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Shabbat shalom. I'm not sure about the starfish story. You know the one I'm talking about? You've probably heard it, but I'll retell it. The story goes like this: After a storm, an old man sees a beach filled with stranded starfish. And he sees a young boy picking up the starfish one by one and gently throwing them back into the ocean. And the old man, seeing how many starfish there are and the pace at which the boy is working, says, Little boy, what are you doing? There are so many starfish, and you're only one person you can't possibly expect to make a difference. And the boy holding one starfish places it into the water and says, I made a difference to that one. That's the story. It's a sweet story about how small acts of kindness add up. And they matter. And that's true. And yet, I've often wondered about that story. Isn't anyone concerned that there was this terrible storm that stranded all these starfish on the beach? Why aren't we preventing storms like this from devastating our ecosystem? And there's still at the end of the story thousands of starfish that don't have help. I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer. It's quite a beautiful story. But there's a sense of futility that the problems that face the world are so great, so massive, and each of us may try to do our part, but we sometimes feel frustrated that even if we helped that one or this one, we can't fix the overwhelmingly complex systems that are broken. Yeah, I can be kind to the person in front of me, and yet how do we actually make an impact that matters if we are trying to fix the world one person at a time? One starfish at a time. Which leads me to Parshat Bihar. It begins with an ambitious economic agenda that is focused at the systemic level. It lays out the process of observing the Shemitah, the sabbatical year, in which God commands farmers in Israel to let the land lie fallow every seventh year. Laborers, the land, and the landlord all take a paid vacation for a full year, and God promises, I'll make sure there's enough. And then after seven years, seven cycles of seven years, 49 years in total of the 50th year, is an even more ambitious and even more radical economic policy. The Yovel, the Jubilee, which is described at the beginning of the Parsha, is a year in which all debts are canceled, all slaves are released, it's an economic reset button to avoid the prospect of intergenerational poverty, wealth is redistributed, the playing field is leveled. This is the vision that the Torah wants us to internalize as what it would mean for the people of Israel to lay out their economic plan for the land of Israel. It's one in which there's not even the prospect of poverty, where everyone will be cared for. One in which the land and humanity live in harmony with one another, and everyone lives with respect and dignity, and everyone has enough. And then the parsha continues. And it says if people fall into poverty, here's how you treat them. Help them if they need help. Don't make them slaves forever. And you sort of have this whiplash. Wait a second. The parsha began with setting out a system where these kinds of economic problems would never happen. And then it's saying, well, here's what to do if these economic problems do happen. And I think the Torah is saying, this is the ideal. We want there never to be poverty, but we know that people make mistakes, people don't follow the rules in exactly the way they're laid out. This might not be a practical system for you to abide by. And so what do you do when things go wrong? The Torah says, Vihiyamuk Achika Umata Yado imach, vehekezaktabo, vakai imach. When your brother's hand begins to falter, and his hand buckles under you, strengthen him, take hold of his hand, so that he may live with you. The verse is saying that if someone is falling into economic distress, lift them up, help them out, lend them a hand. As an aside, the Torah doesn't say, Let them learn how to lift themselves up. It places the onus on the person who is on solid ground to help the person who is stumbling. Now, an astute reader would ask the question that I asked before: why are we having these problems if the system was set up to prevent them from happening in the first place? And I think we might also wonder how do the preventative measures work in coordination with the emergency measures? There are lots of different applications to this, not just in economic terms, but you might think about health and wellness. We engage in preventative medicine, but nobody is saying we should get away do away with ERs. There's inevitably going to be people who get sick. One doesn't abrogate the need for the other. Many are familiar with Rambam, with Maimonides' eight levels of charity. It's arranged from the least virtuous to the most virtuous, which are intended to create dignity and independence for the people who they aim to help. The lower levels involve giving reluctantly or in public or less than you're asked to give, while the higher levels emphasize giving generously, anonymously, and in ways that protect a person's dignity. The highest level of charity, as some of you might know, is not giving a man a fish, but teaching him how to fish, allowing that person to be self-sufficient through a job, through a loan, or other support, so they no longer need to rely on others. But I sometimes think when people read Maimonides or they learn these levels, they misunderstand his intention. Just because he says the ideal is to give someone the gift of independence and self-sufficience, he's not saying don't give them charity if they need it. He's not saying that the lower levels are not necessary. He's just saying that in the hierarchy of ways to help, these ways to help are the best, and these ways to help are less than ideal, but still necessary. After all, how many of us are in a position to create a job for every person we meet who needs one? While the ideal may be the latter, it doesn't obviate the need for the former. Which is how Ramban, not to be confused with Rambam, how Nachmanadis understands the last two words of the verse in question. When the Torah says, Vichai achika imach, vechai imach, he shall live with you. Ramban, in a very long and convoluted, that tends to be how Ramban writes, in a long comment on that verse, he says, Don't, I'm paraphrasing here, when push comes to shove, save a life. Don't stand behind an aspirational theory for the future when a person is in distress now. Help them up. This tension, as I said, arises in many different areas of life. Injustice. Is it better to try to behave in a way that treats everyone equally or fairly, or to, or to try and change the laws, the systems that give advantages to some and not to others? In the climate, is it better for me to be mindful about my own consumption or try to create cooperative treaties and agreements that work on systemic levels? I was talking recently with a teacher who recently took a job in the senior administration at her school. And I was asking her, tell me about this change in your career. And she said, You see, I know that now that I'm in the administration, I can affect the lives of more students. I have an impact. But when I was in my classroom, I was the boss. And I got to set up the classroom exactly how I wanted it. And so I could help those fewer students exactly in the way I wanted. This takes me farther away. It's more systemic. I can help more people, but it also takes me away from the things that I loved about teaching, and I ultimately have less control. I think all these tensions are at play in the tension between the beginning and the end of Parshat Bihar. I think the Torah gives us both models, the Jubilee, which is systemic, and poverty relief, which is individual. It gives us preventative models, but also reparative models when things go wrong, because it's teaching us that one without the other is inadequate. If you only focus on the system, you lose sight of people as individuals and the sacred connection that comes when people help each other face to face. But if we only work on helping individuals and not leveling the playing field or addressing systemic inequalities, we wind up helping fewer people overall, or maybe even perpetuating systems of inequality. This, I believe, is a place where a both and approach is necessary rather than either or thinking. So I want to revisit the starfish parable and rewrite the ending. The last line of the traditional version, the one that was handed down to us from Sinai, has the boy saying, Well, I made a difference to that one. Here's two possible endings that I would offer as an alternative. After the boy placed the fish back into the ocean, the old man was so moved by the boy's kindness that he called the new CEO of the company that he built and asked him to consider making an ambitious sustainability pledge. And he decided to run for town council on a platform of rebuilding the sand dunes and addressing the effects of climate change on the local environment so no other starfish would ever rely on the kindness of a boy to survive. Not a great story. But you see where I'm going. Here's the other ending. The boy grew up and he created a foundation called the Starfish Fund. And they now run training seminars on kindness and responsibility for the care of one's community. Their work has addressed a number of critical issues facing this beach community, but the boy still makes time for walks on the beach and caring for God's creation every day. Shabbat shalom.