Green writes in Everything Is Tuberculosis (p180):
Not long ago, I was walking in the backyard, staring up at the night sky, when I happened to step on a nail that went right through my shoe and an inch into my foot. The next morning, I drove on a good road to a clinic a few minutes from my house, where I received a booster shot to eliminate the already small chance that my mishap with the nail might result in tetanus. But in order for this minor medical intervention to occur, so many systems had to work in my favor: I needed healthcare access, of course — in my case, a health insurance program that pays for basic preventative care like vaccines. I needed to live in a community with twenty-four-hour electricity, so that the tetanus shot could remain cold and not lose its efficacy. I needed a system that could efficiently and reliably transport not just the shot itself, but also the gloves worn by the nurse who did my injection. I needed to live in a community with an education system strong enough to train nurses and doctors. Ultimately, what I needed was not just a tetanus shot but an entire set of robust systems to work perfectly in concert with each other — a phenomenon that ought not be a luxury in our world of abundance and yet still somehow is.
We cannot create a world without suffering. But we can keep trying to create a world where to cry out is to be already answered.
good shabbos,
ada
p.s. thanks to R’ Helen Plotkin for helping with the revocalization of Tehillim 118, and R’ Mira Niculescu for connecting the verse from Isaiah to Vayikra.