Parashat Naso: The Gift of Giving

 It could have been a very different story.

A few months ago, I wanted to access a video recording of a talk that was given back in 2008.  I casually popped the DVD into my laptop’s player and to my dismay, it refused to recognise the disc.  Not one to be easily deterred, I tried to get it to perform on other devices but they too declined to comply with my instructions.

What to do, what to do, what to do?

The outlook was decidedly blue.

It was decidedly a very foggy day in Bushey Town (with apologies to Ira Gershwin).

I spoke to a friend who suggested a contact who runs a ‘vintage video film and audio transfer service’ (as he describes his business on LinkedIn) and crucially lives nearby.  As it happened, I also came across an old Camcorder tape which held the original recording.  Eureka!  Problem solved.

Except it wasn’t, as the Camcorder refused to play the tape.

I phoned my friend’s friend, whom I shall refer to as ‘H’ and he happily agreed to take on the work.  A quick car journey and two tapes (I found a second one with the first) handed over for digital transfer.  In a jiffy, I was sent a link to download the footage onto my laptop.  Job done.

And then (speaking in a Jeremy Clarkson type voice), I had an idea!

Sitting in a box in my garage were a bunch of old cine films that belonged to my parents.  When I was a child, one of THE most wonderful things my mother did, was to get my dad to put up the portable screen in the living room, close the heavy gold-coloured curtains, set up the vintage reel-to-reel projector, switch off the lights and spend the evening screening old silent films that either she or my grandfather had shot (he loved filming and was able to afford colour film), stretching back to pre-war Belgium when she and her brother were little children.

If you are curious to know where my love of movies comes from, it probably originates from those lovely soirees with the three of us and my mother providing a detailed commentary to the grainy images appearing on the screen.

This is a shot of my three-year-old mother, filmed in Knokke (Belgium’s equivalent of Bournemouth which the Jews of Antwerp have frequented since time immemorial) in the summer of 1939.

Who could have guessed what would transpire just a few months later?

I shlepped over a bag of twenty or so films and sure enough, within a few days, was able to view a cinematic pageant spanning over forty years of memories, including the first footage of yours truly when I was a smiley three-month-old baby:

Concurrently, I found a way of transferring Camcorder cassettes from an earlier recorder that thankfully worked and allowed me to watch my daughters growing up in the late 1990s and early 2000s.  This is my eldest, Hadassah when she was just under four months old:

I appreciate that there can’t be too many people around who have colour footage stretching three generations going back to the 1930s!  My mother inherited her father’s love of cinematography and kept a video diary (as it were) of her life from the late 1940s to early ‘80s, capturing her teenage holidays, my parents’ honeymoon, life in America and then in Europe, settling in London.  All of which explains how I have ended up with over two dozen digital files.

Several years ago, I purchased some decent video-editing software which allows me to delve into the files and trim them thus creating mini films of selected material.  As my mother filmed so much footage, I have numerous scenes with family and friends in beautifully restored colour (H cleaned the tapes up during the digitization process).  I have sent these files to the people who were the subjects.  As you can imagine, very few folk will object to seeing themselves as babies (in the case of my family and friends - my daughters were thrilled to see themselves as toddlers) or significantly younger versions of themselves!  In return, I have received some wonderful comments from the recipients.

In this week’s Parasha, the longest single sidra in the entire Torah, we read a lengthy passage which describes the bountiful and identical gifts brought by the princes of each tribe to the Mishkan/Tabernacle.  The reading describes a joy that is almost palpable.  It is one that we can understand because when we give a gift, we receive so much more in return and that’s why it is as much a skill to know how to receive as it is to give in the first place.

It’s not difficult to give someone a present (the challenging part is often to know what to choose in the first place) but when we receive it, do we react in a way that rewards the person who has given us the gift?  Are we appreciative or gracious enough and how often are we mindful of the other person’s feelings when they have given of themselves?

It dawned on me when editing and creating the individual files how some of the recipients might not be comfortable seeing relatives that are no longer with us.  Watching my late parents is a bittersweet experience but, at least for me, there is something really comforting knowing that, with the click of a button, my darling mother and father are ‘alive’ again.  Young, silent yet animated and happy in the moment.  Unaware of what might (and did) lie ahead in their lives.  Each frame is a snapshot, a slice, an instant when they didn’t worry about the future.  When the camera did what it should be doing, they were there – in the moment – frozen in time, happy to be alive.

The tribes of Israel were about to experience the repercussions of the failed mission of the spies and a future that would find them wandering the deserts of the Middle East for four decades.  However, at that moment, before everything else, they basked in the joy of bringing the gifts to the Mishkan and in return, celebrating the events which lasted for nearly a fortnight.  It is not by accident that these readings are also repeated over the entirety of Chanukah, since they were dedicating (Chanukat) the Tabernacle.

One of the fundamental mitzvot that is incumbent on all of us is to give charity or as we call it, Tzedaka.  The root of this word is Tzedek which means justice.  When we give tzedakah, we are elevating the act of giving to a higher plane.  In doing so, we not only raise the financial status of the recipient, but we are also, at the same time, rewarded with the mitzvah/commandment of giving Tzedaka (which is mandated in the Torah).  In other words, we are creating a just society which provides an equivalence between the benefactor and the recipient.

In Parashat Re’eh (Devarim 15.7-8), we are instructed to do the following:

“If there be a poor person among your kinsfolk in any of your towns in the land that the L-rd your Gd is giving you do not harden your heart or close your hand towards your brother in need.  Open your hand generously and freely lend him enough to answer all his needs.

The Talmud tells us:

"The poor man does more for the giver than the giver does for the poor man."
[Ta'anit 10b / Leviticus Rabbah 34:10]

and as Rabbi Sacks ztl put it so beautifully:

“The paradox of giving is that when we lift something to give to another, it is we ourselves who are lifted.  I believe that what elevates us in life is not what we receive but what we give." [ https://rabbisacks.org/quotes/the-paradox-of-giving]

I began this Drasha with the following sentence:

‘It could have been a very different story.’

If the DVD had worked in the first place, I wouldn’t have needed to look for the source and take myself on a personal journey that led to my uncovering a treasure trove of reminiscences.  It was a walk down ‘memory lane’ which I began on my own and have now been accompanied by all the people who received their freshly minted digital time machines.

This contributor has become a recipient and the pleasure it has brought me is immeasurable.  If you would like to know how it feels, give a gift (or even better, Tzedaka) and savour the response you receive both from the recipient and in the latter example, your soul.

Enjoy that moment for as long as you can, irrespective of what might transpire in the future for it is the fire that will burn brightly and light up even the darkest of future nights.

Happy giving and Shavuah Tov!