Titzaveh/ Zachor

Titzaveh/ Zachor

This  week, the Shabbath before Purim, the tradition has us fulfill the commandment to remember Amalek.  We remember that they attacked us in our fatigue, both physical and spiritual and we are commanded to erase every thought of the accursed tribe. I am commanded to remember some tribe that I can no longer identify.  A people that no longer exists.  I am commanded to erase a null set. 

There is a tradition  that Amalek represents (baseless) antisemitism. [ I would argue that all antisemitism, like any racism, is baseless. ].  I have no trouble understanding antisemitism.  My experience with it: a few comments, a punch or two when I was a child - these are very mild.  Worth mentioning only because of their role in strengthening my bond to the Jewish people.  My parents, and my murdered grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins....they are the victims of the antisemitism worth remembering.  This Amalek I can recognize and curse.  Is it the wrong Amalek?  Are all the Amaleks one? 

It is important to me not to misidentify the evil tribe. They are  not confined to a particular nation or language, although the concentration of Amalekites may have been extraordinarily high in Germany and Poland and Ukraine and Lithuania...  It is the people unified by their willingness and desire to kill and torment the weak, exhausted, defenseless people.  Not just Jews, but all the sojourners. 

My parents called our victims of the Holocaust korbonoth- sacrificial offerings.  The main parsha for this week, Titzaveh, deals with the initiation of the altar and its attendant priests. The animal sacrifices of the Torah conveyed the drama of death, especially death without worldly benefit. They can never match the impact of the holocaust.  Perhaps, in the next temple, animal sacrifices will be replaced by  film documenting the concentration and death camps. 

Let us celebrate our survival

Happy Purim

Terumah: some assembly required

Most of the parsha describes the construction of the Tabernacle and its vessels. I can follow the ark of the covenant.  It  is just a box, a coffin for the tablets.  The ark cover, the golden kaporeth, decorated by cherubim facing one another with outstretched, overhanging wings freaks me out, but is something that I can imagine.  The table is more difficult to visualize:  with its molding and shelves.  The menorah, with its cups, knobs and flowers is variously  imagined  by the commentators. 

As the descriptions proceed to the sanctum, the altar and the courtyard, they become sketchier.  I have trouble imaging how it is all put together.  

Much of my home furniture has come from Ikea. I used to assemble it myself.  I usually had to redo some part because of left/ right  confusion of nearly identical parts.  I did not feel talented at assembly.  I was not taught the value and pleasure of assembly.  I did have a tinker toy, but no erector set.  There was no role model for putting things together or fixing them when I was growing up.  If my father attempted such activities, he was berated, regardless of his level of success. My wife quotes her grandfather , " give a Jew a hammer, and he will hit his thumb."  I was taught to give up on construction projects. 

Besides, when i was a boy, we could not afford parts that fit together. No LEGOs. My clothes were "seconds" - sold at a discount because the stitching was a little off. The opulence of the parsha - gold, silver, precious stones- is  foreign. 

When I was 7, when Sputnik was launched, I scrounged for  stuff to make my own Sputnik: a wicker box with a lightbulb and other junk.  I plugged it in and blew the fuse.  The lesson was reinforced: don't even try to construct. 

When I was a young man, I was drawn to the laboratory where I could put things together.  But the ghost of deprivation haunted me, I needed to economize; my confidence was limited.  The shadow of that ghost is still with me. But now she tickles me when I get my patient $10,000./ month drugs for a $10. copay. 

I spoke at the Royal Palace in Warsaw about the heroic deeds of those who helped rescue my parents from the holocaust.  The Royal palace has a gilded, opulent look.  It is the Polish Versailles, the Polish Tabernacle. The corruption and falseness that is papered over ,in gold colored foil, is evident beneath the pretentious facade of reconstruction .

   We, who have been without a beautiful place of assembly for so long, our structure is the ragtag succah, the ditch in the Polish forest - cleverly covered with branches and leaves. Those are the structure I can relate to. 

Mishpatim: Law and Order

Mishpatim: Law and Order

Every year, reading Mishpatim, I am amazed by the arrangement.  ( Paragraphs are according to the text) 

It starts with  laws of the indentured servant: his term of service, his relationship to his family, extending his term of service with a pierced ear.

It moves on to the crueler and more desperate situation of the man who sells his daughter into servitude.  There is an implication that the servitude will end in marriage, and the hint that this marriage will not be the most honored of unions. 

Then there is a distinction between capital homicide and manslaughter. 

Striking a parent is punishable by death. 

Kidnapping is a capital offence

Cursing a parent brings the death sentence

A non lethal wound is a tort,  not a felony.

The juxtapositions are jarring.  There is no let up, as the parsha proceeds through various misdeeds, crimes, damages, misdemeanors.  It reads like class notes, items written as fast as possible, priority dictated by a combination of poignancy, universality, counter-intuitiveness, probability of appearance on the final exam.  The name of the parsha, Mishpatim, takes on a double meaning: laws and sentences.  Are these sentences that have not been ordered? 

No, there are lessons in the juxtapositions.  Servitude, death, parents: these are themes that can swim together.  On the High Holidays we ask Gd if we are being viewed as children or as servants as was beg for our lives and ask forgiveness for our mortal sins.  The idea of liberation, by any means, including killing, is embedded in servitude. A slave is a kidnapped person. The Master may imagine himself in loco parentis, but that is not reality. ...

There is method..

Yithro: Law and Justice

Yithro: Law and Justice

The climax of the parsha is the Ten commandments, the core charter of Judaism and the religions that originate from it. These principles have become global in their adoption, while  their meaning has remained provincial.  We can all agree on the principle that it is forbidden to steal, but there is a breadth of opinion about the meaning of fraud and theft. 

Jethro sees his son-in-law, Moshe, sitting all day adjudicating cases.  He advises that  justice  be systematized. His advice is accepted by Gd and Moshe. The assignment of people, other than Moshe,  to the role of judge, creates a problem of validation.  Moshe, who can unerringly  anticipate the will of Gd, needs no further endorsement.  But the decisions of  more ordinary people can be called into question, and the questions can rise in the hierarchy, back to Moshe. 

In this context, the Ten Commandments  can be seen as a constitution, a set of immutable, fundamental laws that are the foundation of a system.  The law that is engraved in stone is above human manipulation.  The judge is merely the reminder of rules that exist outside  of the situational realm. 

But justice does not live in the law. Righteousness, like medical care, is dependent on the particulars of the situation.  When the starving serf "steals" the grain he has produced by his labor from the lord of the manner, when the peasant hides the wheat she has produced from the Soviet overseers, what kind of theft is that?  The law is an  ass,  it is blind to circumstances. Justice resides in its interpretation in context . 

Without the law, civilization either collapses or becomes a cult of personality. Truth  is above the law.  Gd is above that.