The Torah On The Blind and the Deaf

Lev 19:14  

You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block in front of the blind.  You shall fear your God.

Telushkin begins by pointing out that cursing the deaf and ‘tripping up’ the blind is easy - the victim does not know who perpetrated the action.  BUT GOD WILL KNOW - and that is why you must fear (or stand in awe of) your God.

What caught my attention in his discussion was not the literal importance of this commandment - clearly it is cruel to perpetrate these actions, but the implication that by legislating AGAINST them, many people were guilty of doing them.  Why, Telushkin asks, would you make an injunction against an action that didn’t occur.

For me, this casts the 10 Commandments in a new light.  People don’t respect God, the Sabbath or their parents, they create graven images to which they bow down, they lie, they murder, they covet, they commit adultery.  Tin other word, the community 3,000 years ago was no different than the community today.

It is STILL difficult to act in a just and righteous way.  WHY?  Because it is so much easier NOT to.  What’s a little cheat, here and there?  A little gossip?  A little worship of ‘idols’?  Look around - everyone is doing it.  I don’t see too many people being punished (well, maybe the weak, the blind and the deaf)  But hey - it’s not me!

And that is precisely the point that I keep seeing.  It’s not me.  It’s the other.  And as long as I consider the other to be the other, then - it’s not me.  It’s not US.  It’s them.  What will it take to make the world a world of us?  Are we close to some unspeakable horror (as if there haven’t been enough already, too many to count) that will finally get everyone’s attention?  War in Gaza?  Ebola?  Climate change?  Syrian civil war?  Shooting down of Malaysian flight over Ukraine?  Incursion into the Ukraine?  ISIS?  ‘Shootings in Chicago?  How many more that I can’t name off the top of my head.

What will it take?  What will it take?

Lev 19:14  

You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block in front of the blind.  You shall fear your God.

Telushkin begins by pointing out that cursing the deaf and ‘tripping up’ the blind is easy - the victim does not know who perpetrated the action.  BUT GOD WILL KNOW - and that is why you must fear (or stand in awe of) your God.

What caught my attention in his discussion was not the literal importance of this commandment - clearly it is cruel to perpetrate these actions, but the implication that by legislating AGAINST them, many people were guilty of doing them.  Why, Telushkin asks, would you make an injunction against an action that didn’t occur.

For me, this casts the 10 Commandments in a new light.  People don’t respect God, the Sabbath or their parents, they create graven images to which they bow down, they lie, they murder, they covet, they commit adultery.  Tin other word, the community 3,000 years ago was no different than the community today.

It is STILL difficult to act in a just and righteous way.  WHY?  Because it is so much easier NOT to.  What’s a little cheat, here and there?  A little gossip?  A little worship of ‘idols’?  Look around - everyone is doing it.  I don’t see too many people being punished (well, maybe the weak, the blind and the deaf)  But hey - it’s not me!

And that is precisely the point that I keep seeing.  It’s not me.  It’s the other.  And as long as I consider the other to be the other, then - it’s not me.  It’s not US.  It’s them.  What will it take to make the world a world of us?  Are we close to some unspeakable horror (as if there haven’t been enough already, too many to count) that will finally get everyone’s attention?  War in Gaza?  Ebola?  Climate change?  Syrian civil war?  Shooting down of Malaysian flight over Ukraine?  Incursion into the Ukraine?  ISIS?  ‘Shootings in Chicago?  How many more that I can’t name off the top of my head.

What will it take?  What will it take?