Pinchas, Paula, and the Perils of Tranparency

Pinchas, Paula, and the Perils of Tranparency

Sermon for Parshat Pinchas 5773

Delivered June 29, 2013 

What do you do when someone you love does something you hate? ... or, someone whose cooking you love does something you hate?

How many of you know who Paula Deen is?

Paula Ann Hiers Deen,is an American celebrity chef, former cooking show host, restaurateur, author, actress, and Emmy Award-winning television personality.

Her parents died before she was 23, and an early marriage ended in divorce. She then focused on cooking for her family as something she could do without leaving her house.  Her grandmother Irene Paul had taught her the hand-me-down art of Southern cooking. She later moved to Savannah, Georgia, with her sons. In 1989, she divorced her husband, Jimmy Deen, to whom she had been married since 1965. She was left with only $200 and money was tight raising both her kids and her younger brother, Earl (“Bubba”). She tried hanging wallpaper, working as a bank teller, and selling real estate and insurance. She then started a catering service, making sandwiches and meals, which her sons Jamie and Bobby delivered.

Deen's home business, The Bag Lady, soon outgrew her kitchen. In January 1996, Deen opened her restaurant, The Lady & Sons, in downtown Savannah. USA Today named The Lady & Sons the "International Meal of the Year" in 1999. The specialty is a buffet of Southern "comfort foods."  In 2008, Deen opened another restaurant, the Paula Deen Buffet, at Harrah's Tunica Casino in Tunica County, Mississippi. In September 2009, Deen announced a new dessert line to be sold at Walmart.

Deen's relationship with Food Network began in 1999, and eventually got her own show, Paula's Home Cooking, which premiered in November 2002.

On June 21, 2013, due to a controversy regarding Deen's admission, during a deposition for a lawsuit, that she had used racial slurs, The Food Network announced they will not renew her contract.

Lisa Jackson, a former employee of restaurants owned by Deen and her brother, Earl "Bubba" Hiers, filed a lawsuit alleging racial and sexual discrimination. In a story initially reported in June 2013, by the National Enquirer, Deen stated in her deposition that she has used the "N-word" at times, saying "Yes, of course. But that's just not a word that we use. I don't -- I don't know. As time has gone on things have changed since the 60's in the south." Deen said she employed the term when telling her husband about an incident “when a black man burst into the bank that I was working at and put a gun to my head. I didn’t feel real favorable towards him”,

Deen also admitted she was sure that she’d used the word since that incident. Deen also described wedding plans for her brother with a "true Southern plantation-style theme". She planned to employ black male servers to represent slaves in the antebellum era, although she denied having used the "N-word" when discussing the wedding waitstaff.

In addition to her dismissal from Food Network, Target Corporation and QVC announced they would no longer carry Paula Deen products, to be followed shortly by Walmart, Sears, and K-Mart.

This dramatic fall from grace, if you will, while so far removed from our non-celebrity lives, holds an important lesson for how responsible people go about performing repentance, or teshuvah as we call it in Jewish parlance, for their transgressions. 

We might borrow some concepts from this season and its accompanying narrative and texts.

As we begin the three traditional weeks of mourning in the Jewish calendar which commemorate the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash (the Temple ) two thousand years ago due, according to the Talmud, to baseless hatred, (sinat chinam), it behooves us to consider how and why we find ourselves in this nadir.

This week’s portion, Pinchas, may offer us some sage advice.  Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron the High priest, lays claim to fame at the end of last week’s portion, Balak: No less than a Jewish prince, a tribal Nasi (Zimri ben Saluh of the tribe of Shimon) one of the great leaders of the Jewish people, is actually cohabitating with a Midianite (idolatrous) princess in public, literally opposite the Mishkan (the tabernacle) and (in shock?) no-one is doing anything about it! Even Moshe and Aaron are (seemingly) so overwhelmed by the audacity of this public desecration that they are simply weeping in front of the tent of meeting.

So Pinchas stands up and puts an end to this public desecration by publicly executing both Zimri, the tribal prince along with Kozbi, the Midianite Princess. And no less than G-d himself (at the beginning of this week’s portion, Pinchas) declares his motives to be pure, his cause just, and guarantees him a ‘covenant of peace’.

Putting aside the many challenges inherent in such a story (and the fact that only G-d can declare such an action, with no judge or jury, to be acceptable) it is fascinating to note that the consequence of such a violent act is the granting of a covenant of peace. Even more interesting is that the Torah takes the time to delineate that Pinchas is the direct descendant of Aaron the High Priest whom we know was given this exalted role because he was the perennial “Ohev Shalom”: a lover and a pursuer of peace.

How can Pinchas, who is depicted as the ultimate zealot, be a descendant of Aaron who loved peace?

Perhaps before we can begin to decide what course of action to pursue when witnessing such public desecration we first have to be sure we still love peace. Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz zatza”l, the great Rosh yeshiva of the Mir, points out (in his sichos mussar ) that before meting out punishment, one must be filled with a sense of love and compassion for the one being punished.

Precisely because Pinchas was the descendant of Aaron, and was imbued with the quality of loving his fellow human being, he was able to mete out the appropriate consequence without being affected by personal considerations.

And how does one accomplish this seemingly impossible fête? It is equally interesting to note that when describing Pinchas’ decision to execute the perpetrators of this horrible public desecration (which put an end to the plague ravishing the Jewish people as a result) the Torah says:

“Vayakam mitoch ah’Eidah”

“He arose from the midst of the congregation”. (Numbers 25:7).

What made Pinchas such a great leader was the fact that he was firmly ensconced in the midst of the congregation. He was with the Jewish people; he felt their pain, reveled in their joy, suffered with their sorrow, and knew their challenges. He was a true descendant of Aaron whom our tradition describes as a lover and pursuer of peace.  He showed his transparency, throughout the challenges of his lifetime.

What is transparency?

As a principle, public officials, civil servants, managers and directors of companies and organisations and board trustees have a duty to act visibly, predictably and understandably to promote participation and accountability. Simply making information available is not sufficient to achieve transparency.

Transparency and accountability need each other and can be mutually reinforcing. Together they enable citizens to have a say about issues that matter to them and a chance to influence decision-making and hold those making decisions to account.

Tricia Rose, a Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, wrote this week that:

Deen is steadfast in her denials about being a racist. But she seems to explain away her actions or redirect the conversation when asked about the specifics of her comments and their implications.

Her reflections, apologies and justifications are striking in their inability to see things from the perspective of those she has offended, and how they might feel in the face of her actions.

Plus, she can't seem to connect her actions to broader, endemic conditions in society.

This could be a teachable moment to discuss how complex racism is, how good intentions cannot do the work of anti-racism education, and how even people who like black people can behave in ways that do racial harm. 

Yes, Paula Deen, good people can hold racist ideas even though they might not be aware of them. Instead, it has turned in to a maudlin, self-absorbed reality-TV style drama.

For this apology tour to do real good, Deen might consider taking an anti-racist position, reaching out to black people and honoring the pain many face as a result of serious racial discrimination, and thinking about how she might have contributed to it. Deen might use her extensive media platform to draw attention to racial injustice today, to show the broader public just how much it saturates American society, even for those who think they are above it.

Indeed, Paula Deen is no Pinchas, in that she missed the mark entirely in her understanding of how to perform teshuvah ...

Instead of identifying with the people she has confessed to offending, she made it "all about me."

Rather than modeling the virtue of transparency, which is inseparable from accountability, she made excuses and does not get the straight line between her indiscreet language and her outlandish plans for her brother's wedding.

If blind hatred lost us the Temple two thousand years ago, it is only through removing the blinders to hatred that we might achieve a more hopeful way of repairing our broken world.

It is my hope that Paula Deen can reconcile her setback by realizing the perils of transparency, so that she might get it right on the next round of her campaign before the media.

(with thanks to Rabbi Binny Freedman)