Here’s the brief d’var Torah which Rabbi Rachel offered at CBI yesterday morning. (Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)
In this week’s Torah portion we receive a wealth of ethical commandments.
For instance: When an ox gores someone to death, kill the ox, but don’t punish its owner. But, if the ox has been in the habit of goring, and its owner knows that but fails to guard it, and it gores someone to death — then punish its owner, because the person who had responsibility failed to act.
I’ve read this verse many times before. But this year I couldn’t help reading it through the lens of the news story I’ve been following this week.
This week in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a man entered the apartment of two neighbors and shot the couple and the woman’s younger sister in the head, execution-style. He later turned himself in and claimed that he killed them over a parking dispute.
The three young people who were murdered were Deah Shaddy Barakat, Yusor Mohammad, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, aged 23, 21, and 19.Deah and Yusor were newlyweds, married in December. They were dentistry students who donated their dental expertise to the local homeless community, taught kids about dental hygiene at the local library in their spare time, and raised money and dental supplies to take to Turkey so they could help Syrian regufees. Razan was a college kid, a student of architecture and environmental design. All three of them were pillars of their community. Deah, Yusor, and Razan were Muslim.
This act would be atrocious no matter who the victims were. But it is extra-heartbreaking to me because they were so young, and so idealistic, and so full of life.
The man who killed them was a known anti-theist — not merely an atheist, but someone who loathed religion. He had posted nasty anti-Muslim language on Facebook. He had harassed these victims before. The young married woman had told her father, “He hates us because of who we are.”
What he did was beastly. And when I read the verses about the ox who gores someone to death, I think of this man who killed three innocent souls for reasons I cannot begin to fathom.
And then I wonder: who is responsible for the behavior of the ox? In the Torah, the answer is clear: its owner, if that owner had any suspicion that the ox would behave in such a way.
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If you’d like to read some commentaries on this week’s Torah portion, some links follow:
