Parshat Ki Tavo contains the tochecha, the Divine rebuke read in Deuteronomy 28; verse after verse of what will befall the people if they abandon the covenant. It is a painful passage in the Torah to read aloud, and tradition in fact has us lower our voices as we chant the words.
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But tucked just past this covenantal scolding is a strange, quiet verse: "Until this day, Gd has not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, or ears to hear" (Deuteronomy 29:3). Rashi and the commentators who follow him seize on the words ad hayom hazeh, "until this day." Read with the lens of hope, the verse isn't only an indictment. It's a promise. The understanding we lack right now is coming. Even in the middle of language of curse, the Torah plants a blessing: the blessing of eventual clarity, of insight, of perspective we didn't have in the depth of darkness and pain.
In my role I often find myself balancing national events with their local impact, and this week I've been thinking a LOT about this verse and Mark Ruffalo’s most recent anti-Semitic rant.
After Ruffalo attacked the Paramount–Warner Brothers’ Discovery merger by branding Larry Ellison an "oligarch" and invoking Oracle's technology ties to the Israeli military, Jewish organizations and Hollywood leaders created a coalition called The Brigade, which stated plainly that Ruffalo’s words traded in anti-Semitic tropes. Ruffalo's response wasn't to reconsider his claims. It was to declare the accusation "appalling and fundamentally dishonest" and insist the Jewish community had simply misread him.
Here is the principle and understood social norm that we have come to take for granted: when a group, especially a minority group, says "you have offended me," we do not typically hand the accused a veto over that claim. When a person of color or mainstream faith group shares that a comment crossed the line, common courtesy doesn’t try to rationalize that it wasn't really racist or hateful because the speaker didn't intend it that way. The naming of the wound belongs to the wounded.
Yet here, when Jewish organizations said, "this is anti-Semitic," Ruffalo did not simply disagree, he told them they were wrong to feel the way they did. That move, "I don't hate Jews, so stop being offended," is not a defense against the charge. It is, in its way, a repetition of the hatefulness: it tells the Jewish community that its own read of its own history and its own pain doesn't count unless the accused signs off on it.
We do not need to win the argument about Ruffalo's heart. That was never our burden. But like the curses of Ki Tavo, this week has handed us something we didn't have last week: clarity about how far "I don't hate you, stop being offended" can be stretched, and confirmation that our voice, when we name what hurts us, does not require anyone else's permission to be true.
That, too, is ad hayom hazeh, insight we didn't have until today, which brings me to matters much closer to home. This week our JCRC director and I sat down with more than 50 local Christian faith leaders at their monthly roundtable; not to argue, but to break bread. These colleagues invited us to build bridges and gave us time to share about a project marking the anniversary of 10-7: 1,200 Israeli flags, each representing a lost life from that tragic day, placed at each participating church for their October 4th Sunday services, ahead of October 7th itself.
Same week, two pictures of who actually stands where. One tells us who feels entitled to define our pain for us. The other shows us who simply asked how to stand beside us. Because we are Stronger Together.
Shabbat Shalom.
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