Not a Laughing Matter: VaYikra

I just finished reading comedian Trevor Noah’s book, Born a Crime. 

From the first page, you’re waiting to hear whether and how his mother survived a gunshot to the back of her head by his stepfather, and you don’t find out until the last page (spoiler alert: I’m going to tell you, but the book is still really good). 

Even though this is a story of Trevor’s life growing up in South Africa and the intricacies of Apartheid from his own experiences, his mother is central to his life and his book. 

Through the systemic racism, poverty, years of hunger and physical and emotional abuse by a husband she can’t get away from because the police are complicit, his mother insists that Jesus is all she needs. 

This is a woman who drags Trevor to church every Sunday---correction: churches--three, to be exact; “the White Church, the Black Church, and the Mixed Church,” for the different experiences and needs they fulfill in her. 

Her story of survival is one of those crazy ones of a woman pinned to the ground, a gun pointed at her head, a gun so powerful and reliable it never backfires, yet it spits the bullets out the back, one after another, giving her time to get up and run for her life with her son (not Trevor).

She runs to her car and, once in the driver’s seat, her husband shoots again, this time hitting her in the back of her head through the rear window.

The bullet goes clear through her head, she collapses, and blood is strewn everywhere.

Her son climbs into the driver’s seat and gets her to the hospital.

Trevor, now a grown man making a living as a comedian in South Africa, gets a phone call from his brother, races to the hospital, finds his mother alive but bleeding profusely, and learns that she had canceled her health insurance (“because it’s a scam!”).

He is faced with a decision about giving his credit card to the nurse and getting into debt for the rest of his life, or letting her die, which she probably will anyway. She is expected to be in the ICU for weeks if she survives (he gives the nurse the credit card).

But it turns out that the bullet through her head does one of those ricochet things where it just barely misses her skull, her spinal cord, and her brain, any major arteries, and her eye, making a hole through the side of her nose instead, and leaving all else intact.

The only thing the doctors have to do is stop the bleeding, and she’s miraculously awake in a few hours and out of the hospital in a few days. 

When she wakes up, she jokes that Trevor is now officially the most good-looking person in the family. 

And when Trevor chides her for having canceled her health insurance, she says, “But I have insurance, Trevor. I have Jesus. And God has blessed me with a son who could pay my bill.”

Talk about complete faith!

The Torah portion this week, as we begin the Book of Leviticus, Vayikra, starts with God calling out to Moses, letting him know there is more work to be done; after the Exodus, now “free,” the Israelites need to learn what it means to know God, to get close to God. 

The way they will do this is through animal and grain sacrifices, prepared in a special way and burnt on an altar, by way of the priests, the kohanim. 

The “sacrifice” is not actually called a sacrifice in Hebrew, but rather, a “Korban,” a coming near, or an approaching of God. 

In other words, God is calling out to Moses and the people, and instructing them on how to approach God: how to come close.

Over and over, the parsha’s description of how to properly make an animal offering includes taking the blood of the animal and dashing it all around the sides of the altar.

It also includes a repeated commandment to make the offering a “re’ach nichoach,” or a pleasing odor.

One type of offering is of shalom, peace, also translated as wholeness. 

Trevor Noah’s mother has learned this lesson already, of how to approach, or get close to God and how to believe with the wholeness of her being. And despite the blood, her own blood, that is dashed around her car, she carries peace: a peace that comes from deep faith. 

She believes wholly that despite human imperfection, misbehavior, abuse and tragedy, God is there for her. She knows that believing and praying doesn’t necessarily mean that God can prevent humans from being hurt or from hurting each other, but she uses her deep belief, and the Bible, as her guide to living a truthful and honest life. 

Her “pleasing odor” for God are her constant prayers. 

I don’t know about you, but I look to people like her, who have suffered greatly and seen and experienced terrible human tragedy, yet manage to maintain a sense of well-being and wholeness, not to mention humor, never giving up on themselves or humanity.

Such deep faith in God translates into a deep faith in humanity and the possibility of redemption, if only we keep working at it, despite, or perhaps because of, the blood we keep spilling.