Posted on May 1, 2026 by Rabbi Noah Diamondstein
Dear friends,
In our parashah this week, we hear the narrative of the Blasphemer who provokes a fight and ultimately curses God’s name. His name is not given, but his lineage is: “his mother’s name was Shlomit, daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan.” (Lev. 24:11) This lineage is a curious one, and his mother’s Hebrew name almost implies the opposite of the idea of Blasphemy–Shlomit Bat Dibri means something akin to “The daughter of my speech is peace.”
Hearing a story in which the main character is nameless, but in which we do learn his specific family and tribal lineage, may strike the reader as strange. Rashi, the most famous and widely cited biblical commentator, commented on this verse saying: “The wicked bring shame on themselves, their parents, and on their tribe. Similarly, the righteous earn praise for themselves, praise for their parents, and for their tribe.” To quote Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, “…our deeds implicate those who love us and those who are connected to us through family or through culture. We may think we act alone, but we touch more lives than we know, and our deeds have the power to taint or adorn the lives of those who love us.” (The Bedside Torah, p. 204)
When we make confession on Yom Kippur, we do so as a collective using the first person plural–”Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu, Dibarnu dofi…” We acknowledge that we ourselves have not committed every sin in the alef-bet, but that some in our community have and that there are implications on us all. We Jews cannot look away when other Jews or indeed the world’s only Jewish State commits injustice. It is our responsibility to expect that Jewish people among us, Jewish institutions, and the State of Israel reflect the highest standards of Jewish morality, and hold them accountable when they do not.
This week a Jewish extremist terrorist attacked a French nun outside the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; the innocent woman almost died, and likely would have if not for the intervention of another brave Jewish man who fought the assailant. Israeli police have released footage in hopes of bringing the attacker in. Attacks like these by Jews against non-Jews, both in Israel proper and in the Palestinian territories, have become more and more common of late–a rash of violence that gives Jews the world over a bad name. When we sink down to the morality and behaviors of those who we have long cast as our enemies, we belittle ourselves and our entire community. In its way, doing so is an act of blasphemy, a puncturing of a hole in the name of God. Let us join in demanding justice for innocent victims and an end to Jewish violence against the innocent in our holy land.
May we not wake up on Sunday morning to yet another week of headlines that bring us all down, and may this be a peaceful Shabbat,
Rabbi Noah Diamondstein