The Promise of the Land & Akharei Mot

I took a much needed break from writing last week.

But I was on a journey through Passover.

In the end, nothing really turned out the way I expected on our two seder nights, or the way it’s been in the past. I really wanted to get Rabbi Ellen Bernstein’s Passover Haggadah, The Promise of the Land, but I didn’t get to it in time.

I know this haggadah focuses our care of the land, which couldn’t be more apt for our time.

Then, this week I heard a recent episode of The Experiment that asks the question, “Should We Return National Parks to Native Americans?”

Did you know that our national parks were created by forcing native people off their land—that these lands were not the pristine lands we were taught they were?

Or that we were taught to believe that “pristine” meant only animals living on them, not the “savage Indians.”

Did you know that these “pristine” lands look the way they do because they were actually consciously shaped by the generations of people who lived there before Europeans came along?

And that Teddy Roosevelt, who is known for his love of the land and creation of the National Parks system, hated Native Americans?

David Treuer, of the Ojibwe people, thinks the National Parks should be returned to Native people.

As Jews, we focus so much on the promise of the land that God gave us, and we think so much about “returning to the land.”

It seems to me that everyone has a right to their land, though who it belonged to first and who it belongs to now gets very complicated.

And then there are people who say that of the 500+ recognized tribes in the U.S., they would never agree on anything because of the history of animosity between them, so why bother? It’s in the past. Let’s move on.

This week’s Torah reading, Akharei Mot (After the Death), returns us to the story of the death of Aaron’s sons—or rather moves on from it.

I am always struck by how quickly the story moves on from these painful deaths.

Yet, God still seems angry, telling Aaron through Moses, “Don’t come too close (like your sons did), lest you die (like your sons did).”

God hasn’t moved on. And God gets angry enough about Aaron’s sons not following his commandments.

Maybe God is really angry at us right now for not taking care of the Earth the way we should, and we just don’t hear it? Do we pass over the problematic American history we have the, the way God passed over our houses in Egypt?

David Treuer says, look at our U.S. government! It’s full of white people who have so much animosity between them, yet they work together; “Have the big idea, and work out the details later.”

What are the big ideas we all have, about our country, our world, that we doubt we can work out?

Do we move on, put it all in the past? Say, “it is what it is” and let go?

Or do we hold on to some of our anger, like God seems to, and our memory of the painful past, for the sake of telling the truth? For the sake of creating a new kind of world? Do we try to make amends for our history and the ugly way our country was created?

I think it’s worth speaking the truth and trying to make amends for our mistakes—past and present—for the promise of the land.