Rabbi Zeitlin

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz explains that over the many generations we’ve been in exile, Tu B’Shvat developed from a largely technical date to determine certain halachot pertaining to trees into a quasi-“Memorial Day” for the Land of Israel. Over the years, Jews have made the effort, often at substantial expense, to obtain the fruits of Israel to enjoy on this day. Almonds, apricots, dates, figs and carob, among others, have adorned our tables for generations. (Although for some contemporary streams of Judaism it has recently expanded to a sort of “Jewish Earth Day”, both the halachic function and the centuries-standing tradition of eating the produce of the Holy Land have really restricted the importance of this day to Eretz Yisrael.) We’ve never lost our taste for Eretz Yisrael and we longingly pray three-times-a-day to return there.

Viewed objectively, however, our longing for this small sliver of earth seems absurd. A desert with very little water table, no major river to yearly flood its banks and turn the bordering land fertile, it’s totally dependent on rainfall which, at best, only occurs a few months of the year. Until the very recent discovery of oil and gas reserves (mostly offshore, so not really in Eretz Yisrael itself) it has been a land devoid of many resources. One wonders why we, or anyone else, would ever have bothered to fight over this land. Why has it become the most hotly contested real estate on earth?

In fact, until very recently it was desolate, abandoned and largely empty. Although this land was “the prize” over several centuries of Crusader and Arab battles, neither Christians from Europe nor Moslems from the much more fertile parts of the middle east flocked to actually live here. Of only spiritual rather than material value, and that only to the Jewish People, there is nothing to attract anyone else. As to the handful of holy sites, mere possession was usually goal enough for them.

When Jews began to return in significant numbers during the 18th and 19th centuries, Arabs from neighboring countries, attracted by the commerce and economy we were creating, flocked to enjoy this prosperity, at the same time resenting and trying to destroy our presence here (although only our presence made theirs possible). Without a legitimate connection to this land, once they were reminded of ours their goal became to destroy us and it.

Our tradition predicted this phenomenon nearly two millennia ago. The Zohar (1:127b) tells how Avraham discovered the holiness of Ma’arat Machpela (The Cave of Machpela which Avraham purchased shortly after Sara’s death) thirty or more years before he bought it bury Sara. A fleeing calf, the story goes, leads Avraham to this cave where he sees a vision of Adam. Looking inside he sees a great light and finds the two graves (of Adam and Chava (Eve)). At that very moment Avraham knows that his people will forever be connected to this land; he must acquire this cave as a burial place for himself, Sara and their descendants. The Zohar next asks the obvious question: why didn’t he purchase this plot immediately? It answers its own question by saying that had he even merely inquired about it at that time, the Hittites living in the vicinity would have paid it (too much) attention. Seeing it’s value to Avraham, they would have wanted to withhold it from him. From time immemorial, it seems, the Holy Land only acquires importance to others when they see its importance to us.

Likewise today, Machpela, which contains the graves of Adam and Chava, Avraham and Sara, Yitzchak and Rivka and Yaakov and Leah, as well as Hevron, the biblical city surrounding it, have been not only claimed by the “Palestinian Narrative” as its own, but they have made serious attempts to altogether deny the historical Jewish connection. We see the same story in Yerushalayim, our holiest city and especially Har HaBayit, site of our two Holy Temples and the holiest spot on earth for our people, where we are accused of/condemned for the “Judaization” of Jerusalem, our history denied and many ancient artifacts which tie us to this place brazenly destroyed.

The lesson–just as soon as the Jewish people show interest in our legacy, Eretz Yisrael, others also show interest, too much interest, and they try to obstruct us. As we remember from the original purchase of Machpela from Efron the Hittite (Bereishit 23:3-18), Avraham’s interest in the empty, abandoned field inspires Efron to demand an extortionist price for it, hoping to either discourage Avraham or, at least, make an outrageous profit. Previously fallow and unvalued by Efron, just as soon as The First Jew sees its holy, intrinsic, spiritual value, he wants to prevent and deny our holy, intrinsic and spiritual connection with this land.

It’s an old story, as relevant today as 3500 years ago. Just as Avraham overcame opposition and began the purchase of Eretz Yisrael on that day, so today, when we are returning to our land, there are powerful forces working overtime to prevent our inevitable destiny. And, just as then, we must now continue to overcome.

The famous Midrash (Mechilta B’Shalach, Shira 23) relates that even the humblest handmaiden saw more at the parting of the sea than did Ezekiel the Prophet. Yet, just days after this experience of enlightenment, complaining bitterly for better-tasting water, we no longer seemed able at all to see God in our world. And later, a mere month and a half after יציאת מצרים (Yetziat Mitzraim), the Exodus from Egypt, וילינו כָּל־עֲדַת בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל עַל־מֹשֶׁה וְעַל־אַהֲרֹן (Vayilonu Kol Adat Bnei Yisrael Al Moshe V’Al Aharon), And all the community of the Jewish People complained against Moses and Aaron–not just a few slackers, but every single person, from the most to the least spiritual and enlightened, all of whom had just, six weeks previously, witnessed the infinite power of the Creator who defied (or temporarily redefined) the immutable laws of nature to not merely rescue the Jewish People from the Egyptians’ pursuit, but to demonstrate His power beyond the immutable laws of nature.

It gets worse. While still in process of receiving the Torah at Sinai, a significant portion of the people turn from God, who had literally just moved a mountain and overwhelmed sensation (we saw sounds and heard visions!) and had “downloaded” all knowledge into each individual Jew, and worshiped, instead, a statue of a calf made of gold.

Although we’re described as a “stiff-necked people”, this refusal to see what’s literally in front of our eyes is a human, rather than a specifically Jewish, failing. Rashi (Bereishit 3:7) hints that upon sinning, even though Adam’s (the forerunner of all mankind) “eyes were opened”, he became (at least partially) blind. The next major Torah personality, Noah (also pre-Jewish and the common ancestor of all modern humanity) immediately plants a vineyard upon leaving the ark and becomes drunk. Isaiah (29:9) implies that becoming drunk on wine (rather than drunk with the love of God) also brings blindness. Sin and callousness, limiting our vista to only our most physical needs and pleasures, dims all eyes to to the true light/knowledge of God’s reality. It’s a human failing. And as we continue to fail, failure becomes normal and expectations, even hope, disappear from our awareness. Sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, we all, Jew and gentile, seem addicted to closing our eyes to every reality. Instead, we “see” just what we want to “see”.

The Ramchal (515 Prayers #71 / תקט״ו תפילות, עא) speaks of God’s “true nature” persisting, even when we utterly surround ourselves with our own short-term vision, effectively banishing God, as it were, in the darkness of our self-obsession. We banish this divine presence, the Shechina, which he equates here with prayer, by surrounding her with darkness and by then placing prayer on such an unrealistically high plane that we become practically incapable of accessing it. Unable to “see” God with whom we long to connect through prayer (Mishna 4:4 of Berachot teaches that one who prays by rote, הָעוֹשֶׂה תְפִלָּתוֹ קֶבַע–HaOseh Tefillato Keva–doesn’t really accomplish much, אֵין תְּפִלָּתוֹ תַּחֲנוּנִים–Eyn Tefillato Tachanunim–his prayer isn’t authentic, heartfelt prayer), at best we merely go through the motions, guaranteeing our failure.

Likewise, Torah study easily falls into rote, into endless repetitions of Judaism 101 or into the type of hair-splitting that loses sight of the larger picture (knowing more and more about less and less until one knows everything about nothing….). To be sure, the “hair splitting” can be useful in training our minds, but we need to keep our eyes on this actual goal rather than merely churning out חומרות (chumrot), artificial, often counterproductive stringencies. Preparing our minds to connect intellectually, just as prayer has the potential  of connecting our hearts emotionally, with God, falls by the wayside. We willfully no longer see the forest because of our fixation with the trees.

Unfortunately, all too often the same can be said about our performance of מצות (Mitzvot, from the root צו, tzav, which has meaning underlying the superficial definition, command, and means to join/group/bind together. A Mitzva, rather than a directive to force uniformity, is a technique to bind ourselves to The Creator), which are frequently performed mechanically and obsessively and without any real sense or expectation of achieving union with God. Once again, we close our eyes.

We behave the same way with secular efforts as well. We live in a fantasy world (see Rabbi Cardozo’s and Rabbi Sack’s commentaries on this parsha, Beshalach). In terms of current world affairs, we pretend that people who daily vow to slaughter us and to destroy Israel “don’t really mean it”. Rather than honestly seeing people for who they are, we, hopefully but disastrously, project ourselves and our values onto them. Perhaps this is from fear, perhaps from our narcissism, perhaps from laziness; in any case we refuse to accept what our eyes perceive, choosing, instead, our fantasies.

All three of these, prayer (Tefilla), Torah study and the actions of Mitzvot, can and should be part of our daily efforts to break through our self-imposed and frequently self-serving (although millennia of oppression has also been all-too-effective in numbing us) blindness. While these “tools” are specifically Jewish, the goals are universal. Only if we break through all this resistance, all the accumulated darkness, can we begin to fulfill our holy mandate of being a Light to the Nations.

The Ramchal, as you remember speaking specifically of Tefilla, prayer, offers a deceptively simple suggestion which can be applied to the other legs of the spiritual tripod (including Torah and Mitzvot). Obviously, it can enhance our efforts in other spheres as well. He proposes that we frame our prayer in קווי (k’vuey), hope/trust/confidence. Hope, trust and confidence that our prayer reaches the Creator, that He truly is actively engaged with our world, that He “wants” us all (not only Jews, but all mankind) to succeed, to fill our purpose and destiny to complete Creation’s final steps and bring our world and everyone/thing in it to its highest state.

Of course there’s no logical reason to believe any of this, and so much of our historical experience blinds us to this potential, not to even mention reality. Depression and discouragement and hardship quite efficiently narrow our vision and blind us to anything beyond ourselves. If we want a fighting chance, we need to make this accurately-described “leap-of-faith”.

The Ramchal gives us an image of prayer soaring on kivuey (hope/trust/confidence) far above the reach of the arrows of doubt, higher than the clouds of darkness that obscure the light (life-energy) that really comprises everything. As we move our eyes from seeing only ourselves and projections of ourselves, we can begin to see that higher reality. Reversing Adam’s initial self-blinding, we can re-open our eyes to the holy. Reversing Noah’s state of “blind drunkenness”, we can, drunk with love instead, start to see reality.

Along with my grandfather, Philip Zeitlin z”l, gone since before my Bar Mitzva, Rabbi Israel Rosenfeld z”l first introduced me to Gemara in 1963. As a way of thinking and analyzing, it has been my lifelong passion and, along with my early studies in mathematics, the foundation of my intellectual life.
I just learned of Rabbi Rosenfeld z”l’s death earlier today. At this point in my life, it’s as close to the loss of a parent as is possible.
Those of you who have or will study Gemara with me, already know or will come to know “Gemara l’Maschilim“, Talmud for Beginners, Rabbi Rosenfeld z”l’s textbook, which I’ve used exclusively for more than 20 years. Now typeset and bound by Torah Umesorah, I was first introduced to it as a set of smelly mimeograph pages, patiently typed out with an ancient Hebrew typewriter with the vowels added by a loving hand. They have imprinted me with a love for our tradition, with an understanding of the high value we’ve always placed on training and using our minds, and also with the human values we’ve championed for millennia.
Rabbi Rosenfeld z”l was a pillar of kindness in my life, beginning when I was 9 or 10 and spent the summer before returning to Hillel Academy in Denver for 5th grade, walking to his house for several hours of private tutoring every day. His brilliance helped me catch up two full years of studies in just a couple months and his patience and love established a bond that has endured more than half-a-century.
I haven’t spent much time in Denver since I was 18, but a high point in each visit would be to go to the shul he davened and taught at, surprise him and enjoy the glowing smile and the twinkle of recognition in his eyes that he always had for me (in spite of my being one of the two worst trouble-makers in his class way back when…..He “credited” me for half of the white hairs on his head!).
He didn’t teach only me, but a generation of young Jewish students in Denver and later in Hartford, Ct. His seudat shlishit (third meal each Shabbat afternoon) open class in Talmud was locally famous, marking the high point of the week for many Denverites over the years.
My tears don’t begin to cover the debt I owe him.
Baruch Dayan HaEmet.

Of course, everything I wrote about ignorance leading to slavery is at least as applicable on the personal level. We’re hobbled not merely by ignorance, but by self-ignorance. If only we could bring to consciousness everything that our souls and bodies already knows….

What is the  חושך (chosech), darkness that masks our knowledge from us?

Many times it’s thinking that we already know everything!

Shabbat Shalom

There are slaveries and there are slaveries. Sometimes one group of people enslaves another and sometimes we enslave ourselves. There are oppressions and there are oppressions, aggressions and aggressions. Sometimes the oppressor and aggressor is external, sometimes we’re our own worst enemies. More often than not these two types combine. When we oppress and enslave ourselves, others are all too happy to join in and really “put the hurt on us”, and as we endure century after century of hate and oppression, it’s not unusual for some of us to to hate ourselves.

A Chassidic/Kaballistic theme is that when Israel is in exile, Da’at, our wisdom and knowledge, is also “missing in action”. We also teach that The Shechina, defined as both the feminine (we consider the feminine as the side of Gevurah, strength and (self)confidence) divine presence as well as Malchut, sovereignty and freedom, is also in exile with us.

In the system of Sefirot (a very complex concept whose definition includes “configurations” of divine/life energy, intellectual/emotional/physical traits considered from a spiritual, trans-rational, prespective and also categories of human experiences/perceptions, again considered from a spiritual perspective), Da’at both isn’t but functions as a distinct Sefira (1). Da’at, what we really know, is always at least partially undefined/hidden.

Said another way, in our current modality of existence we’re never fully aware of the vast knowledge we really possess. Which is to say that in the galut/exile mode in which we now exist (even those of us meriting the privilege to live in Eretz Yisrael), we live with our Da’at in exile, often unaware of the truths within ourselves.

Historically, continuing into the present, that often takes the form of either enslaving and oppressing ourselves, failing both to recognize and to utilize our power as individuals and as members of the Jewish People, refusing to realize that we need merely to take that first step to our freedom. Yes, using only a small portion of our mental powers we can innovate and entrepreneur and cure disease, but without exploring, discovering and utilizing the greater intelligence contained in our Torah, we take only baby steps.

While that is bad enough, some of us, and even one of these is two too many, can blind ourselves so much that we join those who hate and try to destroy us, falling into the delusion that we actually deserve the torture and oppression we’ve endured for millennia. This takes the form of accusing our tradition as out-of-date, unenlightened and oppressive in itself, and/or, as is all too fashionable now, (self-)accusing Israel, our very selves, as racist, occupiers, oppressors of the “indigenous” inhabitants, baby-killers and all the other fashionable antisemitic charges.

No, it’s not as easy as merely opening our eyes, letting truth and reality and real wisdom flood in, not even as easy as using our literally God-given techniques to develop our mind to its capacity (this is called “learning Torah“), but both of these are required, much-needed, first step.

It’s not arbitrary that the next-to-last plague in Egypt was darkness. Although it’s too detailed to go into here, one way of understanding the plagues is that each had to be inflicted on the powers of evil in order to break that particular hold that evil has on us. We break the hold darkness, ignorance, holds over us and then we can, finally, break the hold of death and march into Life. Together we can lead each other to comprehend the world as it is, as a manifestation of The Creator, open our own and each other’s Da’at, and begin the real journey to Geula, everlasting life.

Shabbat Shalom

(1) The introduction to the concept of Sefirot is found in Sefer Yetzira, a book of mystical knowledge said to be revealed by Avraham Avinu, our patriarch Abraham. It is very insistent that there are exactly ten Sefirot, not nine and also not eleven. This is because Keter, the highest of the ten Sefirot and our connection with the totally unknowable, is itself so unreachable that it barely exists. With it’s almost disappearance, Da’at, knowledge/wisdom, the product/resolution of Chachma, inspiration and Bina, analysis/processing, partially emerges. Counting both Keter and Da’at, we’d have eleven, which is impossible, and if we don’t count Keter, since it’s really unavailable, we’d only have nine unless we add Da’at.

Blame it on social media, but the latest tokenism of support for victims of various outrages, slaughters and natural disasters has been to hold up a sign (or more likely just copy a ready-made one that’s already gone viral) identifying with the victims. I don’t doubt that these people are sincere and I don’t really begrudge them salving their own shock, but let’s get real.

I strongly doubt you are Charlie. My guess is that you religiously submit to the the latest bullying by the political correctness police and would never utter aloud or write for publication even a tiny fraction of what these cartoonists regularly did. I bet you’re afraid to write or say the word “nigger”, even as you proclaim yourself to be one with those those free-speech warriors who went far beyond that. Rather, I assume that you are a very decent person and, like all decent people everywhere, are shocked by the brutal savagery of Islamic terrorists. I do, of course, wonder where are the signs, “I am Yazidi” or “I am Nigeria” or “I am Syrian/Iraqi/Lebanese Christian”…

When you hold up a sign, “I am Jewish” in solidarity with the people slaughtered in the Paris kosher market just before Shabbat, all I can say is, “No, you’re not Jewish”. You’re Jewish if your mother is Jewish or if you, proactively by conversion, join the Jewish people. Sorry, holding a sign doesn’t count (and would you really like it to, obligating you to observe the laws of Shabbat, Kashrut, Family Purity?).

If that was all, I wouldn’t really mind. After all, the world is an increasingly tough place and if these gestures give you the strength to go on, ma tov u’ma na’im. But what you’re really saying is that “I feel sorry for victims” and “Jews are the eternal victims”. And that gets me very angry.

To be a Jew is not to be a victim. If anything along that parameter, Jews are survivors. We have survived more than three and a half millennia of attempts to exterminate us. We don’t need your, or anyone else’s sympathy. In fact, were this not a “rabbinic” article I’d tell you exactly what you can do with your sympathy.

But being a Jew is infinitely more than being a survivor. (I find the joke that every Jewish holiday is “They tried to kill us. We won. Let’s eat” the very prototype of self-hate.) Being a Jew is that great privilege/responsibility to be trusted and mandated with the task of bringing the Infinite Light of all creation to everyone’s awareness. To be a Jew is to be entrusted with Eretz Yisrael, the Holy Land, and, even more so, with the Holy Temple, the font which pours that Infinite Light into all physical reality. To be a Jew is to have a very full to-do list which leaves no time for victimhood, for cliché or for tokenism.

Yes, if you want to join us in this, please begin your studies. Commence your conversion process. We will welcome you (or we are mandated to welcome you, current religious/political embarrassments aside) and put you to work at our sides. But if you just want to relieve the pain of yet one more outrageous example of man’s inhumanity to man, better you, as whoever you really are, do something to prevent the next one.

When I grew up in Denver in the early 1950s and 60s, it was a very different world. Perhaps we over-simplified our values with fewer areas of ambiguous grey, but we knew who the good guys were, the US, and who the bad guys were, previously the nazis and now the communists (as kids we used to joke about “disappearing one of our friends if he insulted or offended us). Israel was a small, heroic outpost and almost none of us (I certainly didn’t know of anyone) in our Jewish community weren’t fiercely proud. For that matter, few, if any, Americans didn’t admire it, even if that admiration was accompanied with, perhaps, too much pity (for the Holocaust) as well. Religious or not, we spoke with pride of “Jewish Values”. It seemed that most of the adults were small businessmen, working extremely hard to provide for their families and to ensure a better life for their children than they, themselves, had experienced. That’s not surprising, as most were no more than one generation “off the boat”, and many of my friends’ parents bore the tattoos of concentration camps on their wrists and arms.

My father was a conservative businessman, even in those days an anomaly as most of his friends and colleagues were committed liberals and democrats. He came from Texas and when I was little we would regularly take long family car trips there at least twice a year (I used to joke that they were our family’s Regalim, pilgrim festivals).  On each of these trips, my father, the conservative, but also the Jew, made a point to drive us through impoverished rural black towns as well as the black ghettos in the larger cities. We’d see people living in shacks that lacked walls, lacked roofs, unpaved streets either filled with dust in the summer or mud in the winter, poor people with no jobs and nothing to do, sitting forlornly on their porches. He wanted to impress on us exactly what injustice and prejudice looked like (much like Eisenhower’s insistence to document the horror of the liberated concentration camps so the world would never forget). Each time he’d remind us that our people also suffered these same indignities and worse.

My father was a conservative, but he was a humanitarian and there was, both in those years and now, in spite of the political propaganda machine, no contradiction. Although Denver, in those years, was not a center of political activism, he made sure that we understood the bond between our people and black Americans. He was also a very non-violent person and as race relations began to heat up and turn violent in the mid-60s, he pointed to Martin Luther King, Jr. as someone whose struggle we should all support. Most Jews, even conservatives like my father, aligned themselves with the black struggle for equal rights and opportunity.

Jews were active in the Civil Rights Movement. We didn’t just give lip-service, some of us gave our lives. Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, both Jewish, along with James Chaney, black, were murdered on June 21, 1964, as they worked together to register black voters in Mississippi and hundreds, if not thousands, other Jewish college students joined them in voter-registration efforts. As a people we mourned all three martyrs. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously marched with Martin Luther King in the Selma-Montgomery March of March, 1965, commemorated in iconic photographs. Heschel spoke of the march as “praying with his feet” and King referred to Heschel as “one of the truly great men” and a “great prophet”.

Jews were both active and highly visible in the Civil Rights Movement. We were also acknowledged as its strongest supporters.

Something happened in the march of years from the mid-1960s to the mid-2010s. The Civil Rights Movement politicized and then radicalized Jewish youth, me among them. Well-meaning but often naive, too many of us missed the slight-of-hand as the agenda of the left either changed or revealed itself to become ever-increasingly anti-semitic. Too many, committed to humanitarian ideals, confused them with “liberalism” and “universalism” and when push came to shove decided that their own Jewish people were the bad guys.

The Arab world, which never accepted the existence of the State of Israel, nor the existence of free, non-dhimmi, Jews living among them might be a lot of things, but stupid is not one of them. Early on they adopted the language of “national liberation”, a pet “cause” of the increasingly radical left, naming their most visible organization dedicated to erasing Israel the “Palestine Liberation Organization”. Their self-branding granted them an almost immediate “hechsher” (strictly speaking, a certification of kashrut, but used here to mean legitimacy), brotherhood with the the radical left worldwide and alliance and support of the Former Soviet Union. That their sole raison d’être was genocidal no longer mattered because they were now “members in good standing” with the international radical left, itself no stranger to wholesale slaughter (100,000,000 murdered by Lenin and Stalin).

As the formerly liberal movement in America, especially in the universities, raced to keep pace with the “international standard”, more and more young Jews, seduced by seeming acceptance on campus and beyond, also radicalized. Today, among the most vile Israel-haters in the US (and, following a parallel perverse path, in Israel as well) are “Jewish”.

Which brings us to today, January 8, 2015, the opening of the new movie, “Selma”, celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. and his heroic leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, culminating in that very same, famous Selma-Montgomery March where, literally arm-in-arm, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, marched with him.

I haven’t seen this movie and I don’t plan to. I’d heard rumors and, to verify, I checked several full-cast lists for that film. While prominent and highly visible in the real march, conspicuously absent from the movie is Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. With the ease of operating some movie cameras, Jewish Americans have been “disappeared” (sound familiar?) from the Civil Rights Movement.

I don’t normally write about films or popular culture. But I have read, seen and heard almost no protest of this revisionist history, this distortion of facts (but distorting facts is one of the anti-semites favorite tools, such as denying the historical and continual Jewish connection to the Land of Israel….). So, today I write about a movie.

Synchronicity is a powerful experience in the study of Torah. This Shabbat, around the world, Jews read and study  Parsha Shemot, slow transition of our Egyptian exile in abject slavery. Like the well-known metaphor of boiling a pot of frogs, if you very gradually increase the heat, subtlely but steadily shift the status of and attitude towards Judaism, too many don’t even notice until it’s too late. The analogy to the “switcho-chango” of natural Jewish humanitarian values into vile Jew-hating antisemitism which is rapidly on the rise in today’s world, should be too obvious to miss.

Unfortunately, too many of us continue to miss it.

Normally I would wait almost exactly a half-year to write about Parshat Shelach, the Torah reading about the “spies” who, sent by Moshe to scout out the land, returned with a list of complaints and exaggerations and took the heart right out of the Jewish people, convincing them they were unable to fill their divine mission, the first step of which was settling Eretz Yisrael. Not only did that episode precipitate a forty-year wander (including the death of every adult over twenty at the time of the Meraglim’s report–i.e. a forty-year-long holocaust) through the desert, the worst disaster, to that date, for the newly born Jewish nation, but its echoes have reverberated through the millennia, foreshadowing future disasters including the destruction of both Temples, and the slaughter that accompanied these disasters, the Spanish Expulsion, including the mass death that was a part of that, the beginning of World War I, which lead directly to World War II and the Shoah (Holocaust).

The key to this chain of disasters was, and remains to this day, ingratitude and terrible leadership. On the verge of finally inheriting the land promised to Avraham four hundred years earlier, suffering through the cruelest of slaveries, this remaining one-fifth of the Jewish People (the vast majority had given up completely, preferring slavery) witnessed and experienced the greatness of The Creator through the miraculous Exodus from Egypt, the even more miraculous miracle at Yam Suf (the Red Sea) and personally participated in that unique moment of Revelation at Sinai, lost heart and, somehow, felt that the Holy Land just wasn’t worth the risk that the Meraglim, “spies”, had scared them with.

Remember, we’re discussing the elite, that twenty-percent who weren’t brainwashed or seduced into accepting the perverse status quo of Egyptian slavery. These are the Jews who experienced the highest levels of devekut, attachment to God; at the Red Sea every single person achieved a level of prophetic consciousness perhaps greater than anyone, barring Moshe Rabbenu, in human history. The best of the best, witnesses to God’s participation in the world, taught by Moshe Rabbenu himself, they were still led astray.

Who were these Meraglim, spies, who had such power to sway the entire people, to destroy their sense of purpose in just one night? Much like today, they were the “leaders” of the Jewish people, the “princes” of their tribes. And like most of our “leaders” mentioned in Tanach, Talmud, and history books, including most of the leaders to date of the State of Israel, they were disastrous, bringing the Jewish people, again and again, the the very edge of destruction.

Of course we’ve had some leaders who, rather than forwarding their own personal agendas, based themselves on our timeless values. Moshe (Moses), obviously, is the paradigm of ideal, selfless leadership (when beseeching God almost to the point of being granted his desire to cross the Jordan and lead the Jewish People into the Holy Land, he suddenly stands aside when he realizes that this would freeze an deficient “perfection” rather than to allow us to develop fully–see the end of A Matter of Timing, much earlier in this blog. Yehoshua and the Shoftim (Judges) who led before Shaul (Saul), our first king, also ruled with the priority of the Divine Mission of the Jewish People. Shaul, of course, had his own agendas and plans, thinking that, somehow, he knew better. Replacing Shaul, David and Shlomo (Solomon) led according to our mission (even if their personal conduct was flawed, as leaders they maintained their higher values), but things go radically downhill after them, with very few examples of of truly God-directed leaders (the first Hashmoneans come to mind as I write this on the eighth day of Chanukah, but they too rapidly devolved into corruption which led to disaster after disaster). Only from time to time have we had leaders who were worthy of the title.

We face the same challenges today. Weak and timid “leaders”, not only in the political realm, but in the cultural, legal, religious and academic worlds as well! “Leaders” more interested in secular values than those of our unique tradition. Too many of today’s Jewish people have lost sight of the uniqueness of Eretz Yisrael, the almost unique privilege of, once again, being able to live there under Jewish sovereignty. They are led by people, most of them self-appointed experts and authorities, who know almost nothing of Jewish tradition and Jewish values, but pontificate on the shortcomings (or what they view as shortcomings, i.e. not realizing their own, often non-Jewish and often anti-Jewish world view) of the State of Israel. Too many of them, within Israel and in the diaspora, actively work to dismantle Israel. Much like the “leaders” who were the Meraglim, they tear the heart our of the Jewish people, destroy our courage and resolve.

Then there are those, usually within the Israeli political and legal systems, who are happy enough and often proud enough to live in Jewish Israel, but are sufficiently ignorant of our values to substitute foreign values which bode us no good (much like the Hellenists of our Chanukah story). Without realizing, or, chas v’shalom, maybe realizing the damage to Israel’s future economic security, they work to block the miraculous gifts God has given us.

In 1967, in one military miracle after another, much like the Maccabis, our radically outnumbered and out-gunned army liberated our historic heartland and our historic and eternal capital, including Har HaBayit, The Temple Mount. From Day One, there have been “leaders”, ashamed of their Jewishness and the confrontation with Jewish history of Judea, Samaria and, even more so, Jerusalem and Har HaBayit, who have repudiated the miracle and tirelessly tried, politically and diplomatically, to undo it.

Then there’s the old joke: if only Moses would have taken a right turn instead of a left turn…. In other words, how much more global influence we would have had, not to mention economic security, if, like much of the Arab world, we lived above a sea of oil and gas….. And in a new, very recent miracle, those very resources were quite unexpectedly discovered, especially in our offshore territory.

But rather than rejoicing in and giving thanks for this miracle, there are activists and regulators and bureaucrats and judges who, in the name of values which might have relative importance, but are much less important than our very survival, are trying to block any benefit Israel and the Jewish people might have from these gifts.

I’m not sure anymore if many who revere universalist ideals such as global cooperation and world peace understand that these values were first explicitly stated as Jewish values. כִּי בֵיתִי בֵּית־תְּפִלָּה יִקָּרֵא לְכָל־הָעַמִּים, Because My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations, was first declared by Isaiah (56:7), as was וְכִתְּתוּ חַרְבוֹתָם לְאִתִּים וַחֲנִיתוֹתֵיהֶם לְמַזְמֵרוֹת לֹא־יִשָּׂא גוֹי אֶל־גּוֹי חֶרֶב וְלֹא־יִלְמְדוּ עוֹד מִלְחָמָה, And they will beat their swords into plowshare and their spears into pruning hooks, nation will not lift sword against nation, nor shall they learn war anymore (Isaiah 2:4).

These values, these truly progressive Jewish values, fully depend on the survival of the Jewish people and our continuing vision. Of course, the survival of the Jewish people is guaranteed by God, but our ability to contribute to the world at this point in history depends on the survival of the State of Israel, the nation, refuge and, most important, the native soil of the Jewish people, the one place on earth where our contributions to mankind can flourish.

It’s time to learn the lesson of the Meraglim and to reject the ignorance and defeatism of bad leadership who doesn’t understand the preciousness of the land and our opportunity to live there, and who rejects the very gifts our Creator provides to enable us.

If you’re much younger than me, unless you’re a country and western fan or a musicologist, you’re probably not familiar with Johnny Cash’s great hit, A Boy Named Sue. Listen to the song for its message or just to refresh your memory…..

Akedat Yitzchak, the “Binding”of Isaac (Bereishit 22-1-19), is one of the great mysteries of the Torah. Avraham, who waited until the age of 100 for the birth of his son, Yitzchak, is suddenly commanded by God to offer him as a sacrifice. Not only do we question why Avraham went along with such a command and why he was praised for doing so, we must also question why God made this demand on Avraham to begin with.  Although Yitzchak is saved in the end (as is Avraham from having to actually murder his own son) when a ram is provided by God in his place, this very trauma, and his mother’s, Sara’s, susequent death from shock at news of this occurrence, form much of his (Yitzchak’s) character.

Avraham, in mystical terms, is the personification of Chesed, loving-kindness. Yitzchak, on the other hand, represents, Gevura, strength and Din, strict, inflexible justice. In one sense, they’re considered polar opposites which, however, blend and resolve into Tiferet, beauty and balance, represented by Yaakov, the third patriarch.

However, it’s not considered easy for a Jew to be anything but loving and kind.  The Talmud (Yevamot 74a) teaches: שלשה סימנים יש באומה זו: הרחמנים, והביישנין, וגומלי חסדים, “There are three characteristics to this nation–that are merciful, modest and perform kindnesses (Chesed).” To deviate from love and kindness, even when that defies the need for strict judgement, is foreign to the Jewish temperament. Nonetheless, a person and a people require strength (Gevura) in addition to a loving nature (Chesed).

When commanded by God to put his beloved son, as well as himself, through this horrible ordeal, Avraham realized (and saw through רוח הקודש, Ruach haKodesh (prophetic vision)), that the future of his children, the Jewish people, would be filled with challenge, hardship and opposition. Much like the “Boy Named Sue”, Avraham had to prepare future generations with the strength to survive everything that they will confront.

Hopefully, we have the understanding and maturity to thank and praise God for his Chesed (learning that even Gevura is for the purpose of ultimate Chesed), rather than Sue’s reaction to his father. Perhaps that’s the underlying Chesed and love that, as the Talmud explains, describes the Jewish people.

It’s the seventh night of Chanukah.

I’ve lit with oil for more than thirty years. I have an old, unornamented chanukiah that was very common in Jerusalem. It still might be. Constructed of brass and faced with glass, it’s like an aquarium, covered, but vented on the top.

Olive oil burns silently and completely enclosed, no sound can escape. Although protected from outside wind, each flame dances and flickers uniquely, none of them in the same rhythm. It appears that each one is completely independent from the others, although, of course, each one moves the air with its heat and with its own dance–in a choreography too complex to understand, we can be hypnotized as they dance together.

Step back. After not too many steps, the chanukiah becomes a single light source as the individual flames cannot be separated.

Imagine a wall of chanukiot, each mounted at random on this wall, each filled with seven distinct flames.A few steps back and each chanukiah merges into a single light. If we could move backwards a sufficient distance, the individual chanukiot will merge and the wall itself becomes a single light source, each chanukiah adding to the light.

As beautiful as this image is, it has a great defect, a great weakness. Every scale lacks בחירה (bechira), choice. The vision is alluring, but even in its complex beauty it’s superficial. Given enough computing power, and for all I know my older iPhone already has more than enough, every hop and flicker can be predicted and the entire phenomenon accurately animated. Beautiful, but trivial.

Imagine the beauty and power of Am Yisrael, the Jewish people. Six hundred thousand souls, distributed among twelve million individuals, each fully empowered and charged to choose. Each choice adding to the unpredictability, enabling the beauty of life, rather than mere still-life, to unfold in continual surprise.

כי מציון תצא תורה, Ki MiTziyon Teytze Torah, Out of Zion, the center of the Jewish soul, will go forth Torah, the pure energy of existence enclothed so it enlivens rather than consumes all life. The world, and all life it contains, reaches the fullness of perfection only when external attempts (false gods) to control and reign it in fail. This struggle between control/predictability and true holiness, predicated on the inability to predict and control, underlies so many struggles in this world. If only we can trust that the values we receive from the Holy Torah will enable us to trust our ability to, finally, סור מרע ועושה טוב, Sur M’Ra V’Oseh Tov (Psalms 34:15), reject evil and build the good, to, independently, join the growing current of people who choose life.

עם ישראל חי, Am Yisrael Chai, The Jewish People are Life.

Chanukah Sameach