What profits will we remember of the year 5767? Is it possible to understand anything and to detect God's projects that so many would eventually deny? Just a real look! Mother Teresa, the Albanian-born little Catholic nun passed away ten years ago, in Calcutta, amidst dying corpses, crematories. She was beatified - first step toward her full recognition as a saint - by late Pope John-Paul II. The fervent faithful gathered for the pope’s funeral then required the Catholic Church his immediate canonization.
A sort of "on air" event required after his death but that is still on hold, following the normal process of the Church tradition. Our civilization is divided into the speediest instant messengers, some up-to-the-second thrilling tempo of life and a burden-like, often shameful and scandalous waste of time and competences. And see, since the 4th of Tevet 5766 (January 4, 2006), Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has been sleeping while we splash and flounder with kassams on Sderot, the resignation of the president while Shimon Peres averted the Eyn HaRa' / Evil Eye and, overshadowed by all the blessings of our tzaddikim, will lead Israel into the "shemittat karka'ot veshemittat kesafim = the year of remission and for the Land of Israel, its qarqa'ot / soil that will remain uncultivated and the remittance of the debts" in 5768. The grounds and soils as the bottom of a certain period that shows again every seven years, like a "karka'it shel sefinah - the bottom of a ship" (Yevamot 116b) that, in terms of years, arrives at some deadline, a time of rest and forgiveness (for land (adamah) and humans (bney Adam).
In the course of 5767, we roved here and there and rambled in the search of some long-term solution. Our ancestors wandered from Ur-Kasdim down to Egypt and back to the Land of Canaan. Abraham erred - because he was seeking God or it would be more adequate to say that God took him on a journey. He was - as we often shared it here - "bekhom hayom - in the very heat of the day". Together with Sarah, he was struggling along throughout wide spaces and unknown people, but he did it consistently, cheating at times but overcoming all the "nissayonot / tempting tests proposed by God while Sarah could have a grin or some laugh. No real problem: it was still prophetic. We read quite the same with Moses’ story. He constantly remained a man of faith in the context of impossible challenges.
The media scoop that brought forth the “night of the faith” or “darkness” through which Mother Teresa went for some time over thirty years of her life is an important feature of anybody’s relationship to God. Elie[zer] Wiesel’s first account written after his experience in the concentration camp of Auschwitz echoes this profound darkness and abandonment: “Di Nacht – the Night”. The young survivor of a “Nacht und Nebel – night and fog” period could hardly describe what is beyond any description. As numerous survivors, it took time before he could only smile. Thousands of pious Jews got away from their ancestors’ faith in the living God and until today, it remains a very painful and open wound for a great number of souls. It is an act of divine loving-kindness that some men and women, survivors and their children could surface after the Churban (Extermination) with something parallel to the seeded steadfast, inflexible though not rigid emunah / confidence-faith of Abraham, Moses or Job. In this respect, the rather joyous spiritual traditions experienced by the Sephardim and Oriental Jewries do reinvigorate and everywhere allow curing the scars left by history. Indeed, sarcastic and cynical attitudes mirror how the twentieth century had thickly been marked by darkness and despair.
True, the communist terror and various forms of genocides in different countries (South Africa, Turkey, Cambodia, Rwanda) would also enter in some sort of conflict with the light shown at Mamre’s oaks. The Russian Eastern Orthodox monk, saint Silouan the Athonite, declared: “Keep your soul in hell and do not despair”, which definitely links the Oriental tradition with the powerful rise and revival of Judaism. But say, that “night” is en vogue. It makes sense because it allows showing that people who dedicated their lives to God could – like anybody else – be terribly affected by some total privation or defect of God’s Presence. A young French Catholic nun, saint Therese of Lisieux, who died at the age of 26, was the first to describe with remarkable insights her experience of “night, or divine apparent absence” as a spiritual test. Jewish and Christian, Muslim renewal and sometimes stiff attitudes contrast and might come into conflict with this experience of a spiritual “eclipse / tzimtzum” that affected the last century in many aspects.
Nonetheless, there is a profound gap between the Jewish and Christian approaches with regards to this darkness or “night”. The parshat hashavua or reading portion of this week is a twofold one; the second portion is usually read after Rosh HaShanah. These Shabbat readings “Netzavim-Vayelech” are thus to be found in Devarim / Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20 and 31:1-30. We should bear in mind the following Shabbat Teshuvah that will include the reading of the song Ha’azinu which concludes Moses’ life and introduces to the coming Day of Atonement.
We experience how short our memory can be. This is true in our own lives and records. We may be swirling in a world of pictures, takes, shots, videos and films. Images are stored en masse and fade. Days pass, disappear and change. They may facedly give the impression of some deja-vu. Fashion swings that way.
There is a special way for Jewishness to apprehend tenses. But Judaism cannot focus on any positive “night or darkness, absence of eclipse / tzimtzum of God”. Christianity has it as a part of natural Gentile and “heathen-rooted” tendency. It turns to be a positive experiment because it shows that God chooses and man may feel as left aside, abandoned. The most difficult part for Jews is to admit that such a spiritual posture is not linked to idolatry and that faith in God may show as “ from under ashes or dust” (cf. Gen. 3:19; “Al efer tashuv – you shall return to dust”). The so-called “culture of death” has reigned over too many events that affected Christianity in the past century. On the other hand, Jews may forget that they are proposed two ways, once again, for the last time before Autumnal New Year: blessing or curse. Indeed we ask that the year end with its curses and that New Year start with God’s blessings.
Does it mean that we enjoy any real free will and free choice? Pre-destination and absence of free will or conscience have prevailed throughout the Christian history and that souls are at stake. The Catholic Church revised this essential point during the last Council that ended in 1965. The Oriental and Orthodox Churches are less flexible until now, though they mainly focus on conversion, return to God and resurrection. Indeed, our freedom depends, as concerns Judaism, on how the Mitzvot are so real and abide our souls that everything only depends on God.
The reading portion proposes a set of choices to which we are submitted beyond any personal decision. True, we are called to bless, to build, support, save, cure and help. Daily life may be rather a burden that misses simple justice too much. We have seen that during the year: “shuv – again, return, renew” is the main spiritual and human tendency. Judaism is shaped to value life and not death. Life supersedes anything and this is the exceptional spiritual plus that Judaism brought and maintains, and somehow sustains among the Nations. It is the real challenge of the hardships faced in the timid development of a dialogue with the Christians. This is the terrible difference between Jews and Christians. Just as the night would seemingly be considered as a positive sign of humbleness, death may be a temptation to see if survival is possible. Judaism focuses on a choice: take the good measure of your days and nights and why should God extend them?
“Veshavta ad HaShem – you will return to (= until) the Lord” (Deut. 30:2). Hebrew says “ad – until” because God expects that the believers or humans in general turn, convert, respond in a swiveling and revolving move toward God until they reach Him in the “ad = eternity, world-to-come, forever” and not only for a while, say even a “year”. And the same verse continues: “You (gather) them again (“shav”) those that were scattered (“shvutecha – deported that you call back and return”). Jesus also spoke of newness, of making all things new. But this is at the core of what Rosh HaShanah and the reading portions want to teach us this week. This kind of newness that is a perpetual call to all human being that has a breath of life: indeed things are new.
Then, it is true that there are different schools. Either people are too scared to place their bets or would say they don’t care. There are tons of clichés: life is too short; I do what I want; this is my decision. The real challenge in the “teshuvah – conversion, penance, response, revolving return forever to God” is that it requires that every soul is ready to invest the maximum, more than anything they think to possess in order to get to that point. This is the highest effort that surpasses every effort. That’s the point. It sounds not inhumane and still it shows the price of life. A Jewish Chassidic group has this year this kind of wishes, showing a multi-handicapped who calls to turn to Life. At first, such season’s greetings may rebuke. But they are real.
They are authentic as when I see my heavily handicapped daughter breathing with difficulty. Still, she enjoys life and breathes faith at home and at her work. Just as so many injured, sick or disabled often may show us. It is not possible to fool them with pious words about God. This means that the highest effort is a personal move that also can reinforce the weak. The “shemittah – year of remission and rest of the land” is also one of the best examples of what the Shulchan Aruch teaches about the significance of the highest effort.
“Remember us for Life, King Who desires Life, and inscribe us in the Book of Life, for Your sake, Living God”.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Birobidzhan: "Shulem, Friends!
Elul 20th, 5767 corresponds to the generally accepted calendar date of September 3rd, 2007. The Eastern Orthodox Churches started the new liturgical (cycle of prayers) year and thus they are, in the West on September 3rd, 7516 (of the creation) that will be celebrated on September 14th, 7516 in the Church of Jerusalem, Russia and other Julian Eastern Orthodox calendars. There is a significant difference between the Jewish traditional year of the creation of the universe and the Christian Orthodox year of the foundation of the worlds. Calendars are definitively PG / parental guidance and not U / universal and we do behave as naughty kids towards Our Father Who is in heaven / Avinu shebashamayim.
Canada celebrates Labour Day on September 3rd. A sort of prior-to-Thanksgiving Day that starts on October 8th, 2007 in Canada while the United States will have their Thanksgiving on November 22nd, 2007. This is due to the period of harvesting in the different regions. But Labour Day in Canada on 09/03 has been instituted on the first Monday in September since the 1880s. Something that unexpectedly matches with the first Aliyah to Eretz Israel or with the overwhelming violence of the pogroms organized against the proletarian shtetl-Jewish village in the czarist Russian Empire.
The proletarians were mostly needy people as were the Ukrainians who fled to Canada by the same time and settled in the Western Provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia. Nothing to do with the 09/03 institution of a Labour Day. Interestingly, the 1880s were years of fighting for civil rights almost everywhere in the Western civilization.
By that time, Toronto appeared to be very advanced in this struggle to get more social and economic justice in the laws governing the general respect of the workers and condition of work. Merely a dream if compared to some wealthy States and moguls. But, the Toronto printers got to their 54-hour work per week and the day was adopted in Canada in 1894 although the socialists (our Bundists to some extent) chose May 1st as the official international Labour Day. Still, the Anglos had to do that their way and the point is that in North America, this corresponds to the time when leaves fall from trees; harvest collects the late crops... The falling of leaves = Fall or Autumn” and Yiddish sings the hit: "'s fal'n di bleter - Leaves are falling", the French best "Les Feuilles mortes" written by the poet Jacques Prevert. There is a touch of French nostalgia, Slavic spleen, Germanic Sehnsucht and Yiddish “miltz un benkshaft”. It is sweet, cute, kind; Hebrew: “dikayon or dichduch” (spleen) or "gagu'im" that are slightly weirder and whirling.
Autumn! We shall soon have the Autumnal Feasts of Rosh HaShanah and Yamim Nora'im, the Day of awe. Nu-u-u, what? I suddenly got aware that the Jewish workers celebrate these days the 70th anniversary of the former Jewish Autonomous Region (in Siberia), namely the seventieth year of the full official recognition of what is today the “Republic” of Birobidzhan, the ever-Jewish autonomous region by the rivers of Amur on the Chinese border. Is it a birthday or a yohrtsayt (anniversary of departed)? Or the departure for a far-reaching envisioned prospect of acting Israeli development in Asia amidst a mixer of blended Russian, Ukrainian, Mongolian, Chinese, Manchu, Jewish descents flavored with some Yiddish if not rebirth of Yiddishkayt / Jewishness.
“Ich habe einen Traum = chalom chalamti (Berachot 55b) = I have a dream”, said the Viennese birth-giving founder Benyamin Zvi Theodor Herzl born in Budapest at the sight of the Dreyfus affair and condemnation. From Basle to Zichron Yaakov, the Ashkenazi Jews erred throughout Her Majesty’s Empire and Commonwealth before the Jewish Congress got the Balfour Declaration allowing the return of the Jews to Zion and Jerusalem.
We were about to toil in Uganda, down the Darfur at that time. On that same year, the Bolshevik Revolution, broke out and remodeled the czarist Russian Empire into a sort on union of comrades. Byelorussia (Belarus) became a haven of creation for the future kibbutzim in Palestine. Some elements of the large Jewish settlements and intelligentsia actively participated in the godless deployment of a fraternal and messianic brave new world of friendship.
Thus, Stalin had his own dream about the Jews and he is the only State builder who donated a piece of land to the Jewish comrades as full members of the communist collectivity. We hardly can say that he presented – hmm? - conferred, or even conceded Birobidzhan to the Jewish “nation”. At this point, it should be noted that both Israel and Birobidzhan (ca. 36,000 sq km) miss exact total surfaces. Stalin, as most leaders of the world from Pharaoh till now, could find the Jews useful at times. Frankly, he would not confess any love toward them. So he created, in 1928, the “Jewish Autonomous Region/Oblast – Yid. Di Yiddishe Avtonome Geg’nt” by the Siberian rivers of the Amur (actually not “love” but “Black River” in Mongolian) along its two tributaries “Bira and Bidzhan”. It is so strange that the Birkat HaMazon (Grace after Meals) Psalm 137 (“By the rivers of Babylon…) made us weep along two rivers in the Siberian Far East! Maybe some remembrance of Biro Sava = Beer Sheva, where Abraham’s story started?... The official languages are Yiddish and Russian, or vice versa. Some legal status updates happened in 1934 and then it became “full-autonomous” in 1937, i.e. seventy years ago. After the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991, it recently redeployed its activities.
This “inspired if not inspiriting” project sought to gather in all the workers of the Jewish nation inside the Soviet Union. Jewish hard-working labor force and toiling cosmopolitan manpower were encouraged to settle in this remote non-cleared virgin and wild area in order to thaw out the land and somehow get frozen there…A taste of Hirsh Glick’s “Zog nit kaynmol = Never say you are going on your last way”, the song of the Partisan. Yiddish was reformatted with Hebrew letters that removed any trace of traditional TaNaKh and Talmud spelling. It was really a dream that lined with the traditional “von ot siuda – get away from us, you Jews” to flicker with the flame of the Jewish toiling workers’ bravery and international chevurah / fraternity that had been launched in 1925 in Belarus.
Still, please do note that this assignment of the Jews corresponded, in the fundamentals of the Soviet spirit, to the laws governing the Union. Each nation had the right to enjoy some land allotment, a homeland. Stalin is the only politician who, with the Soviet communist regime, decided to apportion a tiny and apparently ridiculous part of the “empire” to the Jews and thus founded some kind of Jewish “country, home if not State”. Irrationality met with extravagant right. In comparison, the Mormons were chased, hounded down till they settled in Utah. No Canadian province, United States, European, African or Asian authority has ever proposed the creation of a “Free republic and haven for the Jews”.
There is a spiritual curiosity: in czarist Russia as under the communist Soviets, each inhabitant of the immense territory belonged to a “nation” and, subsequently, was a citizen of the former USSR. We have the same in Israel. There are firstly the “Jewish (national” and then the “Nations”. The Eastern Orthodox Church seemingly reflects identities according to “ethnicities”.
We can say that, though it sounds a bit bizarre, Israel was created as the State of the Jews according to the paradox of a divine concession memorized and kept living in the Scriptures. When our “nuke-oriented” Persian neighbor suggests that each European country should be ready to give asylum to Israeli refugees, he quietly can make such a statement because no European or other nation ever thought of giving some alms of land ownership to a Jewish autonomous or self-governed region. On the other hand, Eastern Europe and Oriental Christianity are undisputedly linked by their faith that, in principle, unites the faithful beyond their ethnicity which constitutes an important and positive element.
The Soviet communist system also dreamed of uniting all the hard-working proletarians. Of course, the Jews did not get the cream of the crops: I met quite a lot of strong-minded former communist and international Labor activists who settled there and sometimes showed up unexpectedly in Europe and Israel. Along the Bira lived some sorts of “fayne biryes = nice, well-educated creatures (Yid.)”, i.e. either real spiritual characters or stiff-necked lost people, as the Polish Jews say. From the 2nd to the 15th of September – with the exception of 09/03! – Birobidzhan celebrates its 70th anniversary with many events scheduled at Sholom-Aleichem Street (City Palace of Culture). It begins with a memorial of the end of World War II and then different meetings: a chess tournament, a festival of Jewish and Yiddish movies (“I love you, Birobidzhan”), dances, with the participation of different ethnics: Ukrainians from Kharkiv and Chinese, Mongolian living in the neighboring areas.
Since 1991, there are astounding development of the Yiddish language and cultural life although the major part of the country had always been non-Jewish – quite an extraordinary situation of paradoxes. There is a rebirth of Judaism, synagogues and an Israeli rabbi lives in the country with his big family. This takes place not so far from this remote “end of Europe”, eh yes, Birobidzhan is part of the Russian Federation and thus reaches out to the border of Europe that falls down the harbor of Vladivostok. I met in Jerusalem a Christian God-seeker who had traveled from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok with two priests – one Orthodox, the other was Catholic - showing the relics of a renowned saint. They also trekked along Birobidzhan, and they were so surprised to see the slow growth of this Jewish Region.
It is also very intriguing to follow up how the Jews will meet the opportunity to support a region located in the heart of Asia, not far from Harbin where so many Jews had lived till the end of World War II. The area seemingly extends Europe to the core of Asia. But the location is unique. Siberia attracts Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Manchu and Mongolians. It is linked to Japan and Philippines… We do have all these people as guest workers in Israel.
Beyond the tragic events that affected the Jews who, for a great part, arrived from Eastern countries in Israel, this miniature autonomous region of Birobidzhan retains something of the socialist communist atheist system that tried to rule the world and in between delivered Auschwitz. Is it foolish / meshigene mazeh or understandable / mistume (min-hastam) that Yiddish, born on the Rhine a thousand years ago was about to disappear many times. Still, it became the truncated national language of a ghostly Jewish Autonomous Region that today tries to use it more wisely. Miracles substantiate the words of the Prophet: “My ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Zay gezint, Birobidzhan!
Canada celebrates Labour Day on September 3rd. A sort of prior-to-Thanksgiving Day that starts on October 8th, 2007 in Canada while the United States will have their Thanksgiving on November 22nd, 2007. This is due to the period of harvesting in the different regions. But Labour Day in Canada on 09/03 has been instituted on the first Monday in September since the 1880s. Something that unexpectedly matches with the first Aliyah to Eretz Israel or with the overwhelming violence of the pogroms organized against the proletarian shtetl-Jewish village in the czarist Russian Empire.
The proletarians were mostly needy people as were the Ukrainians who fled to Canada by the same time and settled in the Western Provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, Manitoba and British Columbia. Nothing to do with the 09/03 institution of a Labour Day. Interestingly, the 1880s were years of fighting for civil rights almost everywhere in the Western civilization.
By that time, Toronto appeared to be very advanced in this struggle to get more social and economic justice in the laws governing the general respect of the workers and condition of work. Merely a dream if compared to some wealthy States and moguls. But, the Toronto printers got to their 54-hour work per week and the day was adopted in Canada in 1894 although the socialists (our Bundists to some extent) chose May 1st as the official international Labour Day. Still, the Anglos had to do that their way and the point is that in North America, this corresponds to the time when leaves fall from trees; harvest collects the late crops... The falling of leaves = Fall or Autumn” and Yiddish sings the hit: "'s fal'n di bleter - Leaves are falling", the French best "Les Feuilles mortes" written by the poet Jacques Prevert. There is a touch of French nostalgia, Slavic spleen, Germanic Sehnsucht and Yiddish “miltz un benkshaft”. It is sweet, cute, kind; Hebrew: “dikayon or dichduch” (spleen) or "gagu'im" that are slightly weirder and whirling.
Autumn! We shall soon have the Autumnal Feasts of Rosh HaShanah and Yamim Nora'im, the Day of awe. Nu-u-u, what? I suddenly got aware that the Jewish workers celebrate these days the 70th anniversary of the former Jewish Autonomous Region (in Siberia), namely the seventieth year of the full official recognition of what is today the “Republic” of Birobidzhan, the ever-Jewish autonomous region by the rivers of Amur on the Chinese border. Is it a birthday or a yohrtsayt (anniversary of departed)? Or the departure for a far-reaching envisioned prospect of acting Israeli development in Asia amidst a mixer of blended Russian, Ukrainian, Mongolian, Chinese, Manchu, Jewish descents flavored with some Yiddish if not rebirth of Yiddishkayt / Jewishness.
“Ich habe einen Traum = chalom chalamti (Berachot 55b) = I have a dream”, said the Viennese birth-giving founder Benyamin Zvi Theodor Herzl born in Budapest at the sight of the Dreyfus affair and condemnation. From Basle to Zichron Yaakov, the Ashkenazi Jews erred throughout Her Majesty’s Empire and Commonwealth before the Jewish Congress got the Balfour Declaration allowing the return of the Jews to Zion and Jerusalem.
We were about to toil in Uganda, down the Darfur at that time. On that same year, the Bolshevik Revolution, broke out and remodeled the czarist Russian Empire into a sort on union of comrades. Byelorussia (Belarus) became a haven of creation for the future kibbutzim in Palestine. Some elements of the large Jewish settlements and intelligentsia actively participated in the godless deployment of a fraternal and messianic brave new world of friendship.
Thus, Stalin had his own dream about the Jews and he is the only State builder who donated a piece of land to the Jewish comrades as full members of the communist collectivity. We hardly can say that he presented – hmm? - conferred, or even conceded Birobidzhan to the Jewish “nation”. At this point, it should be noted that both Israel and Birobidzhan (ca. 36,000 sq km) miss exact total surfaces. Stalin, as most leaders of the world from Pharaoh till now, could find the Jews useful at times. Frankly, he would not confess any love toward them. So he created, in 1928, the “Jewish Autonomous Region/Oblast – Yid. Di Yiddishe Avtonome Geg’nt” by the Siberian rivers of the Amur (actually not “love” but “Black River” in Mongolian) along its two tributaries “Bira and Bidzhan”. It is so strange that the Birkat HaMazon (Grace after Meals) Psalm 137 (“By the rivers of Babylon…) made us weep along two rivers in the Siberian Far East! Maybe some remembrance of Biro Sava = Beer Sheva, where Abraham’s story started?... The official languages are Yiddish and Russian, or vice versa. Some legal status updates happened in 1934 and then it became “full-autonomous” in 1937, i.e. seventy years ago. After the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991, it recently redeployed its activities.
This “inspired if not inspiriting” project sought to gather in all the workers of the Jewish nation inside the Soviet Union. Jewish hard-working labor force and toiling cosmopolitan manpower were encouraged to settle in this remote non-cleared virgin and wild area in order to thaw out the land and somehow get frozen there…A taste of Hirsh Glick’s “Zog nit kaynmol = Never say you are going on your last way”, the song of the Partisan. Yiddish was reformatted with Hebrew letters that removed any trace of traditional TaNaKh and Talmud spelling. It was really a dream that lined with the traditional “von ot siuda – get away from us, you Jews” to flicker with the flame of the Jewish toiling workers’ bravery and international chevurah / fraternity that had been launched in 1925 in Belarus.
Still, please do note that this assignment of the Jews corresponded, in the fundamentals of the Soviet spirit, to the laws governing the Union. Each nation had the right to enjoy some land allotment, a homeland. Stalin is the only politician who, with the Soviet communist regime, decided to apportion a tiny and apparently ridiculous part of the “empire” to the Jews and thus founded some kind of Jewish “country, home if not State”. Irrationality met with extravagant right. In comparison, the Mormons were chased, hounded down till they settled in Utah. No Canadian province, United States, European, African or Asian authority has ever proposed the creation of a “Free republic and haven for the Jews”.
There is a spiritual curiosity: in czarist Russia as under the communist Soviets, each inhabitant of the immense territory belonged to a “nation” and, subsequently, was a citizen of the former USSR. We have the same in Israel. There are firstly the “Jewish (national” and then the “Nations”. The Eastern Orthodox Church seemingly reflects identities according to “ethnicities”.
We can say that, though it sounds a bit bizarre, Israel was created as the State of the Jews according to the paradox of a divine concession memorized and kept living in the Scriptures. When our “nuke-oriented” Persian neighbor suggests that each European country should be ready to give asylum to Israeli refugees, he quietly can make such a statement because no European or other nation ever thought of giving some alms of land ownership to a Jewish autonomous or self-governed region. On the other hand, Eastern Europe and Oriental Christianity are undisputedly linked by their faith that, in principle, unites the faithful beyond their ethnicity which constitutes an important and positive element.
The Soviet communist system also dreamed of uniting all the hard-working proletarians. Of course, the Jews did not get the cream of the crops: I met quite a lot of strong-minded former communist and international Labor activists who settled there and sometimes showed up unexpectedly in Europe and Israel. Along the Bira lived some sorts of “fayne biryes = nice, well-educated creatures (Yid.)”, i.e. either real spiritual characters or stiff-necked lost people, as the Polish Jews say. From the 2nd to the 15th of September – with the exception of 09/03! – Birobidzhan celebrates its 70th anniversary with many events scheduled at Sholom-Aleichem Street (City Palace of Culture). It begins with a memorial of the end of World War II and then different meetings: a chess tournament, a festival of Jewish and Yiddish movies (“I love you, Birobidzhan”), dances, with the participation of different ethnics: Ukrainians from Kharkiv and Chinese, Mongolian living in the neighboring areas.
Since 1991, there are astounding development of the Yiddish language and cultural life although the major part of the country had always been non-Jewish – quite an extraordinary situation of paradoxes. There is a rebirth of Judaism, synagogues and an Israeli rabbi lives in the country with his big family. This takes place not so far from this remote “end of Europe”, eh yes, Birobidzhan is part of the Russian Federation and thus reaches out to the border of Europe that falls down the harbor of Vladivostok. I met in Jerusalem a Christian God-seeker who had traveled from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok with two priests – one Orthodox, the other was Catholic - showing the relics of a renowned saint. They also trekked along Birobidzhan, and they were so surprised to see the slow growth of this Jewish Region.
It is also very intriguing to follow up how the Jews will meet the opportunity to support a region located in the heart of Asia, not far from Harbin where so many Jews had lived till the end of World War II. The area seemingly extends Europe to the core of Asia. But the location is unique. Siberia attracts Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Manchu and Mongolians. It is linked to Japan and Philippines… We do have all these people as guest workers in Israel.
Beyond the tragic events that affected the Jews who, for a great part, arrived from Eastern countries in Israel, this miniature autonomous region of Birobidzhan retains something of the socialist communist atheist system that tried to rule the world and in between delivered Auschwitz. Is it foolish / meshigene mazeh or understandable / mistume (min-hastam) that Yiddish, born on the Rhine a thousand years ago was about to disappear many times. Still, it became the truncated national language of a ghostly Jewish Autonomous Region that today tries to use it more wisely. Miracles substantiate the words of the Prophet: “My ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Zay gezint, Birobidzhan!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
He'emirecha: a word is a word
We come near to the New Year - Rosh HaShanah 5768. Throughout this year 5767, we have tried to share the meaning of the annual cycle of the parashyiot or reading portions that have to be read per annum by the faithful Jews throughout the weeks that give a special unique rhythm to our months and relationship to God, to other Jews and to our fellow people as humankind.
A year is a set of a peculiar number of days and nights, hours, minutes and seconds that pass and are stored by God (Sukka 62b). I often speak of "shlishiyot - thirds" because we want to slowly be so speedy at the present that we would like to compact tiny segments of immeasurable time wickets to the world-to-come. The specificities of these parashiyot or readings consist in the continuous and perpetually renewed and repeated description, study, scanning, discovery of each word of the Torah.
Moreover, each consonant is inspired by changeable vowels or phrase sequences. Then, our lives, life paths or styles, choices or inability to make up our minds and get forward, shape each year into the form of collectivity and alien “portions”. There is a very strange verse in the Gospel. Jesus says to the disciples to get some fish to eat, after his resurrection and they were on the beach. "Simon-Peter (Kaipha) went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three (153) of them" (John 21:11). The intriguing point is that before the decision of the Sages at Yavneh and when the Temple was still extant, the Torah was not read over one sole year as we do at the present, but over a period of three years. There were153 parashiyot / Torah reading portions. Each reading portion is like a "shanah", if not a "rosh hashanah - cappo d'anno (It.) = (the) cape of a year" that instructs us according to the demands "tiftach = open the gates" during Neylah of Kippur / the closure of the Day of Atonement. Thus we turn the cape of a certain period of time, or a page, we round along new openness or closets.
Interestingly, although the Jews as the Christians are rarely aware of that, the Early Church adopted the same weekly pattern of readings. The Syrian-Orthodox and the Assyrian Churches did keep in Aramaic four basic readings that develop the meaning of time over one year as most Churches do at the present. The Roman Latin Church decided, after the Second Council of Vatican that ended in 1965, to break down the readings over three years, reintroducing large portions from the Bible. The Byzantine Church has retained a systematic envisioning of time "spreading-expansion" that is definitely structured upon the basis of the Jewish series of weekly readings. Thus, the Anglican and Episcopalian Churches read "lessons", which correspond to the order of age and time deployment. The very first verse of the Hebrew Torah does not describe a big bang or a set of fragmentation that led to the creation of heaven and (rotating) earth. Yes, let's have a Zen or frightful crashing party. It is important to feel this move, immense energizing impulse that may seem to be partially or totally irrelevant and so short-timed. At any age, a verse, a word can reach out to our understanding of events, without any prior premonition. Then, each instant teaches individuals and congregations about the relevancy of what others would consider as indistinctive and lacking exact goals or prospects.
As the (Jewish) year floats til its untouchable and invisible borders preceded by the “yamei slichot – days of penance”, the engrossing nature of the present ending-up life & Torah portion looks like some sort of chaotic breaking down shivering of our cultures and societies in a climatic context of imbalance. We are supposed to read with new insights the parashiyot / reading portions and their related haftarot / readings from the Books of the Prophets. Hebrew is quite peculiar because of the great variety of interpretations that are proposed by changing the vowels and phrases. There is also the imperative reference to the Oral Law that brings forth another style of Mishnah and comprehensiveness. Good, we supposedly went out of the Land of Egypt, the House of serfdom. We are free. And we ARE. And God… He does exist / He is life-giving and He does direct our lives. He is One. His goal: humans are One, only one singled out humankind. At the present, Israel has no guaranteed and secured borders. Cities turn to be towns distanced by villages. We emerge with difficulty from years of complex societal shame that corrupts us in different ways. The problem is how to make out of it a cohesive relevant challenge inside the Jewish spiritual life and move up to the future. And to approach the New Year which is a Shemittah / year of remission with much renewed insights.
This week, the parshat hashavua / reading portion is “Ki tavo = When you have to come (into the land)” in Devarim / Deuteronomy 26:1- 29:8. Curiously, the portion scrolls up and down again the wonders that happened with the very first Mitzvot / Commandments given by God since the way out of Egypt. Again, the words try to clarify what seems to remain obscure or at least opaque to the human heart. The last verse of the portion sums up God’s indication: “Therefore diligently observe the words of this covenant so that you may deal wisely (“taskilu et kol asher ta’asun”)” (Deut. 29: 8). Yes, Moses reminds us “that his/our ancestor was a wandering Aramean… who lived as an alien and a poor number (vayagar sham b’mitei me’at = poor as dead and low”) in Egypt” (Deut. 26:5). He recalls that the land of Israel “is flowing with milk and honey - eretz zavat chalav ud’vash” (Deut. 26:9.27:3). He mentions the offering of the first fruit and the tithe to be given to the Levites, the foreigners, the orphans and the widow. This deals with the “orlayim / first fruits” and the “reshit ‘on” as regards the firstborns. It should be important to come to 5768 with the ability to remit all debts and offer the first fruits of a soil that needs a rest. But, basically, we know that by heart. What is the point of newness on the eve of this shemittah year (year of remission)? Any believer, any member of a monotheist denomination may quote by heart these commandments.
It does not prove our unity or benevolence or shows our acceptance of togetherness according to the Mitzvot of the Lord. The country is broken down, the region is parting, and war flames lash not so far from a land that will rest for one full year while others would nuke it. It is intriguing that we will have to work more in the coming year than the earth for which every Jewish soul prays so that it could produce good fruits and flow with milk and honey. The “divrei haberit = the words of the Covenant” announced by the Holy One are also linked to “devorim = bees” that collect the nectar in a sort of oneness task. By the way, queen bees are endangered and suffer from an unknown disease that strongly affects the animal at the moment. Pitcairn Island honey is strictly protected. It constitutes the main income of the descent of the Bounty mutinies. The same process develops in Europe and other continents.
“Foot yawly come yah- why come to that?” as Pitcairn mutinies’ descent say at the present. Because, believers can hardly listen to any warning words, hear and accept them to the full. Any believer – in particular in the One God (various style and moods) – may humble himself, preferably suggesting the others to bow and kneel down. Considering the failure of any mission in India, Gandhi used to stigmatize how all sorts of Jews and Christians peacefully could live and work together, e.g. in Cochin. And the reading portion, two weeks before 5768, a year of remission, summons that nobody has any right to self-glorification, pride. This week, God seriously warns us, again and again, as in the first commencements (rishonim) that He can bless and He can curse, not our enemies – No! He can curse us as Jews, He can curse those who fake to accept the Mitzvot and dishonor them. There is no place for playing the fool with that. But we do continue to play the fool anyway. How God could decide to “remove his chosen”? The problem is that He can do that and we experienced that. And when He does, we have a set of arguments, worked out over the ages to turn that either into some modern apikoros-style (“we doubt, we are secular”). A Jew can hardly say he is an atheist, Gotyenu (Yid. “good gracious”). It sounds arrogantly provocative even if the person means it. But newly-converted Jews (it is an inter-faith process anyway) and some dippy posers might treat themselves or their gurus as smashing ones. At this point, we are really survivors of all the floods and should be take care and behave because hurricanes, storms, earthquakes and tsunamis may be signals to give our nonsense a break and get wiser.
True, “I (God) wonder whether in this generation there is one that accepts “admonition / tokhechah” (Tractate Arakhin 16b) and “Man loves reproofs (“tokhechot”). For as long as reproofs are in the world, ease of the mind comes upon the world as also good and blessing” (Tamid 28a). But Judaism has a one time word, full of ambiguity and realism to describe the position of the true believer: “He’emirechah hayom – a hiphil verbal form = (The Lord) has obtained your agreement / promise / reached that you said – admitted – recognized as His treasured people as He promised you, and to keep His commandments” (Deut. 26:18). Here is the point, the real one, based on the paradox of faith. “Yoqer yaamir… Prices increase and go high” (Sota 49, 72) because “recognition, promise, agreement” may at times be confused with “arrogance, pride, pretence”.
In the positive sense, “he’emir = to admit, recognize” creates a sort of constant link or bond between God and human beings as the bride is engaged with her bridegroom. This relates to the offerings of the first fruits that can be traced back to the way out of Egypt. The mitzvah to don the tefillin / phylacteries is performed as a bridal attachment (Hosea 2:21-22; compared to the Song of Songs and Menachot 60b about “the Throne of Glory / Kisse HaKavod”).
The Evangelist John states something similar in the Book of Revelation: “The Spirit and the bride say “Come – Marana tha” and let everyone who hears say: “Come” (cf. Piyyut “Akdamut milin – Before saying any word”) (Apocalypse 22:16).
This bridal commitment has to be reinforced and this is also a matter of concern in our society. Indeed, we utter words as God spoke His words and they are trustworthy, because we experience as numerous generations before us that they are seeds of what we look for: hope and life.
A year is a set of a peculiar number of days and nights, hours, minutes and seconds that pass and are stored by God (Sukka 62b). I often speak of "shlishiyot - thirds" because we want to slowly be so speedy at the present that we would like to compact tiny segments of immeasurable time wickets to the world-to-come. The specificities of these parashiyot or readings consist in the continuous and perpetually renewed and repeated description, study, scanning, discovery of each word of the Torah.
Moreover, each consonant is inspired by changeable vowels or phrase sequences. Then, our lives, life paths or styles, choices or inability to make up our minds and get forward, shape each year into the form of collectivity and alien “portions”. There is a very strange verse in the Gospel. Jesus says to the disciples to get some fish to eat, after his resurrection and they were on the beach. "Simon-Peter (Kaipha) went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three (153) of them" (John 21:11). The intriguing point is that before the decision of the Sages at Yavneh and when the Temple was still extant, the Torah was not read over one sole year as we do at the present, but over a period of three years. There were153 parashiyot / Torah reading portions. Each reading portion is like a "shanah", if not a "rosh hashanah - cappo d'anno (It.) = (the) cape of a year" that instructs us according to the demands "tiftach = open the gates" during Neylah of Kippur / the closure of the Day of Atonement. Thus we turn the cape of a certain period of time, or a page, we round along new openness or closets.
Interestingly, although the Jews as the Christians are rarely aware of that, the Early Church adopted the same weekly pattern of readings. The Syrian-Orthodox and the Assyrian Churches did keep in Aramaic four basic readings that develop the meaning of time over one year as most Churches do at the present. The Roman Latin Church decided, after the Second Council of Vatican that ended in 1965, to break down the readings over three years, reintroducing large portions from the Bible. The Byzantine Church has retained a systematic envisioning of time "spreading-expansion" that is definitely structured upon the basis of the Jewish series of weekly readings. Thus, the Anglican and Episcopalian Churches read "lessons", which correspond to the order of age and time deployment. The very first verse of the Hebrew Torah does not describe a big bang or a set of fragmentation that led to the creation of heaven and (rotating) earth. Yes, let's have a Zen or frightful crashing party. It is important to feel this move, immense energizing impulse that may seem to be partially or totally irrelevant and so short-timed. At any age, a verse, a word can reach out to our understanding of events, without any prior premonition. Then, each instant teaches individuals and congregations about the relevancy of what others would consider as indistinctive and lacking exact goals or prospects.
As the (Jewish) year floats til its untouchable and invisible borders preceded by the “yamei slichot – days of penance”, the engrossing nature of the present ending-up life & Torah portion looks like some sort of chaotic breaking down shivering of our cultures and societies in a climatic context of imbalance. We are supposed to read with new insights the parashiyot / reading portions and their related haftarot / readings from the Books of the Prophets. Hebrew is quite peculiar because of the great variety of interpretations that are proposed by changing the vowels and phrases. There is also the imperative reference to the Oral Law that brings forth another style of Mishnah and comprehensiveness. Good, we supposedly went out of the Land of Egypt, the House of serfdom. We are free. And we ARE. And God… He does exist / He is life-giving and He does direct our lives. He is One. His goal: humans are One, only one singled out humankind. At the present, Israel has no guaranteed and secured borders. Cities turn to be towns distanced by villages. We emerge with difficulty from years of complex societal shame that corrupts us in different ways. The problem is how to make out of it a cohesive relevant challenge inside the Jewish spiritual life and move up to the future. And to approach the New Year which is a Shemittah / year of remission with much renewed insights.
This week, the parshat hashavua / reading portion is “Ki tavo = When you have to come (into the land)” in Devarim / Deuteronomy 26:1- 29:8. Curiously, the portion scrolls up and down again the wonders that happened with the very first Mitzvot / Commandments given by God since the way out of Egypt. Again, the words try to clarify what seems to remain obscure or at least opaque to the human heart. The last verse of the portion sums up God’s indication: “Therefore diligently observe the words of this covenant so that you may deal wisely (“taskilu et kol asher ta’asun”)” (Deut. 29: 8). Yes, Moses reminds us “that his/our ancestor was a wandering Aramean… who lived as an alien and a poor number (vayagar sham b’mitei me’at = poor as dead and low”) in Egypt” (Deut. 26:5). He recalls that the land of Israel “is flowing with milk and honey - eretz zavat chalav ud’vash” (Deut. 26:9.27:3). He mentions the offering of the first fruit and the tithe to be given to the Levites, the foreigners, the orphans and the widow. This deals with the “orlayim / first fruits” and the “reshit ‘on” as regards the firstborns. It should be important to come to 5768 with the ability to remit all debts and offer the first fruits of a soil that needs a rest. But, basically, we know that by heart. What is the point of newness on the eve of this shemittah year (year of remission)? Any believer, any member of a monotheist denomination may quote by heart these commandments.
It does not prove our unity or benevolence or shows our acceptance of togetherness according to the Mitzvot of the Lord. The country is broken down, the region is parting, and war flames lash not so far from a land that will rest for one full year while others would nuke it. It is intriguing that we will have to work more in the coming year than the earth for which every Jewish soul prays so that it could produce good fruits and flow with milk and honey. The “divrei haberit = the words of the Covenant” announced by the Holy One are also linked to “devorim = bees” that collect the nectar in a sort of oneness task. By the way, queen bees are endangered and suffer from an unknown disease that strongly affects the animal at the moment. Pitcairn Island honey is strictly protected. It constitutes the main income of the descent of the Bounty mutinies. The same process develops in Europe and other continents.
“Foot yawly come yah- why come to that?” as Pitcairn mutinies’ descent say at the present. Because, believers can hardly listen to any warning words, hear and accept them to the full. Any believer – in particular in the One God (various style and moods) – may humble himself, preferably suggesting the others to bow and kneel down. Considering the failure of any mission in India, Gandhi used to stigmatize how all sorts of Jews and Christians peacefully could live and work together, e.g. in Cochin. And the reading portion, two weeks before 5768, a year of remission, summons that nobody has any right to self-glorification, pride. This week, God seriously warns us, again and again, as in the first commencements (rishonim) that He can bless and He can curse, not our enemies – No! He can curse us as Jews, He can curse those who fake to accept the Mitzvot and dishonor them. There is no place for playing the fool with that. But we do continue to play the fool anyway. How God could decide to “remove his chosen”? The problem is that He can do that and we experienced that. And when He does, we have a set of arguments, worked out over the ages to turn that either into some modern apikoros-style (“we doubt, we are secular”). A Jew can hardly say he is an atheist, Gotyenu (Yid. “good gracious”). It sounds arrogantly provocative even if the person means it. But newly-converted Jews (it is an inter-faith process anyway) and some dippy posers might treat themselves or their gurus as smashing ones. At this point, we are really survivors of all the floods and should be take care and behave because hurricanes, storms, earthquakes and tsunamis may be signals to give our nonsense a break and get wiser.
True, “I (God) wonder whether in this generation there is one that accepts “admonition / tokhechah” (Tractate Arakhin 16b) and “Man loves reproofs (“tokhechot”). For as long as reproofs are in the world, ease of the mind comes upon the world as also good and blessing” (Tamid 28a). But Judaism has a one time word, full of ambiguity and realism to describe the position of the true believer: “He’emirechah hayom – a hiphil verbal form = (The Lord) has obtained your agreement / promise / reached that you said – admitted – recognized as His treasured people as He promised you, and to keep His commandments” (Deut. 26:18). Here is the point, the real one, based on the paradox of faith. “Yoqer yaamir… Prices increase and go high” (Sota 49, 72) because “recognition, promise, agreement” may at times be confused with “arrogance, pride, pretence”.
In the positive sense, “he’emir = to admit, recognize” creates a sort of constant link or bond between God and human beings as the bride is engaged with her bridegroom. This relates to the offerings of the first fruits that can be traced back to the way out of Egypt. The mitzvah to don the tefillin / phylacteries is performed as a bridal attachment (Hosea 2:21-22; compared to the Song of Songs and Menachot 60b about “the Throne of Glory / Kisse HaKavod”).
The Evangelist John states something similar in the Book of Revelation: “The Spirit and the bride say “Come – Marana tha” and let everyone who hears say: “Come” (cf. Piyyut “Akdamut milin – Before saying any word”) (Apocalypse 22:16).
This bridal commitment has to be reinforced and this is also a matter of concern in our society. Indeed, we utter words as God spoke His words and they are trustworthy, because we experience as numerous generations before us that they are seeds of what we look for: hope and life.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Sheerit: a remnant of believers
As we all know and are getting more and more concerned for different reasons, there is a harsh baby boom competition that turns to an obsessing rush to birth babes on the Jewish side of Israel. There is a sort of fear, a feeling of threat that Jews may be overcome by the competition's generating abilities.
In this "birthing war", we feel on the top of the world and are tickled pink, orange, white and blue. This race is definitely not racist. It is not ethnic: we need babes to birth, more babes and get thousands home made inhabitants that should join the newcomers and all these birthrights & Co Unlimited. We are the State of the Jews, "der Judenstaat" that substantiates Theodore Benyamin Zvi Herzl's vision of the required creation a home refuge for the scattered exiled of worldwide Jewry. Is it a Jewish State?
This is a nuance that does not totally fit or outline what can be understood from Herlz’s German title of the book. Well, the in gathering relates to the Bney Israel (Israelites of Children of Israel), Bney Yaakov, Bney Berit (Children of the Covenant), Bney Yeshurun. Still the "nationality - le'om" usually shows that there are either "Yehudim - Jews" or - as the recent ad claims, nobody will ever take it from us. This usually implies that Yehudim are not the Children of Judah, but mainly "Jewish believers" even if the increasing number of the extant "Jewish" streams might be a bit confusing. Then, we have the "satellite border Jews".
Because, all things being equal, Aharon Barak, the former President of the Supreme Court, could not implement his goal to leave his post by sketching out some clear definition of "who is a Jew". Good, “Jewish” means that the mother is Jewish. This does not mean that her father was a Jew or that there was any understanding of what the realm of the Mitzvot is, or what Jewish faith induces for each Jewish soul.
In the former Soviet Union, a great number of men were "Jewish" according to the Soviet national structure and regulation in force. They became "alien" or "lo barur / not clear - lo rashum / not registered - lo le'om / without nationality" and finally "bebedikah / checked" and thus "like goyim / non-Jews". Indeed, the State of the Jews basically functions, at the present, upon the laws that affected the Jews up to the fourth maternal or paternal ancestors and deported or exterminated because of a presumed ancient Jewish lineage. The same is applicable in the Eastern countries that persecuted "any sort of Jews".
On the other hand, any Jew, living in any country outside Eretz Israel, normally enjoys the full right to return to the homeland; be immediately given all the documents and proof that he/she is duly a citizen if he/she does shows evidence that he/she has some Jewish background. The problem may be more complex for those who come from certain countries like Ethiopia or India. And there is a lot of uncertainty with regards to some individuals or groups who either obtain forged documents bought in messy conditions. Let's say this is a general problem for any new just born-again country.
On the other hand, there is no “born again” contest with regards to the Emunat Israel / Faith of Israel. The State of Israel is indeed considering itself as the refuge and native homeland for all Jews, believers or not. This has raised strong conflicts, but still, the Jewish Orthodox movement is responsible for assuming the present identity of Jewish faithful and belief patterns. These are fought by reformists, conservative, modern Orthodox i.a. and other streams mainly from the West and North America.
In Hebrew, “sheerit – remnant” is connected with the root “sh’er” = “preservation, existence, sustenance, bodily contact, flesh and blood/race as “sh’ereinu – our relatives (compared with Yid. “undzere kinder – our children”) in Tractate Shabbat 1c. Tanhumah Tol’dot 19 (Ed. Buber) refers to the Prophet: “Then the remnant of Jacob amidst many peoples (“sheerit Yaakov beqerev amim rabbim”), shall be like dew from the Lord… and among the Nations, the remnant of Jacob… shall be like a lion” (Micah 5:6[7.8]). Indeed, these verses relate to the well-known verse of Prophet Elijah: “Vehish’arti veIsrael, and I will preserve/ leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18).
Now, we have to keep maintaining that this verse, as others from the Prophets, concerns the Jews as firstly being the community of Israel and not the Church of Christ. The supposedly post-exilic verse “Vehish’arti veqirbech am ‘ani vedal / and I will leave – keep the remnant in your midst of a poor and needy people (of Israel)” (Zephania 3:12) echoes Jeremiah’s verse of “the remnant of those who escaped deportation- to Babylon, the “sheerit Yehudah – remnant of Judah”” (Jeremiah 42: 15.19). It is important to constantly bear in mind that the “remnant of Jacob, Israel, Judah” are the meek and the Chassidim who clutched to the Commandments in times of slaughter and destruction (as the Maccabeans). They do continue to repeatedly teach the Sons of Israel in the context of a full rebuilding process.
Throughout history, the Gospel suggested, in Paul of Tarsus’ writings, that the Gentiles entered the Covenant. They entered the Covenant by the approval of the Jews as members of the Mashiah / Moshiah (Christos), not on the contrary. They were accepted under specific agreements proclaimed by Jacob/James, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, a Hebrew Christian (Ch. 15, Acts of the Apostles). But progressively the Gentiles came to consider themselves as being the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16), the fellow-citizens with God’s true people (Eph.2.11-22), having entered into the covenant of promise. This a tactic of replacement and usurpation: even though they are the branches of the true vine (John.15:1-6) and have been grafted into the olive tree (Romans 11:17). As if God “wants all men to be saved and to come to know the truth”. (1Timothy 2:4), based on missionary power and exercise of might instead of releasing and free consented faith. They are the true ‘dispersion’ (James 1:1, 1 Peter1:1).
Ever since the first separation that forbade the Hebrew Christians to take part in Jewish services and banned them (“cherem”) from the Jewish communities, the Early Church lost its Jewish part of the Body and disappeared. The Churches and their splits steadfastly captured the Jews mainly by forced conversion and without real integration. It does not mean that Jews could never “move up” in Christian hierarchy. In most cases this had nothing to do with faith and Judaic-Christian “intra-faith” recognition.
Are the death and funeral of Cardinal J. M. Lustiger reigniting any kind of pending polemic? I tried to give some basic explanations in a general context in the previous blog “Zehut” (Aug 17). There is definitely no precedent to his situation, with the exception of Solomon Alexander Pollack who was bar mitzvahed and got appointed as first Anglican archbishop of Jerusalem in 1842. Again, Cardinal Lustiger was called to be a French and not a “Jewish” Bishop. True, he was very Jewish in many aspects, but definitely marked by the tragedy of the times.
It is true that the Churches envisioned for ages the existence of Israel as an odd remnant. Some Jews refused to be baptized during WWII because they did not want to adhere to a faith they might have not shared but could exert some attraction on them. They would not separate from “their people”. “Rarely in the past have conversions of the Jews to Christianity proven to be a courageous act of sacrifice”, declared the German Rabbi Leo Baeck. In that sense, Cardinal Lustiger’s life and Church service showed a real spirit of abandonment that bordered some sort of “irrationalities”. And he could experience that pretending to be a Jew and a Christian might appear as a kind of “sub-cultural stand”.
His views were those of the heads of the Roman Catholic Western Latin Rite French clergy. His question is not the same – thus seemingly parallel - as Father Daniel Rufeisen’s “requirement” to be recognized, by the State of Israel, as a Jew and member of the “lochamey haGettaot – Ghetto fighters” as he saved so many Jews from the Gestapo at Mir and imperiled his life as a Jew. The same is applicable for many other priests of Jewish descent (Fr. Alexander Glasberg, originally from the Ukraine). Both have trees as “Righteous among the Nations” and not in their quality of Jews. Fr. Daniel Rufeisen had strong ties with the Israeli survivors and he got the citizenship, still not as a Jew. Such requirements need time, patience and the consent of the Jews as a full-coherent community of faithful.
Thus, it may be useful for the emergence of a Judenstaat / State of the Jews (Israel) to interrogate Israeli society and authorities that are enabled to contest any Christian pretence. Are we called to be Israelis because our ancestors were either persecuted by the Christians, the Nazi apostates or the atheists? Because the tragedy for a great part of the converted Jews to Christianity is that they turned Christians during the time of the Shoah or, more recently of the “perestroika/fall of communism in the USSR”, while profound societal breaches were roaring inside of traditional Jewries.
Cardinal Lustiger’s epitaph: “Having become Christian by faith and baptism, I have remained Jewish. As did the Apostles” is only understandable in the context of France, full of contradictions toward Dreyfus, Leon Blum, deportation, denunciation and heroic resistance. It is both a courageous act and self-recognition, showing a lot of suffering. But a Jew is irreversibly born to fully proclaim the Resurrection (“mechayeh metim = Who resurrects the dead”). Then, the problem is that historically the Gentile Church did eat up and swallow Jewishness like praying mantis, leaving Judaism moving ahead on its own.
The House of Israel / Klal Israel always retained and developed her primacy of priesthood and service for the blessing of all the Nations. The “sheerit Israel” as it appears in the present in the State of Israel should also consider the possibility of positively considering the presence of Jews as Christian believers and full Israeli citizens, participating to the full, and without proselytizing, to Jewish life and being a full part of the local Church of Zion and Jerusalem. They are indeed numerous and often similarly rebuked by Jewish and Christian authorities alike. They did exist throughout centuries. Yes, Jesus was not born in a free State of the Jews; this does theologically (and not only politically) question the Church. Today, Israel is capable of contradicting the Christian world and breaking their historic monologue. Thus, Israel could have the wit to open the gates and benefit of the large experience of her Christian inhabitants.
Rabbi Gamaliel had asked Shmuel HaKatan to write the “Birkat malshinim – Benediction against the slanderers, minim (heretics)” around 100 CE. It concerned all sorts of Jewish heretics as we have them today in different ways. Very slowly and with much insight, Israel should open a dialogue with those that don’t teach the Jews but survived amidst hostility and despite it because the return to Zion gathers every soul as “They are the Bney Israel and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law (Torah), the worship (Avodah), and the promises…” (Romans 9:4).
COMMENTS
In this "birthing war", we feel on the top of the world and are tickled pink, orange, white and blue. This race is definitely not racist. It is not ethnic: we need babes to birth, more babes and get thousands home made inhabitants that should join the newcomers and all these birthrights & Co Unlimited. We are the State of the Jews, "der Judenstaat" that substantiates Theodore Benyamin Zvi Herzl's vision of the required creation a home refuge for the scattered exiled of worldwide Jewry. Is it a Jewish State?
This is a nuance that does not totally fit or outline what can be understood from Herlz’s German title of the book. Well, the in gathering relates to the Bney Israel (Israelites of Children of Israel), Bney Yaakov, Bney Berit (Children of the Covenant), Bney Yeshurun. Still the "nationality - le'om" usually shows that there are either "Yehudim - Jews" or - as the recent ad claims, nobody will ever take it from us. This usually implies that Yehudim are not the Children of Judah, but mainly "Jewish believers" even if the increasing number of the extant "Jewish" streams might be a bit confusing. Then, we have the "satellite border Jews".
Because, all things being equal, Aharon Barak, the former President of the Supreme Court, could not implement his goal to leave his post by sketching out some clear definition of "who is a Jew". Good, “Jewish” means that the mother is Jewish. This does not mean that her father was a Jew or that there was any understanding of what the realm of the Mitzvot is, or what Jewish faith induces for each Jewish soul.
In the former Soviet Union, a great number of men were "Jewish" according to the Soviet national structure and regulation in force. They became "alien" or "lo barur / not clear - lo rashum / not registered - lo le'om / without nationality" and finally "bebedikah / checked" and thus "like goyim / non-Jews". Indeed, the State of the Jews basically functions, at the present, upon the laws that affected the Jews up to the fourth maternal or paternal ancestors and deported or exterminated because of a presumed ancient Jewish lineage. The same is applicable in the Eastern countries that persecuted "any sort of Jews".
On the other hand, any Jew, living in any country outside Eretz Israel, normally enjoys the full right to return to the homeland; be immediately given all the documents and proof that he/she is duly a citizen if he/she does shows evidence that he/she has some Jewish background. The problem may be more complex for those who come from certain countries like Ethiopia or India. And there is a lot of uncertainty with regards to some individuals or groups who either obtain forged documents bought in messy conditions. Let's say this is a general problem for any new just born-again country.
On the other hand, there is no “born again” contest with regards to the Emunat Israel / Faith of Israel. The State of Israel is indeed considering itself as the refuge and native homeland for all Jews, believers or not. This has raised strong conflicts, but still, the Jewish Orthodox movement is responsible for assuming the present identity of Jewish faithful and belief patterns. These are fought by reformists, conservative, modern Orthodox i.a. and other streams mainly from the West and North America.
In Hebrew, “sheerit – remnant” is connected with the root “sh’er” = “preservation, existence, sustenance, bodily contact, flesh and blood/race as “sh’ereinu – our relatives (compared with Yid. “undzere kinder – our children”) in Tractate Shabbat 1c. Tanhumah Tol’dot 19 (Ed. Buber) refers to the Prophet: “Then the remnant of Jacob amidst many peoples (“sheerit Yaakov beqerev amim rabbim”), shall be like dew from the Lord… and among the Nations, the remnant of Jacob… shall be like a lion” (Micah 5:6[7.8]). Indeed, these verses relate to the well-known verse of Prophet Elijah: “Vehish’arti veIsrael, and I will preserve/ leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18).
Now, we have to keep maintaining that this verse, as others from the Prophets, concerns the Jews as firstly being the community of Israel and not the Church of Christ. The supposedly post-exilic verse “Vehish’arti veqirbech am ‘ani vedal / and I will leave – keep the remnant in your midst of a poor and needy people (of Israel)” (Zephania 3:12) echoes Jeremiah’s verse of “the remnant of those who escaped deportation- to Babylon, the “sheerit Yehudah – remnant of Judah”” (Jeremiah 42: 15.19). It is important to constantly bear in mind that the “remnant of Jacob, Israel, Judah” are the meek and the Chassidim who clutched to the Commandments in times of slaughter and destruction (as the Maccabeans). They do continue to repeatedly teach the Sons of Israel in the context of a full rebuilding process.
Throughout history, the Gospel suggested, in Paul of Tarsus’ writings, that the Gentiles entered the Covenant. They entered the Covenant by the approval of the Jews as members of the Mashiah / Moshiah (Christos), not on the contrary. They were accepted under specific agreements proclaimed by Jacob/James, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, a Hebrew Christian (Ch. 15, Acts of the Apostles). But progressively the Gentiles came to consider themselves as being the Israel of God (Galatians 6:16), the fellow-citizens with God’s true people (Eph.2.11-22), having entered into the covenant of promise. This a tactic of replacement and usurpation: even though they are the branches of the true vine (John.15:1-6) and have been grafted into the olive tree (Romans 11:17). As if God “wants all men to be saved and to come to know the truth”. (1Timothy 2:4), based on missionary power and exercise of might instead of releasing and free consented faith. They are the true ‘dispersion’ (James 1:1, 1 Peter1:1).
Ever since the first separation that forbade the Hebrew Christians to take part in Jewish services and banned them (“cherem”) from the Jewish communities, the Early Church lost its Jewish part of the Body and disappeared. The Churches and their splits steadfastly captured the Jews mainly by forced conversion and without real integration. It does not mean that Jews could never “move up” in Christian hierarchy. In most cases this had nothing to do with faith and Judaic-Christian “intra-faith” recognition.
Are the death and funeral of Cardinal J. M. Lustiger reigniting any kind of pending polemic? I tried to give some basic explanations in a general context in the previous blog “Zehut” (Aug 17). There is definitely no precedent to his situation, with the exception of Solomon Alexander Pollack who was bar mitzvahed and got appointed as first Anglican archbishop of Jerusalem in 1842. Again, Cardinal Lustiger was called to be a French and not a “Jewish” Bishop. True, he was very Jewish in many aspects, but definitely marked by the tragedy of the times.
It is true that the Churches envisioned for ages the existence of Israel as an odd remnant. Some Jews refused to be baptized during WWII because they did not want to adhere to a faith they might have not shared but could exert some attraction on them. They would not separate from “their people”. “Rarely in the past have conversions of the Jews to Christianity proven to be a courageous act of sacrifice”, declared the German Rabbi Leo Baeck. In that sense, Cardinal Lustiger’s life and Church service showed a real spirit of abandonment that bordered some sort of “irrationalities”. And he could experience that pretending to be a Jew and a Christian might appear as a kind of “sub-cultural stand”.
His views were those of the heads of the Roman Catholic Western Latin Rite French clergy. His question is not the same – thus seemingly parallel - as Father Daniel Rufeisen’s “requirement” to be recognized, by the State of Israel, as a Jew and member of the “lochamey haGettaot – Ghetto fighters” as he saved so many Jews from the Gestapo at Mir and imperiled his life as a Jew. The same is applicable for many other priests of Jewish descent (Fr. Alexander Glasberg, originally from the Ukraine). Both have trees as “Righteous among the Nations” and not in their quality of Jews. Fr. Daniel Rufeisen had strong ties with the Israeli survivors and he got the citizenship, still not as a Jew. Such requirements need time, patience and the consent of the Jews as a full-coherent community of faithful.
Thus, it may be useful for the emergence of a Judenstaat / State of the Jews (Israel) to interrogate Israeli society and authorities that are enabled to contest any Christian pretence. Are we called to be Israelis because our ancestors were either persecuted by the Christians, the Nazi apostates or the atheists? Because the tragedy for a great part of the converted Jews to Christianity is that they turned Christians during the time of the Shoah or, more recently of the “perestroika/fall of communism in the USSR”, while profound societal breaches were roaring inside of traditional Jewries.
Cardinal Lustiger’s epitaph: “Having become Christian by faith and baptism, I have remained Jewish. As did the Apostles” is only understandable in the context of France, full of contradictions toward Dreyfus, Leon Blum, deportation, denunciation and heroic resistance. It is both a courageous act and self-recognition, showing a lot of suffering. But a Jew is irreversibly born to fully proclaim the Resurrection (“mechayeh metim = Who resurrects the dead”). Then, the problem is that historically the Gentile Church did eat up and swallow Jewishness like praying mantis, leaving Judaism moving ahead on its own.
The House of Israel / Klal Israel always retained and developed her primacy of priesthood and service for the blessing of all the Nations. The “sheerit Israel” as it appears in the present in the State of Israel should also consider the possibility of positively considering the presence of Jews as Christian believers and full Israeli citizens, participating to the full, and without proselytizing, to Jewish life and being a full part of the local Church of Zion and Jerusalem. They are indeed numerous and often similarly rebuked by Jewish and Christian authorities alike. They did exist throughout centuries. Yes, Jesus was not born in a free State of the Jews; this does theologically (and not only politically) question the Church. Today, Israel is capable of contradicting the Christian world and breaking their historic monologue. Thus, Israel could have the wit to open the gates and benefit of the large experience of her Christian inhabitants.
Rabbi Gamaliel had asked Shmuel HaKatan to write the “Birkat malshinim – Benediction against the slanderers, minim (heretics)” around 100 CE. It concerned all sorts of Jewish heretics as we have them today in different ways. Very slowly and with much insight, Israel should open a dialogue with those that don’t teach the Jews but survived amidst hostility and despite it because the return to Zion gathers every soul as “They are the Bney Israel and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the Law (Torah), the worship (Avodah), and the promises…” (Romans 9:4).
COMMENTS
Monday, August 27, 2007
Ma'akeh: to fall adequately
Are we going through a normal and standardized summer time? This year, Hurricane Dean swayed the Martinique and the Guadalupe islands, Haiti, and licked with heavy storms the Dominican Republic, then turned to Yucatan and Veracruz in Mexico. It wipes from our memories or more accurately the images of our media the tremendously whirling hurricane Katrina that destroyed New Orleans and Louisiana, with billions and billions of damages and homeless.
This year, America breaks its bridges that fall into the rivers and continues to burn oil: waste, waste carelessly the best of the cream produced in the world, especially in the Middle-East. Oh, they are very nice and heartfelt people. At the end of the war of Vietnam, in 1975, they left a bled white Asian country of ancient culture with all sorts of traitors and betrayers, easy businessmen, women and raped children.
The refugees had to show affidavits of support provided by American citizens, mostly the families of the soldiers or their friends that had visited the country during the war. They got very sincere and warmhearted documents allowing them to settle in the United States.
We see them from time to time in the Holy Land. Israel had also given asylum to some Vietnamese refugees who became full Israeli citizens and would almost speak Chinese or Vietnamese with a touch of Yemenite intonation, lol.
Less than 40 years later, the United States and some Allies are still involved in oil conquest, but the country progressively grows old, buildings and public work structures are not that safe. New Orleans is still swampy.
True, California could support most of the States, but there is a move toward new cultures, Spanish is now a must. But it is so easy to revamp and to swagger when a multi-state-fragmented entity is sliding down, too slowly to be on open alert.
Nobody even anticipated the financial real-estate crash…And who would show off in Puerto Rico, the rich harbor full of homeless. This year, there are hurricanes and overheat in Eastern Europe, Greece, Romania while Asia is drowning under the powerful monsoon in India, China. The United Kingdom had floods and muds.
The Arctic cap melts too quickly and soap opera writers anticipate the coming floods that would wet up and clear out huge parts of Europe, creating a sort of real Atlantida. As we live on the Syrian Phoenician Rift that drifts away from the inland everyday, we might have, in some generations, to go to work by scuba diving in some aquariums like Eilat...
But the crazy thing is that the world is actually losing its polar kippah / skullcap because humans are drained with consumption products and wasting mania is so ethical at the present.
Not only waste but also squander in time, opportunities and resources. For instance, Israel has a strong health educational system based on prevention of diseases. In response, narcotics, anorexia, drugs, sexual and alien sicknesses, psychological weaknesses attack the structures that should prevent from more affection.
One year ago, a young Austrian Viennese girl, Natascha Kampusch, escaped from her jail. She had spent eight years in the house of a man who had abducted and kept her imprisoned in a sort of underground attic. She survived and slowly recovers, showing real compassion for her tormentor. She somehow symbolizes all the Mitzvot given by God in the reading portion of the week and the odious infringements of all kinds of ethical behaviors, to begin with sexual direct or fanciful perversions.
Indeed, the parshat hashavua or reading portion of the week is taken from Devarim / Deuteronomy 21:10-25:9 in this Shabbat “Ki tetsei – (when) you go out (to war against your enemies)”. It precisely deals with morals… Of course! All Mitzvot and the whole of the Written and Oral Laws are reflecting on ethics throughout the ages, teaching each generation how to behave.
It does not mean than we understand or even cope with the God’s Commandments. But they are our substantial green that allows us ruminating slowly like our dear milking cows (Tehillim 1:2, “uv’torato yehggeh yomam valeylah – and considers/ruminates His Torah day and night”). Thus, what do people ruminate about? Sex. Well, there is a little problem. “Sex” does not exist in Hebrew.
It may sound bizarre to some citizens, because we are sinking in sex genital prolegomena to the kernel issues of our planet out society. In the reading portion, again God prohibits rapes, women abduction in war times, transvestitism, prostitution, adultery and slander against women, mutilation of male genitalia. This really sounds “sexual”. Actually it might be! But we don’t use the exact word in Hebrew to discuss a matter that is at the heart of any existence. Alas, pedophilia is developing in Israel as it was current in Ancient Greece for different reasons.
Some years ago it created a national cultural and mental shock in Belgium, as also in France and within the Catholic Church in the United States, Ireland and other countries. “Sexus” comes from “secare – to divide, cut. Humans are divided in order to determine their qualities of males and females collectively. The parashah is dealing with the various ways of how to comply or reject the “genital” identity of humans as to control their impulses or taboos.
Sex(us) is declined in the present in: heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, same-sex, over-sexed and unisex. This has nothing to do with mechanics. And it is indeed a pity that modern religious teachers do not dare clearly and loudly instruct about the mental, physical and spiritual values of our limbs. They do not function as separate robots or golems, but reflect on personal purity or soul life.
“Males and females are called to be one body and soul”, states the Talmud (Menachot 93a). This confirms the value of the first commandment, i.e. to quit father and mother and to “clutch” to a wife (Gen. 2:24). In Hebrew, “Min = sex” and “Person (to the fullest)”. It also interrogates about our origin and destination (Avot 3:1): “Me’a’in = where from”, “min = who, out of (where)”, “man, mah = what” clarifies the irreplaceable dignity and fulfillment of whom and what human beings are called to do with their members, bones and souls, brains, intellect, mind, conscience.
Apparently, sex appears as “raw and wild instinct”. Hebrew shows that it cannot be mechanical or temporary. It always involves creation and therefore feeling. As in a paradox, we hardly would understand and admit that “making love / love-making” is nonsense. Bodies are not toys, robotic actions trying to substantiate human fancy or throw away fears and obsession. “Love = Ahavah = Gr. Agape” undoubtedly refers to Divine Light of creation (= la’assot, yatsar = to make, create, shape”).
Again, Mishney Torah – Deuteronomy hammers down how consciousness should abide our souls and never affect, harm or even damage other inmates, in particular women. One could think that this “wedding warnings and strict commandments” are a consequence of some women weakness. There is no evidence that women are weaker than men. The TaNaKH insists on the fact that woman was shaped in order to assist and even contradict maleness (“ezer kenegdo = a helper against him (Adam) Bereishit 2:20). This maybe nothing new, but the newness is not in the repetition of prohibitive mitzvot. Newness consists in being more aware that any human would like or even prefer to test, taste what is wrong – then get wounded and fall.
In Israel, most women wear pants, and men become more feminized (ornaments, beauty products, unisex clothing). We look again toward own-sex groups that would turn to individual hedonism and loneliness.
Sexual perversions or transgressions are universal; transvestitism can be initiatory (shamanism or Japanese No theater) as pedophilia is for the African Siwan people or the East Bay Papuans. They show up in ancient Jewish and Christianized cultures as symptoms of degenerative tendencies that are very close to primary mental panicking impulses.
We have more cases of incest, which – besides any mitzvot system – is condemned by all human groups with two amazing exceptions: Egyptian Pharaoh’s and the Mormons. This is definitely not some primitive depravation. It only proves how difficult it is for humankind to eradicate the early commencement of a world ruled, without the assistance of a self-controlled conscience; and driven by sudden and instant rages to have a hell and let people fall.
This is why, it is said that we ought to save a fallen donkey or ox (Deut. 22:4), not to kill the mother of fledgings in a nest; and “assita ma’aqah legagech / to build a parapet for the roof of a new house: “otherwise you might have blood-guilt on your house if anyone should fall from it / ki yipol hanofel mimenu” (Deut. 22:8). Now, this commandment should be read in most cities of the country as regards the building of solid security parapets / ma’aqot everywhere.
This sounds a bit peculiar: is there on our roof a being who may fall and make us blood-guilty? The prayer of the Amidah (18 Benedictions) “Mechalkel” has it: “God sustains the living with loving-kindness, resurrects the dead with great mercy, somech noflim / supports the falling…”
There is no competition in faith. There cannot be any sort of jealousy or will to hurt or damage the others. And still, ages have passed and believers would often trap and wrap people in their own stiff-necked spiritual views. As the blessing says, “God sustains and reinvigorates” all beings while we would love to trip someone up because casting down is such a pleasant game for which personal wounds cannot stand.
In times of floods and hurricanes, people are often saved from their roofs. This would also mean that people are not only born to fall in catastrophic situations! This is the kind of hope beyond any hope that Jews have shown: we are like bouncing babes that stare at the sight that what seems impossible is real and extant.
In August 79 CE, Mount Vesuvio lashed its stream of volcanic fire destroying Pompeii and Herculaneum that remained hidden for centuries.
Why in the world is the Arctic ice removing the (skull)cap of the Earth at present?
COMMENTS
This year, America breaks its bridges that fall into the rivers and continues to burn oil: waste, waste carelessly the best of the cream produced in the world, especially in the Middle-East. Oh, they are very nice and heartfelt people. At the end of the war of Vietnam, in 1975, they left a bled white Asian country of ancient culture with all sorts of traitors and betrayers, easy businessmen, women and raped children.
The refugees had to show affidavits of support provided by American citizens, mostly the families of the soldiers or their friends that had visited the country during the war. They got very sincere and warmhearted documents allowing them to settle in the United States.
We see them from time to time in the Holy Land. Israel had also given asylum to some Vietnamese refugees who became full Israeli citizens and would almost speak Chinese or Vietnamese with a touch of Yemenite intonation, lol.
Less than 40 years later, the United States and some Allies are still involved in oil conquest, but the country progressively grows old, buildings and public work structures are not that safe. New Orleans is still swampy.
True, California could support most of the States, but there is a move toward new cultures, Spanish is now a must. But it is so easy to revamp and to swagger when a multi-state-fragmented entity is sliding down, too slowly to be on open alert.
Nobody even anticipated the financial real-estate crash…And who would show off in Puerto Rico, the rich harbor full of homeless. This year, there are hurricanes and overheat in Eastern Europe, Greece, Romania while Asia is drowning under the powerful monsoon in India, China. The United Kingdom had floods and muds.
The Arctic cap melts too quickly and soap opera writers anticipate the coming floods that would wet up and clear out huge parts of Europe, creating a sort of real Atlantida. As we live on the Syrian Phoenician Rift that drifts away from the inland everyday, we might have, in some generations, to go to work by scuba diving in some aquariums like Eilat...
But the crazy thing is that the world is actually losing its polar kippah / skullcap because humans are drained with consumption products and wasting mania is so ethical at the present.
Not only waste but also squander in time, opportunities and resources. For instance, Israel has a strong health educational system based on prevention of diseases. In response, narcotics, anorexia, drugs, sexual and alien sicknesses, psychological weaknesses attack the structures that should prevent from more affection.
One year ago, a young Austrian Viennese girl, Natascha Kampusch, escaped from her jail. She had spent eight years in the house of a man who had abducted and kept her imprisoned in a sort of underground attic. She survived and slowly recovers, showing real compassion for her tormentor. She somehow symbolizes all the Mitzvot given by God in the reading portion of the week and the odious infringements of all kinds of ethical behaviors, to begin with sexual direct or fanciful perversions.
Indeed, the parshat hashavua or reading portion of the week is taken from Devarim / Deuteronomy 21:10-25:9 in this Shabbat “Ki tetsei – (when) you go out (to war against your enemies)”. It precisely deals with morals… Of course! All Mitzvot and the whole of the Written and Oral Laws are reflecting on ethics throughout the ages, teaching each generation how to behave.
It does not mean than we understand or even cope with the God’s Commandments. But they are our substantial green that allows us ruminating slowly like our dear milking cows (Tehillim 1:2, “uv’torato yehggeh yomam valeylah – and considers/ruminates His Torah day and night”). Thus, what do people ruminate about? Sex. Well, there is a little problem. “Sex” does not exist in Hebrew.
It may sound bizarre to some citizens, because we are sinking in sex genital prolegomena to the kernel issues of our planet out society. In the reading portion, again God prohibits rapes, women abduction in war times, transvestitism, prostitution, adultery and slander against women, mutilation of male genitalia. This really sounds “sexual”. Actually it might be! But we don’t use the exact word in Hebrew to discuss a matter that is at the heart of any existence. Alas, pedophilia is developing in Israel as it was current in Ancient Greece for different reasons.
Some years ago it created a national cultural and mental shock in Belgium, as also in France and within the Catholic Church in the United States, Ireland and other countries. “Sexus” comes from “secare – to divide, cut. Humans are divided in order to determine their qualities of males and females collectively. The parashah is dealing with the various ways of how to comply or reject the “genital” identity of humans as to control their impulses or taboos.
Sex(us) is declined in the present in: heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual, same-sex, over-sexed and unisex. This has nothing to do with mechanics. And it is indeed a pity that modern religious teachers do not dare clearly and loudly instruct about the mental, physical and spiritual values of our limbs. They do not function as separate robots or golems, but reflect on personal purity or soul life.
“Males and females are called to be one body and soul”, states the Talmud (Menachot 93a). This confirms the value of the first commandment, i.e. to quit father and mother and to “clutch” to a wife (Gen. 2:24). In Hebrew, “Min = sex” and “Person (to the fullest)”. It also interrogates about our origin and destination (Avot 3:1): “Me’a’in = where from”, “min = who, out of (where)”, “man, mah = what” clarifies the irreplaceable dignity and fulfillment of whom and what human beings are called to do with their members, bones and souls, brains, intellect, mind, conscience.
Apparently, sex appears as “raw and wild instinct”. Hebrew shows that it cannot be mechanical or temporary. It always involves creation and therefore feeling. As in a paradox, we hardly would understand and admit that “making love / love-making” is nonsense. Bodies are not toys, robotic actions trying to substantiate human fancy or throw away fears and obsession. “Love = Ahavah = Gr. Agape” undoubtedly refers to Divine Light of creation (= la’assot, yatsar = to make, create, shape”).
Again, Mishney Torah – Deuteronomy hammers down how consciousness should abide our souls and never affect, harm or even damage other inmates, in particular women. One could think that this “wedding warnings and strict commandments” are a consequence of some women weakness. There is no evidence that women are weaker than men. The TaNaKH insists on the fact that woman was shaped in order to assist and even contradict maleness (“ezer kenegdo = a helper against him (Adam) Bereishit 2:20). This maybe nothing new, but the newness is not in the repetition of prohibitive mitzvot. Newness consists in being more aware that any human would like or even prefer to test, taste what is wrong – then get wounded and fall.
In Israel, most women wear pants, and men become more feminized (ornaments, beauty products, unisex clothing). We look again toward own-sex groups that would turn to individual hedonism and loneliness.
Sexual perversions or transgressions are universal; transvestitism can be initiatory (shamanism or Japanese No theater) as pedophilia is for the African Siwan people or the East Bay Papuans. They show up in ancient Jewish and Christianized cultures as symptoms of degenerative tendencies that are very close to primary mental panicking impulses.
We have more cases of incest, which – besides any mitzvot system – is condemned by all human groups with two amazing exceptions: Egyptian Pharaoh’s and the Mormons. This is definitely not some primitive depravation. It only proves how difficult it is for humankind to eradicate the early commencement of a world ruled, without the assistance of a self-controlled conscience; and driven by sudden and instant rages to have a hell and let people fall.
This is why, it is said that we ought to save a fallen donkey or ox (Deut. 22:4), not to kill the mother of fledgings in a nest; and “assita ma’aqah legagech / to build a parapet for the roof of a new house: “otherwise you might have blood-guilt on your house if anyone should fall from it / ki yipol hanofel mimenu” (Deut. 22:8). Now, this commandment should be read in most cities of the country as regards the building of solid security parapets / ma’aqot everywhere.
This sounds a bit peculiar: is there on our roof a being who may fall and make us blood-guilty? The prayer of the Amidah (18 Benedictions) “Mechalkel” has it: “God sustains the living with loving-kindness, resurrects the dead with great mercy, somech noflim / supports the falling…”
There is no competition in faith. There cannot be any sort of jealousy or will to hurt or damage the others. And still, ages have passed and believers would often trap and wrap people in their own stiff-necked spiritual views. As the blessing says, “God sustains and reinvigorates” all beings while we would love to trip someone up because casting down is such a pleasant game for which personal wounds cannot stand.
In times of floods and hurricanes, people are often saved from their roofs. This would also mean that people are not only born to fall in catastrophic situations! This is the kind of hope beyond any hope that Jews have shown: we are like bouncing babes that stare at the sight that what seems impossible is real and extant.
In August 79 CE, Mount Vesuvio lashed its stream of volcanic fire destroying Pompeii and Herculaneum that remained hidden for centuries.
Why in the world is the Arctic ice removing the (skull)cap of the Earth at present?
COMMENTS
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Ochel: Lanky, chubby or meaty?
Judaism is built upon strong foundations. As large, big and enormous as the basic "avanim levanot/ white stones" that can seen at the Western Wall. True, the visible stones are not the foundations: these can be slightly seen under the tunnel on the side for men and they are planted deep beneath the earth on the place. Heavy blocks were weighing up the Temple Mount. Weighty blocks of stone brought as living pieces to support and protect the Divine Presence.
"Even - stone" is curious in Hebrew. English comes from Old Norse "Steinur", cf. Germ. "Stein", Du. "Steen" used to describe rocks, from Sanskrit "Styayate - hard pieces of standing material that thicken, curdle", Gr. "Stear - fat". Lat. "Petrus - stone = Gr. Petros, Syriac Kaifa = head) refer to weight and strength. The same with Gr."Lithos" that generated "Lithium", used for energetic power and a specific medicine correcting and reinvigorating mental mood. Slavic "Kamen' - kamyi", linked to "hammer", also echoes these energizing capacities. On the other hand, Slavic “Stena” means “wall”, not necessarily made of stones.
Hebrew supposedly comes from the same concept of "power, strength”: "even” from “avar” (with an alef) : to be bent, thick, pressed" as: "throwing a (heavy) stones into a leather bottle has no effect because it is indigestible" (Pessahim 12b). Evarim/n = meat or "three meats as edible parts of an animal limb (Shekalim 8, 3); "ever - male genital member" and tower of protection in a city (Hullin 101b, Sanhedrin 107a), just as in English Slang ("testicles")."The corpse was put on a closing immovable stone" (Niddah 69b) which is found in the Gospel with Lazarus' resurrection (John 11:39) and Jesus' removal of the tombstone (John 20:1).
"Even shtiyah - foundation stone" occupied the place of the Holy Ark in the Second Temple (Yoma 5, 3). It means a place of birth for feeding newborn babes (the faithful) as "oven [linked to beyn = between and banah = to construct]" which means "the passage or vagina through which the embryo goes out" as in "the place here the child comes to light" (Sota 11b; cf. Ex. Rabba 1). But “even” may also be compared to “holid ben/banim – to birth sons” as in the psalm: “Im HaShem lo yivneh vayit – unless the Lord builds the house, those whose build it labor in vain” (Tehillim 127, 1). John the Baptist has a very clear saying: “I tell you, God is able from these stones (avanim), can raise children (banim) to Abraham” (Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8).
Most memorials were made of stones, from the gigantic Easter Island/Rapa Nui human form monolithic statues to Stonehenge (Stone gallows) mystical circles in Great Britain that resemble the Celtic “men/maen hir – long (high stone)” that point to the sky in Brittany or Wales. “Dolmens” are rather flat large stones under which people were buried and also a place for banquets as most cemeteries and burial places are in most civilizations. As a strange move inducing that the earth is fed by coffins and human limbs, which, in return, should receive some food brought or offered by the survivors.
On the one hand, stones symbolize the hospitality and conviviality of solid weighing in substances. They seem to point toward the high. Interestingly, till the end of the Roman architectural style, churches were “flat” just as synagogues or mosques. Gothic belfries should the human pretence to reach out to heaven, sort of “Babel-like” dream to attain God. On August 6th for the Western and August 19th for the Eastern Orthodox Churches, Christianity celebrated a feast that seemingly does not exist in Judaism: the Transfiguration of Jesus of Nazareth on a high mountain. Is it Mount Tabor? Or did the event take place in Jerusalem or some other Northern mountain?
The Greek word is “metamorphosis” because the “shape/form” of the Jesus changed and “his face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzlingly white as light’ (Luke 9: 29) as he was discussing with Moses and Elijah. It is said in the Gospel of Matthew that this occurred six days after Shimon-Peter (Shimon bar Yona; cf. Ben Sirach chapter 51 and new Kippur service in the rebuilt Temple) confessed Jesus as “the Messiah, the son of the Living God” (Matthew 16:16). Six days later supposedly imply that it was by the time of the feast of the Booths/Sukkot. But the point is that Jesus appeared in a discussion with Moses and Elijah. Shimon-Peter suggested building three tents/dwellings. And then a bright cloud overshadowed them. For the very first time in the Gospel, a voice (cf. Bat Qol = Spirit of God) told the apostles that Jesus was “the beloved son” (Matthew 17: 1-8).
This directly reminds or traces back to Abraham and Moses as God’s acting messengers. There is a key similarity and parallelism that should be taken into account: Moses died in the wilderness and nobody knows where his grave is located. He someway physically disappeared as nil. Prophet Elijah ascended in a whirl-wind to heaven in the Merkavah / chariot and horses of fire while Elisha, his disciple was staring at the scene with the hope to get a double share of spiritual strength from his master (2 Kings 2:9-12). Jesus was subject to a process of “transfiguration – metamorphosis – Hebrew “hishtanut – change”.
The correct word should be taken from the root “tselem – face / “hitstallamut” means “action to be taken in picture” in Modern Hebrew. But “tselem”, in the Jewish traditions, refer to “Image (dark)”, “painted matter” (Avot 3, 14), “even image, take, painting”; or, “pay honor to the image of the Lord! (= respect humans)” (Tanhumah Mishpatim 19). Yiddish and Hebrew use the word for “the (Christian) cross” considered as an object of idolatry. On the other hand, “Hit’orerut – waking up” and “hit’arut – deep rooting-in” would be convenient because they express a change of “’or – skin, thus face and like waking up from another realm”.
We are strong. Everywhere we go, we hear that we are strong, as Israeli society composed of many nations and various people coming from the whole world. The Jews are strong, the Muslims are strong. The Christians are strong. Our strength is exactly like the mythical fairy tales we condemn about the idols or the godly wars in the Antiquity that turned to be Hollywood rubbish. We are so ancient that, when we unexpectedly, get refreshed and updated, we only can appear to be strong. Or, we think we are mighty, powerful. And every group in Israel is so energetic, exquisitely forceful!
Actually, we go far too deep into framing process. We are segmented, fragmented, broken down according the traditional Jewish patterns of emunah / faith vs secular life, but piety is cut down like thin slices of some in between kosher meat that we could not share. On the one hand, we want to be fit, firm, slim, nice and credible, as those above stones, rock building or monuments. On the other hand, are overfed and often fed up, chubby and meaty, full of oil and still would pretend ascending to heaven by our own forces. We look like tough people full of diet articles of faith or weighed-out commandments that we hardly can share.
I gave the two distinct examples of stones and apparent weight or density and lightness of a flashing change with regards to men whose grave are either empty or void because it shows the hardships to really adhere to the spiritual substance of our lives at the present. Look, as in a paradox, we would accept to belong to various Jewish streams as long as they don’t bother our own micro-stream. At this point, if a huge Passover Seder was organized throughout the country, a unique Pesach Seder, very few of us would accept to share the account of the Aggadah, the order of the memorial Seder, the way meals were cooked… and the spiritual meaning of such an event. We would exclude some non-Halachic Jews, all sorts of Christians. Thus, where would the Muslims and Baha’is find their place?
I have a heavily handicapped daughter with a very peculiar syndrome. She cannot stop eating. Then, she is of course on a permanent diet. The refrigerator is locked, the kitchen is locked, she always finds something edible and she is a real gourmet. Is she over-weight or chubby, compulsorily driven to “swallow or eat up” without suffering from any hunger or lack of food? It is a genetic defect that will certainly be corrected for the coming generations.
This syndrome does exist in our society as a sign of “transgressions”. We are noshing all the day out of fear and because we love to nurture and nourish ourselves and others. It seems to be not sufficient at this point in feeding the poor and the homeless. The discomfort that affects my daughter and can hardly be controlled is a pending interrogation in a society that wastes goods, food, time, morality and might not be able to share a Seder to the full. Indeed, we are together and this can be so nice at times.
Man will not only live of bread (Devarim 8:3; cf. Matthew 4:4; Luke 4:4). Israel and Christianity have a common sign of sharing bread and a goal, a call to nurture and feed the world with the Mitzvot and the Reign of God. This implies a constant upgrading to reach out the victims: Peru, China, India as Gaza and….
By the way, what about New Orleans?
"Even - stone" is curious in Hebrew. English comes from Old Norse "Steinur", cf. Germ. "Stein", Du. "Steen" used to describe rocks, from Sanskrit "Styayate - hard pieces of standing material that thicken, curdle", Gr. "Stear - fat". Lat. "Petrus - stone = Gr. Petros, Syriac Kaifa = head) refer to weight and strength. The same with Gr."Lithos" that generated "Lithium", used for energetic power and a specific medicine correcting and reinvigorating mental mood. Slavic "Kamen' - kamyi", linked to "hammer", also echoes these energizing capacities. On the other hand, Slavic “Stena” means “wall”, not necessarily made of stones.
Hebrew supposedly comes from the same concept of "power, strength”: "even” from “avar” (with an alef) : to be bent, thick, pressed" as: "throwing a (heavy) stones into a leather bottle has no effect because it is indigestible" (Pessahim 12b). Evarim/n = meat or "three meats as edible parts of an animal limb (Shekalim 8, 3); "ever - male genital member" and tower of protection in a city (Hullin 101b, Sanhedrin 107a), just as in English Slang ("testicles")."The corpse was put on a closing immovable stone" (Niddah 69b) which is found in the Gospel with Lazarus' resurrection (John 11:39) and Jesus' removal of the tombstone (John 20:1).
"Even shtiyah - foundation stone" occupied the place of the Holy Ark in the Second Temple (Yoma 5, 3). It means a place of birth for feeding newborn babes (the faithful) as "oven [linked to beyn = between and banah = to construct]" which means "the passage or vagina through which the embryo goes out" as in "the place here the child comes to light" (Sota 11b; cf. Ex. Rabba 1). But “even” may also be compared to “holid ben/banim – to birth sons” as in the psalm: “Im HaShem lo yivneh vayit – unless the Lord builds the house, those whose build it labor in vain” (Tehillim 127, 1). John the Baptist has a very clear saying: “I tell you, God is able from these stones (avanim), can raise children (banim) to Abraham” (Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8).
Most memorials were made of stones, from the gigantic Easter Island/Rapa Nui human form monolithic statues to Stonehenge (Stone gallows) mystical circles in Great Britain that resemble the Celtic “men/maen hir – long (high stone)” that point to the sky in Brittany or Wales. “Dolmens” are rather flat large stones under which people were buried and also a place for banquets as most cemeteries and burial places are in most civilizations. As a strange move inducing that the earth is fed by coffins and human limbs, which, in return, should receive some food brought or offered by the survivors.
On the one hand, stones symbolize the hospitality and conviviality of solid weighing in substances. They seem to point toward the high. Interestingly, till the end of the Roman architectural style, churches were “flat” just as synagogues or mosques. Gothic belfries should the human pretence to reach out to heaven, sort of “Babel-like” dream to attain God. On August 6th for the Western and August 19th for the Eastern Orthodox Churches, Christianity celebrated a feast that seemingly does not exist in Judaism: the Transfiguration of Jesus of Nazareth on a high mountain. Is it Mount Tabor? Or did the event take place in Jerusalem or some other Northern mountain?
The Greek word is “metamorphosis” because the “shape/form” of the Jesus changed and “his face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzlingly white as light’ (Luke 9: 29) as he was discussing with Moses and Elijah. It is said in the Gospel of Matthew that this occurred six days after Shimon-Peter (Shimon bar Yona; cf. Ben Sirach chapter 51 and new Kippur service in the rebuilt Temple) confessed Jesus as “the Messiah, the son of the Living God” (Matthew 16:16). Six days later supposedly imply that it was by the time of the feast of the Booths/Sukkot. But the point is that Jesus appeared in a discussion with Moses and Elijah. Shimon-Peter suggested building three tents/dwellings. And then a bright cloud overshadowed them. For the very first time in the Gospel, a voice (cf. Bat Qol = Spirit of God) told the apostles that Jesus was “the beloved son” (Matthew 17: 1-8).
This directly reminds or traces back to Abraham and Moses as God’s acting messengers. There is a key similarity and parallelism that should be taken into account: Moses died in the wilderness and nobody knows where his grave is located. He someway physically disappeared as nil. Prophet Elijah ascended in a whirl-wind to heaven in the Merkavah / chariot and horses of fire while Elisha, his disciple was staring at the scene with the hope to get a double share of spiritual strength from his master (2 Kings 2:9-12). Jesus was subject to a process of “transfiguration – metamorphosis – Hebrew “hishtanut – change”.
The correct word should be taken from the root “tselem – face / “hitstallamut” means “action to be taken in picture” in Modern Hebrew. But “tselem”, in the Jewish traditions, refer to “Image (dark)”, “painted matter” (Avot 3, 14), “even image, take, painting”; or, “pay honor to the image of the Lord! (= respect humans)” (Tanhumah Mishpatim 19). Yiddish and Hebrew use the word for “the (Christian) cross” considered as an object of idolatry. On the other hand, “Hit’orerut – waking up” and “hit’arut – deep rooting-in” would be convenient because they express a change of “’or – skin, thus face and like waking up from another realm”.
We are strong. Everywhere we go, we hear that we are strong, as Israeli society composed of many nations and various people coming from the whole world. The Jews are strong, the Muslims are strong. The Christians are strong. Our strength is exactly like the mythical fairy tales we condemn about the idols or the godly wars in the Antiquity that turned to be Hollywood rubbish. We are so ancient that, when we unexpectedly, get refreshed and updated, we only can appear to be strong. Or, we think we are mighty, powerful. And every group in Israel is so energetic, exquisitely forceful!
Actually, we go far too deep into framing process. We are segmented, fragmented, broken down according the traditional Jewish patterns of emunah / faith vs secular life, but piety is cut down like thin slices of some in between kosher meat that we could not share. On the one hand, we want to be fit, firm, slim, nice and credible, as those above stones, rock building or monuments. On the other hand, are overfed and often fed up, chubby and meaty, full of oil and still would pretend ascending to heaven by our own forces. We look like tough people full of diet articles of faith or weighed-out commandments that we hardly can share.
I gave the two distinct examples of stones and apparent weight or density and lightness of a flashing change with regards to men whose grave are either empty or void because it shows the hardships to really adhere to the spiritual substance of our lives at the present. Look, as in a paradox, we would accept to belong to various Jewish streams as long as they don’t bother our own micro-stream. At this point, if a huge Passover Seder was organized throughout the country, a unique Pesach Seder, very few of us would accept to share the account of the Aggadah, the order of the memorial Seder, the way meals were cooked… and the spiritual meaning of such an event. We would exclude some non-Halachic Jews, all sorts of Christians. Thus, where would the Muslims and Baha’is find their place?
I have a heavily handicapped daughter with a very peculiar syndrome. She cannot stop eating. Then, she is of course on a permanent diet. The refrigerator is locked, the kitchen is locked, she always finds something edible and she is a real gourmet. Is she over-weight or chubby, compulsorily driven to “swallow or eat up” without suffering from any hunger or lack of food? It is a genetic defect that will certainly be corrected for the coming generations.
This syndrome does exist in our society as a sign of “transgressions”. We are noshing all the day out of fear and because we love to nurture and nourish ourselves and others. It seems to be not sufficient at this point in feeding the poor and the homeless. The discomfort that affects my daughter and can hardly be controlled is a pending interrogation in a society that wastes goods, food, time, morality and might not be able to share a Seder to the full. Indeed, we are together and this can be so nice at times.
Man will not only live of bread (Devarim 8:3; cf. Matthew 4:4; Luke 4:4). Israel and Christianity have a common sign of sharing bread and a goal, a call to nurture and feed the world with the Mitzvot and the Reign of God. This implies a constant upgrading to reach out the victims: Peru, China, India as Gaza and….
By the way, what about New Orleans?
Friday, August 17, 2007
Diyun: cool, folks, don't be judgmental
In the previous blog about the impact of identity in the Jewish society, I tried to show the importance to treat Jewishness with much respect and to listen to the voices and advices of those who have been in charge of the Jewish spiritual development until nowadays.
It may at times irritate us when we consider the way some members of the Rabbinate take peculiar decisions or, on the contrary, are not able to upgrade the numerous problems that arise out of a quick-changing Jewish manner of considering faith, life, death, involvement in the society, work, learning, birthing babies, getting married, divorced or taking care of pets and wildlife.
Nonetheless, whatever positive or negative opinion we may have, the rabbis did preserve and save over ages the reality of the Jewish realm of the Mitzvot/Commandments and the treasury of Judaism. Thus, the Orthodox Jewish movements have to upgrade, but they did protect and did safeguard a heritage whose coherence in imperiled in Israel as abroad because of the dramas caused by secularization and the after-Shoah memory-deleting tragedy.
The Eastern-European Yiddishkayt civilization was put at the stake forever, which does not mean at all that Jewish Laws and Commandments would not outlive for the ages. They are indeed words of eternity that cannot pass. Our challenge is to pass it to each generation and to enhance the quality of reflection, understanding and knowledge of God as co-Worker of humankind.
This is why – whatever streams existing at the present in Judaism, all of them deserve to be respected as a part of the House of Israel/Klal Israel – the rabbis have played and continue to play a major role beyond any “clerical freezing behaviors”. This is one of the pending issues that we have to face: we need “dayanim – rabbinical judges” who must be spiritually credible. We need justices and men and women of righteousness and still, this is the hardest part of witnessing to our vitality.
The parshat hashavua / reading portion of the week is to be found in the Book of Devarim/Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9: “Shoftim – you shall appoint judges (said the Lord to Moses)”. The process of “Mishney Torah – repeatedly repeating the Torah” shows how God knows as Moses feels with insight that the Israelites are at pains with accepting to observe the Mitzvot. Jewish memory can easily be compared to some elephants whose trunks transfer the stored memorized elements to the trash out of some odd boredom.
True, we can be so lazy, on the verge of sloth, about learning the Mitzvot and then teach them adequately. They are not virtual games, twisty or tricky monologues or simply a way to reside in Israel without having to make a living, defense the country, avoiding active involvement in the essential questions that they raise: good and evil, the profundity of unreachable God’s Commandments and projects with regards to daily life without living like zombies or bee’s knees or in-crowd trendsetters of remote speculations.
It gives the impression that exerting judgment and being a decision-maker, a manager, sort of heading a ruling entity is a knock-out activity full of prestige and might. Most of the soap operas and serials would rely on recurring patterned events: wedding and divorce, lawsuits and court quibbling. When Moses followed the advice given by his father-in-law, Jethro, to appoint “anshey chayil – men of value, discernment” and councils to resolve the problems that were raising inside the Israelite community as they were a bit lost in the wilderness, he humbly found the wise manner to avoid quarrels among the people.
He was the leader, heading the nation but, as Jethro told him, he could not handle or govern everything. We do see in many countries how politicians or economists, whatever profession indeed may be driven to power; life-long presidents or Chief High Guides of the People. Sometimes the period would legally be reduced to four-five-seven years but there is a real thirst of might. These people of power do exist of course in the world of laws and regulations that vary in different countries. But Moshe Rabbenu humbled himself. He listened to Jethro’s voice of wisdom and assigned the first “judges or justices”.
At this point, from the Sinai Revelation and Giving of the Torot (Oral and Written Torah) onwards, God’s righteousness is the main goal targeted by the Israelites and these activities are broken down into peculiar occupations: Words (writing, reporters, journalists), Law (lawyers, justices, attorneys, judges), Health or language of the body & soul (physicians, surgeons, psychotherapists, therapists, nurses).
Legal matters cover all these activities because it may either cause harsh sufferings or deliver individuals and groups from serfdom and make them feel and act freely. Thus, Law is at the heart of every Jewish prayer and non-Jews would even be astounded of the “legal aspect” of many Jewish demands made to the Lord. “Atah Honantanu –You have favored us with the knowledge of Your Law” (on Shabbat, Berachot 33a), which means that the believers except that God will bless with order the peaceful commencement of a new week, withheld from any sin.
But the striking and constant call to memorize the earlier times of God’s and Moses’ decision for the Israelites is shown in the benediction included in the Amidah (18 Blessings): “Hashivah shofteynu kev’rishonah / Restore our judges (justices) as in prior times, veyoatseynu kev’techilah / and our counselors as of yore; remove from us sorrow and sighing (yagon veanachah) and reign Alone over us, Lord, with kindness and compassion, righteousness and justice (betsedek uvmishpat) (during the ten days of penitence/slichot = Melech HaMishpat – King of Judgment).
The first phrase is taken from Prophet Isaiah 1:26-27, which presupposes that they were able to exert a compassionate legal authority that allowed the removing of grief and suffering. On the other hand, the second part of the blessing suggests that the ancient wilderness appointment of the judges-advisors implied a correct monitoring of the society. This was not the case when foreign dominion and judges were arbitrarily ruling over the Jewish nation, in particular the Romans by the time of the Second Temple. The Palestinian version of the benediction has “Ohev mishpat – Who loves judgment” instead of (Melech/King of judgment) as in Isaiah 61:8.
Indeed, there is a strong connection between the Amidah blessings 9 to 11 about Redemption, the ingathering of the exiled and the restoration of the judges. Curiously enough, the demand was not introduced after but before the destruction of the Temple as explained in Talmud Sanhedrin 41a, seemingly written forty years before 70.
Are we thus so legal-oriented? The State of Israel is repeatedly insisting till some parroting that we live in a “medinah chukit = state of legacy”. The police and the soldiers acting as policemen, but also all kinds of “courts – batey hamishpat” or “beyt shalom – court of peace” for marital and penal disputes constitute a major part of the Israeli stand of justice.
Or, at least there is a genuine and firm purpose to act and resolve any pending societal or individual issue with a sense of righteousness. Of course, people would be tricky, cheating each other, would fall out with best friends for bargains or haggle. We are a friendly nation, rather spoiled somehow like churlish children. Money… money… “kessef/massar oder gelt” and some would know how to get loaded while other can be skint. So what is robbery, eh? It can evolve into a sort of democratic mental and secular mitzvah that fell down to the street or a ditch. A lawless rule can be a spiritually fallen commandment. We see at the present the legal bodies: the Supreme Court, then new Attorney General embattled in upgrading the power of legacy.
Now, there are also the rabbinic tribunals and the dayanim – rabbinic judges. This should be good provided that nobody is corrupt or twisty. The problem with the twist is that it hardly can be detected overtime. As we grow foxy, crooked, we insidiously leave and forget what is at the core of the Mitzvot and we get misleading. Funny how at times we can get astonished or amused to get misled in return. It is correct that Israeli society is going through rising hooliganism, opportunism, self-ruled and self-autonomous decisions taken with less and less respect of the State regulations.
This is a real problem and we caught a glimpse at that with the previous blog about “Identity”. Indeed, Israel has become for some people like the “shalosh arim – the three cities (of refuge)” determined in our reading portion of the week. These three cities existed in order to protect the “rotz’chim - murderers” who had killed or harmed somebody “by mistake”, unwillingly. By the time the mitzvah was decreed, it is evident that legality was respected. And it was a ver humane provision to secure a murderer who had not killed or wounded somebody intentionally.
One of the formulas used for the ancient ordination of the rabbis is: “Yadin – yadin: you want to exercise judgment, you will judge / yattir- yattir: you want to deliver, release, make free – you will authorize / Yoreh – yoreh: you want to teach (the Laws), give birth to souls: you will open them so that they can reach their goals”. In Hebrew “Din, dinim” often corresponds to what the Christians would call “grace, blessings”. Because we have forgotten that a judgment is not only a penalty nor a punishment.
It has a prophetic aspect that enables a society to comply with the rules and still be aware of how to trespass without harming its development. Thus, the moral commandments “You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery,…” are composed of very subtle points that are daily infringed by most people. The question is how to correct public life as to induce freedom, release and a spirit of prophecy! And enable some good will to teach the commandments with a spirit of kayf.
It is intriguing that the Noahide Laws require the setting-up of tribunal in every town. Justices, lawyers, shoterim/officers-policemen and women as the rabbis and pious people do have an immense preventive responsibility to bring forth the value of Laws.
Jesus said: “Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven”. (Matthew 6:19-20). The realm of the Mitzvot is far beyond any denomination, party, judgment. It calls to be cool.
COMMENTS
1. Amazing that we are now quoting Jesus. If Judaism gave the world nothing else but Monotheism, Justice in all of its aspects may have sufficed as our contribution to humanity. Too bad that Christianity does not teach Jesus's respect for the rightiousness of the scribes and pharisees and the admonition to Justice which includes feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, helping the sick and the downtrodden, but focuses the teachings of Paul.
Stanford Newman, Warren, Michigan USA 48088, Aug 17 6:08PM
It may at times irritate us when we consider the way some members of the Rabbinate take peculiar decisions or, on the contrary, are not able to upgrade the numerous problems that arise out of a quick-changing Jewish manner of considering faith, life, death, involvement in the society, work, learning, birthing babies, getting married, divorced or taking care of pets and wildlife.
Nonetheless, whatever positive or negative opinion we may have, the rabbis did preserve and save over ages the reality of the Jewish realm of the Mitzvot/Commandments and the treasury of Judaism. Thus, the Orthodox Jewish movements have to upgrade, but they did protect and did safeguard a heritage whose coherence in imperiled in Israel as abroad because of the dramas caused by secularization and the after-Shoah memory-deleting tragedy.
The Eastern-European Yiddishkayt civilization was put at the stake forever, which does not mean at all that Jewish Laws and Commandments would not outlive for the ages. They are indeed words of eternity that cannot pass. Our challenge is to pass it to each generation and to enhance the quality of reflection, understanding and knowledge of God as co-Worker of humankind.
This is why – whatever streams existing at the present in Judaism, all of them deserve to be respected as a part of the House of Israel/Klal Israel – the rabbis have played and continue to play a major role beyond any “clerical freezing behaviors”. This is one of the pending issues that we have to face: we need “dayanim – rabbinical judges” who must be spiritually credible. We need justices and men and women of righteousness and still, this is the hardest part of witnessing to our vitality.
The parshat hashavua / reading portion of the week is to be found in the Book of Devarim/Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9: “Shoftim – you shall appoint judges (said the Lord to Moses)”. The process of “Mishney Torah – repeatedly repeating the Torah” shows how God knows as Moses feels with insight that the Israelites are at pains with accepting to observe the Mitzvot. Jewish memory can easily be compared to some elephants whose trunks transfer the stored memorized elements to the trash out of some odd boredom.
True, we can be so lazy, on the verge of sloth, about learning the Mitzvot and then teach them adequately. They are not virtual games, twisty or tricky monologues or simply a way to reside in Israel without having to make a living, defense the country, avoiding active involvement in the essential questions that they raise: good and evil, the profundity of unreachable God’s Commandments and projects with regards to daily life without living like zombies or bee’s knees or in-crowd trendsetters of remote speculations.
It gives the impression that exerting judgment and being a decision-maker, a manager, sort of heading a ruling entity is a knock-out activity full of prestige and might. Most of the soap operas and serials would rely on recurring patterned events: wedding and divorce, lawsuits and court quibbling. When Moses followed the advice given by his father-in-law, Jethro, to appoint “anshey chayil – men of value, discernment” and councils to resolve the problems that were raising inside the Israelite community as they were a bit lost in the wilderness, he humbly found the wise manner to avoid quarrels among the people.
He was the leader, heading the nation but, as Jethro told him, he could not handle or govern everything. We do see in many countries how politicians or economists, whatever profession indeed may be driven to power; life-long presidents or Chief High Guides of the People. Sometimes the period would legally be reduced to four-five-seven years but there is a real thirst of might. These people of power do exist of course in the world of laws and regulations that vary in different countries. But Moshe Rabbenu humbled himself. He listened to Jethro’s voice of wisdom and assigned the first “judges or justices”.
At this point, from the Sinai Revelation and Giving of the Torot (Oral and Written Torah) onwards, God’s righteousness is the main goal targeted by the Israelites and these activities are broken down into peculiar occupations: Words (writing, reporters, journalists), Law (lawyers, justices, attorneys, judges), Health or language of the body & soul (physicians, surgeons, psychotherapists, therapists, nurses).
Legal matters cover all these activities because it may either cause harsh sufferings or deliver individuals and groups from serfdom and make them feel and act freely. Thus, Law is at the heart of every Jewish prayer and non-Jews would even be astounded of the “legal aspect” of many Jewish demands made to the Lord. “Atah Honantanu –You have favored us with the knowledge of Your Law” (on Shabbat, Berachot 33a), which means that the believers except that God will bless with order the peaceful commencement of a new week, withheld from any sin.
But the striking and constant call to memorize the earlier times of God’s and Moses’ decision for the Israelites is shown in the benediction included in the Amidah (18 Blessings): “Hashivah shofteynu kev’rishonah / Restore our judges (justices) as in prior times, veyoatseynu kev’techilah / and our counselors as of yore; remove from us sorrow and sighing (yagon veanachah) and reign Alone over us, Lord, with kindness and compassion, righteousness and justice (betsedek uvmishpat) (during the ten days of penitence/slichot = Melech HaMishpat – King of Judgment).
The first phrase is taken from Prophet Isaiah 1:26-27, which presupposes that they were able to exert a compassionate legal authority that allowed the removing of grief and suffering. On the other hand, the second part of the blessing suggests that the ancient wilderness appointment of the judges-advisors implied a correct monitoring of the society. This was not the case when foreign dominion and judges were arbitrarily ruling over the Jewish nation, in particular the Romans by the time of the Second Temple. The Palestinian version of the benediction has “Ohev mishpat – Who loves judgment” instead of (Melech/King of judgment) as in Isaiah 61:8.
Indeed, there is a strong connection between the Amidah blessings 9 to 11 about Redemption, the ingathering of the exiled and the restoration of the judges. Curiously enough, the demand was not introduced after but before the destruction of the Temple as explained in Talmud Sanhedrin 41a, seemingly written forty years before 70.
Are we thus so legal-oriented? The State of Israel is repeatedly insisting till some parroting that we live in a “medinah chukit = state of legacy”. The police and the soldiers acting as policemen, but also all kinds of “courts – batey hamishpat” or “beyt shalom – court of peace” for marital and penal disputes constitute a major part of the Israeli stand of justice.
Or, at least there is a genuine and firm purpose to act and resolve any pending societal or individual issue with a sense of righteousness. Of course, people would be tricky, cheating each other, would fall out with best friends for bargains or haggle. We are a friendly nation, rather spoiled somehow like churlish children. Money… money… “kessef/massar oder gelt” and some would know how to get loaded while other can be skint. So what is robbery, eh? It can evolve into a sort of democratic mental and secular mitzvah that fell down to the street or a ditch. A lawless rule can be a spiritually fallen commandment. We see at the present the legal bodies: the Supreme Court, then new Attorney General embattled in upgrading the power of legacy.
Now, there are also the rabbinic tribunals and the dayanim – rabbinic judges. This should be good provided that nobody is corrupt or twisty. The problem with the twist is that it hardly can be detected overtime. As we grow foxy, crooked, we insidiously leave and forget what is at the core of the Mitzvot and we get misleading. Funny how at times we can get astonished or amused to get misled in return. It is correct that Israeli society is going through rising hooliganism, opportunism, self-ruled and self-autonomous decisions taken with less and less respect of the State regulations.
This is a real problem and we caught a glimpse at that with the previous blog about “Identity”. Indeed, Israel has become for some people like the “shalosh arim – the three cities (of refuge)” determined in our reading portion of the week. These three cities existed in order to protect the “rotz’chim - murderers” who had killed or harmed somebody “by mistake”, unwillingly. By the time the mitzvah was decreed, it is evident that legality was respected. And it was a ver humane provision to secure a murderer who had not killed or wounded somebody intentionally.
One of the formulas used for the ancient ordination of the rabbis is: “Yadin – yadin: you want to exercise judgment, you will judge / yattir- yattir: you want to deliver, release, make free – you will authorize / Yoreh – yoreh: you want to teach (the Laws), give birth to souls: you will open them so that they can reach their goals”. In Hebrew “Din, dinim” often corresponds to what the Christians would call “grace, blessings”. Because we have forgotten that a judgment is not only a penalty nor a punishment.
It has a prophetic aspect that enables a society to comply with the rules and still be aware of how to trespass without harming its development. Thus, the moral commandments “You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery,…” are composed of very subtle points that are daily infringed by most people. The question is how to correct public life as to induce freedom, release and a spirit of prophecy! And enable some good will to teach the commandments with a spirit of kayf.
It is intriguing that the Noahide Laws require the setting-up of tribunal in every town. Justices, lawyers, shoterim/officers-policemen and women as the rabbis and pious people do have an immense preventive responsibility to bring forth the value of Laws.
Jesus said: “Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven. For, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven”. (Matthew 6:19-20). The realm of the Mitzvot is far beyond any denomination, party, judgment. It calls to be cool.
COMMENTS
1. Amazing that we are now quoting Jesus. If Judaism gave the world nothing else but Monotheism, Justice in all of its aspects may have sufficed as our contribution to humanity. Too bad that Christianity does not teach Jesus's respect for the rightiousness of the scribes and pharisees and the admonition to Justice which includes feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, helping the sick and the downtrodden, but focuses the teachings of Paul.
Stanford Newman, Warren, Michigan USA 48088, Aug 17 6:08PM
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