When Confusion Is a Sin

I planned this message before the Orlando shootings occurred.  They occurred the day before I delivered the message and proved tragically relevant to the theme.  I referred to the shootings briefly in the moment and I'm including a paragraph which I subsequently added (along with the photo) to reflect what I said.  

We’re months away from the high holidays but I want to start with a reference to Yom Kippur.  On Yom Kippur we confess to a whole bunch of sins – most of them make complete sense.  One in particular, I always found curious. 

על חטא שחטאנו לפניך בתמהון לבב Al het shehatanu lefanekha b’tim’hon levav.  We confess for the sin which we committed through confusion of mind.

What’s so wrong with being confused? 

God knows, there are many situations that are legitimately confusing, where we are considering competing needs, or weighing competing values.  In such situations we may do well to admit to some confusion, even ambivalence.

But there are situations that are so clear that a response of confusion of mind, tim’hon levav, is a sin.  Situations where anything other than a clear, unequivocal response is a travesty.

I’m going to discuss some unpleasant but important topics this morning that illustrate the sin of tim’hon levav with reference to Shavuot and these upcoming moments of Yizkor.

In January of 2015 at Stanford University a male student raped a young woman behind a dumpster while she was unconscious.  She was rescued when two other male students drove by on bicycles, saw what was going on, and as the young man tried to get away, tackled him, giving time for law enforcement officials to arrive. 

The rapist, then a Stanford freshman, claimed at the trial that there was consent, that the relationship with this woman evolved over the course of the evening.

His father wrote the following letter to the judge, following the conviction, in order to convince the judge to be lenient with the sentencing.

"As it stands now, Brock’s life has been deeply altered forever by the events of Jan 17th and 18th. He will never be his happy go lucky self with that easy going personality and welcoming smile. His every waking minute is consumed with worry, anxiety, fear, and depression. You can see this in his face, the way he walks, his weakened voice, his lack of appetite. Brock always enjoyed certain types of food and is a very good cook himself. [Brock's father goes on to describe how his son always enjoyed a good steak.] Now he barely consumes any food and eats only to exist. These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways. His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.

"Brock can do so many positive things as a contributor to society and is totally committed to educating other college age students about the dangers of alcohol consumption and sexual promiscuity."

Brock’s father’s letter is nauseating on many levels.  Perhaps he himself is confused about the boundaries, or perhaps he is pretending to be confused.  But there’s no place for confusion here, real or feigned. 

Brock’s crime wasn’t alcohol consumption or promiscuity.  It was raping another human being. 

I worry that we have not made clear, especially to our sons, that women are not objects to be conquered and that the moment that you force yourself on someone else you have crossed a clear line. 

I worry that in the acknowledgment of the realities of the party scene that occurs on college campuses and elsewhere, which often includes drinking and hook-ups, we have not made sufficiently clear, especially to our sons, that there is no excuse – EVER – for forcing yourself on someone and if you have any shade of doubt as to whether you are doing so, if you have any shade of doubt as to whether the other person is consenting, then don’t do it. Now – of course, that clear, unequivocal message ought to be delivered in the context of these young men growing up watching men treat women as human beings.

Young men are not wild animals. They are human beings who make choices. When the choices they make are criminal, choices that damage another human being, they need to be held fully accountable.  The same night that one young man chose to rape a woman, two other young men chose to tackle him and to bear witness to what actually transpired.  Young men are not wild animals; they are human beings who make choices.  The choices they make will reflect the interplay between their innate natures and the clarity with which they are nurtured.

No tim’hon levav is allowed here, no confusion of mind – not as an excuse, not as a call for consideration – no confusion of mind when things are clear and so much is at stake.

On the holiday of Shavuot we celebrate God’s revelation to Israel at Sinai.  We pride ourselves on appreciating the 70 faces of the Torah, the subtleties of rabbinic discourse, the value of מחלוקת לשם שמים makhloket l’shem shamayim, debate for the sake of heaven.

But sometimes we try to argue ourselves into and out of situations in ways that just aren’t ok. 

The anniversary of King David’s death, his yahrzeit or Sal, as it is known in Persian tradition, is associated with the holiday of Shavuot.  Some classical rabbis tried to excuse King David from sleeping with his commander Yoav’s wife, Batsheva, and arranging for Yoav to be killed.  They said that Yoav had arranged a conditional divorce before going off to battle, in case he would be killed, so that somehow Batsheva was retroactively available.  The Me’am Lo’ez, an 18^th century commentator, wrote,  מכל מקום מגונה הדבר mikol makom meguneh hadavar – no matter what, the actions of King David are reprehensible.

No place for confusion – real or feigned – when things are clear.

The Middle East is a roiling, complicated mess.  But one thing has to be made clear, again and again – killing innocent people is wrong.  Wrong no matter the religion of the murderer or the victim.  While many Palestinians were nauseatingly celebrating the murder of 4 Israelis in Tel Aviv, there were also Palestinians who posted pictures of themselves with the words “Not in my name” written on their foreheads and those who called the Israeli Jews they know in Tel Aviv to see if they were OK.  There are those of all faiths and backgrounds who understand that murdering innocent people is wrong and those that do not.

There is no room for support or even equivocation when it comes to the killing of innocent people.  No excuses permitted.  None. 

(I then spoke about the Orlando shootings extemporaneously.  The following paragraph gives a sense of what I said and I'll be speaking more about it in the near future.)

49 innocent people were murdered yesterday in a gay bar in Orlando and many more were injured.  The murderer claimed a connection to ISIS. There is no justification for murdering innocent people.  No confusion permissible when it comes to the infinite value of people's lives, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender or ethnicity or race or religion.

The front page of Friday’s NY Times featured an article about punctuation.  The article pointed out that the period, the full-stop, is gradually being used less and less, especially in electronic communication.  The slam poet and former English teacher Taylor Mali did a funny, yet resonant performance on how young people tend to end their sentences with an uncertain intonation, as though asking for permission rather than making a statement.

Our tradition recognizes the value of the full stop as in לא תרצח Lo tirzah.  Don’t murder.  Full stop.  And there are others.

We cannot allow confusion or fear or anxiety or bitterness to erode the full stops that are called for. 

In a few moments we’re going to offer prayers in memory of loved ones who have died.  We will ask God to remember the worthy and righteous deeds they performed.

I ask us to consider all the times that our loved ones delivered clear messages to us about what’s right and what’s wrong through word and deed, messages that ended in a full stop.  Even if it took time for those messages to sink in.

I ask us to consider the legacy of clarity that we were each given - the clear message about what's right and what's wrong that our loved ones gave us during their lifetimes.

And I ask us to ask ourselves the following question:  Are we being clear enough with our loved ones in those areas that demand clarity?  As long as we live, there is still time for us to ask ourselves that question, to answer honestly, and to correct course as needed.

And then God-willing in a few months, on Yom Kippur, when we get to the line about “confusion of mind,” we can ask ourselves how well we’re done.  Hopefully the answer will be:  We've been clear about matters that are clear.  Full stop.  

Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck on the Second Day of Shavuot before Yizkor, June 13, 2016