System Failure

The following is an elaboration of my thoughts on Parashat Emor, presented beautifully by my incredible wife, Ruthie Hollander, in her own piece, Parashat Emor, as Debated from the Uber.

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Trigger Warning: This article discusses mental illness and suicide.

Towards the beginning of chapter 24 of Sefer VaYikra, we are presented with a cryptic encounter between two unnamed individuals, only identified by their parents’ tribal affiliations. The first was the son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian man, and the second was the son of two Israelites. For reasons unknown, the two get into an argument and the half-Egyptian man, we are told:

וַ֠יִּקֹּ֠ב בֶּן־הָֽאִשָּׁ֨ה הַיִּשְׂרְאֵלִ֤ית אֶת־הַשֵּׁם֙ וַיְקַלֵּ֔ל
The son of the Israelite woman pronounced the Name in blasphemy (VaYikra 24:11)

The Chizkuni explains this was a form of curse and a profaning of God’s name, and it earns this individual the death penalty. However, I am less interested in this sin itself and more interested in the mystery surrounding it. Readers aren’t given any information about these two men or what they were arguing about beyond their parents’ nationality. Rashi offers the following Midrash as a possible reason for their quarrel:

He sought to pitch his tent in the camp of Dan. They said to him: ‘What leads you to pitch your tent in the camp of Dan?’ He said to them: ‘I am from one of the daughters of Dan.’ They said to him: ‘It is written: “Each man by his banner with the insignias of his patrilineal house” (Numbers 2:2) – and not his matrilineal house.

According to this Midrash, it was a dispute over territory and belonging. The blasphemer, who we later learn was the son of a woman named Shelomit, tried claiming a space among the tribe of Dan, his mother’s tribe. However, his attempts are foiled by another member of the tribe who said that he had no place there because according to Jewish law tribal affiliation is transmitted through the father, not the mother. Since his father wasn’t Jewish, he had no right to a space in the tribe, leaving him homeless and leading to his blasphemy.

This Midrash paints a tragic picture of what lacking a sense of belonging can lead to, but what I find most powerful is how enigmatic the text is. It offers little to no details about why or how this argument transpired, but I wonder if that was intentional. In the midrash’s version of the story, the main character simply wanted — needed — a place to belong when he felt lost and was denied that basic necessity, left destitute by an individual who thought of nothing beyond the surface level legality of the stranger’s claim. But, unfortunately, there are many ways communities and social systems can fail someone in desperate need of something — be it a resource or support system — but couldn’t find that resource and/or someone willing to help them. Perhaps the midrash is only one version of a situation of neglect so many people are the victims of, and the incident that instigated the initial encounter and the blasphemer’s downward spiral is purposefully unidentified to reflect the reality that there is no single instigator for this kind of tragedy. There are endless opportunities for people to fall through the cracks of social safety nets and fall victim to neglect or someone else’s lack of accountability.

The Torah doesn’t introduce the blasphemer with any specifically until he commits the sin of blasphemy and is identified as the son of Shelomit. Reflecting on the Torah’s omission of the main character’s name, the Ohr HaChaim claims that, “The Torah did not bother to be specific and mention his name as it did not make any difference in the end,” but that is precisely the point. It always mattered. It just didn’t matter to anyone else until it was too late and the final sin was committed. Most of us only ever care to scrutinize the outcome of an incident, not the genesis.

Our story in Parashat Emor isn’t one of divine justice for the sins of an individual. It is a tragic tale of communal failure, wherein some unidentified poison was left to fester and the vulnerable party was ignored, only for everyone to turn their attention to the issue when it’s too late. The blasphemer’s action was not the failure of the story, but rather the tragically preventable outcome of the community’s failure.

Unfortunately, this approach to tragedy is how many of us engage with mental health and substance abuse and misuse in our communities and families, only paying closer attention to individuals who have already fallen victim to these conditions, and not taking preventative steps when they need support.

This past week I attended a program hosted by BeWell ATL and the Blue Dove Foundation called “Beyond the Silence,” where members of the Atlanta Jewish community shared stories of hope and loss from their own mental health journeys. One speaker was Benjamin Pargman, father of Manny Pargman, a 19-year-old who had died by suicide. His message was that we need to be talking about and addressing things that make us uncomfortable because failing to do so kept him and others from helping his son. One of his most powerful lines was that the first time he ever thought about suicide among youth was when the coroner called to tell him his son was gone.

We need prevention for mental illness and suicidal ideation just as much as we need treatment. At the program, cards were handed out with links to his website, mannysband.org, a project dedicated to preventing others from meeting the same fate as Manny. Poignantly, the philosophy of Manny’s Band is presented as, “While suicide prevention is widely acknowledged, it’s often seen as ‘someone else’s problem’ — until it hits close to home. Manny’s Band Foundation challenges communities to treat it as everyone’s responsibility through honest conversations and proactive awareness.”

Parshat Emor should be a call to action to reflect on what needs are prevalent in our communities that haven’t been met, and which systems are already in place that are failing. We need to be asking ourselves what we could be doing to prevent disaster, not just how to respond to it.

May Manny’s memory be a blessing.

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PS: If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal ideation, call or share the number for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, 988, to speak with trained specialists and receive life-saving support.