Like most of the Australian Jewish community, I was horrified by the overt and unashamed acts of antisemitism that we witnessed this week at the local pre-poling station. Seeing the antisemitic tropes and dehumanisation of Jews on our streets, reminisce of the caricatures featured in the propaganda in Nazi Germany, I was deeply disturbed.
The fact that average Australian community members sat by and watched, followed by the deafening silence of our leadership, raised so many questions about where our country is going and the future that we have here as Jews. It was very unsettling and to some degree, traumatising.
The Baal Shem Tov taught that we are supposed to learn something positive in the service of Hashem from everything that we see and experience. The Alter Rebbe added that we are supposed to “live with the times”, a reference to living with the weekly Parsha and seeing the world through its lens.
I’ve been racking my brains, thinking what could possibly be the positive message in this disturbing reality, and how can we see it in Parshas Tazria and Metzora.
Tazria and Metzora speak about Tzaraas. The Pesukim refer to the spots of Tzaraas as נגע, a blemish or affliction. Antisemitism of the likes that we witnessed, are certainly an impure blemish. They are a blight on our society, an ugly stain on the beautiful country that we call home.
But the Baal Shem Tov’s directive is to find positivity, inspiration and lessons of hope.
The Chassidic masters observe that when rearranged, the same letters that spell נגע, also spell ענג, meaning pleasure or delight. The Sefer Yetzira teaches that there is nothing more sublime than ענג and nothing more lowly than נגע.
There is a profound message in the fact that these two words, with completely polar meanings, share the same letters.
The difference between these two words is the placement of the letter ע. Ayin means an eye, referring to our perspective. The difference between seeing and experiencing ענג or נגע, between experiencing the lofty or the lowly, is in our control. It depends entirely on how we choose to perceive things and what we choose to see.
