The parshat hashavua "Shelach lecha" or this weekly reading portion "Send (men to scout the Land of Canaan)" recounts one of the most famous episodes of the TaNaKH about the spies, and includes essential Jewish Mitzvot/Commandments in the Book of Bamidbar/Numbers 13:1-15:41.
It is time to march into the Land of the Avot/Ancestors. Moses decides to assign twelve men from the ancestral tribes to scout the land = latur et-eretz Kena'an (Num. 13:17), have a real look at the country, the inhabitants, a full spying survey with much discretion and know-how. At this point, this is a typical and very proficient activity of Israel over the world. Moses did not send the men the same way we have a pending problem with Jonathan Pollard. He was not on a "tour". In Hebrew, "tur" means "to spy", still in a way that implies to walk, go around, be awake and on alert, go on foot (regel/leg - meragel = spy in Modern Hebrew). "You have espied the Land and found fault with God's Tent", says Talmud Shebuot 47b, echoing Numbers Rabba 16, 20: "You have espied the faults of the Land of Israel".
A good spy, for the Talmud, is Aaron: "The great spy (Aaron) died who had espied for them the road of life" (Yoma 1:38b). The Israelite spy is a man of God who is accomplishing a sort of divine mitzvah for the benefit of the whole community of Israel. In this view, our spies should not be corrupt... totally under self-control... not utter any slander... of rumors, and we should not hear any blah-blah about them in return.
The perfect shomer/guardian of the integrity and rigor is also the model of the bney chorin/ free men (and women). Numerous names come then to our minds, especially of those people who, in terrible days when Jews were persecuted and for the sake of the State of Israel, offered their lives with courage and silence. Israelis have developed amazing and witty tricks to confound the enemies. We love thrillers, but curiously the good old-fashioned Israeli spies are more of the Lamed-Vavnikim sort (the 36 unknown tzaddikim/righteous that save the world) than full-tanned oriental green-eyed guys and girls jumping from beds to couches with guns, poisoning pills, killing kisses, pocket bombs and Holy Land bullets. Everybody knows the joke of a man who answers – in the middle of a dark night in Tel Aviv – that he is Yaakov the violinist, but that Yaakov the spy lives on the fourth floor, up there…
Moses sent the twelve men and they had a wonderful tour. They brought gorgeous fruits, clusters of grapes and pomegranates after forty days of scouting. The report was disparate. Exceptional landscapes and country, but the inhabitants seemed a bit bizarre. How difficult to recognize the people after an absence of 400 years! Land of milk and honey, but the inhabitants are powerful; their cities are fortified and terribly large. This is dangerous, reported ten of the men who saw the Amakelites and the mighty Hittites. They got scared.
Worse than everything: they even met with very tall men, something like 100 XXXL size guys, the Nephilim, that had disappeared since Gen. 6:4. There, they were looking at the Sons of the Covenant like grasshoppers, and the “spies” did have the courage to look back. These ten also spread some rumors that the country they saw devours the inhabitants and they successfully slandered around so that the Israelites wanted to return to good old Egypt.
Slander is called to disappear by nature, said the Sages. But the reaction of these “reporters” is exactly the same as what we hear about our Israeli society and the country at the present. We all have our dreamy Nephilim, extra sized ghosts. We look at each other so often like grasshoppers or chimpanzees in a zoo. And the land is wonderful but no oil, only honey and milk fruits and grapes, olives.
Indeed we are fortified. Everybody is even fortified here. And always better or more threatening than in Egypt. When we find some family connection from America to Israel, we may discover we have a “rich” uncle in some Rehov Ben Yehudah, who owns a tiny falafel stand or pizza corner. But what a location! Well, this week, we should maybe pray for our spies… and all the honest spies because the problem is that they are very buddy-buddy and interconnected and can easily be spoiled.
On the other hand, it is really difficult to account the truth and keep balanced. Caleb and Joshua exposed what they had seen and that it was possible to conquer the land. They said “Do not fear the people of the country for they are our “lachmenu =bread=food (prey)”. “Milchamah = war” in Hebrew does mean that we are no more in a situation of rather natural hospitality in the tribal culture. We doubt, suspect, attack or flee. “Mi’lchamah = it is no more possible to share the same meal/food/bread, which induces a state of war, a conflict”. This is very significant in spiritual life and also as regards the Christian bread sharing rooted in the Kiddush partaking of bread. Caleb and Joshua underscored that the Israelites should not rebel against God.
Now, “kibush, conquest” shows more than the way we even use the word at the present. In the case of the Israelites – again in revolt against God and Moses and willing to return to Egypt – we must consider something else. They got out of the womb of some foreign “fostering” country, i.e. Egypt, symbolically a “house of slavery”. Let’s say that the wilderness, in the Sinai, is a place of dizziness, tests, wandering and giving of the Torah. It is time for the Israelites to behave as grownups and face the conquest of their own identity, the fulfillment of their being. They cry exactly as spoiled children do. And the rumors just match with what they fear: why getting ahead to the Land of Canaan? True, the same question is pending in the present as regards the apparently unexpected renewal of a Jewish State and of the Arab nation, Semitic heritage in the region.
Curiously, I will send these lines to my contact at the BlogCentral, early on the 7th of June, the civil date when forty years ago, I felt a total change in my life in entering the Old City of Jerusalem, a upside down turn on my route. But then, the present reading portion obliges us to consider how we behave in terms of righteousness or deep injustice. When Caleb and Joshua witness that the kibush, conquest is possible, how can we show today that the Israelites do not rebel against God? In our time, it is more questionable. The real interrogation is how to get to a target that does not harm but will allow building actions. No unjust expropriations but a progressive and comprehensive “Semitization” of the Israeli society in the Middle East.
Indeed, the false rumors conveyed by the ten men, their lies and betrayal of Moses’ mission are constant stuff. We are reluctant to grow, to become adults. Adulthood is so frightening for some Jews because of the monstrous experience of history. This is why – even it sounds as some kind of a vitz /joke – good scouting eyes and brains allow growing spiritually. No way to compare with some servile traitors conveying sugary gossiping reports to some potentates.
The point is to be found in the accomplishment of the first commandment given to all beings: “Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it “vekhivshua””(Bereishit 1:28). We must be careful not to damage human souls and this is quite a challenging problem for our society. “Kibush” is also the means of subduing evil, pride and will of useless conquest, preventing overbearing what is proper to others”, states Pessikta Zutrathi 197a (Buber Ed.). On the other hand, reaching out to our own self-control allows enhancing oneself and sometimes a society.
Thus, it makes sense that the Jewish tradition proposes the systematical reading of the Pirkey Avot – Sayings of the Fathers, a portion of the Talmud Tractate Nezikin (Damages) from Pesach to Shavuot, usually till Rosh Hashanah in most congregations today. The book is included in most Shabbat prayer books and is composed of five chapters plus one (Kinyan Torah=acquisition of the Torah) brought from a minor Tractate “Kallah”. As the Book of Job or Lamentations, the Sayings of the Fathers (Avoth according to Mishnaic Hebrew) is one of the best-sellers and most read books in the world. It is very ethical, down-to-earth and spiritual, crude and full of wisdom and thus can bring some reflection, insights and responses to all humans in search of who they are.
This also deals with our weekly reading portion. The spies or scouts were to examine with insightful and ethical eyes the realm of the country. Interestingly, at the end of the parshah, God gives the commandment to hold the tzitzit / fringes at each corner of the garments with a blue cord (techelet), “to look at it, observe them so that you don’t follow your heart and eyes /velo tituru (scout astray, make the wrong tour) acharei levavchem veacharei eyneichem (in lustful urges)” (Bamidbar 15:39-40). The commandment to look and observe the tzitzit in order to achieve and accomplish all the Mitzvot held in hand and upon our eyes is basic and extant for every Jew. They introduce to a daily viewing and consideration of how to behave with decency and dignity.
It is not a problem of “derech haaretz = morals” that obliges every soul to make healthy use of their brains and will. In the reading portion, it is repeatedly mentioned that “if something was done unwittingly = le/bishgagah”, there were some provision to be observed. This traces back to the wondrous prayer of Yom Kippur: “Forgive us, cleanse us, atone us, all the House of Israel as the inhabitant who resides in her midst (leger hagar betocham) / ki kol ha’am bishgagah (because all the nation, people, community) has erred unwittingly. The word is linked to “meshugah – insane, fool, foolish” that became Slang Yinglish “shmeggegeh” (just sounds so lovely and exact!). We could say “weird, weirdo, spaced out without any drugs except our ego’s pressure”.
The word “mussar” is usually considered as the correct word for “ethics”, or authentic tradition of good behavior. But the commandment to look at the tzitzit is not moral, not ethical. Who can know what is inside of a soul? Morals or ethics suggest attitudes or pave the way to measure how we dare or not behave toward ourselves and the others. The twelve men were called to more: to see and not to get astray from a path that they might consider dangerous. Our lives can be imperiled by many events or situations. We can then choose to respond like Caleb and Joshua, by taking over the truth and facing it. In that view, the Mitzvot are not moral, ethical, judgmental, pleasing. They show our connection with God and how we accept him. Moses was very humble and thus could not enter the Land taking upon him the lack of faith of the Israelites.
On the second Sunday after Pentecost, the Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates the local Saints. Interestingly, in the 4th century, seemingly in the Celtic Roman Catholic Church of the West, the Church of Rome decided to recall the Saints on November 1st and then All the Souls (Departed) that were defunct (had accomplished their officium/task) on the following day, showing a sort of hope in wintertime.
The Orthodox Church celebrates the Saints as those who lived in the Pentecostal breathing-in of the Spirit. Firstly, all the Saints as last week and now the local Saints. Thus, the Palestinian Saints track back to the Avot, the ancestors and all the prophets of the Bible. From the time before Abraham till the cave of Machpelah, the Land of Canaan and Eretz Israel, each territory of the ancestor tribes and Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Arabia till so far away… God-seekers scout souls and soil and teach how to share wittingly.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Nezikin, damages
The inhabitants of the State of Israel can be rough, rude, tough. They are basically nice, gentle, mild and ready to help. The statement is a bit abrupt. It depends what segments are considered to be so "cute" with some famous sabra coarseness. The youths can be very kind, “yeled melech” - we are a “child is a king here" sort, but then show some help to many people of all ages.
Everywhere we go in the streets, buses, taxis, trains disabled people work in all possible fields of activities and they are normally protected by the law. Their rights and possibilities to be granted and enjoy a wide range of social and medical as well as "entertaining activities" could and should be developed. But handicapped people, who are disabled since their early age, or as a consequence of a genetic problem, are also accompanied by the great number of injured individuals who were shot and hardly survived with limited capacities. Others must be very strong to get to the level required by their bosses.
Basically, Israel does respect those who were hurt by life. Endogamy and seemingly poor renewal of blood created a danger for some pious communities, who, on the other hand, show real caring love to their babies and grownups.
There are also the mentally disabled who seem to frighten an increasing part of the Israeli society at the present. This appeared in a recent survey realized by the Ministry of Social Affairs. “Pachadim – fears, irrational panics” that also can technically depict the hypochondriac anxieties of the elderly. They are progressively knitted within our brains, along with the frightening events of our lives.
“Mishley – the Book of Proverbs” alerts us about the dangers to be in frequent with strange people, thus considered as “forbidden”: “This will save you from the forbidden woman (= ishah zarah; the one who is strange and alien) / “menachriyah amariyah hechalikah = from the alien woman whose talk is smooth” (Prov. 2:16). “Estrangement” to usual and common sense is a first step toward some kind of alteration that may drift us from others.
It is very peculiar how suspicious we became and careless in other ways. Decades ago, we were taught in a very simple way: films, ads showed us how to take care if we find something on the floor. Take a stone, throw it on the object from afar; if it does not explode, it can eventually be yours. At the present, children are overprotected and would leave their rucksacks on the side. But if we see faces or people dressed in what is not usual for our usual group, we would be more suspicious and shelter ourselves from them.
Two reactions are then intriguing. Either to mock a group and run away, which is more than common among the teens and not very courageous, or to avoid glances. When the “war situation“ started seven years ago, it was even funny to see Jewish Israelis packed together at the bottom of the buses, some ghetto-like reaction to reach the farthest point. In 2001, there was a curious trend in Jerusalem. It appeared immediately after the first terror attacks happened in the city. Increasing numbers of Arab women started to visit the center of the town and the big stores while the other inhabitants would keep aside or dubiously consider what to do, even the police at that time.
“Zar” comes from root “zarar = to smash, be smashed, scattered, rotten” as in Talmud Niddah35b, Hullin 12,3; useless ovulation of a woman or an “egg that fell from the nest and is rotten (Sanhedrin 82b). The appealing aspect of the word is that it corresponds, to some extent, with what happens with “goy – geviyah (corpse)”. Either it is oddly used by the Jews to speak of non-Jews. Or, in Biblical language it both refers to “goy qadosh – holy people” (Ex. 19:6), i.e. the “reinvigorated corpses or bodies” who are called to sanctify God or the “simple goyei haaretz – nations (Gentiles of the earth)”.
In the Talmud, “zar” often refers to the simple children of Israel, the non-priests (Yoma 42a). On the one hand, despise that can turn to be royal and sublime! Or it may cause a sort of competition, as between the Jews and the Christians: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a chosen nation (Gr. “ethnos”)” wrote the Apostle Peter-Kaipha (1 Peter 2:9); the Byzantine Liturgy of Saint Basil that strongly influenced the Fourth Order of the Latin Mass includes the reference as a replacement of the Jews, ignoring the commandment of fulfillment and unity, oneness in God given by Jesus. How fascinating is it that those who should be considered as chosen by God seem alien to some and crazy to the others. Unity is not shown. It is mocked.
Why should people replace others in God’s likeness? Because it is evidently easier to exclude and remove all kinds of inmates rather than integrating and assimilating them. Thus, it is more convenient to regard our diversity as a symphony (Gr. sun – with, phone – voice) and not only as splits. As Paul of Tarsus said: “The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25). These words are close to the saying of Hillel read this week in the Jewish communities. It climaxes with this famous quotation: “Seeing a skull floating on the surface of the water, he (Hillel) said: Even if they have drowned you because you drowned others, those who drowned you will themselves be drowned” (Pirkey Avot 2:6-8). In Hebrew, a skull is not only the content of our brains, eyes, face and vertebrae. It is on a move, revolving, turning here and there, like “megilgul hazeh legilgul acher = from one to another identity “transmigration, movement” (Prayer before going to sleep).
Hillel is right. We cannot touch the integrity of a skull because death will haunt, in various ways, those who want to kill the soul and cannot (which is one of the most important aspects of Hanukkah’s victory in the rededication of the Temple and the miracle of the light). It is thus the profound meaning of the Golgotha as the place of Calvary or of the Skull in the Gospel.
There is a significant link between the way a society respects, pays attention, takes care and monitors its handicapped or disabled. This is, in general, true for the respect due to any creature and being. Thirty years ago, when disabled were taken by car to the Western Wall, they could open up the wheelchair that was in the trunk and get by themselves to the Kotel; it was amazing. Curiously, the same could happen in Germany and the Netherlands to get to a supermarket. At the present, we see everywhere this kind of personal motorcycles with access to more and more places. We have a lot of soldiers who were wounded.
It is correct that many mentally sick are visible in Israeli society, maybe more openly present in caring arms of more pious Jewish families. It may be the consequence of recurrent war situations, rampant poverty and lack of medical assistance in different segments of the population; anyway, disabled are basically not rejected or hidden as in some other continents.
There is also a spiritual context which is naturally supportive. Walking along the administrative center of Jerusalem and other cities, we can meet with heavily handicapped secretaries, executives and some groups of people of all age, joyfully rushing in their wheelchairs.
I saw once in the North, at a hospital, a whole village of deaf Arabs. At that time, they were given hearing aids that had been carefully stored in their rooms. The Kupat Cholim/Medical care center obliged them to check the devices but they said: we don’t need them because we are all deaf and understand each other perfectly. Other individuals would stay from time to time in hospitals, but the mentally sick are not systematically removed from the society.
God really trusts in the humans. Usually we would think of the opposite and attest that humans hardly can trust in God. No, God entrusted His creation with defects that can profoundly interrogate or cause the despair of so many people. It is therefore very important never to despise any soul, human attitude. In the genocides that developed over the twentieth century, killings aimed at extirpating any mark of God’s image and likeness. Thus, the disabled and mentally sick were either to be murdered or to endure inhuman experiences as if they were toys for sadists.
It may happen that our Israeli society is going through the terrible times of wasting money and lacking care and “love to the neighbor, other.” There is a slide-down that may physically effect the sick. We approach a borderline as Shoah survivors can hardly get the money they are due to receive. They are the ones who that suffered the ignominious reality of death camps, pogroms, assassinations. For decades, we have lived on German money that creates a special connection between the survivors and the State. There is much of a spiritual act of mutual recognition from Germany and Israel and vice versa that we must acknowledge.
The way the disabled are treated questions along the same line, and even more as regards the mentally sick. It is easy to insult somebody whom one considers as alien and runaway. This is not the attitude of faith. Silence, disdain and haughtiness would exert a sort of impulsive censure.
There are two Hebrew words for “disability = mum and nachut”. “Mum = something, anything but as compared to “klum = nothing” (Nedarim 66b). It also means “repulsive” in the Talmud as referring to mamzer/bastard (Kiddushin 3, 64). But “Never reproach the mum (handicap, defect) of your neighbor with a defect that you have in common”(Bava Metziah59b). Nachah/nachi means “to be lessened, reduced”. It paves the way to some perception of alterability that can develop into foreign and estranged suspicions.
The problem with disabilities and handicaps is that they challenge individuals and society by requiring a lot of care, patience, hope without any certitude of healing, over time. Thus they test the faithful about their real commitment with the absence of any response to suffering. My daughter is now 23 years old and was born with no real diagnosis of a muscular and cerebral disease. She went to the gates of death and came back totally death-proof, which is psychological “rule.” My wife and I have spent 20 years helping her to socialize and to be in contact, often educated by others because they had a different experience of her. It took 10 years to know the defect and the disease. It took 10 more years for the social and medical institutions, as well as the families, to understand how she could live in an adequate environment. It will take 10 more years – and will not be applicable to her generation – to replace the defective cells and genes and repair, correct. Then, it is quite probable that some 10 additional years will slowly allow eradicating the syndrome.
The disabled people allow a society to measure its stand and never lie or use pious words about suffering, value of each life. With much prudence and respect, every soul embodies Hillel’s words to the faithful read this week: “Do not set yourself apart from the community; do not be sure of yourself till the day of your death. Do not judge your fellow man till you have been in his position…” (Pirkey Avot 2:5).
Everywhere we go in the streets, buses, taxis, trains disabled people work in all possible fields of activities and they are normally protected by the law. Their rights and possibilities to be granted and enjoy a wide range of social and medical as well as "entertaining activities" could and should be developed. But handicapped people, who are disabled since their early age, or as a consequence of a genetic problem, are also accompanied by the great number of injured individuals who were shot and hardly survived with limited capacities. Others must be very strong to get to the level required by their bosses.
Basically, Israel does respect those who were hurt by life. Endogamy and seemingly poor renewal of blood created a danger for some pious communities, who, on the other hand, show real caring love to their babies and grownups.
There are also the mentally disabled who seem to frighten an increasing part of the Israeli society at the present. This appeared in a recent survey realized by the Ministry of Social Affairs. “Pachadim – fears, irrational panics” that also can technically depict the hypochondriac anxieties of the elderly. They are progressively knitted within our brains, along with the frightening events of our lives.
“Mishley – the Book of Proverbs” alerts us about the dangers to be in frequent with strange people, thus considered as “forbidden”: “This will save you from the forbidden woman (= ishah zarah; the one who is strange and alien) / “menachriyah amariyah hechalikah = from the alien woman whose talk is smooth” (Prov. 2:16). “Estrangement” to usual and common sense is a first step toward some kind of alteration that may drift us from others.
It is very peculiar how suspicious we became and careless in other ways. Decades ago, we were taught in a very simple way: films, ads showed us how to take care if we find something on the floor. Take a stone, throw it on the object from afar; if it does not explode, it can eventually be yours. At the present, children are overprotected and would leave their rucksacks on the side. But if we see faces or people dressed in what is not usual for our usual group, we would be more suspicious and shelter ourselves from them.
Two reactions are then intriguing. Either to mock a group and run away, which is more than common among the teens and not very courageous, or to avoid glances. When the “war situation“ started seven years ago, it was even funny to see Jewish Israelis packed together at the bottom of the buses, some ghetto-like reaction to reach the farthest point. In 2001, there was a curious trend in Jerusalem. It appeared immediately after the first terror attacks happened in the city. Increasing numbers of Arab women started to visit the center of the town and the big stores while the other inhabitants would keep aside or dubiously consider what to do, even the police at that time.
“Zar” comes from root “zarar = to smash, be smashed, scattered, rotten” as in Talmud Niddah35b, Hullin 12,3; useless ovulation of a woman or an “egg that fell from the nest and is rotten (Sanhedrin 82b). The appealing aspect of the word is that it corresponds, to some extent, with what happens with “goy – geviyah (corpse)”. Either it is oddly used by the Jews to speak of non-Jews. Or, in Biblical language it both refers to “goy qadosh – holy people” (Ex. 19:6), i.e. the “reinvigorated corpses or bodies” who are called to sanctify God or the “simple goyei haaretz – nations (Gentiles of the earth)”.
In the Talmud, “zar” often refers to the simple children of Israel, the non-priests (Yoma 42a). On the one hand, despise that can turn to be royal and sublime! Or it may cause a sort of competition, as between the Jews and the Christians: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a chosen nation (Gr. “ethnos”)” wrote the Apostle Peter-Kaipha (1 Peter 2:9); the Byzantine Liturgy of Saint Basil that strongly influenced the Fourth Order of the Latin Mass includes the reference as a replacement of the Jews, ignoring the commandment of fulfillment and unity, oneness in God given by Jesus. How fascinating is it that those who should be considered as chosen by God seem alien to some and crazy to the others. Unity is not shown. It is mocked.
Why should people replace others in God’s likeness? Because it is evidently easier to exclude and remove all kinds of inmates rather than integrating and assimilating them. Thus, it is more convenient to regard our diversity as a symphony (Gr. sun – with, phone – voice) and not only as splits. As Paul of Tarsus said: “The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:25). These words are close to the saying of Hillel read this week in the Jewish communities. It climaxes with this famous quotation: “Seeing a skull floating on the surface of the water, he (Hillel) said: Even if they have drowned you because you drowned others, those who drowned you will themselves be drowned” (Pirkey Avot 2:6-8). In Hebrew, a skull is not only the content of our brains, eyes, face and vertebrae. It is on a move, revolving, turning here and there, like “megilgul hazeh legilgul acher = from one to another identity “transmigration, movement” (Prayer before going to sleep).
Hillel is right. We cannot touch the integrity of a skull because death will haunt, in various ways, those who want to kill the soul and cannot (which is one of the most important aspects of Hanukkah’s victory in the rededication of the Temple and the miracle of the light). It is thus the profound meaning of the Golgotha as the place of Calvary or of the Skull in the Gospel.
There is a significant link between the way a society respects, pays attention, takes care and monitors its handicapped or disabled. This is, in general, true for the respect due to any creature and being. Thirty years ago, when disabled were taken by car to the Western Wall, they could open up the wheelchair that was in the trunk and get by themselves to the Kotel; it was amazing. Curiously, the same could happen in Germany and the Netherlands to get to a supermarket. At the present, we see everywhere this kind of personal motorcycles with access to more and more places. We have a lot of soldiers who were wounded.
It is correct that many mentally sick are visible in Israeli society, maybe more openly present in caring arms of more pious Jewish families. It may be the consequence of recurrent war situations, rampant poverty and lack of medical assistance in different segments of the population; anyway, disabled are basically not rejected or hidden as in some other continents.
There is also a spiritual context which is naturally supportive. Walking along the administrative center of Jerusalem and other cities, we can meet with heavily handicapped secretaries, executives and some groups of people of all age, joyfully rushing in their wheelchairs.
I saw once in the North, at a hospital, a whole village of deaf Arabs. At that time, they were given hearing aids that had been carefully stored in their rooms. The Kupat Cholim/Medical care center obliged them to check the devices but they said: we don’t need them because we are all deaf and understand each other perfectly. Other individuals would stay from time to time in hospitals, but the mentally sick are not systematically removed from the society.
God really trusts in the humans. Usually we would think of the opposite and attest that humans hardly can trust in God. No, God entrusted His creation with defects that can profoundly interrogate or cause the despair of so many people. It is therefore very important never to despise any soul, human attitude. In the genocides that developed over the twentieth century, killings aimed at extirpating any mark of God’s image and likeness. Thus, the disabled and mentally sick were either to be murdered or to endure inhuman experiences as if they were toys for sadists.
It may happen that our Israeli society is going through the terrible times of wasting money and lacking care and “love to the neighbor, other.” There is a slide-down that may physically effect the sick. We approach a borderline as Shoah survivors can hardly get the money they are due to receive. They are the ones who that suffered the ignominious reality of death camps, pogroms, assassinations. For decades, we have lived on German money that creates a special connection between the survivors and the State. There is much of a spiritual act of mutual recognition from Germany and Israel and vice versa that we must acknowledge.
The way the disabled are treated questions along the same line, and even more as regards the mentally sick. It is easy to insult somebody whom one considers as alien and runaway. This is not the attitude of faith. Silence, disdain and haughtiness would exert a sort of impulsive censure.
There are two Hebrew words for “disability = mum and nachut”. “Mum = something, anything but as compared to “klum = nothing” (Nedarim 66b). It also means “repulsive” in the Talmud as referring to mamzer/bastard (Kiddushin 3, 64). But “Never reproach the mum (handicap, defect) of your neighbor with a defect that you have in common”(Bava Metziah59b). Nachah/nachi means “to be lessened, reduced”. It paves the way to some perception of alterability that can develop into foreign and estranged suspicions.
The problem with disabilities and handicaps is that they challenge individuals and society by requiring a lot of care, patience, hope without any certitude of healing, over time. Thus they test the faithful about their real commitment with the absence of any response to suffering. My daughter is now 23 years old and was born with no real diagnosis of a muscular and cerebral disease. She went to the gates of death and came back totally death-proof, which is psychological “rule.” My wife and I have spent 20 years helping her to socialize and to be in contact, often educated by others because they had a different experience of her. It took 10 years to know the defect and the disease. It took 10 more years for the social and medical institutions, as well as the families, to understand how she could live in an adequate environment. It will take 10 more years – and will not be applicable to her generation – to replace the defective cells and genes and repair, correct. Then, it is quite probable that some 10 additional years will slowly allow eradicating the syndrome.
The disabled people allow a society to measure its stand and never lie or use pious words about suffering, value of each life. With much prudence and respect, every soul embodies Hillel’s words to the faithful read this week: “Do not set yourself apart from the community; do not be sure of yourself till the day of your death. Do not judge your fellow man till you have been in his position…” (Pirkey Avot 2:5).
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Peh al-peh: Moses' unique humbleness
Time passes and the next memorial feasts or days will show in June with the commemoration of the destructions of the Temples and the city of Jerusalem that will climax on the 9th of Av (07/23-24).
We just left Shavuot and the Giving of the Written and Oral Laws to Moses. The journey through the wilderness continues with Shabbat Beha'alotekha (Moses, when you will elevate the lamps) and the weekly reading portion in the Book of Bamidbar/Numbers 8:1-12:16. There starts the second year of the Israelites' sojourn in the desert. The Levites are called to mount = ha'alah the lamps in the Tent of the Meeting. They are told to serve from the age of 25 until they reach 50. Then, they would stay on the side of the acting Levi'im, without performing anything.
Moses proposes to celebrate the feast of Passover, thus for the second time in the wilderness. It happens that some men come with specific requests. Can they join the feast as they had been in contact with corpses and are unclean? At each step, Moses answers them that he knows nothing and needs to get God's advice and response. This is the repeated motto of this weekly reading. Moses goes ahead but constantly needs God's personal answer. In the case of the feast of Passover, the reply is that these men should wait one full month and then celebrate Pesach on Iyar 14, i.e. what became "Pesach sheni = Second Passover" for those who were absent at the feast and could not participate for some valid reason.
This provision is mentioned as a sort of leitmotiv that accompanies the Israelites during their journey in the Sinai. It is said that they should take good care of everybody, every soul and to never reject anyone. Today, this sounds as a typical reminder from the wilderness times. The Sinai is per se a kind of no-man’s land, a wild area full of dangers, with plenty of visible, invisible, day or night enemies or fictions that may exert their power even through fictitious visions.
Moses repeated the Lord’s commandment: “when a stranger who resides with you (“ve-khi yagur ger”) will offer a Passover sacrifice to the Lord, he must offer it in accordance with the rules and rites (mishpato) of the Passover sacrifice. There shall be one law for you, whether stranger or citizen (velager ule’ezrach) of the country”(Bamidbar 9:14). This extends the rather permanent issue we face in this country, much after the time spent in the wilderness and discussed as an actual problem in the previous blog. The time in the Sinai corresponds to a pedagogical tour. It is not a labyrinth because this wonderful space and mind route has but only two possible goals. The Cretan labyrinth combined secrecy and hardship to get free and/or memorize. It was also a mythological way to hold the Minotaur and thus to restrict one’s thought on limited solutions. The Egyptian pyramids were built on the same confusing pattern. Human rulers and leaders love these sorts of quizzes. Genetics and specialists of memory diseases or defects would show how such paths can be controlled with much insight.
The journey through Sinai is not of the same nature. It is not built upon myths and mythological attempts to tie up human beings. We are still in the Sinai in many ways, in particular as regards our desires or expectations, beliefs or faith that we came and will continue to come out of serfdom to freedom. In the wilderness, the Hebrew nation was a displaced living body that advanced in some dizzy darkness. This means they missed explanations, maps, central piloting headquarters and strategy.
Today, just look at the mobiles. We get the last breaking news in whatever alphabet, the weather forecast for the week, a living map showing where we are and where you may go. It also means you know where our friends, buddies are located and where the next conflict will nuke out. And, along with the view of the Tent of the Meeting, if any, your favorite pictures or flashing ads, SMS and fax services, access to your credit cards and personal documents, with the exact time. We hold the world in the palm of our hand, or around our neck, provided there is no strike somewhere. Then, you can call your friend who is at the Kotel/Western Wall and cry out all our distress lives from Anchorage! In Israel, beside a weapon on a belt, there are people who have 3, 5 cell phones at hand. It does not mean we know how to use our cells. But we are not lost… well!
Now, in the desert, when there is a grain of sand, everything gets blurred. And there they were the ancestors! They were journeying ahead with camels, donkeys and sheep, rattling around without real understanding of where the route should lead them to. In this respect, as people were also dying in this environment, it should be interesting to analyze with precision that were listening to Moses. It is quite a pity that no TV nor Arutz “something” could not record daily life, counseling with Moses and prayers at the Tent of Meeting.
The Talmud is rather lively, but still… It is evident that, progressively, the marching in the desert appeared to be dangerous. They were not at Jericho. But the Israelites made two hammered silver trumpets (chatzotzrot kesef) to summon the divisions and convoke the congregation with long blasts. The task was given to Aaron and the priests. Because these trumpets were to be blown in case of a war in order to remind the people that God is able to deliver the nation from their enemies (Num. 10:9). Everything still focuses and is naturally centered on God. He is the One and only Counselor at this point. There are “intermediate contacts or laws that allow to make a ‘chatzitzah – partition’ between clean and unclean and shake a situation” (Hagigah 78b). The trumpets and their resounding name in Hebrew have this function. It does not mean that God will save. It does not mean that the human divisions of the Israelites were strong or powerful, mighty. On the contrary, they did know that only Moses could advise them adequately because he was conversing with God in full obedience and consent, mutual trust.
At times, the Israelites could not accept such a situation. This is why it is inquiring to see how Moses tries to persuade Hovav the Madianite to guide the division across the desert and help them avoiding wrong routes (Bemidbar 10:29). Hovav was a sort of “stranger and citizen.” He answered to Moses that he preferred not to guide him and return to his home. Moses tried a second time to convince him to “give his eyes” in order to find the right direction. He got no response. The scene is fascinating because we still go through the same temptations, tests and frightening experiences, here in this country but also everywhere because the mental configuration is rather similar. Nahmanides had stated that: in the wilderness, Hovav would have given a human hand in a situation that basically defies God actions and certainly not Moses’ non-existing power. Thus, two radicals are used that are essential in Judaism: “tov – good – yetiv – to be good”, which Moses said to Hovav to persuade him to guide them; in return, he would be good, generous toward Hovav.
Hovav’s refusal is more than significant. It is precisely when the ger is a full resident and still claims his own freedom. This can upset or rebuke. Moses is a simple man and has the human right to be feeble. In that sense, leaders are terribly weakened by nature. Hovav reminds Moses that his only guidance comes from God’s mouth and nobody else. When Moses insists “lecha itanu – come with us”, he forgets for a very short while that is definitely essential, that the Israelites are to join the spiritual path accomplished by the Avot – the ancestors and three first patriarchs. As concerned leaving idolatry and the house of Terach, Abraham heard “lech lecha – go, leave – go to yourself and who you are- go, go then to your country”. This is a divine call, a bit “weird” and that he could hardly listen and accept immediately. We have the same problem. We have more: we know this by heart! So leave it to the highbrows and we shall pull in/out, backward/forwards, around/away, underneath/in the air. And there go the strikes in the reading portion: the people protest: they want to eat, weep upon all these delicious products of Egypt. They got quail and manna.
But this was in the desert and the real thing concerns Moses. It is written about him: “Moses was a very humble man more than any other man on earth (anav meod mikol adam asher al-haadamah)” (Num. 12:3). This traces back a parallel with the first human being. “With him, says the Lord, I speak mouth to mouth (peh al-peh) (v.8), without riddles and he beholds the likeness of the Lord.”. Moses could not utter words properly. He was “ani – poor” as God expecting His people prayer (Tehillim 104). He could not boast God or the Israelites or Pharaoh or anyone by his experience with God. How can we expect anything of God if we think we are strong and know anything about Him? Everywhere, leaders will declare that they know; they will not step down because they know. And even when the downfall, collapse is definitely clear, still they are strong and know. Leaders can just be any anonymous person who blows up for some odd reason.
Moses’ humility has become a model that remains unsurpassed in the TaNaKH. He is the model of the Jewish “anawim – poor that totally rely on God”. He was obedient to God. “Obedience” does not mean a lot at the present. True, it sounds “too Christian” and servile. The Latin word “ob-audire” means “to hear, listen in a converging way, together.” This is the most difficult point to reach. It does not consist in “hearing” (sh’ma) and then do what pleases us. It does not mean a sort of constantly frustrating reduction of personal freewill or freedom.
On the contrary, as “the poor in spirit – oi ptokhoi to pneumati” (Matthew 5:3), lauded by Jesus, the way is widely open to who believes that God can work unexpected things. Jewishness has deep feeling toward those they would assume to be “anawim” or “tzadikim – righteous”, beyond any titles. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates, on this Sunday after Pentecost, the Saints who lived as human beings in the total abandonment to God’s Providence and Commandments. There is something very close to the Jewish “Devekut – attachment” in the Chassidic tradition. The Saints were not supermen/women, just ordinary people whose lives radiated God’s Acting Presence and Providence. The Orthodox and the Catholic Churches have recognized (canonized), in the past thirty years, a immense number of Saints. This can be a real questioning between the Jews and the Christians.
The 20th century has been a monstrous time of apostasy and crimes. Some men and women, children did trust in God and joined those who witnessed for God along the centuries. Curiously, Judaism also started to recognize, under specific circumstances, the merits of the “Righteous among the Nations”. Saints and Righteous are not E.T.’s. They sanctify God’s reign everywhere.
COMMENTS
1. Great job Rabbi!!!
This was very well written and thought out. Keep up the good work.
John Tobin, Tennessee, USA, May 31 8:05PM
Posted by Av_A at 8:32 AM 0 comments
We just left Shavuot and the Giving of the Written and Oral Laws to Moses. The journey through the wilderness continues with Shabbat Beha'alotekha (Moses, when you will elevate the lamps) and the weekly reading portion in the Book of Bamidbar/Numbers 8:1-12:16. There starts the second year of the Israelites' sojourn in the desert. The Levites are called to mount = ha'alah the lamps in the Tent of the Meeting. They are told to serve from the age of 25 until they reach 50. Then, they would stay on the side of the acting Levi'im, without performing anything.
Moses proposes to celebrate the feast of Passover, thus for the second time in the wilderness. It happens that some men come with specific requests. Can they join the feast as they had been in contact with corpses and are unclean? At each step, Moses answers them that he knows nothing and needs to get God's advice and response. This is the repeated motto of this weekly reading. Moses goes ahead but constantly needs God's personal answer. In the case of the feast of Passover, the reply is that these men should wait one full month and then celebrate Pesach on Iyar 14, i.e. what became "Pesach sheni = Second Passover" for those who were absent at the feast and could not participate for some valid reason.
This provision is mentioned as a sort of leitmotiv that accompanies the Israelites during their journey in the Sinai. It is said that they should take good care of everybody, every soul and to never reject anyone. Today, this sounds as a typical reminder from the wilderness times. The Sinai is per se a kind of no-man’s land, a wild area full of dangers, with plenty of visible, invisible, day or night enemies or fictions that may exert their power even through fictitious visions.
Moses repeated the Lord’s commandment: “when a stranger who resides with you (“ve-khi yagur ger”) will offer a Passover sacrifice to the Lord, he must offer it in accordance with the rules and rites (mishpato) of the Passover sacrifice. There shall be one law for you, whether stranger or citizen (velager ule’ezrach) of the country”(Bamidbar 9:14). This extends the rather permanent issue we face in this country, much after the time spent in the wilderness and discussed as an actual problem in the previous blog. The time in the Sinai corresponds to a pedagogical tour. It is not a labyrinth because this wonderful space and mind route has but only two possible goals. The Cretan labyrinth combined secrecy and hardship to get free and/or memorize. It was also a mythological way to hold the Minotaur and thus to restrict one’s thought on limited solutions. The Egyptian pyramids were built on the same confusing pattern. Human rulers and leaders love these sorts of quizzes. Genetics and specialists of memory diseases or defects would show how such paths can be controlled with much insight.
The journey through Sinai is not of the same nature. It is not built upon myths and mythological attempts to tie up human beings. We are still in the Sinai in many ways, in particular as regards our desires or expectations, beliefs or faith that we came and will continue to come out of serfdom to freedom. In the wilderness, the Hebrew nation was a displaced living body that advanced in some dizzy darkness. This means they missed explanations, maps, central piloting headquarters and strategy.
Today, just look at the mobiles. We get the last breaking news in whatever alphabet, the weather forecast for the week, a living map showing where we are and where you may go. It also means you know where our friends, buddies are located and where the next conflict will nuke out. And, along with the view of the Tent of the Meeting, if any, your favorite pictures or flashing ads, SMS and fax services, access to your credit cards and personal documents, with the exact time. We hold the world in the palm of our hand, or around our neck, provided there is no strike somewhere. Then, you can call your friend who is at the Kotel/Western Wall and cry out all our distress lives from Anchorage! In Israel, beside a weapon on a belt, there are people who have 3, 5 cell phones at hand. It does not mean we know how to use our cells. But we are not lost… well!
Now, in the desert, when there is a grain of sand, everything gets blurred. And there they were the ancestors! They were journeying ahead with camels, donkeys and sheep, rattling around without real understanding of where the route should lead them to. In this respect, as people were also dying in this environment, it should be interesting to analyze with precision that were listening to Moses. It is quite a pity that no TV nor Arutz “something” could not record daily life, counseling with Moses and prayers at the Tent of Meeting.
The Talmud is rather lively, but still… It is evident that, progressively, the marching in the desert appeared to be dangerous. They were not at Jericho. But the Israelites made two hammered silver trumpets (chatzotzrot kesef) to summon the divisions and convoke the congregation with long blasts. The task was given to Aaron and the priests. Because these trumpets were to be blown in case of a war in order to remind the people that God is able to deliver the nation from their enemies (Num. 10:9). Everything still focuses and is naturally centered on God. He is the One and only Counselor at this point. There are “intermediate contacts or laws that allow to make a ‘chatzitzah – partition’ between clean and unclean and shake a situation” (Hagigah 78b). The trumpets and their resounding name in Hebrew have this function. It does not mean that God will save. It does not mean that the human divisions of the Israelites were strong or powerful, mighty. On the contrary, they did know that only Moses could advise them adequately because he was conversing with God in full obedience and consent, mutual trust.
At times, the Israelites could not accept such a situation. This is why it is inquiring to see how Moses tries to persuade Hovav the Madianite to guide the division across the desert and help them avoiding wrong routes (Bemidbar 10:29). Hovav was a sort of “stranger and citizen.” He answered to Moses that he preferred not to guide him and return to his home. Moses tried a second time to convince him to “give his eyes” in order to find the right direction. He got no response. The scene is fascinating because we still go through the same temptations, tests and frightening experiences, here in this country but also everywhere because the mental configuration is rather similar. Nahmanides had stated that: in the wilderness, Hovav would have given a human hand in a situation that basically defies God actions and certainly not Moses’ non-existing power. Thus, two radicals are used that are essential in Judaism: “tov – good – yetiv – to be good”, which Moses said to Hovav to persuade him to guide them; in return, he would be good, generous toward Hovav.
Hovav’s refusal is more than significant. It is precisely when the ger is a full resident and still claims his own freedom. This can upset or rebuke. Moses is a simple man and has the human right to be feeble. In that sense, leaders are terribly weakened by nature. Hovav reminds Moses that his only guidance comes from God’s mouth and nobody else. When Moses insists “lecha itanu – come with us”, he forgets for a very short while that is definitely essential, that the Israelites are to join the spiritual path accomplished by the Avot – the ancestors and three first patriarchs. As concerned leaving idolatry and the house of Terach, Abraham heard “lech lecha – go, leave – go to yourself and who you are- go, go then to your country”. This is a divine call, a bit “weird” and that he could hardly listen and accept immediately. We have the same problem. We have more: we know this by heart! So leave it to the highbrows and we shall pull in/out, backward/forwards, around/away, underneath/in the air. And there go the strikes in the reading portion: the people protest: they want to eat, weep upon all these delicious products of Egypt. They got quail and manna.
But this was in the desert and the real thing concerns Moses. It is written about him: “Moses was a very humble man more than any other man on earth (anav meod mikol adam asher al-haadamah)” (Num. 12:3). This traces back a parallel with the first human being. “With him, says the Lord, I speak mouth to mouth (peh al-peh) (v.8), without riddles and he beholds the likeness of the Lord.”. Moses could not utter words properly. He was “ani – poor” as God expecting His people prayer (Tehillim 104). He could not boast God or the Israelites or Pharaoh or anyone by his experience with God. How can we expect anything of God if we think we are strong and know anything about Him? Everywhere, leaders will declare that they know; they will not step down because they know. And even when the downfall, collapse is definitely clear, still they are strong and know. Leaders can just be any anonymous person who blows up for some odd reason.
Moses’ humility has become a model that remains unsurpassed in the TaNaKH. He is the model of the Jewish “anawim – poor that totally rely on God”. He was obedient to God. “Obedience” does not mean a lot at the present. True, it sounds “too Christian” and servile. The Latin word “ob-audire” means “to hear, listen in a converging way, together.” This is the most difficult point to reach. It does not consist in “hearing” (sh’ma) and then do what pleases us. It does not mean a sort of constantly frustrating reduction of personal freewill or freedom.
On the contrary, as “the poor in spirit – oi ptokhoi to pneumati” (Matthew 5:3), lauded by Jesus, the way is widely open to who believes that God can work unexpected things. Jewishness has deep feeling toward those they would assume to be “anawim” or “tzadikim – righteous”, beyond any titles. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates, on this Sunday after Pentecost, the Saints who lived as human beings in the total abandonment to God’s Providence and Commandments. There is something very close to the Jewish “Devekut – attachment” in the Chassidic tradition. The Saints were not supermen/women, just ordinary people whose lives radiated God’s Acting Presence and Providence. The Orthodox and the Catholic Churches have recognized (canonized), in the past thirty years, a immense number of Saints. This can be a real questioning between the Jews and the Christians.
The 20th century has been a monstrous time of apostasy and crimes. Some men and women, children did trust in God and joined those who witnessed for God along the centuries. Curiously, Judaism also started to recognize, under specific circumstances, the merits of the “Righteous among the Nations”. Saints and Righteous are not E.T.’s. They sanctify God’s reign everywhere.
COMMENTS
1. Great job Rabbi!!!
This was very well written and thought out. Keep up the good work.
John Tobin, Tennessee, USA, May 31 8:05PM
Posted by Av_A at 8:32 AM 0 comments
Shavuot/Pentecost: whirling in God's big hugs
As days pass. rain and storms drift away. Summer heat increases. At this point, rain, heat and desert sharav/hamsin wind are replaced by very hot temperatures, moody and instable temper combined with the influence of the moon and a sort of common "machzor - period" state of mind. These are the most significant parameters that specify summer in a region that always quakes and shakes imperceptibly. We are a few months before the shmittah / the 7th year of rest for the earth and again, as last year, the different people living in Eretz Israel are embattled in shooting Kassams, then sending back snipers, pulling slowly in then slowly out, like a bloody wedding dance performed by confused children and whose compasses would show any direction, provided there is any weird or irrational action to undertake, whatever action. It is so frightening to wait for months under the sun, bogged down the split streets and houses of Sderot or in some other West Bank or Samaria region. South Lebanon clashes again. The land and its people may not know any coming shmittah in terms of peace and rest and spiritual refreshing of the earth and the fields.
But indeed we are the am segulah, the chosen ones, the only chosen people, expect you. We are chosen, elected and don't even have to think what of what and how come, because we know God so much from inside that we will listen to Him, good enough, but next year, next time. Who can even envision how God knows us? He may convene us for a new "farbrengen – spiritual convention": from Chassidim to all sorts of congregations, no problem, we do, accomplish our task. We do it the way a T-shirt explains it: "My work is so secret that I don't even know what my job is". Still, God is a Name here, God may also be the game (very playful to turn His Name into any kind of entertainment, business or a kindergarten play) and we shall listen to Him... I was told that on the eve of Shavuot by a group of Orthodox teens. Wai wai! They knew everything, absolutely everything with some parrot-fashion “click-me again phrases”: "We will never serve in Tzahal, because we pray for Israel and this is the best thing to do because we are the best" (sic; well, why even state "sic", it is just evident). As I tried to quietly say the Tehillim (they were not that Ashkenazi "zugn tehillim - say the psalms" but rather North-African and Yemenites), they asked the normal stuff: why, from where, what for, what am I? And the conversation climaxed very quickly about the fact whether I knew or not that the Jews are indeed the chosen people. “No prob’, guys”, I answered, “I guess I heard that before.” - "Really?" replied a childlike arrogant youth... and so what? Okay, two teens added: "You are old, you know, we are 13 and a half, "Yishmorekha HaShem - May G-d bless you!", said one of the leaders whom I warmly thanked saying that blessing beings and creatures is the true mitzvah given to Abraham Avinu. Some responded by spitting intensively on the ground. We agreed after a few minutes that it is better not to spit in order to keep Jerusalem "naki - clean" and that the tif-tuf (drizzling drops) were over for this year. "Yeah, but G-d chose us, you see..." they continued with much pensive rumination. “So we pray and God listen to us” ("and you also spit at times, say in between", I smiled nicely" - "Yes, but this is because of the goyim; there are goyim everywhere". - "You bet!???, I asked astounded, adding: “But, okay do you know that tons of “goyim- non-Jews” also serve in the Israeli Army, and seemingly more and more Arabs, Druses, Bedouins, Russians and others... And you cannot call them all the time "goyim" because the Jews are also some special sort of "goy"...", I kindly suggested. They yelled they were the Sons of Abraham Avinu and not some random goy/nation..." - "Indeed, Jews are a "goy kadosh - holy people" - They stared that "holy or not" still the word is "goy"(Ex. 19:6). The extraordinary and rather humdrum aspect of the conversation is that they don't know at all that the same discussion is accounted in almost a word-to-word transliteration in the Gospel (Matthew 3:9 - Luke 3:8).
We are on Shabbat Naso in which is read the longest reading portion in the Book of Bemidbar/Numbers 4:21-7:89. It deals with the laws governing the service inside the Tent of the Meeting, also the status of “nazir – nazarite” (who goes away or aside from the society, abstains from drinking wine. He gets God’s crown on his head and a total spirit of freedom. This has always been a major life choice in Judaism, but too often confronted with Christian monastics views as lifeless. R. Shimon bar Yochai was a nazirite – so? Longhair down to thighs – eyes of burning interiority or hippy-yuppie tripping to some isolated mount (Bhutan is en vogue). Eastern Orthodox monks have the same look while, in the West, shaven skulls are humbly “clean-cut”. Jewish ancient nazarites as Christian monks are called to control their desires and thus be free – also from counting and polishing their hair constantly.
The teens were right: whom G-d chose and to whom He gave the Torah? At the present, the competition is just wild, nuts, berserk, frantic, infuriated. True. Shavuot – together with Christian new wave Western style Pentecost – are bonkers (cf. British naval slang: slightly drunken” with some touch of lightly crazy sexual fire). We have the same in Jerusalem for Sukkot, the Feast of the Tabernacles. But it is far more under control. Charismatic Shavuot and Western Christian New wave believers dance, scream, rock ‘n roll Hebrew psalms, speak in tongues. Long robes, white to orange through all sorts of rainbow truly beautiful clothes, makeup of essential products, shofar, harps, lyres, cymbals, and there it goes “Hallelujah, Blessed be the Lord, Baruch HaShem, yom-yom – everyday”.
Right, Israel pathetically needs supporters. Then we face an ethical issue. Can we play the fool with God Himself? The show can be gorgeously joyous; the same people would not miss their flight to some other continent and this ecstatic blowout will change to desperate rave-in from one airport to another. In the meanwhile, they would cross – but not meet – Orthodox Jews (they often give them a spit or two), Eastern Orthodox Christians from Russia (long-beards and hair covers for women, Slava Tebe, Gospodi (exactly the same as our “Baruch HaShem…). This year a large African Catholic delegation of Monsignori. No. This year, the most moving group, if any, might be “the Big Hug”, apparently run by some Dutch-speakers. Not a Shavuot/Pentecost-linked movement. They met on the net. They could gather and get acquainted in Jerusalem. Indeed, the dilemma’s are basically the same: what to do with your mouth? To do or listen? Or, to speak and repeat the same truisms, with more or less conviction? We love to hug in Israel. Shoulders call upon shoulders and cheeks kiss other tanned fresh cheeks sometimes with a lot of friendship and joyfully. This very American behavior was also largely development by late Diana, the Princess of Wales. We need warmth, people need warmth, Jews need warmth and in this very small street colloquium with religious teens, they did agree that even the goyim (Nations) need warmth. There is really something like shravi (wilderness wind) pep and dash these days. Is it mainly due to the development of conflicts at every level of the ruling leaderships, killings, snipers, bulldozers, tanks? “Dash” is the word in Hebrew for this hugging kissing warmth that makes you feel a “chosen” for a short while. “Hug” comes from Old Norse “hugur – soul, mood, thought” – “hugsa – to think, remember, mind, comfort” – Germ. “Hegen – to cherish, cf> to make a hedge”. “Dash” is Hebrew is just sweet; it was “dashdesh/dashesh – to stamp upon”… “tramp a drunken person”, states Targum Isaiah 19:14. When the Spirit was spread on Jerusalem at Pentecost, it is said that people look a bit “drunk” (Acts of Apostles 2:13). This group gathered with a real question – nothing to do with porn or sex: human beings are supposedly 37,2C in the morning and can show some comforting warmth, which became also a psychological assistance method in this country. Incidentally, during the Eastern Byzantine divine liturgy, the priest pours hot water into the cup of red wine (cf. blood) because Jesus is considered as risen from the dead and thus has a “humane” temperature (besides all other cultural explanations).
Still, the reading portion of the week does not only focus on all that. Firstly, there is the verse of Bemidbar/Numbers 6:22-27 called the “Birkat Kohanim – Priestly Blessing”. The blessing is recited daily and has been throughout the age in most peculiar places of the world. This year, we want to climb up the Temple Mount. Then we must be aware that this blessing is the last priestly and sacrificial act perpetually performed by the Jews and inherited from the Temple Service. It implicitly extends God’s blessing to all the Nations and the kohanim are totally overshadowed by their prayer-shawls, they separate their fingers to let the Shekhinah come through and reach out to the people. Chosen? Yes, but not for ourselves. Someway, spirituality always stumbles between low-profiled humility and high-tech arrogance.
Luther had translated with a rare exactitude the Massoretic verse of Num. 7:89: “Moses…would hear the Voice “spoken him - meddaber elav –redend zu sich” from above the cover (kaporet) of the Tent”. This is a grammatical quiz that is very intriguing. R. Leibowitz traces back to Maimonides as to Rashi. “meddaber” is a reflexive “mitdaber, shortened into meddaber”. It means that God was speaking to Himself when meeting with Moses. This is the quiz, a permanent quiz. Everything comes from Him and returns to Him (cf. John 13:3). Mishley/Proverbs16:4 stated likewise that “God makes everything for Himself”. Thus, it means that from Moses to us and ahead of us God only discusses with Himself and shares what humans are able to understand, cope with, deny at times or rediscover fortuitously.
This Saturday-Sunday, all the Christian Churches will celebrate the Feast of Pentecost and the Spreading of the Holy Spirit. One of the very interesting decisions taken by the Roman Catholic Church during the Second Council of Vatican (1965) was to reintroduce, as a consequence of common studies and dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox Churches, various prayers to the Holy Spirit during the liturgies. Oriental Churches have always been very Spirit-oriented as the “Ruah Elokim merachefet, the Spirit of God was sweeping as the eagle over the water” (Gen. 1:2). Pentecost is Greek for Arabic Hamsin (sounds like sharav!) = 50. It seems to be confusing for some Jews abroad. The Russians call the Feast “Most Holy Troytza” which underscores the very complex definition of the Trinity vs. One God. Monday is more specifically the “Day of the Holy Spirit”.
Somehow, Shavuot and Pentecost, in multifaceted ways in the Jewish and Christian traditions, point out that we are reinvigorated by God’s Gifts Who blows into our nostrils the soul of warmth and comfort. Maybe we get to cuddling hugs that warm us up, eh like good pastries, look around and have a question: “Can we tame each other?”
But indeed we are the am segulah, the chosen ones, the only chosen people, expect you. We are chosen, elected and don't even have to think what of what and how come, because we know God so much from inside that we will listen to Him, good enough, but next year, next time. Who can even envision how God knows us? He may convene us for a new "farbrengen – spiritual convention": from Chassidim to all sorts of congregations, no problem, we do, accomplish our task. We do it the way a T-shirt explains it: "My work is so secret that I don't even know what my job is". Still, God is a Name here, God may also be the game (very playful to turn His Name into any kind of entertainment, business or a kindergarten play) and we shall listen to Him... I was told that on the eve of Shavuot by a group of Orthodox teens. Wai wai! They knew everything, absolutely everything with some parrot-fashion “click-me again phrases”: "We will never serve in Tzahal, because we pray for Israel and this is the best thing to do because we are the best" (sic; well, why even state "sic", it is just evident). As I tried to quietly say the Tehillim (they were not that Ashkenazi "zugn tehillim - say the psalms" but rather North-African and Yemenites), they asked the normal stuff: why, from where, what for, what am I? And the conversation climaxed very quickly about the fact whether I knew or not that the Jews are indeed the chosen people. “No prob’, guys”, I answered, “I guess I heard that before.” - "Really?" replied a childlike arrogant youth... and so what? Okay, two teens added: "You are old, you know, we are 13 and a half, "Yishmorekha HaShem - May G-d bless you!", said one of the leaders whom I warmly thanked saying that blessing beings and creatures is the true mitzvah given to Abraham Avinu. Some responded by spitting intensively on the ground. We agreed after a few minutes that it is better not to spit in order to keep Jerusalem "naki - clean" and that the tif-tuf (drizzling drops) were over for this year. "Yeah, but G-d chose us, you see..." they continued with much pensive rumination. “So we pray and God listen to us” ("and you also spit at times, say in between", I smiled nicely" - "Yes, but this is because of the goyim; there are goyim everywhere". - "You bet!???, I asked astounded, adding: “But, okay do you know that tons of “goyim- non-Jews” also serve in the Israeli Army, and seemingly more and more Arabs, Druses, Bedouins, Russians and others... And you cannot call them all the time "goyim" because the Jews are also some special sort of "goy"...", I kindly suggested. They yelled they were the Sons of Abraham Avinu and not some random goy/nation..." - "Indeed, Jews are a "goy kadosh - holy people" - They stared that "holy or not" still the word is "goy"(Ex. 19:6). The extraordinary and rather humdrum aspect of the conversation is that they don't know at all that the same discussion is accounted in almost a word-to-word transliteration in the Gospel (Matthew 3:9 - Luke 3:8).
We are on Shabbat Naso in which is read the longest reading portion in the Book of Bemidbar/Numbers 4:21-7:89. It deals with the laws governing the service inside the Tent of the Meeting, also the status of “nazir – nazarite” (who goes away or aside from the society, abstains from drinking wine. He gets God’s crown on his head and a total spirit of freedom. This has always been a major life choice in Judaism, but too often confronted with Christian monastics views as lifeless. R. Shimon bar Yochai was a nazirite – so? Longhair down to thighs – eyes of burning interiority or hippy-yuppie tripping to some isolated mount (Bhutan is en vogue). Eastern Orthodox monks have the same look while, in the West, shaven skulls are humbly “clean-cut”. Jewish ancient nazarites as Christian monks are called to control their desires and thus be free – also from counting and polishing their hair constantly.
The teens were right: whom G-d chose and to whom He gave the Torah? At the present, the competition is just wild, nuts, berserk, frantic, infuriated. True. Shavuot – together with Christian new wave Western style Pentecost – are bonkers (cf. British naval slang: slightly drunken” with some touch of lightly crazy sexual fire). We have the same in Jerusalem for Sukkot, the Feast of the Tabernacles. But it is far more under control. Charismatic Shavuot and Western Christian New wave believers dance, scream, rock ‘n roll Hebrew psalms, speak in tongues. Long robes, white to orange through all sorts of rainbow truly beautiful clothes, makeup of essential products, shofar, harps, lyres, cymbals, and there it goes “Hallelujah, Blessed be the Lord, Baruch HaShem, yom-yom – everyday”.
Right, Israel pathetically needs supporters. Then we face an ethical issue. Can we play the fool with God Himself? The show can be gorgeously joyous; the same people would not miss their flight to some other continent and this ecstatic blowout will change to desperate rave-in from one airport to another. In the meanwhile, they would cross – but not meet – Orthodox Jews (they often give them a spit or two), Eastern Orthodox Christians from Russia (long-beards and hair covers for women, Slava Tebe, Gospodi (exactly the same as our “Baruch HaShem…). This year a large African Catholic delegation of Monsignori. No. This year, the most moving group, if any, might be “the Big Hug”, apparently run by some Dutch-speakers. Not a Shavuot/Pentecost-linked movement. They met on the net. They could gather and get acquainted in Jerusalem. Indeed, the dilemma’s are basically the same: what to do with your mouth? To do or listen? Or, to speak and repeat the same truisms, with more or less conviction? We love to hug in Israel. Shoulders call upon shoulders and cheeks kiss other tanned fresh cheeks sometimes with a lot of friendship and joyfully. This very American behavior was also largely development by late Diana, the Princess of Wales. We need warmth, people need warmth, Jews need warmth and in this very small street colloquium with religious teens, they did agree that even the goyim (Nations) need warmth. There is really something like shravi (wilderness wind) pep and dash these days. Is it mainly due to the development of conflicts at every level of the ruling leaderships, killings, snipers, bulldozers, tanks? “Dash” is the word in Hebrew for this hugging kissing warmth that makes you feel a “chosen” for a short while. “Hug” comes from Old Norse “hugur – soul, mood, thought” – “hugsa – to think, remember, mind, comfort” – Germ. “Hegen – to cherish, cf> to make a hedge”. “Dash” is Hebrew is just sweet; it was “dashdesh/dashesh – to stamp upon”… “tramp a drunken person”, states Targum Isaiah 19:14. When the Spirit was spread on Jerusalem at Pentecost, it is said that people look a bit “drunk” (Acts of Apostles 2:13). This group gathered with a real question – nothing to do with porn or sex: human beings are supposedly 37,2C in the morning and can show some comforting warmth, which became also a psychological assistance method in this country. Incidentally, during the Eastern Byzantine divine liturgy, the priest pours hot water into the cup of red wine (cf. blood) because Jesus is considered as risen from the dead and thus has a “humane” temperature (besides all other cultural explanations).
Still, the reading portion of the week does not only focus on all that. Firstly, there is the verse of Bemidbar/Numbers 6:22-27 called the “Birkat Kohanim – Priestly Blessing”. The blessing is recited daily and has been throughout the age in most peculiar places of the world. This year, we want to climb up the Temple Mount. Then we must be aware that this blessing is the last priestly and sacrificial act perpetually performed by the Jews and inherited from the Temple Service. It implicitly extends God’s blessing to all the Nations and the kohanim are totally overshadowed by their prayer-shawls, they separate their fingers to let the Shekhinah come through and reach out to the people. Chosen? Yes, but not for ourselves. Someway, spirituality always stumbles between low-profiled humility and high-tech arrogance.
Luther had translated with a rare exactitude the Massoretic verse of Num. 7:89: “Moses…would hear the Voice “spoken him - meddaber elav –redend zu sich” from above the cover (kaporet) of the Tent”. This is a grammatical quiz that is very intriguing. R. Leibowitz traces back to Maimonides as to Rashi. “meddaber” is a reflexive “mitdaber, shortened into meddaber”. It means that God was speaking to Himself when meeting with Moses. This is the quiz, a permanent quiz. Everything comes from Him and returns to Him (cf. John 13:3). Mishley/Proverbs16:4 stated likewise that “God makes everything for Himself”. Thus, it means that from Moses to us and ahead of us God only discusses with Himself and shares what humans are able to understand, cope with, deny at times or rediscover fortuitously.
This Saturday-Sunday, all the Christian Churches will celebrate the Feast of Pentecost and the Spreading of the Holy Spirit. One of the very interesting decisions taken by the Roman Catholic Church during the Second Council of Vatican (1965) was to reintroduce, as a consequence of common studies and dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox Churches, various prayers to the Holy Spirit during the liturgies. Oriental Churches have always been very Spirit-oriented as the “Ruah Elokim merachefet, the Spirit of God was sweeping as the eagle over the water” (Gen. 1:2). Pentecost is Greek for Arabic Hamsin (sounds like sharav!) = 50. It seems to be confusing for some Jews abroad. The Russians call the Feast “Most Holy Troytza” which underscores the very complex definition of the Trinity vs. One God. Monday is more specifically the “Day of the Holy Spirit”.
Somehow, Shavuot and Pentecost, in multifaceted ways in the Jewish and Christian traditions, point out that we are reinvigorated by God’s Gifts Who blows into our nostrils the soul of warmth and comfort. Maybe we get to cuddling hugs that warm us up, eh like good pastries, look around and have a question: “Can we tame each other?”
Ger toshav: a stranger or an inhabitant?
Israel is a young, dynamic, modern forward State and it seems that as such it attracts a lot of people from over the world with various backgrounds and cultural and religious connections. Singapore is rather the same, but in other ways. There, everything is strict, clean-cut, laws are inspired from the British right, but Indians, Malaysian, Indonesian, Chinese (77% of the inhabitants), together with Tamil, Burmese, some Europeans and North Americans combined with Australians, make it one of the most boiling and futurist areas of the planet. No time for personal life, gays and lesbians meet for hidden/known parties on Tuesdays, baseball or still some cricket on green lawns. The Chinese ideograms prevail as the Esperanto visual tongue while the Japanese make their way with Koreans and Russians. It is a typical example of compressed time for the small multicultural nation constantly under stress.
This socio-cultural tendency of stress has been widely used, seemingly as a parallel extension of hedonism over the decades that followed World War II. As the conscience of an existing “ego” develops in Asia, there, in Singapore, it is not neglected; it is simply not relevant economically, financially, for the collectivity and its resources, growth.
From North America till most modern states, hedonism that would underscore the need to develop personal satisfactions and life paths tends to adopt a similar view: stress is a good thing because it obliges the workers (sorry: employees, executives, managers, heads, leaders) to personal pressure. This can lead to blows, i.e. strokes, heavy diseases, mal-etre.When Singapore tightens its economic and brainstorming abilities, contracts its strength into international business agreements, stress acts as the major agent that goes beyond any human, traditional values. Singapore views only one thing: the thin compact state aims at maximizing the results. All Buddhist and Jewish, Christian, Muslim institutions are present there, with Hinduism and Jainism (Gandhi’s non-violence faith). The inhabitants are S’inpore because of their physical, mental spiritual involvement in this constant enhancement. And, provided that we do not look too much at the rate of local suicides or “self-offering on a voluntarily basis for the development of the State.”
The creation of the German Democratic Republic (October 1949) was a consequence of the agreement passed by the Allies in 1945, dividing Germany into four blocs under control of the then-American, British, French and Soviet “superpowers”. At present, “East-German socialism” may appear a weird political rip-off. A remake of Charlie Chaplin’s “Dictator” that would have turned to narrow-minded twisted gregarious communism. Before the German reunification, the highways crossed outstretched agricultural farm collectivities whose inmates were mainly considered as slaves, brainless, uneducated or spies.The Leader was Erich Honecker, who would exhort the “brothers/brotheresses – Brueder/Bruederinnen = comrades” to oppose with courage the rest of the world. None of the citizens had ever participated in any sort of murder during World War II. Mass killings, genocide (Jews, Gypsies, mentally disabled), deportation of pink triangle gays and black lesbians were perpetrated by the “others”, i.e. the Western Germans and their allies.
On the other hand, the communists and “comrades of all the proletarian nations, especially the Slavs (communists)” were among the first victims of the Nazis blurred into some odd all-German capitalistic entity.There are two famous writers, two brothers – not necessarily political “comrades”. Thomas and Heinrich Mann. They were born in Lubeck, the famous Hanseatic town in North Germany. Thomas Mann envisioned the drama of Nazism for Germany, received the Nobel Prize and after a lecture given on the 50th anniversary of the death of Richard Wagner (1933), he left Germany for good and vehemently protested against the Nazi system in the Neue Zuercher Zeitung (1936).
Interestingly, Thomas and Heinrich Mann’s mother was from Brazil and was of Brazilian Creole and German origin. Thomas and Heinrich Mann spent the war in America, rescuing the victims and lecturing against Nazism. After the war, Thomas Mann refused to come back to Germany and lived in Switzerland. Heinrich Mann strongly condemned Nazism and wrote various essays about Zola and the French socialist movements. In 1943, his novel, Lidice, showed the atrocities committed in Czechoslovakia. After the war, he tried to find a way for a new German spirit in East Germany and was appointed as chairman of the Academy of Arts in 1949.It happens that, in the vicinity of Dresden (East Germany), on the Polish/not far from the Czech border, there is a remainder of a Slavic tongue that, in ancient times, was spoken till the south of Hamburg. “Serpski = Sorbisch/Wendisch = “Serbian” has two dialects close to Polish and Serbian spoken in Budyshyn (Bautzen) and along the border. During the time of the communists all through Eastern Europe, this allowed special contacts with various areas. More recently, during the war in Sarajevo, refugees could be rescued in that area of Germany. Thus, who were the inhabitants? A national mass without soul that was basically known for their athletic champions wiped-out with shots and needles as they appeared, or the liberation movement initiated by the Lutheran Church in the 80s?
It has always seemed bizarre and tragic, amazing and amusing but the Jews have another homeland in the world. I often met and meet with Soviet people who came to Israel or other parts of the world from Birobidzhan, Siberian Far-East, the Jewish Autonomous Region (Oblast) located on the Chinese border. Flowing from the Amur (not really “love” but “Black river”), the Bira and Bidzhan rivers join in the “Yiddish-speaking” green capital Birobidzhanshtot.Ignoring the Byelorussian pilot kibbutzim of the West, Stalin had nonetheless that “spiritual” care that each nation, Jews as well, should have their home and thus decided to create the autonomous region in 1927-28. It is sometimes fantastic to discuss in Jerusalem or Europe with Polish ghettos’ convicted communist pioneers. Here, some youths studied at Khabarovsk and can stutter some words in Yiddish. The language had been reviewed, the Hebrew Semitic spelling was abandoned by force. Still, the Birobidzhaner Shtern is the national gazette. In September 1972, I read there that “Palestinians were savagely geharg’nt gevorn, murdered in Munich athletic meeting.”
The incredible thing is that there has always been a desire to create a communist-minded region for the Jews inside the Soviet Union. The kind of Jewish State where Jews would be very few, not totally Jewish, not truly speak their own denatured/distorted language.Birobidzhan appears sometimes as an alternative for some anti-Zionists. On the other hand, its location is strategically unique for the Jews… who, along with the Nestorians writing Manchu in Syrian script, reached the region on their way to Japan till the 12th century. The close Mongolian Buddhist monasteries returned the Nestorian and Syrian-Orthodox prayer books to the faithful after the fall of communism. Anyway, still Israel is somehow present in the Far East.
Now, faith requires and implies full freedom and sense of delivery, which is or was not present in the above social contexts. In Israel, there are Jews and non-Jews. How to define who is a Jew and who is not is a real quiz. No problem. But the problem may turn a bit different. I often mentioned the importance of the Noahide laws, which are a part of the 613 Mitzvot that are incumbent for every Jew. In the different Diasporas, the Jews have not been free to have a free and natural Jewish educational system. It is true that forced conversions to various Christian denominations have been applied systematically. One of the most striking methods, which does seem to be a kind of “forced conversion,” was the idea that – during World War II – Jews could be saved by being really baptized or given a certificate of baptism.This is stunning and it remains a pending question. It is true that the State of Israel encompasses people who cannot show any evidence of their real link with the Jewish identity. The question has really tormented a lot of individuals and sometimes groups that would claim their appertaining to Jewishness. In Deut./Devarim chapters 29 and 30, the problem is connected with idolatry and any “ger toshav – an inhabitant who lives with the Jews” would supposedly be able to reject any kind of idolatry and accept the realm of the Commandments. This is evident as regards the observance of the Shabbat for any person who shares the life of the Jewish community. Then, the problem is to know if the Israeli state is not wider than the state of the Jews and if this can be considered as a positive object of reflection about the development of our society.
Let’s say that, if things were clear and connected with the full observance of the mitzvot and the existence of a functioning Temple in our midst, the rule decreed by Ezra that the Jews who went up to Zion must repudiate their foreign wives should be applied at the present (Ezra 10:2). Today, this would sound unthinkable and not human. On the other hand, many modern Chassidic movements (Chabad) insist on the importance of the Noahide laws. There are indeed hundreds of thousands of gerey toshav – inhabitants and/or ezrachey Israel (citizens of Israel) who have been directly in contact with (usually) Christianity and need a very specific and adapted spiritual assistance. This is evident but in a context of historic mutual suspicion and ignorance, it should be convenient to show how Judaism has shown to be a school of tolerance and does live of the Divine Presence. The Israeli civil law includes a very meaningful article: “Law 140/1977: assures that “yesh chofesh dibbur vedat be Medinat Israel – there is freedom of speech and conscience in the State of Israel”. “dat – conscience, faith?” is difficult to adapt in other tongues and spiritualities. D. Ben Gurion wanted that the State could exert a control over the rabbinate and all kinds of clergy people. Undoubtedly, the rabbis have played an immense role over the centuries and until now in handing over living Jewish traditions. In some areas, they did encounter Christians and Muslims, which is a must in a society and a region as ours.There is more: whatever faith concerned, there is no fear for believers in God or any pressure of any kind because the only thing that God can do is to help us finding His way and freedom.
Peh al-peh: Moses' unique humbleness
Time passes and the next memorial feasts or days will show in June with the commemoration of the destructions of the Temples and the city of Jerusalem that will climax on the 9th of Av (07/23-24).
We just left Shavuot and the Giving of the Written and Oral Laws to Moses. The journey through the wilderness continues with Shabbat Beha'alotekha (Moses, when you will elevate the lamps) and the weekly reading portion in the Book of Bamidbar/Numbers 8:1-12:16. There starts the second year of the Israelites' sojourn in the desert. The Levites are called to mount = ha'alah the lamps in the Tent of the Meeting. They are told to serve from the age of 25 until they reach 50. Then, they would stay on the side of the acting Levi'im, without performing anything.
Moses proposes to celebrate the feast of Passover, thus for the second time in the wilderness. It happens that some men come with specific requests. Can they join the feast as they had been in contact with corpses and are unclean? At each step, Moses answers them that he knows nothing and needs to get God's advice and response. This is the repeated motto of this weekly reading. Moses goes ahead but constantly needs God's personal answer. In the case of the feast of Passover, the reply is that these men should wait one full month and then celebrate Pesach on Iyar 14, i.e. what became "Pesach sheni = Second Passover" for those who were absent at the feast and could not participate for some valid reason.
Moses repeated the Lord’s commandment: “when a stranger who resides with you (“ve-khi yagur ger”) will offer a Passover sacrifice to the Lord, he must offer it in accordance with the rules and rites (mishpato) of the Passover sacrifice. There shall be one law for you, whether stranger or citizen (velager ule’ezrach) of the country”(Bamidbar 9:14). This extends the rather permanent issue we face in this country, much after the time spent in the wilderness and discussed as an actual problem in the previous blog. The time in the Sinai corresponds to a pedagogical tour. It is not a labyrinth because this wonderful space and mind route has but only two possible goals. The Cretan labyrinth combined secrecy and hardship to get free and/or memorize. It was also a mythological way to hold the Minotaur and thus to restrict one’s thought on limited solutions. The Egyptian pyramids were built on the same confusing pattern. Human rulers and leaders love these sorts of quizzes. Genetics and specialists of memory diseases or defects would show how such paths can be controlled with much insight.
The journey through Sinai is not of the same nature. It is not built upon myths and mythological attempts to tie up human beings. We are still in the Sinai in many ways, in particular as regards our desires or expectations, beliefs or faith that we came and will continue to come out of serfdom to freedom. In the wilderness, the Hebrew nation was a displaced living body that advanced in some dizzy darkness. This means they missed explanations, maps, central piloting headquarters and strategy.Today, just look at the mobiles. We get the last breaking news in whatever alphabet, the weather forecast for the week, a living map showing where we are and where you may go. It also means you know where our friends, buddies are located and where the next conflict will nuke out. And, along with the view of the Tent of the Meeting, if any, your favorite pictures or flashing ads, SMS and fax services, access to your credit cards and personal documents, with the exact time. We hold the world in the palm of our hand, or around our neck, provided there is no strike somewhere. Then, you can call your friend who is at the Kotel/Western Wall and cry out all our distress lives from Anchorage! In Israel, beside a weapon on a belt, there are people who have 3, 5 cell phones at hand. It does not mean we know how to use our cells. But we are not lost… well!
Now, in the desert, when there is a grain of sand, everything gets blurred. And there they were the ancestors! They were journeying ahead with camels, donkeys and sheep, rattling around without real understanding of where the route should lead them to. In this respect, as people were also dying in this environment, it should be interesting to analyze with precision that were listening to Moses. It is quite a pity that no TV nor Arutz “something” could not record daily life, counseling with Moses and prayers at the Tent of Meeting.The Talmud is rather lively, but still… It is evident that, progressively, the marching in the desert appeared to be dangerous. They were not at Jericho. But the Israelites made two hammered silver trumpets (chatzotzrot kesef) to summon the divisions and convoke the congregation with long blasts. The task was given to Aaron and the priests. Because these trumpets were to be blown in case of a war in order to remind the people that God is able to deliver the nation from their enemies (Num. 10:9). Everything still focuses and is naturally centered on God. He is the One and only Counselor at this point. There are “intermediate contacts or laws that allow to make a ‘chatzitzah – partition’ between clean and unclean and shake a situation” (Hagigah 78b). The trumpets and their resounding name in Hebrew have this function. It does not mean that God will save. It does not mean that the human divisions of the Israelites were strong or powerful, mighty. On the contrary, they did know that only Moses could advise them adequately because he was conversing with God in full obedience and consent, mutual trust.
At times, the Israelites could not accept such a situation. This is why it is inquiring to see how Moses tries to persuade Hovav the Madianite to guide the division across the desert and help them avoiding wrong routes (Bemidbar 10:29). Hovav was a sort of “stranger and citizen.” He answered to Moses that he preferred not to guide him and return to his home. Moses tried a second time to convince him to “give his eyes” in order to find the right direction. He got no response. The scene is fascinating because we still go through the same temptations, tests and frightening experiences, here in this country but also everywhere because the mental configuration is rather similar. Nahmanides had stated that: in the wilderness, Hovav would have given a human hand in a situation that basically defies God actions and certainly not Moses’ non-existing power. Thus, two radicals are used that are essential in Judaism: “tov – good – yetiv – to be good”, which Moses said to Hovav to persuade him to guide them; in return, he would be good, generous toward Hovav.Hovav’s refusal is more than significant. It is precisely when the ger is a full resident and still claims his own freedom. This can upset or rebuke. Moses is a simple man and has the human right to be feeble. In that sense, leaders are terribly weakened by nature. Hovav reminds Moses that his only guidance comes from God’s mouth and nobody else. When Moses insists “lecha itanu – come with us”, he forgets for a very short while that is definitely essential, that the Israelites are to join the spiritual path accomplished by the Avot – the ancestors and three first patriarchs. As concerned leaving idolatry and the house of Terach, Abraham heard “lech lecha – go, leave – go to yourself and who you are- go, go then to your country”. This is a divine call, a bit “weird” and that he could hardly listen and accept immediately. We have the same problem. We have more: we know this by heart! So leave it to the highbrows and we shall pull in/out, backward/forwards, around/away, underneath/in the air. And there go the strikes in the reading portion: the people protest: they want to eat, weep upon all these delicious products of Egypt. They got quail and manna.
But this was in the desert and the real thing concerns Moses. It is written about him: “Moses was a very humble man more than any other man on earth (anav meod mikol adam asher al-haadamah)” (Num. 12:3). This traces back a parallel with the first human being. “With him, says the Lord, I speak mouth to mouth (peh al-peh) (v.8), without riddles and he beholds the likeness of the Lord.”. Moses could not utter words properly. He was “ani – poor” as God expecting His people prayer (Tehillim 104). He could not boast God or the Israelites or Pharaoh or anyone by his experience with God. How can we expect anything of God if we think we are strong and know anything about Him? Everywhere, leaders will declare that they know; they will not step down because they know. And even when the downfall, collapse is definitely clear, still they are strong and know. Leaders can just be any anonymous person who blows up for some odd reason.Moses’ humility has become a model that remains unsurpassed in the TaNaKH. He is the model of the Jewish “anawim – poor that totally rely on God”. He was obedient to God. “Obedience” does not mean a lot at the present. True, it sounds “too Christian” and servile. The Latin word “ob-audire” means “to hear, listen in a converging way, together.” This is the most difficult point to reach. It does not consist in “hearing” (sh’ma) and then do what pleases us. It does not mean a sort of constantly frustrating reduction of personal freewill or freedom.
On the contrary, as “the poor in spirit – oi ptokhoi to pneumati” (Matthew 5:3), lauded by Jesus, the way is widely open to who believes that God can work unexpected things. Jewishness has deep feeling toward those they would assume to be “anawim” or “tzadikim – righteous”, beyond any titles. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates, on this Sunday after Pentecost, the Saints who lived as human beings in the total abandonment to God’s Providence and Commandments. There is something very close to the Jewish “Devekut – attachment” in the Chassidic tradition. The Saints were not supermen/women, just ordinary people whose lives radiated God’s Acting Presence and Providence. The Orthodox and the Catholic Churches have recognized (canonized), in the past thirty years, a immense number of Saints. This can be a real questioning between the Jews and the Christians.The 20th century has been a monstrous time of apostasy and crimes. Some men and women, children did trust in God and joined those who witnessed for God along the centuries. Curiously, Judaism also started to recognize, under specific circumstances, the merits of the “Righteous among the Nations”. Saints and Righteous are not E.T.’s. They sanctify God’s reign everywhere.
| COMMENTS |
| 1. Great job Rabbi!!! This was very well written and thought out. Keep up the good work. John Tobin, Tennessee, USA, May 31 8:05PM |
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