SERMON    Parashat Behar   Leviticus 25:1 – 26:2  16 Iyar 5784  

May 24, 2024

Rabbi David Edleson   

Temple Sinai   South Burlington, Vermont

 

DROR YIKRA

Forty-seven years ago, almost to the day, I was called to the Torah for my bar mitzvah on this week’s Torah portion, Behar.   I can still recite most of it by heart, which is very odd considering I can remember very few details from high school.   Tim, with whom I went to high school, remembers all our classmates and drama, and while the names sound familiar, it is all a fuzzy blur to me.   I do remember most of the poem Ulysses  by Alfred Lord Tennyson that I had to memorize for a class, and I remember my Torah portion. 

I was not 13.  I was 16 years old.  My family didn’t push us to have bat or bar mitzvahs, in part because we were Reform and Confirmation had replaced b’nei mitzvah in my father’s generation, and in part, because the nearest synagogue to us was over an hour, my father travelled for a living and my mother hated  driving.

I didn’t even think about it much because I was very busy in band and school, and became drum major for my sophomore year. 

As many of you know, at the end of that same year at Chattooga High School, located in the heart of Marjorie Taylor Greene country, the band parents had a secret meeting and voted that they did not “want a Jew leading the band down Main Street” and so I was removed.  There was a lot of drama, and meetings with ADL lawyers, but my main reaction was that if antisemitism was going to affect my life so profoundly,  I needed to learn more about Judaism.   By then, I had my driver’s license and could drive myself that hour to Rodef Shalom in Rome, Georgia where I met with the student rabbi and started studying for my bar mitzvah. 

I lucked out in terms of my portion, Behar.  I don’t want to give away much since Ophelia will be giving her d’var on it tomorrow, but it is an important section of Torah where the idea of the shnat yovel, or the Jubilee Year is described.  It is a somewhat radical economic document which requires the entire country take a year off every 50 years and land would go back to original owners.   I can no longer find my d’var, but I distinctly remember it was a very lefty socialist take on private ownership of property.  My socialist mother was thrilled.  My father was not.   Several people in the congregation told me I should become a rabbi, and here I am.   Having a bar mitzvah changed my life, and still stands a one of the major milestones and markers of moments when life takes a new direction.

One of the key lines in the portion, one I know Ophelia is not talking about reads:

וּקְרָאתֶ֥ם דְּר֛וֹר בָּאָ֖רֶץ לְכׇל־יֹשְׁבֶ֑יהָ

Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof.

This is the famous verse that is on the Liberty Bell.  

It is also the basis of a famous Jewish zimmer, or Shabbat song Dror Yikra that connects this sense of “liberty” with Shabbat and the luxury of a day of rest.   The first verse reads:

God will proclaim liberty for both sons and daughters, and will keep you as a cherished vision.  Your name is good and will not cease, so sit and rest on the Sabbath day.

Dror Yikra is also an excellent example of the beauty and complexity of the Jewish world.  It was written in 960 CE in Córdoba, Spain by the poet, linguist, and musician Dunash ben Labrat, who was born in Fez, Morocco, then studied in Baghdad un the famous rabbinic scholar  Saadia Gaon.  He then moved to Cordoba.

His hymn became very popular.  I think it is because it asks God to destroy those who persecute us, while also lifting up Shabbat and the beauty of Jewish tradition.  Very soon it was put to music and became popular in Europe and North Africa. 

But the poem eventually made it to ancient Jewish community of Yemen.  The Jews of Yemen trace their arrival back either to the time of Solomon, or at the latest, to the Babylonian exile in the 6th Century BCE.  They became famous in world trade for their mastery of silversmithing, particularly delicate scroll work.

It is a fascinating community with practices that are unique to them.   For example, they put on tefillin where we spell out the word Shaddai, (a name for God) using a Hebrew Alphabet that dates back to early Biblical times, with the Dalet being more of a triangle, like the Greek Delta.  They also have distinct wool kippot they wear, and Yemenite Hebrew is thought to be the closest to the original pronunciations.  

In Yemen, a community that had suffered through centuries of oppression and abuse by successive Muslim rulers ,   Dror Yikra was given a new tune that quickly became central to the community’s celebration of Shabbat.  

When Israel was created, Yemenite Jews were among the many that were attacked by their neighbors and government and in a secret mission, Israel airlifted 50,000 of them in what is called   ‘Operation Magic Carpet” but was officially known as  “On Wings of Eagles.”   This was the vast majority of Jews living there.  Today, the Yemenite community in Israel numbers around 400,000.

One of the noticeable influences of Yemenite Jews is on Israeli music.  Today there is a very popular singing group of sisters called “Aiwa” but before them, there was Ofra Haza who you might know from singing the song “Chai” at Eurovision in 1983.  She then was famous enough to come out with an album of Yemenite music that came out the year Tim and I first arrive.  We played that cassette into it broke and quickly got the CD.  It is a great album.   One of the songs she made famous was Dror Yikra. 

This combination of Torah, and a poem that made its way across the world and centuries so that we are the inheritors of it is one of the things I love and am most proud of about the Jewish world.  Their story of persecution and rescue to Israel is one of those stories that remind us of why Israel exists, and that seems particularly important these days.

So in honor of this week’s parasha, and of Ophelia’s bat mitzvah, I want to sing Dror Yikra.   The words are in your program.   

DROR YIKRA

דְּרוֹר יִקְרָא לְבֵן עִם בַּת, וְיִנְצָרְכֶם כְּמוֹ בָבַת
נְעִים שִׁמְכֶם וְלֹא יֻשְׁבַּת, שְׁבוּ וְנֽוּחוּ בְּיוֹם שַׁבָּת.

D'ror yikra l'ven im bat, v'yintzorchem k'mo vavat, n'im shimchem v'lo yushbat, sh'vu v'nuchu b'yom shabbat.

God will proclaim liberty for both sons and daughters, and will keep you as a cherished vision.  Your name is good and will not cease, so sit and rest on the Sabbath day.

אֱלֹהִים תֵּן בַּמִּדְבָּר הַר, הֲדַס שִׁטָּה בְּרוֹשׁ תִּדְהָר,
וְלַמַּזְהִיר וְלַנִּזְהָר, שְׁלוֹמִים תֵּן כְּמֵי נָהָר.

Elohim ten b'midbar har, hadas shitah b'rosh tidhar, v'lamazhir v'lanizhar, sh'lomim ten k'mei nahar.

God placed a mountain in the wilderness, and there grew myrtle, acacia, cypress and pine.  To those shed light and those upon whom light is shed,  may you be given peace flowing like a river’s waters.

Shabbat Shalom.