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Parashat Yitro: The Ten Commandments -- Obvious or Revolutionary?

The Ten Commandments.  We see them everywhere, the two tablets.  On synagogue buildings and over the aron kodesh, the ark containing the Torah scrolls.  In pictures of Moses across the history of biblical art.  At courts of law.  The tablets are so familiar we might stop noticing them.

And the words on the tablets.  In a way, they are so obvious:  Don't murder, steal, or commit adultery.  The one time God chooses to speak to everyone, to be heard universally -- why are these the words God says?  Doesn't everyone know this already?  Hadn't God already given this as a tradition back in the time of Noah?  Wouldn't any good philosopher already derived the same laws from reason, without recourse to revelation?  Hadn't most societies figured out or imposed these laws to keep order, if not for higher reasons? 

And yet these are the words that God chose to say in God's one and only moment of universal prophecy.  We only have to look around us to see why.  More than three thousand years after the revelation at Har Sinai, the words of the Ten Commandments are still revolutionary.  Page through today's paper, and every column is about how the world is still not living by the words on the tablets.  Murder, greed, deceit, disloyalty in all their forms are still here.  They are tenacious, though not by any means the norm.  But against such tenacity, against centuries that still tolerate murder and stealing and betrayal, the world needs God's voice.  The booming voice from the mountain.  The teaching voice, as the midrash describes it, speaking to every person in the way he or she needs to hear it.

That's the second tablet.  The first tablet also makes a claim.  I am Adonai your God, Who brought you out from the land of Egypt, the house of slaves.  What does this have to do with murdering and stealing?  I think part of the message of the first tablet is this:  I know -- says God -- what a world of idolatry and murder and greed looks like.  You know it too.  And I give you My word that the world does not have to be this way.  But building and preserving a moral world requires you not to forget Egypt, and not to forget that you are humans.  You are not gods, and no one who rules over you will ever be a god.

This is the command against idolatry, and also the mandate to observe Shabbat -- a day of limitation, and a day of imaginging the world in its perfect state. 

I don't look at today's world and see mainly lawlessness.  The Ten Commandments are not a lonely voice in the wilderness.  But we are not finished hearing them.  In Exodus 19:1, the Torah says not "on that day they came to Mt. Sinai" but "on this day", and the midrash says:  This day, whichever day you read or hear these words, is like the very day they were first announced. As we stand up this Shabbat, and hear those words again chanted from the Torah, we can still hear them as if they are new.  As if they are as radical as they have ever been.  They are words that will never be quite obvious, and never be too old.

Parashat Bo: Redemption is God's True Power

Of all the commentaries on the Torah, the one that Jews traditionally turn to first is the commentary of Rashi, Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, who lived in France in the eleventh century.  Rashi’s very first comment on the Torah asks this question:

Rabbi Yitzchak said:  The Torah did not need to begin until chapter 12 of Exodus, “This month shall be for you the first of the months.”  He’s referring to the chapter that details the instructions for how to celebrate Pesach in Egypt and then for all time.  Rashi continues:  This is the first commadment that Israel was commanded.

In other words, Rashi asks:  Why do we really need the first sixty-one chapters of the Torah?  It’s a radical suggestion:  Maybe all of Genesis and some of Exodus aren’t really necessary.  Maybe this moment, at the edge of Egypt, is the real beginning.  The verse Rashi mentions says, "This month is for you the first of the months."  This is when time starts.  Not when the world was created.

Now of course Rashi is going to come back eventually with a reason why we need the book of Genesis, and there are actually a few commandments in Genesis.  But still, he entertains this question about when the Torah really begins, and it’s a good, juicy question.

What Rashi is onto is this:  There is something different in the way people experienced God’s presence before the redemption from Egypt, compared to that moment at the edge of leaving Egypt.  Rashi’s question suggests that God’s presence in the world, and for people, was not complete and not really understood until this moment of redemption.  Which was not just a moment for itself, something incredible that happened once, but also a gift that would be new each year, and each time we think back on it.

So what was missing at the beginning, at the start of Genesis?  On the sixth day -- late in the day -- God created the people, the man and the woman.  And God said to them, do you see all these things around you?  All the other animals, and the beautiful trees, and those stars and the sun and the moon up in the sky?  Well before you got here, I made them.  All of them, the whole cosmos.  I started up high in the sky, and I worked my way down here.  All of it, I made all of it -- and for you, in fact!

Isn’t that amazing?  So vast, so enormous.... And there is this one tree, among the many that you see here, over there growing out of the ground, and some fruit grows on it, and I want you not to eat that.

Well, they did eat it.  And things went downhill from there, to murder and violence and destruction, and God scaled back the plan.  Even though the people did multiply quite a lot from the first two, God through Genesis ends up speaking onto to one person at a time.

What happened at the start?  What was missing?  Why didn’t things really start with Adam and Chava?  Maybe it’s just that this idea of the God of the universe is so big that it was just too abstract.  It didn’t really do anything in their hearts, for Adam and Chava.  Maybe the command itself -- don’t eat this one thing -- maybe that didn’t seem big enough, didn’t sound like the kind of thing a great and mighty God would be asking for, as the basis of some kind of connection and relationship.

Elsewhere in his commentary, Rashi picks up on the fact that even for generations after Avraham there isn’t ever a complete sense of who God really is, or could be, beyond one person at a time.

But it’s different when we get to this part of the Torah.  To the end of four centuries of slavery, the very last few days in Egypt.

This isn’t abstract at all.  This isn’t:  Before you arrived I put those stars far out in the sky.  This isn’t:  All I have to do is speak, and a tree or a fish comes into being.

In Egypt, God comes down.  Down in every sense.  Down to the Nile, to the lowest spot in this low valley of Egypt.  Down from the sky into those waters of chaos and death that are carved, down, deep into the lowly Earth.  God comes down to the lowest people, who are beaten and dehumanized, whose hands are muddy and blistered and broken, who are detached from their souls to the point where they can hardly do anything but groan, who can’t think beyond the terrible things of now.

God has to fight for them, against a tyrant who everybody thinks is really the god.  God has to fight for their awareness, to be next to them down in the mud and in their slave-camps and next to the taskmasters, just to get these people even to notice God.  God has to frustrate the expectations of all those who think that gods only go with grandeur like Pharaoh has, the beauty and richness of his palace and his temple and his architecture, the hosts who do his bidding.

This is much harder work than creating the universe.  If you read the Torah, if you compare Bereshit and Shmot, Genesis and Exodus, the way Rashi does, it’s clear that redemption, rescuing these people, takes much longer, it is a much, more, difficult labor than making the world.

And by coming down, God shows us that more is involved than pure power -- than just the abililty to make things and do things.  The task of redemption requires commitment, and loyalty, and dedication.  Rabbi Heschel called it divine pathos:  God’s essence is that God hurts when people hurt.  And when people are enslaved, oppressed, suffering, the hurt is so large that God’s response to that is the largest thing that God does.

And that response is the only thing big enough to go with the notion that God is great.

So Rashi’s question -- why not start the Torah here in Egypt -- it comes from the idea that God’s true nature, the gadol-ness, the greatness that we associate with the notion of God -- it isn’t manifest until God comes down.  As far from Heaven, where you were taught to expect God to be; until God comes down to be there in Egypt, to be here.

And at the moment when the Jews are finally first awake to the fact that God is there for them, God says:  This moment is also going to be there, always, through this story.  So that every time you are oppressed by another Pharaoh, by armies of enemies, or by other kinds of suffering, by illusion or illness or depression, you will know that I come down, I come there, as low as you are or as low as things go.  No matter how much mud or blood or tears as there may be.  I can’t stop those things from happening, God says, but I can and will be there and fight for you to notice Me, to see me fighting there with you.  My colleague Rabbi Sharon Brous was teaching about Pesach and she mentioned a congregant who said that she never understood how it was possible to pray to a warrior God, because she was such a committed pacifist -- until she developed cancer, and needed God to be a warrior on her behalf.

That’s why making the liberation into the beginning of time is the first mitzvah in the Torah.  Time starts when we finally experience Adonai not in the starry heavens but close by.  Bringing back the reality of redemption, of God’s being with us when we most need it, requires action from us.  It’s not just the annual memory on Pesach, but also each Shabbat, when we say in the Kiddush zecher litziyat mitzrayim, that Shabbat is a reminder of going out from Egypt.  And we bring back this redemption each and every day in our prayers, when we say Mi Chamocha, the song our ancestors sang with their feet still wet, still sticky with the mud of the Yam-Suf, the Sea of Reeds.

If you are looking for God, it’s not just about Genesis or who made the world.  The Ten Commandments do not start, “I am the God Who created the universe.”  Instead, they begin, “I am Adonai your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”  The God in the middle of our prayers is the God of Exodus, the God whose name was revealed finally in Egypt, who rescues and liberates and redeems.  Bayamim ha-hem uvazman hazeh -- in ancient days, and still always.

Parashat Va'era: Knowing God's Name

At the beginning of Parashat Va'era, God says to Moshe:  I appeared to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaacov as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name Y-H-V-H (Exodus 6:2).  Rashi explains that the early ancestors had a difference experience of God than the Israelites would in Egypt.  The chassidic commentator Noam Elimelech, Rabbi Elimelech of Lizhensk, elaborates by comparing these two names of God to a mezuza on the doorpost.

Reb Elimelech notes that Shaddai is the name that appears on the case of the mezuza, facing out.  This name represents an outer layer of the experience of God -- for instance, as the exercise of power.  But inside the mezuza, enclosed, is a passage from the Torah and essential name of God, the letters Yod-Hay-Vov-Hay.  This is the "heart", the living Torah and the living God.

From the beginning of the Torah, God is the Creator, and the patriarchs know God that way.  Yet for some reason, they don't always turn toward God at times of trouble.  God addresses them, and they respond.  Only occasionally do they call out to God.  Yitzchak and Rivka do, when they are childless and during her difficult pregnancy.  But Yaakov -- Yisrael -- does not, through years of difficulty in many lands.

The Creator God -- the Almighty, Shaddai -- is not the aspect of God that speaks universally to the heart and draws it near.  If creating the world isn’t enough to wow human beings, then God needed to find something else big enough, important enough, to be a message people would understand about God's true nature.

A great musician is proven by playing the most difficult or intricate repertoire.  A great athlete is tested by the post-season, against the stiffest competition.  So God can’t really be understood just by God's helping out one family, or bringing a season or two of prosperity to the land.

No, God will be understood by coming to the side of a nation in the time of its greatest suffering, its lowest demoralization, against the most powerful tyrant who calls himself a powerful God.  The compassion that God shows now, and the power that God displays against oppression -- these are truly gadol, big and great, in the deepest way.  Even bigger than creating the universe, which after all God did almost without any effort at all.

That’s why God’s name, God’s nature, comes to be known fully only now, in Egypt, for the slaves.  If we want to know God completely, not just in the stars or in the beautiful designs around us, we will know it as compassion when compassion seems least likely.  As strength on our side when there seems to be no strength, and as support when all the weight is on the other side.  Building and making things -- even for human beings this is easy, and so too for God.  These other things often seem impossible.  Only the shadow of Egypt can make us truly appreciate the light that is God.

Shabbat Chanuka: The Kavannah of Giving

Like most rabbis, I dislike the way so much of the focus of Chanuka shifts from the nerot, the lights, to the presents kids receive.

But I also know that giving, at any time, is a profound Jewish act.  Last week during Shabbat evening services, we davvened in our small chapel.  Usually one of the members passes around the wine and grape juice when it's time to sing the Kiddush.  Sometimes when we're in the chapel, the tray is nearest to me and I carryng it around.  Last Shabbat I felt a tremendous kavvanah, a spiritual focus, as I brought the tray around, stopped by each person or two, and extended the tray to them to take a small cup.  In those couple of minutes, I felt that I was being given a great privilege.  That I was fortunate to be the one that night to give a cup of something so sweet -- to have just a small moment of giving -- to each and every person in the room.

There is at least a small connection between Chanuka and giving.  During Shabbat Chanuka, we always read from the story of Yosef.  This week in Parashat Miketz, Yosef is elevated to the position of Pharaoh's vizier, his chief of staff, second in power only to Pharaoh.  When famine strikes in Canaan, his brothers come down to Egypt for food.  To procure food to bring home, they end up having to appear before Yosef, whom they don't recognize in his Egyptian clothing.

The twisting road of reconciliation between Yosef and his brothers is told, this week and next, through a series of acts of giving.  The food that Yosef sends them home with, the coins that he hides in their bags.

The word in Hebrew for the food-provisions that the brothers seek is shever.  The same word means "broken."  How interesting!  The brothers come to seek shever/provisions, and they land in front of the person they have the most shever/broken relationship with.  In order for Yosef to find a way to forgive, and to bring the family back together, he has to transform the brokenness into giving.  Initially, he uses giving as another power with which to manipulate his brothers.  Eventually, Yosef's love for them and for his father will overcomes all the history, and he wants nothing more than to be together and to feed his family.

Giving is not instantly or automatically redemptive or healing.  But on Chanuka, I just notice that giving is a part of Yosef's process of healing.  It's a modality he has to use, and to learn how to use.

So too, gifts on Chanuka can be gratuitous, wasteful, spoiling, and over the top.  Or, in the right proportion and with the right kavvanah or focus, the giving of gifts can be filled with love.  For the giver, even more than the receiver, the act of giving a present is a moment to savor.  With gratitude for being able to give something that sweetens the candlelighting even more.  Giving gifts is not what Chanuka is about.  But it too can be a moment of light.

Parashat Vayeshev: Tim Tebow, Meet Yosef

Here was the thing about Yosef:  No matter what, God was with him, and he prospered.

Yosef was left by his brothers, and brought to Egypt and sold.  As soon as he arrived in the house of Potiphar, an official of the Pharaoh, "Adonai was with Yosef, and he became a prosperous person, and so he was in the house of his Egyptian master" (Genesis 39:2).  Then, when Potiphar's wife accused him of sexual wrongdoing, and he ended up imprisoned, "whatever he did, Adonai made it prosper" (39:23).

I thought of this aspect of Yosef this week, in the context of something that seems fairly insignificant.  Tim Tebow is a professional football player, quarterback of the Denver Broncos.  Since his days as a college quarterback at the University of Florida, he has been known as a devout and religious person.  He gained some national notice in 2010 during the Super Bowl, when he was in a commercial with his mother about her decision not to have an abortion when she was pregnant with Tim.

In the football world, Tebow is regarded as an unusual quarterback who may well not last.  But this season he took over the leadership of his team, and has led them week after week to, dare I say, "miraculous" comeback victories.  When he scores, his end-zone ritual of bowing in thanks has become known as "Tebowing", a new minitrend.  (At teebowing.com, a fan site, there are pictures of people doing this all over the world, including the Kotel in Jerusalem.)

Essentially, Tim Tebow is inviting us to see him like Yosef:  whatever he does on the field, God is causing him to succeed.  (What other explanation could there be, since football experts don't buy into his skills?)  The sports radio programs, especially the last two weeks, are now full of debate about whether his overt displays of religiosity are appropriate, over-the-top, offensive, a turn-off to fans, etc.

Now this is football, and just to be clear, there are other places that need the divine spirit much more than the end zone.  But these kinds of cultural discussions do hold a mirror up, and it's worth checking on what we see.

So first I'll say that, as a religious person, I see something of a double standard.  We tend to expect a certain amount of bad behavior from professional athletes, and a good deal of childishness, offensive behavior toward women, and barroom brawling is overlooked.  Or, explained away as part of the scene, "where they come from", or what not.  Though to be fair, I think the expectations on athletes are rising, and the storm after Penn State is a good indication of that.

But a lot of people are simply ridiculing Tim Tebow because he is religious, in an open and enthusiastic way.  Say what you will (I will say what I will just below) -- Tebow's ethic is a positive influence on his team and community.  People praise him as a super teammate, and an inspiring leader.  For him that flows from his faith, and why shouldn't it?  Athletics is a discipline, and his faith feeds into his excellence.  He's not harming anyone, he's lifting people up.  That's some of the best of faith.  If people are uncomfortable with that, let them be as uncomfortable about greed in sports generally.  It's still acceptable in America to condescend to religious people, especially to evangelical Christians.  Not only to worry about having them impose their religious, but to degrade them as cute or quaint or from another era.  That simply shouldn't be.

Still, Tim Tebow is not Yosef.  The big differences are these.  First, the Torah tells us that God prospered Yosef not when Yosef was on top, but when he was on the bottom.  When he was a slave, a prisoner -- not a superstar.  Second, the Torah tells us what other people saw in him, or what was obvious about him from an outside perspective.  You don't see Yosef calling attention to himself in Egypt as blessed by God.  He had done that in the past, when he was little, bragging to his brothers about his dreams of being in God's favor.  But he grew up.

Yosef came to experience God's blessing, and to become a channel for prosperity.  But he was probably the same age as Tim Tebow when Yosef learned not to flaunt it.  God didn't need Yosef to spell it out for other people.  It was enough for him to live it.  There was, or would be, a reason for Yosef to bear that kind of blessing.  It wasn't football; it was family, and to save his people.

Hopefully if Tim Tebow stick around, he'll grow into this as Yosef did.  For his own growth and sense of perspective, and for the good name of religion in America.

Parashat Vayishlach -- Penn State and the Rape of Dina

Now Dina, the daughter of Leah whom she had borne to Yaakov, went out to see among the daughters of the land.  And he saw her:  Shechem son of Chamor the Hivite, chief of the land, and he took her and he lay with her and he raped her.  Then his soul was drawn to Dina, daughter of Yaakov, and he loved the young woman and spoke tenderly to the young woman... (Genesis 34:1-3)

This is the only story we have about Dina, the only daughter of Yaakov and his wives.  She might be literally a teenager or a young adult woman.  The language of yetzia, "going out", is used also about Yaakov himself and about Moshe, when they were teenagers or young men.  And this is what happened:  she went out to be among other young woman, "to see".  And her life was interrupted by another "seeing", from Shechem son of Chamor, a powerful man.  The result -- the twisted love from him, and the revenge against Shechem's people by Yaakov's sons -- is the only result we hear.  We don't hear any more of Dina's story.

Part of the cruelty of sexual assault and sexual abuse is the physical violence.  Part is the taking over of a life -- the hijacking of the victim's own story, own path.  Dina's story opens with something so interesting -- we don't have other biblical stories about young people going out among themselves, other than to herd sheep or draw water.  What were they doing?  What kind of interesting young woman were they?  But now, we have only "the rape of Dina" and nothing else.

In the verses I've quoted, the Hebrew word for young woman is read aloud as na'ara, but the written Hebrew in the scroll says na'ar -- a lad, a young man.  Against the backdrop of the Penn State sexual abuse scandal this lept out at me.  Shechem's assault was against a young woman, but it could have been against a young man or a boy.  The violence, the consequences, are the same.

We ask:  what more is there to learn?  What more might we not already know about rape, abuse, assault, sexual harrassment?  So this year the Torah isn't coming to teach us something we don't know.  Instead, it is reminding us of all the things we do know.  We're reminded, through Penn State and Syracuse University, that we have not finished building systems of accountabiity, so that those who witness or suspect sexual abuse are obligated to come forward.  We have not finished building cultures or havens that protect abusers.

Rabbi Brad Hirshfield of CLAL, reflecting on Penn State, recently made the case for vigilance, which he defines like this.  Vigilance means a willingness to be more on guard than usual on behalf of people who are especially vulnerable.  To put aside even loyalty and the presumption of goodness we usually have about other people, and for the sake of those who are vulnerable to entertain the possibility that the worst may be true.

Rabbi Hirschfield argues that being vigilant does not mean thinking that everyone is an abuser or even that every secondhand story one hears is true.  It does not mean giving up our faith in others, in teachers and coaches and advisers.  But when something credible comes to us, we have a duty -- especially to children -- to pursue it, to confront if we can, to see that it's not swept under the rug.

There are all kinds of reasons it is hard.  It's easier to be a bystander, not to take sides, not to get involved.  But the fact is:  abuse, whether it's physical or sexual or emotional, is real and it happens, and there is no part of our society that is yet free from it.

So we have to remind ourselves of our duty not to turn away if we know or if we hear something.  Children especially need to know that if, God forbid, they have to summon the courage to speak to us about something that happens to them or to a friend, that we will listen and not dismiss it, or look for reasons not to take it seriously.  We -- their parents.  We -- their teachers, their youth group leaders, their rabbi.

It's the same in the case of adults who tell of abuse or harassment.  The kinds of things Herman Cain was accused of occur in private.  They are the situation of Dina and Shechem, where one person holds particular power over the other -- whether it's financial or emotional or physical.  It's hard to prove, and incredibly frightening for the victims to contemplate what might happen if they speak out.  Those who have been abused or threatened or harassed stand in a position of particular vulnerability, especially against the powerful, whether it's a boss or a coach or any kind of leader.

We have to keep reminding ourselves that no one is beyond reproach simply because of their position of power.  Certainly not a football coach, and not even a person who fancies himself the President of the United States.  It is our duty, imitating God, to look out for the less powerful, for the vulnerable.

That is vigilance, one of the things we need reminding of.  The other is that we have to tell our children that we will listen if, God forbid, they have to tell us about something that happened to them or to someone they know.  We have to be there if a friend or a neighbor, God forbid, has to tell us that they are in danger, to be ready to call the police if necessary or to find safety.  In our community, one place to turn in a case of abuse of any kind is Bridges, which is one of the best organizations in our area for victims of domestic or child abuse in any form -- the phone number 24 hours a day is 603-883-3044.

In our synagogue this week, it is USY Shabbat, a celebration of youth and leadership.  They are the truest honor to the legacy of Dina, daughter of Leah and Yaakov.

Parashat Bereshit: Why Do We Begin Again?

I love the few moments on Simchat Torah when we read the end of the Torah, and then read the beginning.  One minute Moses is on top of a mountain, surveying the whole Land of Israel, the Torah is recounting all the wonders and teachings, and the people are getting ready for the exciting next chapter in their land.  It is literally the high point!

And then...."the earth was formless and void, darkness over the face of the deep...and God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light!"

It's dramatic.  It's jarring.  It's particularly jarring to go back and realize how much of a climb we have to start again.  To go through all the difficulties of beginning -- Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the Flood, the tribulations of the first mothers and fathers, just to get to Moses again.  Then all the difficulties in Egypt...that's what we'll be reading into the winter.

I was thinking about this question of why we do it.  Why we willingly rewind, so we have to reread and relive all of the difficulties that we know are coming.

It can't be that we believe that life simply repeats itself in an endless circle.  That's the view of the beginning of Ecclesiastes in the Bible -- there is nothing new under the sun.  (We actually got that out of the way last Shabbat, where in some congregations Ecclesiastes is read on Shabbat during Sukkot.)

The Sfat Emet taught about the Exodus from Egypt that it happened so quickly that it takes all the generations to truly explain its meaning.  So too with the entire Torah.  Even after some 2000 reading cycles, maybe more, we're still unearthing all that is hidden in the Torah.  There are some things there that only we -- the people of the year 5772, not the people of 5771 -- can find, understand, and make real in the world.  By virtue of who we are this year, and who the world is this year, and how our relationship with God is different this year.

The legacy of Eve and Adam, Sarah and Abraham, Moses and Miriam, are still unfolding through us.  We go back each year, to study that legacy.  We live forward each year, knowing each week that our lives are adding another chapter to theirs!  That we live not only as ourselves, but as the projection of the people we are reading about.  This week, the consequences of our study of Adam and Eve's decisions will play out somewhere in a way or in a setting where they never have before.  (Listen to congregant Terry Watterson's online audio Dvar Torah.)

The arc of the whole Torah is still thrilling.  God creates a world and seeks partners -- who will they be?  Two humans, all of their descendents?  A single couple, and their slowly growing family that becomes a nation?  How long until that partnership flowers -- one lifetime, hundreds of years?  Can it endure slavery, exile, or even the normal difficulties that go with learning something new and demanding?  (That goes for both God and the Israelites!)

That's the big story, and along the way are all the little stories and teachings that beckon for our attention.  Each of them is still not fully understood -- perhaps not even by God -- so we go together into another year.  From darkness and chaos, slowly and gradually toward the top of the mountain, where Moses is looking out in wonder at what we will do with it all in the new year.

Dvar Torah: Reflections on the 9/11 Anniversary

Here is the text of my Dvar Torah last week on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack.

Parashat Ki Tetze: Reflections Before 9/11

On the Shabbat the day before the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, we read Parashat Ki Tetze.  It opens:  "When you go out to war upon your enemies..." (Deuteronomy 21:10).  It concludes:

Remember that which Amalek did you along the way, when you went out from Egypt:  he came upon you along the way, cut down all the stragglers at your rear, and you were tired and worn out -- not fearing God.  And it shall be:  when Adonai your God gives you rest from all your enemies all around, in the land that Adonai your God is giving you as a hereditary portion, blot out the memory of Amalek from under the heavens.  Do not forget!  (Deut. 25:17-19)

The ta'amei hamikra -- the trope, the notes that tell us how to chant the Torah -- tell their own story about how painful it is to look back even from a distance at a terrible crime.  The Torah reading is almost without rhythm, out of step, as it tells how in the future to deal with the memory.

So the first word Zachor -- "Remember" -- is given a long note, as if to say how hard it is to summon the actual memory.  (Click on them to hear how they sound chanted.)  The next word in Hebrew, et , is a word without any content, and yet it also gets a long note.  Then, as the attack on the Israelites by Amalek is recounted, the words just rush out.  Many, long words are compressed into the cantillation normally used for just a few.  Hard letters, gutterals and stops.  Then a deep breath, and drawn out:  V'haya, "and it shall be, in the future"...and the strange command.  To blot out the memory of Amalek, yet never to forget what they did.

We need to remember, and want to forget.  We recall in detail -- what we say, where we were -- and are ashamed when we realize that the images that transfixed us on TV were the dying moments of three thousand people.  We want the revenge, to blot out Bin Laden and his followers, and also to have rest from all our enemies.  We want to deny al-Qaeda the dignity of even being known.  Yet we have to tell the story, if we are to have any hope of building a world that will be without them forever.

Are we doing justice to the memory of those who died, on September 11 and in the wars since then?  Are we changed, as people or Jews, as Americans or free people?  These are the questions to remember, even as we return to the first moments in our memories.  My own answers I will give in shul this Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom -- May it be a Shabbat of peace, as we recall that day of war.

 

Parashat Devarim

Here is a good introduction I wrote to why we are reading at this time of year from the the book of Deuteronomy, Sefer Devarim, and the prophecies of Isaiah:

http://www.rabbijon.com/2009/07/devarim-introducing-your-two-personal-assistants.html