Ki Thavo: recognition

Ki Thavo: recognition

The parsha asks the pilgrim to recognize the arrival.  The wanderers must make a declaration of coming to the goal.  This is it. It was hard to get here, but here we are, and we bear a basket of fruit as a tribute. 

The second half of the parsha are blessings that will devolve from following the law,  followed by pages of details about the curses that will befall us if we veer from the prescription.  Perhaps it is incumbent upon us to recognize what has happened: the Holocaust and the State of Israel, as the fulfillment of this pronouncement. 

As I read through the description of the catastrophe, I could not avoid imagining what my parents and  their generation went through.  The text foresees  the perpetrators of evil  as a a nation with an unintelligible language.  The Romans called the Germanic tribes Barbars because their language sounded like "bar bar bar..", meaningless phonemes.  This was the nation that starved, hunted, and murdered my ancestors, the descendants of the assemblage on the plains of Moab, to whom Moshe described such a cataclysm.  Too many of the details were fulfilled. This was it. 

Now the punishment is meted out, just as it is promised, to  the smallest detail.  What happens now?  What do the survivors and their descendants do with this fulfilled promise?  How do we repair the relationship? Is there a relationship? 

I have lived in a blessed world, with little overt Divine punishment and with fulfillment that the last generation could not fathom. There is no part of my life that is not saturated with contentment. The blessings exceed expectations.  I can have any food, drink, entertainment at any time.  I have a portal to all the knowledge in the world in my pocket. I can travel to Jerusalem on a whim.

So is this what it feels like to arrive?

Ki thezei: passion and control

Medieval art depicts 7 deadly sins, temptations: lust, greed, sloth, etc., that lead a person to a bad end.  The parsha deals with these temptations, not as forbidden, not to be denied, but as issues to be dealt with and handled. The parsha allows for submission to these temptations.  It offers correctives and controls for the consequences of frailty.

The " pretty woman," the captive of battle, must be given time to mourn her losses;  and her captive is given time to consider the consequences of his conquest.  She cannot be treated as a slave, she cannot be sold to another.

The Torah does not tolerate (the deadly sin of) sloth.  Lost objects must be returned to their owner.  The overburdened beast deserves attention, it cannot be ignored.  The new home buyer is instructed to place a safety barrier around the high, dangerous places.

The end of the parsha deals with the poor: the laborer,  the borrower, the beggar.  These are the people who are easy to cheat, these are the situations that we hope to avoid.  The Torah instructs us to treat them fairly, to recognize their difficulties.

The parsha has an important coda.  We are instructed to erase the memory of Amalek.  What is relevance of this eternal enmity to a parsha dealing, mostly, with the tempering of temptation with justice?

Amalek is introduced as a nation that attacked the weakened Israel  from the rear.  Is this not analogous to the exploitation of the poor for profit?  Doesn't the slumlord see herself in this description? In our Yizkor service, another use of the concept of zachor (remember), we invoke the memory of our ancestors as a stimulus to do good by giving tzadaka.  The other side of that is the erasure of the memory of domination and cruelty.

Even in conquest there is room for kindness.

Shoftim: authorities

Shoftim: authorities

In the parsha, some leaders are elected by the people, others are selected by heaven. Whom should I  follow? 

The parsha begins with the instruction to select judges and officers.  The people, as a whole, are instructed to promote the individuals they select to these positions of responsibility.  Individuals , identified as honest, fair , above reproach are to be indentified and installed as the representatives of the Law.  They will decide disputes, maintain order, and preserve the traditions.  This part looks like a democratic process. 

Apostasy is immediately brought up.  The judges, all the people must subscribe to the core beliefs.  It will not do to have variation in the concepts of correct and fair.  Deviations are to be dealt with with extreme prejudice. 

Alternative interpretations of the law are  dealt with.  Arbitration of disputes among judges will be moved up the hierarchy.  The aristocratic element of the leadership, the Kohanim and Leviim,  are invoked as part of the supreme court  that generates the unified, no longer to be questioned, decision. 

The king is introduced as an elective entity, the monarch is an appeasement to the popular desire.  This divinely sanctioned political entity echos  the spies that led to the 40 years of wandering in the desert.  If the people insist, they can have this king, they can be like other nations in this regard.  But the king must abide by the written law, the constitution, the Torah. 

Truth comes from another source.  A prophet, a Moses-like character will be presented to the people.  If the prophet is true, follow her. Criteria for truth are  left  to the observer - or his delegates? ( the judges, Kohanim, king, etc.)

Justice is not what you imagine.  The killer must be given an opportunity to prove his lack of intention. Trees have rights!

The last vinette, the hacked calf of the unsolved murder, is a study in the impotence of the system.  The system was supposed to prevent murder.  It failed.  The ceremony, culminating in the hand washing/ hand wringing of the justice system asserts the responsibility of that system to prevent, or at least deter by avenging, such heinous acts.  Does the symbolic, unproductive ax slaughter of the calf help? It does affirm that the act is recognized and the community needs to do more. 

מִשֶּׁרַבּוּ הָרַצְחָנִים, בָּטְלָה עֶגְלָה עֲרוּפָה

When murderers multiplied, the [ceremony of] breaking a heifer’s neck ceased. 

Sotah  9:9

Welcome to modern times.

Re'eh: Loyalty

This parsha  moves from the auditory (shema) to the visusal.  Up until now, in  Devarim, this book of summary, Moshe has instructed us to listen  and obey.   He has emphasized that the  core pronouncement, Gd's communication at Sinai, had no visual component, there was nothing to be seen. That which is heard  can imply direction, but not location.  Re'eh, see!, implies place; location becomes important.

What Moshe tells the people to see is not physical.  It is imagined: the  blessing and curse that depend upon obedience to what they have heard.  In these realms - the auditory, the imagination -everything is portable, not bound to a location. The introduction of the chosen local changes the nature of ritual - it adds a dimension of loyalty, it binds the service to a Divinely ascribed national consensus, a capitol.

Eating meat was the great communal meal.  Before refrigeration, preservation of meat was difficult or impossible. The feast avoided wasting the meat. Slaughtering an animal is a significant act. All of it must be used in the best possible way.

 The feast built community, common purpose, reciprocity.  It built a tribe.  Now, the people are instructed to build a nation.  The festival could only be at the capitol,  Gd and the Nation would be part of the celebration.  Defection was forbidden.  All would declare their loyalty in word and deed. 

Keeping the nation together means resisting change. Ignore the evidence.  If the seer accurately predicts events, but denies the core belief, be loyal, stick with the faith.  What modern theory will be the phlogiston  of tomorrow?  How will the next data set impact on the predictions of AI? I have sen the scientific models evolve . In cancer, where people are desperate for a model, we have evolved from embryology to histochemistry, to DNA mutation analysis , to signal transduction, toAI, to... 

We have seen the sins of loyalty.  Stalin, Hitler, ....Loyalty is not enough.  The mission must be right, and we cannot trust the intuitions of our time. Do it right.  Do right.

Aikev: if/then

Aikev: if/then

In the parsha, aikev is translated as "because, consequent ."  Onkelos translates it as "halaf," in exchange.  Earlier this word, the root of the name Yaakov ( Jacob), meant a heel, the fulcrum of  walking.  Now we are extending that meaning to the pivot of success.  This is fundamental conditional programming: if/then.   If you keep the commandments,  then you will succeed.  It moves the contingency from physics to the author of Nature, the Creator of the universal.

The first mention of aikev is in the Garden of Eden.  The aikev is the target of the humiliated  serpent,  the place where the snake aims, as the human tries to crush its head.  Achilles. This is the symbolism : The deception, the excuse, symbolized by the agent of temptation, impedes a true understanding of cause and effect.  The ability to scapegoat permits the adventure into the forbidden. The Devil made me do it/ gotcha by the heel!

Then there is Jacob, the second born, evidencing his striving by hanging onto his brother's heel.  The brother Esau, named for the grass; the brother Jacob, named for the action of the snake (in the grass). The older brother, through his hunting adventures, finds favor in his father's eyes.  The younger brother grabs. What is left him to do? Perhaps this grabbing of the heel is a partial undoing of the previous episode.  The brother that races ahead, not thinking of what he is trampling on, is re-minded about consequences and considerations. It is Jacob who brings elements of the Torah to Esau.  The consequences seem to include getting his head stepped on. 

Eikev reminds us that what we perceive as cause and effect( the other if/then)  is a convenient fantasy, a model.   It is not the kernel, The parsha reminds us of the manna and says that the human does not live by bread, but by the word of Gd.  If the farmer plows and plants and  waters and weeds - there may be an adequate crop yield.  But storm, disease, vermin and other unanticipated  events can invalidate the hard work.    Nature is not fair.  Natural selection (the core belief of Esau?) is an excellent model, but the variations that are its substrate are the work of Gd, as are the selective forces that are its crux. 

 The parsha  gives us a formula.  Follow the rules and you will do well.  If/then. The survival from previous transgressions required extraordinary effort that cannot be redone.  The survival from previous punishment ... is that evidence of Divine kindness?