Nitzavim: Terms of Service

Nitzavim: Terms of Service

If the Torah were an app, there would be a very long set of warnings and agreements ( that nobody reads).  After the  hundreds of pages of stipulations required for the use of the app ( which includes a promise land and assurance of a happy life) there would be a checkbox that asks:  [] agree? The checkbox would be in Nitzavim . It is the ask for agreement to the terms.

When a person gets chemotherapy for cancer, she must sign a consent.  This attests to having been told that the treatment could have side effects.  It is very rare for a patient to decide not sign the form and forgo the recommended treatment.  After all, the recommended treatment  (should have) considered the balance  between the risks and benefits.  The lawyers insists on the signature.

The patient cannot understand what the side effects really look like or feel like.  The doctor cannot know all of the possible side effects and can only describe the more common issues in general terms. This is another agreement in name only. It is a formalism

We  accept the Torah and the tradition with a limited understanding.  We need to consult scholars to know the laws and customs that are appropriate to the real life circumstances that arise.  There are too many books, commentaries, responsa, etc to claim that the acceptance is well informed.

The parsha tells us that the message is not foreign  or strange,  It is in the heart of the one who accepts .  And it the obligation of subscriber to do the right and the good.  Violations are grounds for the termination ...of service

Ki Thavo: granted and entitled

My (mis)memmory of this parsha is that Gd is abusive.  All those curses: Inciting people ( the enemies) to beat and kill and besiege; causing famine; a return to  exile and slavery - even the threats are distressing.  And it all happened for real  75 years ago!  My parents lived through the horrors that were described.

The medical advice for a person in an abusive (or very threatening) relationship is to leave; find a refuge where the abuser/threaten-er cannot find you.  The parsha, of course, gives the opposite advice.  The curses come from abandoning Gd, staying with Gd leads to the blessings. 

My mother would often say that I "take [things] for granted."  The connotation was that I did not appreciate the  good fortune that underlay the availability of food, shelter, and the multitude of comforts I could enjoy with almost zero sacrifice. It contrasted her holocaust survivor experience to my  late  20th century American  life of middle class luxury.  I could open the freezer and eat ice cream.  She lived in a freezing hole in the ground and when she hurt, she could not even  scream.  She experienced the curses that are enumerated in this weeks parsha.  Were it not for the   documented experiences of her generation, I would have discounted these cruel descriptions in the text as fantastic nightmares.  Now I know that an enemy can be as cruel as the one described in Ki Thavo ( maybe worse).

"Take for granted" means that the object has been gifted, there was ( or should have been) an application to donor, but the recipient assumed that the request has been honored without an application.  It is a presumption of entitlement, albeit with some vague recognition of  a provider.  It is gratitude-very-light.  The absence of the "curses" enumerated in Ki Thavo , and perhaps the imparting of the blessings, is generally taken for granted.  I am used to that condition

Ki Thavo:  when you arrive in the land the land Gd has granted you.  This is title deed.  The land will be the possession of the Israelites, as had been promised to the ancestors.  But what happens after that is not guaranteed. Now we have entitlement, a sense of deserving, a legal right  to the implications of being landed: a right to bounty and leisure  and joy.  The parsha comes to tell us that the fruits of a homeland are a separate deal.  They depend, at least in part, on the covenant of commandments. 

Moshe presents a covenant, an agreement, between the Israelites and Gd prior to the entry into the Promised Land. It comes with a declaration that includes the recognition of arrival in the promised land, a declaration that the promise has been kept.

And the declaration includes a recognition that the nation is an improbable entity.  It is the product of a wandering Aramian ( Abraham), a sterile marriage ( but for Divine intervention), generations of murderous rivalry ( the legacy of Cain and Abel), and the failure of an attempt by another Aramian ( Lavan) to destroy ( either physically or spiritually) father Jacob, who descended to Egypt and started the agon of slavery that  they remember. After the fact, all extant events are extremely improbable and the product of miracles.  All extant facts have a probability of occurrence equal to one.  They certainly occurred.

This week I was introduced to the  Anna Karenina principle: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.(Thank you RZ ).  There is an infinity of possible failures that are potentially fatal and another infinity of circumstances that would make life intolerable.  For the privileged  majority of the population of the First World, misfortunes  are infrequent enough that most of our lives are pleasant.  Ultimately, there is always a biological failure: death. 

This is  related to the concept of entropy.  The popular notion  of entropy is that systems (that work) ultimately deteriorate and malfunction.  Actually, entropy means that there are many possible states and the operational state is a unique situation and the odds are against it.  The odds will eventually win and the system will fail. 

Our beautiful world of convenience and luxury requires maintenance so that it does not fall into one  of the infinite alternatives that are not pleasant, and possibly not viable. The covenant is the road to order. 

Ki Theze: 

The first two words of the parsha , Ki Theizei sets the theme: When you go out... You are out to do something, to get somewhere. Then you  you chance upon something ...Something that is not planned,   an opportunity to fulfill a desire.  The circumstances arise  to benefit from another person or animal or thing that is weaker than you. How to you balance the opportunity against the ethics.  Where are the limits? 

The drama of the situation can magnify the desire.  The victorious soldier, who sees the attractive woman, is also the soldier who has survived the life threatening battle.  He realizes his mortality and wants to exploit every opportunity to enjoy life.  He sees the woman, who understands that her best chance of survival is to marry a conquering soldier, looking her best.  The Torah tells him to reconsider after she has shown more of her true self: removed her makeup, mourned her parents [who were killed by the soldier's friends in the war]. If he is still in love, he can marry her.  But the marriage is valid.  She cannot be reverted to spoils of war, to chattel.

 The confused son of his youthful passion cannot be relegated to a status lower than that afforded by his birth.  If he is the eldest, he receives the double portion, even though he no longer represents the ancestral values, and is a reminder that passion begets frenzy.  This sociopathic child could become a threat to society . Caution:  The lustful sin of opportunity can have terrible consequences.

The parsha is filled with guidance for the incidental.  The loss of a neighbor is an opportunity to return  the lost object, or care for it until she comes looking for it.  Be among those who help the fallen animal....

As individuals, we are instructed to be kind, to temper greed with compassion.  Leave wheat and grapes and olives for the poor to glean.  Taking a few grains as you pass through the neighbors field is not stealing... unless you bring a sickle and basket to collect. 

We hide behind the corporate to circumvent the humane.  Why shouldn't a drug costs $1000 per day? Someone ( probably an hourly worker) worked very hard to develop it.  Doesn't that justify the exorbitant profit of the speculator who bought the rights? She recognized an opportunity an married it. 

Shoftim: whom to obey

Shoftim: whom to obey

Leadership has many dimensions. The judge (shofet)  applies the law and interprets the words.  The officer (shoter) enforces the ruling in a humane, but sometimes forceful, manner.  The Priest and Levite  are trained  for intercession with the Divine forces that rule over all. The king assures the privileges of membership in the people. The prophet reveals the path of truth. The general allots resources toward victory.  The elder is a bridge to the wisdom of experience.  This week, the Torah demands allegiance to all of these entities. 

The judges and officers are actors in time.  They arbitrate between the law which was written at a given time, and the circumstances as they see them.  The need for judges recognizes that all possibilities cannot be explicitly anticipated.  Extrapolation, and thus interpretation, is always needed.  The judge makes peace with progress. 

The king is introduced as a self imposed  entity.  The people, in their desire to be like other other nations elect for themselves the king.  The instructions  are permeated with ambivalence.  Establishing the monarch is presented as a concession to the will of the people.  וְאָמַרְתָּ֗ אָשִׂ֤ימָה עָלַי֙ מֶ֔לֶךְ כְּכָל־הַגּוֹיִ֖ם אֲשֶׁ֥ר סְבִיבֹתָֽי  you decide, “I will set a king over me, as do all the nations about me,” It contrasts with the other leaders and officers that are mandated and have elements of Divine intervention. 

The election of the king involves a concession to the general rule of differentiating  from the surrounding nations.  It is a permitted way to be like them, even with the elements of reverence, that border on worship, that accompany it.  

The monarchy defines an aspect of nationhood that is optional for the Israelites: to be like other nations.  Electing a king means investing nationhood with entitlements.  The nation asserts its prerogative to take its share, perhaps to  make its share as big as possible. Jobs, tariffs, immigration rules - are all under the purview of the king. 

Our tradition is that From the day that the Holy Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken away from the prophets and given to fools and children. . ( Bava Bathra 12b)  The parsha tells us that it is not easy  to distinguish prophecy from heresy.  Was it the loss of the national focal point or was it the lack of a physical connection to the Divine that precluded the unification of an innocent ( childlike) and  alternative ( foolish)  worldview into a credible statement ? What about machines? Can they be prophetic?

The parsha ends with the ritual of the beheaded calf, brought to expiate an unsolved  murder.  This collaboration between the elders and the judges ,  וְיָצְא֥וּ זְקֵנֶ֖יךָ וְשֹׁפְטֶ֑יךָ,  and the Kohanim  allows those in charge, those who must be obeyed, to wash their hands of the general violence of their society. They squander a calf that has never pulled a plow  on a barren  piece of land.  They evoke the desecration that is murder in this extraordinary ritual  with a living, not a golden, calf. This passage  comes soon after the prohibition of cutting down a tree to make a rampart for the siege of war.  A prohibition of waste, even in a time of exigency, is followed by waste atop waste in a ritual of regret.  

Is there a force stronger,or more wasteful,  than regret?