Tikkun Daily Blog Archive (https://www.tikkun.org/tikkundaily/category/religion-spirituality/judaism-religion-spirituality/page/32/)
On Sunday August 19th, 2012 in Jerusalem, four more women were arrested at the Kotel, the Western Wall, considered the holiest site in Judaism, for reportedly engaging in behavior that could lead to “endangering the public peace and for wearing a prayer shawl.” They were praying.
I. Change the World Today! “Reality does not exist on its own, in and for itself, but only in an historical relationship with the men who modify it.” Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks
“‘See, I have given over to you’- …the righteous with their words create new heavens and new earths, as the verse suggests: See, what I have done- I have given over to you that creating aspect of myself so that with your teachings you can create new realities of heaven and earth. Understand this.” Degel Mahane Ephraim, Perashat Re’eh
II. This week’s text begins with a resounding cry (Devarim 11:26):
“See!
Jewish Vegetarians of North America is spearheading a coalition of groups that is making an audacious proposal: that the ancient Jewish New Year for animals, a day originally involved with the tithing of animals for sacrifices, be restored and transformed.
Today we continue a series of sermons on great matters of American culture and practice in which millions of people are stuck in painful or unjust relations, and no movement toward solution is coming through our collective will. Our theme today is the food system in America. It seems hardly to bear repeating, but let it be heard again that this, the world’s richest nation, has the largest proportion of poor people, when compared with other industrialized nations. How is that possible, except that somehow our wings are broken. Unlike gun control or our criminal justice system, which no politician will discuss, hunger and poverty have sometimes mattered to elected leaders.
This week’s Torah segment begins with Moshe (Moses) telling of his his failed attempts to persuade God to let him enter the land of Canaan. “Va’ethanan, And I beseeched the Lord at that time, saying…”. The Midrash reads a lesson about prayer from each word in this verse. For example, the unusual first term, Va’ethanan, which contains the root ch-n-n, is linked to the similar root, chinam, which translates as gratis, free of charge.. From this word play, the early midrash known as Sifri, quoted by Rashi, teaches
“it is in the language of a free gift, for while the righteous could fall back on their good deeds, the righteous ask that Gd grant them their request as a free gift…”.
Parshat Pinhas is the one week every year when Jews are compelled to focus on the zealot as a figure of piety and devotion, the zealot as hero, the zealot as savior. Partisans of the ideological left and right use Pinhas as the exemplar of their respective positions. In the Torah, Pinhas represents the true hero, perhaps only supplanted by Abraham and Moses. All three act outside the norms of acceptable behavior and, in doing so, achieve divine recognition and reward. All three are also associated with violent actions: Pinhas and Moses both kill in acts of passion, and Abraham attempts to kill, in response to a command. All three are rewarded in perpetuity.
I. Devarim- The Courage to Critique
It feels a bit different to write about Perashat Devarim, akin to writing a review of a review. Perashat Devarim is the beginning of Moshe’s extended deathbed monologue, presented just as the people are preparing to enter the land, under a new leadership. In these perashiyot, we have a review by Moshe of the events of the Exodus, along with a repetition of many mitzvot and some theological statements, in a tone traditionally interpreted as critique or “tochacha”. This concept is one that deserves some elucidation, and towards the end will expound on the links between this concept and the tradition of reading this perasha at the time of Tisha B’av, the day commemorating the destruction of the Temple, the loss of life and loss of sovereignty that accompanied the failed rebellion against Roman hegemony.
Photographer Claire Schwartz explores both sides of the Israeli West Bank Barrier and the Bethlehem/Jerusalem checkpoint in her series entitled israel.checkpoint.palestine. Schwartz describes her photographs as a form of visual activism and social justice. “For me, art is all about my politics,” she says. “It is a way of being creative and expressing things that are political.”
1. Perashat Matot: This and Thus
In the second of essay of last week’s perasha, Pinchas, we discussed the episode of the daughters of Zelophad in terms of a paradigm for proper leadership. The handling of their complaint and its subsequent settlement with a Divine agreement was used to illustrate two necessary aspects of an ideal system- one in which the potentially ‘unvoiced’ are given full participation in the legislative process, and the other being the need for transparency, where the process of decision making must be open to all, in order for the differing needs of a diverse populace to be heard and recognized, in the formation of a truly just society. This message is continued in the Hassidic commentaries to this week’s perasha, Matot, in response to several textual problems, not as clearly related to the matter as the Daughters of Zelophad episode. This week’s perasha begins with an unusual text, using a phrase not found elsewhere in the Torah:
‘And Moshe spoke through Rashei Hamatot, the Tribal Chiefs to the people of Israel saying, This is the matter which God has commanded’
The matter at hand is the technical handling of sacred vows, particularly how and when they can be undone or revoked.
At the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, which is really the closure for last week’s story, we are told of the priesthood given as a reward to Pinchas for killing the insurrectionary leader of the tribe of Shimon and his consort, a Midianite woman.