A few weeks ago I participated in training to Stand Up Against Street Harassment, sponsored by L'Oreal Paris, hollaback, and the NYC Commission on Gender Equity, established in 2015 to build a safer and more inclusive NYC. Designed to prepare participants to be ready to safely respond when seeing or experiencing street harassment, the program outlined 5 options for action and offered opportunities to practice our discernment on-line. The instructor was clear and honest, sharing personal narrative to support an authentic presence. Most important, the training
encouraged participants to determine which options for action would work best for us as individuals. Once we leave our homes again, every one of us will be witness to street harassment, in the grocery store, on the subway, in a restaurant. Most of us have already experienced this multiple times in life either as bystanders or victims. It's unfortunately not so unusual for people to be publicly marginalized and made the uncomfortable other. If you want to learn how to be a good bystander (I prefer the term upstander!), I encourage you to enroll in this free training athttps://www.ihollaback.org/stand-street-harassment/
This week's parasha, Hukkat, teaches, This is the ritual: When a person dies in a tent, whoever enters the tent and whoever is in the tent shall be impure seven days, and every open vessel with no lid fastened down shall be impure (Numbers 19:14-15). Our 11thc. commentator Rashi says the vessel to which the Torah refers is an earthenware vessel, something that becomes unclean/set apart not by its exterior but by the impurity that is placed within. The Kotzker Rebbe understands this to be so because an earthenware vessel is significant only because of what it contains. Without its own intrinsic value, it receives impurity/becomes othered from its contents. On the other hand, a metal vessel has intrinsic value unto itself; therefore, its impurity remains outside the vessel. The Kotzker understands and explains this through the lens and rules for kashering/making kosher different types of pots. I wonder, which are we? Metal vessels, significant in their very existence, able to withstand tarnish without changing their core value(s)? Or are we earthenware vessels who become who we are because of what we carry within?
It's up to us to decide who and how we want to be in the world. What we hold inside, what we carry in our hearts makes a difference. Bias and hatred contaminate us. This is why the only way to purify earthenware vessels is through breaking them. I always thought this odd because a pile of shards cannot hold a cup of coffee. But now I understand because love is like oxygen. It energizes us from the inside out, filling up the vessel and drowning out hate. Maybe the answer is to let our hearts shatter into a million pieces and trust that with intention and training we can become the holy souls we were placed here to be, and stand up for one another from the inside out.
Shabbat Shalom rg
Congregation Habonim 103 West End Ave New York, NY 10023
