Rabbi's Sermon 1st Mar 2025 / 1 Tevet 5785

JUSTICE WE DEMAND

JUSTICE WE DEMAND

There is a passage from the Book of Proverbs that is often included in Jewish funerals' liturgy: צְדָקָה, תַּצִּיל מִמָּוֶת" It is usually translated as "Charity delivers from death" [prov 10:2].

What does it mean? There is a plain reading of the verse: by giving charity in memory of our beloved, when they are not with us anymore, we overcome their death. Their memory remains with us because we associate their name with a donation. For example, we see their name inscribed on a school plaque or some items (like the Torah mantle or other paraphernalia).

But when you think of the Hebrew word, usually translated as "charity", tzedaka, you find something deeper at play here.

Because, you know, "charity" is not the proper translation of the word tzedaka, and וּצְדָקָה, תַּצִּיל מִמָּוֶת" may mean something else, besides being the standard invitation to donate to shul to honour someone's memory.

Tzedaka has the same root as Tzad, which means "Side."

Rather than "giving charity," tzedaka more appropriately means "taking a side, taking the right side, taking the proper side."

Therefore, the correct translation of tzedaka is more likely to be "justice" than "charity."

The passage from the Book of Proverbs which I am talking about is possibly more translated correctly in this way: Justice delivers from death.

Justice delivers from death.

It is a powerful statement, but -I reckon- it may sound even more problematic than the incorrect charity-based translation.

How can we say that justice delivers from death? What exactly does it mean?

To answer such a question, look no further than yourself.

I mean ourselves today.

There are many feelings in this room as we all think of Tsachi, and we are all in a state of shock, anger and grief.

The whole story screams "injustice!"

We have prayed for his liberation every week - more, every day! since that terrible October 7th. Is it just, is it right that he has been murdered?

During these months, the family to which we are so close have passed through unthinkable pain and torment.

Hamas has played games, cruel games, filtering news, informing that he was dead, then that he was alive, then (the sadism of this...) that the Israeli had killed him.

In communicating with the family, Hamas transgressed rules that they had set. This is the definition of injustice!

This is what has been done to us!

Because in their eyes, we Jews, we dhimmi, must be treated in this way; justice does not apply to us.

"Injustice!" That Tsachi's daughter Maayan was murdered beside him and in front of the rest of the family and that he was brutally abducted from his home after.#

"Injustice!" the twisted reasoning in the media: "Israel exchanges hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for one hostage because Jews are supremacists and racists, and to them, the life of one single Jew is worth those of a hundred Palestinians."

And I can go on.

Many things have been said about "the prophetic", often questionable, as if "prophetic Judaism" was somehow in opposition to "normative Judaism"

The image of a spoiled kid stomping their feet and whining "It's unfair!" when it's time to go to school, inevitably comes to mind).

Still, the fact is that Judaism is the only religion that has produced not some prayer, not some passages of a holy book, but an entire corpus, and entire literature, that embodies the claim for justice: the prophetic literature that we read after the Torah, during the Haftara.

Judaism's demand for justice is a salient trait.

We Jews have screamed against injustice for more than 2,000 years. Judaism demands that we stand against injustice.

That's the reason why we have been praying at the Memorial in Palmeira Square every evening for the last 14 months.

Actually, we built the memorial because of our sense of justice, because we saw all around us the Jewish State being slandered as genocidal, and the media talking only of the Palestinian victims, taking for granted Hamas propaganda and selling it as hard truth. But it was and it is propaganda, as it has been eventually exposed on these days, and the BBC has paid for it with your money, by the way.

We have honoured the victims of the most enormous pogrom after 1945 because of our sense of justice. And we thought the world knew that the worst injustice in the world is the pogroms!

We have been reminding, and we will continue to remind the public opinion in this city of the injustice that Israelis endure at the hands of Hamas

And by the hand of too many "neutral" institutions that are not neutral

Even if they claim with words to be neutral, their actions -what they do and what they do not do- show the opposite: they choose a side, and it is not the side of justice: yes, I am talking about the Red Cross.

And we will continue to demand justice, justice for the victims of Muslim terror, justice for the hostages kept in chains in Gaza and for their families, justice, justice we demand.

Because we are Jews; and because justice is stronger than death.

Rabbi Dr. Andrea Zanardo, PhD