Rabbi's Blog

“I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe.”  I hear Yaakov crying out these words as he wrestles all night long with an angel that may be his own conscience, suffocating him to examine his integrity and take responsibility, standing tall in his world with authenticity and pride.  A voice echoed in all of us as we struggle to make sense of a broken world and stand up to play our part in its redemption.

“I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe.” I hear in the anguished cry of Dina, Leah and Jacob’s daughter as she is taken by force and sexually violated in a field.  Dina’s breathless cry is on behalf of all women who are victims of sexual and other gender-based violence around the world; from countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where rape is a systematic weapon of a horrible war, to assault and rape of women on college campuses.  “I can’t breathe.”

“I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe.  I hear the blood curdling cry of the men of Shchem, three days after their voluntary circumcision so they could intermingle with the Tribes of Israel, brutally murdered by Shimon and Levi in a violent revenge killing spree for the disgrace to their sister Dina’s honor.  This “I can’t breathe” is echoed in all the disempowered voices of the victims of brutal collective punishments, perpetrated in rage and creating only more bitterness and enmity. How much longer will the world choose retribution over reconciliation, violence over friendship?

“I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe,” sobs Yaakov once more in his humiliation and disbelief as he realizes what has been done in his name and by his own flesh and blood.  His “I can’t breathe” of awareness of his own complicity perhaps in the barbarism and penetrating in the hearts of all of us as we wonder how we too might be complicit in revenge that breeds violence and hatred.

“I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe.”  Most of all we hear the pathetic last words of Eric Garner, a 37 year old African American male, now senselessly dead leaving behind a widow and six children who will never again feel their father’s breath.  His crime wasn’t trying to sell loose cigarettes on a street corner to feed his family, his crime was being black in a nation where, in spite of having a black man in the White House, black men are still 20 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than their white neighbors.  “I can’t breathe,” chants an exasperated nation as a grand jury fails to indict the police officer who squeezed those last breaths out of Eric Garner.

Nishmat Adam – the breath of humanity is breathed into the nostrils of the first human being by God in the Garden of Eden, and it is that breath that gives us life, dignity, inspiration and aspiration in the world.  Every person is created in the image of the Divine with that neshama, soul-breath life force animating every individual.

On December 10^th, 1948, a Jewish lawyer called Renee Cassin co-drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, seeing it as an extension of the Ten Commandments.  This Shabbat is designated as Human Rights Shabbat, as the anniversary approaches.  The second clause in the preamble of that document begins: “Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.”  Our world is reeling from such barbarous acts, violations of human rights.  Article 24 states: “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.”  This is Shabbat, where our resting bodies are able to breathe more deeply, restoring our dignity with that nishmat chayim, the breath of life.  As we, in our privilege and freedom, take those soul breaths of Shabbat and enjoy our rest, we have an obligation to consider those who can’t breathe, whose human rights are choked out of them, whose dignity is violated.  So many people in our world have no respite, no rest from tortured lives.

I can breathe, and each breath reminds me of my deep blessings and privileges and obligations to those who can’t.  The appalling tragedy and travesty of Eric Garner wakes us up to our own humanity that demands that we protect that of others, and that we do what we can to restore justice and dignity to our world, so that all can breathe deep breaths of life, as we wrestle with the angels and demons of our own conscience.