Parashat Acharei Mot-Kedoshim: Are You A Superhero?

 How far would you go to save someone’s life?

What if doing so resulted in injuries which Gd forbid included breaking eight bones in fourteen places:

·         Your right knee

·         Your right and left ankles

·         Your left leg tibia

·         Your shoulder bone

·         Your jaw

·         Having your eye popping out of its socket so far forward that it could see the other one

·         Suffering from a collapsed lung which had been pierced by the rib bone, along with a similar injury in the liver?

All this due to being run over by a 14,300 pound snowmobile (to be precise the 1988 Pistenbully Sno-Cat) and crushed into the ice hardened asphalt.

Why?  Because you had risked your life to protect that of your nephew’s.

It is New Year’s Day 2023 and you are situated at an altitude of 10,785 feet in the Sierra Mountains in Nevada.  The snow is very deep and the treacherous conditions make it difficult for any sort of rescue craft to make their way to you.  It eventually takes 21 minutes for a fire engine to arrive, followed by a helicopter which takes you to Reno Hospital.  Your life literally hangs in the balance.

It doesn’t matter how many roles the actor, Jeremy Renner played prior to the start of this year; this was not a film set and his Avengers ‘Hawkeye’ character was nowhere to be seen.  What he had experienced was in every manner the ‘stuff of nightmares.’

As I watched his recent TV interview with Diane Sawyer, I sat with my mouth wide-open.  He explained how he had been trying to pull his Ford Raptor truck from his snowbound driveway to the street.  His nephew Alex had tied a chain from the front of the truck to the back of the Sno-Cat.

They managed to manoeuvre the truck onto the road and Alex started to remove the chain. Ahead, Jeremy turned the Sno-Cat around and it slid on the icy road.  Panicking, he realised that he couldn’t see Alex and that the Sno-cat was heading straight for him.  Without considering his own safety, he leant out of the cabin and placed his foot on the rolling track, to try to spot Alex, forgetting in the process to apply the handbrake.

He lost his footing and fell off the track into the snow.  In a heartbeat, he jumped back onto the track to try to re-enter the cabin to halt the machine.  He had to stop it from moving forward as Alex could have been crushed between the two vehicles.  Climbing onto the extremely slippery track, he lost his footing again and was pulled under, whereupon the Sno-Cat rolled over his entire body, which was now face down on the road.

Alex saw what had happened and ran over to his uncle whilst the machine gently rolled into a seven-foot snow wall and stopped.

Without a phone handy, he tried to summon help but unfortunately most of the neighbouring houses were empty, presumably due to their owners being elsewhere over the new year holiday.  Fortunately, a couple heard the commotion and came out to help.  Between the three of them, they held Jeremy, called the emergency services and hoped for the best.  At one point, the lady said that Jeremy had possibly ‘died’ for a few seconds but was thankfully revived.

In hospital, his distraught family tried to communicate with him, but he was unable to speak.  Using sign language, he said that he was ‘sorry for what he had put them through’.  In the interview he added (crying), “I’m sorry my actions have caused so much pain.”

Astonishingly, when thinking about the accident, he said, "I have no regrets - I'd do it again…I refuse to have that be a trauma and it be a negative experience."

If one were to write down some of the Torah’s most famous verses, I would imagine that the following from Parashat Kedoshim would appear near the top of the list:

Vayikra/Leviticus 19:18

You must love your neighbour as yourself.

Rabbi Akiva (in Bereshit Rabba 24.7) commented that this represented the ‘great principle’ of the Torah.  Hillel famously told the man who wanted to learn the Torah on one foot (Shabbat 31a), “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.  That is the entire Torah, the rest is just commentary, now go and study.”

The love that emanated from Jeremy’s titanium reconstructed jaw was very plain to see.  Although he had risked everything to save his nephew, it was very apparent that he would have carried out the Torah’s dictum, irrespective of whomever had been at that location at that time.  Similarly so, the bravery demonstrated by his nephew and neighbours which very possibly resulted in his life being saved.  If we can place this behaviour at the very top of our priorities, is this not the ultimate demonstration of ‘loving your neighbour’ irrespective of whether he or she is a relative?

We know our families are the most important people in our lives.  Extending this to the ‘family of humans’ means that, if we believe that we are descended from Adam and Eve, we must somehow, albeit distantly, be related to each other.  Certainly, we have more in common than that which divides us.  We sometimes forget to look before we metaphorically ‘leap’ by acting in a way that lets us down and upsets others.

It takes someone like Jeremy Renner to remind us of how important people are in our lives, how our time in this world can be so brief and how we can act to help others.

 You don’t need to jump off a moving snow plough to make a difference to another person’s life.         As Hillel said, “What is hateful to you, don’t do to others.”  It’s not a difficult lesson to absorb.

Jeremy summed it up with a moving quote at the end of the interview.

“I wouldn’t let that happen to my nephew…the real superpower (presumably referring to his role as ‘Hawkeye’) is the ability to transform your superpower into your strength”.

We all have a ‘superpower’ – our ability to live up to the verse’s message.

In admiring his determination to heal and make a positive impact on others, we can look to Mr Renner to remind us of what a real superhero looks like.  If we value and respect our neighbours, perhaps, we too can be our own superheroes.

Shavuah Tov.