Lech Lecha: on the run

The parsha explores the relationship between immigration and conquest. Gd tells Avram to go The Land, foreshadowing its  conquest.  Avram arrives as a wayfarer.  He, and his entourage, cannot stay because of the famine.  The famine also implies that, at the time,  this land is undesirable, it cannot support its inhabitants. The land is cheap, perhaps free for homesteaders. hefker. 

By the end of the first aliyah, Avram has left The Land, he is on his way to Egypt-Mizrayim. He confronts a problem of travelers - variations in law and customs.  He recognizes that in  Mizrayim,  he will probably be killed in order to make his beautiful wife available. He needs to go to Mizrayim to survive.  He choses the least evil path.  Sarai, his wife (and half sister) will skip the wife part. Gd takes care of the rest. Avram survives, the Egyptians do not have the guilt of killing Avram.  Sarai and Avram are reunited... and expelled from Egypt. 

More travel, back to the Land. Perhaps the famine is over. Alternatively, with riches, Avram et al. can survive the famine. Wealth generates strife. Avram and Lot (whose name means curse in Aramaic) travel away from each other. 

Then comes World War 0. The war of conquest. There is a lot of running here. Lot is taken away and the survivor of the battle comes running to Avram, informing him of Lot's capture.  Avram organizes a military campaingn,runs,  and frees all the captives.  Avram the conqueror,  is crowned by Malchizedek in (Jeru)salem.  The place names (14:6) Paran and Seir  are bookends, reappearing in Zoth Habracha (Deut 33:2).  Avram, the father of greatness (ram), the progenitor of the princes of Paran and Seir. 

Most dramatic is the running away of Hagar from Sarai. Sarai torments the pregnant Hagar.  Hagar has been abandoned to her mistress by Avram, the father of her child. She runs away to save herself, like all of the flights in the parsha.  An angel meets her at the well and tells her what to name her child (call him Ishmael) and the angel tells her to be a good muslim  ( in the sense of submission).

Immigration is conquest.  I pity the poor immigrant.  From the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave (immigrant?)

Noach: Technology

(At least )3 major technological  products are significant in the parsha: The Teyva ( ark), wine production, and the Tower ( of Babel).   The works ( Ur) of the Casdim  may also be in there. 

The Teyva is a Gd directed device  that saves the selected seeds of human and animal life.  Noach  ( the builder of the ark) and his family give rise to humanity.  The equivalently selected  righteous of the birds, beasts and bugs spawn their kinds. All require a human contrived artifice, the Teyva ( ark) to withstand the deluge. 

The Teyva is constructed with exactitude. Dimensions are given. The precision of the construction  ( to within  one amah) is even given.  The teyva is the fallout shelter of its time, the ban on greenhous gases,  the move to America in 1938... the action that rescues (sometimes)

Wine production is, along with bread, one of the great early biochemical industries. These products of the controlled action of  yeast  on sugars to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide are the origins of biochemistry.  Louis Pasteur started his career  by developing a method (pasteurization) to prevent the souring of wine. 

Noach's overindulgence in the products of this art led to his embarrassment and  eternal human strife. Wine was the first drug. It is still popular and, often,  still leads to misfortune. 

The Tower was a human idea. The United Nations.  People feared that they would be dispersed. They came upon a way to work together more efficiently.   Instead of using irregularly shaped stones, they would use a uniform building material, constructed to tolerance... the brick. (Perhaps they made them in the kiln (Ur) of Casdim).  The morter seems to have been a natural stuff, the tower was a hybrid system - human brick, natural morter. 

The tower  was the internet of its time (http://), it brought together the world.  It allowed crowdsourcing.  But as the technogy advanced, the need for new languages ( Ararmaic, English, Fortran, C++, Python) overwhelmed the advantages of unity.  That which was intended to unite caused the division and dispersion. 

Our technology is puny compared with the forces that Gd bestowed upon nature. But sometimes  human intervention  rescue some of us ...Workers of the world...

Zoth Habracha: Bracha and Prophecy

Perhaps the purpose of prophecy is bracha. 

Let's look at the words.  Prophecy is something that sane people no longer claim.  It is an art that is lost.  It is our tradition that it is lost.  The shadow of prophecy is the crazy person with the sign reading: The End is Near. 

That crazy person preserves the essence of prophecy.  There is something that everyone can predict: the end will come.  That prophecy is a threat; it serves to make a person think about legacy, what will happen after she is gone. 

The Torah ends with prophecy.  It is a  literary device.  

Bracha is related to the replanting of the vine that has grown too long.  It is the success that comes from investment.  It is legacy.  A true blessing requires an element of prophecy, it is an aid to the blessed  that is appropriate to his nature and directs what she should become. The blessing is   hard to give and hard to accept. 

May we all have a gebenschte (blessed) year and may it  come to a good end.  

Hoshana 2011

Hoshana

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s26/sh/6d19f41e-2943-4864-af00-3ff0a6bb62a2/0ec67c60f35fb2b870143e5117d00228

The custom of parading around the syngogue - palm branch, myrtle, willow and ethrog in hand - is strange.  It feels old, some kind of semblance of the temple service, not the real service , the sacrificial service, but some ancillary activity.
While we march around the synagogue, on our way to that key place between the Bima and the Aron, we recite, responsively, a poem, a set of alphabeticaly arranaged short phrases that speak of salvation, destruction and protection from destruction.
The activity occurs at the time of year that we repeat Parsath Zoth Habracha.  The transition of power from Moshe to Yehoshua ( the same root as Hoshana)  The reminder that the tragedy occurs ( Moshe dies), justice is not intelligible ( Moshe does not go into the promised land)  and salvation occurs ( the people  are led by [the lesser] Yehosua into the promised land ( and are subsequently exiled.)
The shin  shared between Moshe and Yehoshua implies things about the nature of the call for help - Hoshanah.  It is the sh of hush, the sound of the fire of the burnt offering.

Zoth Habracha: Nations 2010

Zoth Habracha

מִסִּינַי בָּא וְזָרַח מִשֵּׂעִיר לָמוֹ--הוֹפִיעַ מֵהַר פָּארָן
אַף חֹבֵב עַמִּים

We identify the  first phrase as the attempt to give the Torah to the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir and the children of Ishmael who dwell in Paran.
Hobaba is  Jethro.
I prefer not to think of the genetics, but rather the cultural variations being more or less conducive to the acceptance of Torah.  Esau, Seir  is concerned with appearance... the robes of Esau are  are so significant that his father , Isaac, identifies him by the robes. Seir:hair! ( or perhaps Hair [ the play].

Ishamel is the outcast son of the maidservant, but Gd listens to him in his  alienation.
Jethro is hospitable and accepts outside beliefs and gives brilliant advice ( a hierarchical system of courts with a written constitution).

How do the tribes, who tried to kill Joseph compare?  favorablly, I guess.

May Gd help us.  Hosheanna, as seen on the teeth of the Gentile in A Serious Man.