Shabbat Sermon: Love and Complexity with Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz

From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Last Sunday evening Shira and I were in Lakewood, New Jersey for a wedding. Lakewood is the capital of the charedi, or ultra-Orthodox, world in America. Lakewood boasts a world-famous charedi yeshiva called Beth Medrash Govoha which is the second largest yeshiva in the world, second only to the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. The wedding was charedi. Men and women sat separately during the wedding. Men and women danced separately after the wedding. There was a thick wall separating the men and women dancing. And a strong majority of the men wore black hats. It was the first black hat wedding we had ever attended.

Being at this wedding called to mind, for me, a famous story about Dr. Paul Farmer in Tracy Kidder’s biography called Mountains Beyond Mountains. Paul Farmer would go to impoverished third world nations and provide modern health care to people who otherwise did not have access to modern medicine. One day Paul Farmer is in Haiti where there had been a tuberculosis outbreak. Many locals believed that tuberculosis is caused by sorcery, by an enemy casting a spell upon them, the response to which was to ask a Voodoo priest to cast a curse upon your enemy in retaliation for causing your illness. Paul Farmer tries to make the case that tuberculosis is a disease caused by germs, not an illness caused by curses; and that the most helpful response is antibiotics, not mobilizing a Voodoo priest to cast a counter curse. Paul Farmer meets a woman afflicted by tuberculosis who is persuaded to take medication. She recovers. Afterwards she tells Paul Farmer, “I know TB is caused by germs.” And she also says I know which enemy cursed me so I asked my Voodoo priest to get revenge. Paul Farmer responded, if you believe it was an enemy that cast a curse upon you, why then did you take the antibiotics? To which this Haitian woman responded: “Honey, are you incapable of complexity?"