Mishpatim - Caroline and Kirk: Tales of Desperation & Redemption

"I sit by your grave and weep,

Silently, not to disturb your sleep.

Rest in peace my beautiful son

It won't be long before we are one,

While I lie down by your side.

And talk, no secrets to hide.

Tell me, Eric, what did I do wrong?

What should I have done to make you strong?

Now I sit here and cry,

Waiting to be with you when I die."

'Life Could Be Verse: reflections on love, loss, and what really matters', Health Communication Inc.,Douglas, K, 2014, [p. 72]

"I remember one of the first ever internships I ever did was for a fashion shoot where Caroline was going to be on the cover of a magazine. She was incredible and so inspiring on the day. She never complained and made it look easy, even though she was going through multiple outfit and hair and make up changes. I was exhausted just watching her.

The best bit?

She came up to us interns (there were three of us) and spoke to us individually about the shoot. She asked why we were interning and what we wanted to do. She didn’t have to do that, and yet she did anyway. You don’t often see that on a high-profile fashion shoot. She was kind and lovely and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. I hope that’s how she is remembered." 

Daisy, 26, content manager, London

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/18/readers-pay-tribute-caroline-flack-love-island

The last few weeks have witnessed the demise of two people, who on the face of it, couldn't have been more different.

The first, a young, beloved TV presenter with so much left to give, who tragically chose to end her life prematurely and the second, a wise, centenarian Hollywood actor whose very name invoked countless memories of his performances in the minds of his millions of admirers around the world.

I knew little about Caroline Flack before last Saturday night and even less about 'Love Island' the popular TV show she fronted. I had heard her name in relation to the recent court case, but as I didn't care much for her or the programme, the news glossed over me.

It was different when it came to Kirk Douglas. I am very familiar with a great deal of his films, including "Cast A Giant Shadow", "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ", "Lust for Life", Gunfight at The OK Corral" and of course "Spartacus". I was also aware of the retracing of his roots and the public reclaiming of his Jewish background, which began in the late 1980s with the publication of his autobiography, "The Ragman's Son".

Since Saturday night, I have read, with a growing sense of sadness how Caroline struggled with her mental health, which worsened after she won the "Strictly Come Dancing" contest in 2014. 

She wrote:

"'It all started the day after I won Strictly. I woke up and felt like somebody had covered my body in clingfilm. I couldn't get up and just couldn't pick myself up at all that next year.....'

I felt I was being held together by a piece of string which could snap at any time. People see the celebrity lifestyle and assume everything is perfect, but we're just like everyone else. Everyone is battling something emotional behind closed doors - that's life. Fame doesn't make you happy."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-8008585/Caroline-Flacks-mental-health-battle-Love-Island-host-admitted-struggles-just-months-death.html

One would have thought that Kirk Douglas, née Issur Danielovitch, who didn't have an easy start to life, would have been able to enjoy his twilight years embraced in the warmth of his family, but he too suffered greatly,  narrowly surviving a helicopter crash, in which two other people were killed in 1991 and only five years later, being struck down by a severe stroke which robbed him, an actor, of his greatest tool, his voice.

And then he lost his youngest son, Eric, the subject of the poem I read at first, to a drug overdose. He was only 46 and this was but eight short years after his father's debilitating stroke.

Exodus 21 (1) Now these are the rules that you shall set before them:

שמות כ״א: (א) וְאֵ֙לֶּה֙ הַמִּשְׁפָּטִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר תָּשִׂ֖ים לִפְנֵיהֶֽם׃

Sforno on Exodus 21:1:1 (Ovadiah ben Yaakov Sforno - Italian Rabbi d.1550)

ואלה המשפטים, in the previous paragraph, the Torah spoke about the prohibition of coveting property belonging to someone else (20,14). This did not involve action.

Exodus 20 (14) You shall not covet your neighbour’s house: you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his male or female slave, or his ox or his ass, or anything that is your neighbour’s.

שמות כ׳:י״ד (יד) לֹ֥א תַחְמֹ֖ד בֵּ֣ית רֵעֶ֑ךָ לֹֽא־תַחְמֹ֞ד אֵ֣שֶׁת רֵעֶ֗ךָ וְעַבְדּ֤וֹ וַאֲמָתוֹ֙ וְשׁוֹר֣וֹ וַחֲמֹר֔וֹ וְכֹ֖ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר לְרֵעֶֽךָ׃ (פ)

By contrast, where it says ואלה המשפטים,  the Torah speaks about laws governing the concrete nature of “אשר לרעך,” tangible matters belonging to your fellow man.

The Parsha of Mishpatim that we just read, starts recording the laws that Gd gave to Moses whilst he was on Mount Sinai for the 40 days preceding his first return to the Children of Israel (when they greeted him with the obscene Golden Calf).

It contains a panoply of civil laws ranging from the treatment of Hebrew slaves, those who commit manslaughter, matricide or patricide, kidnapping, through to criminal damage, theft, sorcery. behaviour towards Gentiles, orphans, widows, the poor, keeping Shabbat and even the rudimentary laws of Kashrut.

In short, it provides, in detail the foundations of what should be a just and moral society. 

A society that values and respects the rights of individuals:

·        Where those self-same members play an active role in building a community of like-minded people.

·        Where each person is treated justly and those who break the rules are punished accordingly. 

·        Where people like Kirk Douglas insisted on crediting Dalton Trumbo, the screenwriter of Spartacus – a man whose career and livelihood had been decimated through being blacklisted during the barbaric McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1940s and '50s.

Kirk Douglas, who donated millions of dollars to improve the lot of his fellow human beings by giving to countless schools, hospitals and medical centres both in the United States and abroad.

Kirk Douglas, who contributed to the creation of playgrounds in Jerusalem enabling Arab and Jewish children to play together, building a shared future together. The ardent Zionist who established the ‘Kirk Douglas Theatre’ in the Aish building opposite the Kotel.

This was Kirk Douglas, the proud Jew who reclaimed his heritage, realising that it was never too late to contribute to the kind of society espoused in this week's Parsha.

And Caroline Flack, who although she didn't achieve the same dizzying heights, in her tragic, untimely death, showed us that, had we lived by the words embedded in the fabric of Mishpatim, we too might have been part of a society that could have protected her. 

Had her inner turmoil been addressed earlier, perhaps she might have taken different decisions, choices which might not have resulted in the alleged charges relating to assaulting her boyfriend. This led to her feeling that she had no other option but to take her life.

Exodus 22:

(21) You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan. (22) If you do mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to Me.

She may not have been a widow or an orphan, but she was just as vulnerable and perhaps, only now, will her anguish be understood. When large swathes of society enthusiastically promote a culture where programmes like 'Love Island', 'Big Brother' or any similar reality show are venerated, sooner or later, that society’s shallow outlook and cynical facade will self-destruct and cause the collateral damage we witnessed last week. Hopefully, Caroline has found the inner the peace she craved so much.

As Kirk wrote, at the age of 98:

Gd walks beside me in the open air.

I can't see Him but I'm sure He's there.

Together we admire His green grass,

His roses in bloom,

Tomorrow that red one will decorate my room.

Together we admire His palm trees,

Tinted silver by the setting sun.

A sudden breeze carries Gd away,

As light is fading at the end of the day.

I sit there lonely, until it's hard to see,

So, I get up and - He is inside of me!

I'm happy to know that Gd is everywhere:

In the broiling sun, the pouring rain,

And in the cool night air.

Look for Him. He is your friend too.

But if you can't find Him, He will find you.

[ibid p.74]

Now, he has found them both and the moral lessons that we read today were never more applicable that in the societies we currently inhabit.

We can't afford to risk losing another Caroline and we owe it, both to ourselves and the youthful members of the next generation, to ensure that a society’s moral compass can always be redirected.

It is never too late to change the world.

Shabbat Shalom.

Yitro - Kilroy and the Legacy of the Torah

James J. Kilroy (d.1962) was an inspector who worked in the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts.

During WWII, the staff at the shipyard needed to increase production to turn out as many ships as they could to help the war effort. Kilroy's job included checking the rivets that held the ships together, making sure that they had been placed properly and fastened solidly.

In the course of his daily duties, Kilroy had to fit between tight spaces and often entered very narrow areas to check the rivets, which he counted in blocks. As he approved an area, he used some chalk to certify that it had passed his strict criteria and left a tick as a mark of his inspection.

In those days, workers were paid on a piecework basis and this was calculated per rivet.

When Kilroy had left for the day, the workers would erase his tick so that when another inspector checked the rivets, they would be counted a second time and the workers would be paid twice for the same job!

After a while, one of the shipyard supervisors calculated that the number of ship parts was below the amount being paid, considering the amount of rivets being inspected.

Kilroy had to come up with a solution, realising that his inspection marks had been tampered with. He could use paint instead but how would he be able to fit into the tight spaces carrying a pot of paint?

His solution was to re-apply the ticks, but with an additional oversized legend stating that "Kilroy was Here" which made the tampering more difficult. He later added the famous 'eyes and nose peering over a wall' sketch.

The message was clear to all the workers - "don't tamper with Kilroy's inspections!" and indeed, as a result, the tampering ceased.

In peacetime, all ships would have been painted over, obliterating Kilroy's artwork, but due to time constraints and the need to deliver the ships as soon as possible to the theatre of war, they were launched with the sketches intact.

When the ships appeared in parts of Europe and the Far East, the servicemen had no idea about the history of the legend and soon played a game of seeing how many locations they could spot the "Kilroy was Here" motif around the world. Simply put, Kilroy became ubiquitous.

After the war, the motif was replicated in locations as remote as Mount Everest and the Arc de Triomphe.

There is even a story that, when the Nazis found the motif on a piece of captured American equipment, Hitler thought that Kilroy was the identity of a high-level spy!

I've related this story because of something similar that happened to me recently.

A few months ago, my eldest daughter, Hadassah felt that she wanted to discover a little more about her origins and bought a DNA kit from the Israeli based website "My Heritage". She duly sent off the results and when they came back, she found out that she was mostly Ashkenazi with some Sephardi connections, due to her maternal grandmother's Greek background, which the family traced back to Spain and the inquisition.

She asked me to have myself tested.

Initially, I was reluctant, not least because these tests are still in their infancy and there is quite a lot of scientific scepticism as to their authenticity and reliability. They are also relatively expensive.

The Black Friday discounts duly rolled up and so I decided to take the plunge. I bought a kit, swabbed my cheeks and returned the package to the US, just after Xmas.

And I waited....and waited.

I'll be honest, by now, I was quite intrigued as to the result that would come back!

(In passing, I was almost amused when I went to post the package at a Post Office in Edgware and the lady immediately asked me if I was sending a DNA kit. Apparently, I'm not the first Jewish person in the vicinity to do so!)

About a fortnight ago, the result came back. I checked online, with bated breath.

Was I 13% Spanish, 15% Turkish, perhaps 3% Chinese....."

No, unlike my daughter, I am, at least according to the results....100% Ashkenazi.

And not only that, the map they provide links me to no less than seven countries, without a by-your-leave of individual percentages. I'm a pure Jewish European thoroughbred!

Was I disappointed?

Completely. I felt that I'd been diddled out of my hard-earned cash.

I could have used the money to pay for a very nice meal at the Aviv in Edgware (for two, noch)!

But then I got to thinking....

If you look at this week's Parsha, we find our ancestors eagerly encamped at the bottom of Mount Sinai, where-ever it may be found in the vast deserts of the Middle East. Gd presents a set of laws to a nation, barely free from centuries' long slavery by the most powerful empire in the known world.

In a desert.

Ten Commandments (literally, the Ten Statements) that literally rocked the mountain.

Exodus 19:17-18

(17) Moses led the people out of the camp toward God, and they took their places at the foot of the mountain. (18) Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke, for the LORD had come down upon it in fire; the smoke rose like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled violently.

A pretty incredible sight.

Yet, within five weeks, Gd is threatening to destroy the nation and rebuild a new one from Moshe....and within two years, from the point of their departure, they are on the verge of being obliterated once again as the spies relate their deceitful travelogue - perhaps the first instance of 'fake news'.

If we think about it, had Moshe not interceded, the nation of Israel could possibly have ended its travails in the desert and the Torah might have disappeared alongside them.

But that's not what happened.

They survived and the revolutionary moral code carved into those rocks (albeit a second time) travelled far beyond the sand dunes of Sinai.

They now form the basis of a book that is literally the DNA of the three monotheistic religions and their message is communicated by billions of people around the world.

My ancestors lived amongst those people - scattered around Europe, keeping the Jewish flame alive, through thick and thin, through poverty and perhaps a touch of wealth, through pogroms and national wars. The self-same Torah, given at Mount Sinai, way down south, could be located in every rivet that held their faith together in the shtetlech of Poland and White Russia.

Before Kilroy, the Torah - was Here.

And so, when I think about it, although it would be nice to have a little more information, the fact that I can say (at least if you believe the evidence) that I am 100% Ashkenazi fills me with a great sense of pride. That, despite everything my folks went through, here I am.

This week's Parsha, which provides us with our spiritual DNA, reminds us that when Hashem took our people out of Egypt, it didn't matter where in the world the Torah ended up.

From Anchorage to Adelaide and everywhere in-between, the Jewish People and the Holy book that we share with the world around, have become the ultimate Kilroy!

And that dear friends, is nothing short of riveting.

Shabbat Shalom.

Bo - Beware of Darkness

Exodus 10:

(22) Moses held out his arm toward the sky and thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. (23) People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was; but all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings.

Rashi on Exodus 10:22

ויהי חשך אפלה … שלשת ימים — there was darkness of gloom when no man saw another during those three days, and there was moreover another period of three days’ darkness twice as thick as this when no man rose from his place: one who happened to be sitting when this second period of darkness began was unable to rise, and one who was then standing was unable to sit down.  (cf. Midrash Tanchuma, Bo 1; Exodus Rabbah 14:3).

"Watch out now, take care

beware the thoughts that linger

winding up inside your head -

The hopelessness around you

in the dead of night

Beware of sadness"

(c) George Harrison 1970

This last quote, which sounds as if it could have been a direct warning from Gd directly to Pharaoh, comes from a song written by George Harrison called "Beware of Darkness".

The song appeared on his triple album masterpiece "All Things Must Pass", which most people (including critics) hold as being the finest release from any of the four solo Beatles. 

It will celebrate its golden anniversary at the end of November.

What is it about the plague of darkness that distinguishes it from its predecessors and why ‘darkness’?

To date, we've seen the decimation of Egypt, with the first couple of plagues being more of an irritant than a serious threat.

Blood, frogs and lice were not exactly pleasant, but at least they didn't result in too much damage to humans or animals.

The wild animals were ferocious and deadly, but many Egyptians escaped alive.

Plague number 5 decimated the animals in the fields (according to Rashi) but not those that were housed indoors.

Even boils, painful as they were didn't present a mortal threat (though they did kill off the surviving animals) – so as bad as things were, at least the Egyptian vegetarians weren't too bothered and no doubt, there were many more after the end the plague!

Things however started changing with the hailstones. They were deadly - both in the human cost and the overall impact on the economy, with the crops being destroyed as a result - where carnivores and omnivores amongst the Egyptians were now disadvantaged.

The locusts gave the "coup de grace" by mopping up any remnants of food with their unrelenting attack on any crops and fruit that might have survived the hailstones:

Exodus 10:

(14) Locusts invaded all the land of Egypt and settled within all the territory of Egypt in a thick mass; never before had there been so many, nor will there ever be so many again. (15) They hid all the land from view, and the land was darkened; and they ate up all the grasses of the field and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left, so that nothing green was left, of tree or grass of the field, in all the land of Egypt.

By the time we get to Plague Number 9, you have a population that is battered, bruised and most important, hungry. The skin has properties to heal from most conditions, not least boils, but hunger cannot be eradicated so easily.

Which brings us to the plague of darkness - a strange follow-on from the dramatic events described in Plague number 8.

 The commentator Rashi provides a vivid description of the "viscosity" as it were, of darkness as though it had been turned into a thick broth of air, that turned Egyptians into living versions of the Pompeii statues - frozen in their respective stance - whether standing or sitting. It can't have been pleasant but this plague was certainly not life-threatening (however, the Midrash does tell us though, that during this plague, four fifths of the Israelites who didn't merit to leave Egypt were killed by Gd, but that is another sermon).

What was Gd trying to teach the Egyptians by punishing them with a plague of the night?

Could he have written "Beware of darkness?" version 1.0?

A few weeks ago, my wife and I visited the Saatchi Gallery in London to view the remarkable exhibition on Tutankhamun. It really is worth visiting before it closes in May.

There were many elements that we found fascinating, not least the descriptions of how the Egyptians relied on magic and their obsession with the dead .

It was illuminating to compare these with the examples provided in the Torah's narrative, regarding the way in which the magicians were able to replicate a number of the early plagues. 

Concerning our relationship with the dead, the Book of Devarim/Deuteronomy warns to stay away from those who communicate with the dead, presumably referring to the highly venerated Egyptian Book of the Dead - which no doubt our ancestors would have been familiar with.

Most importantly, the central figure in Egyptian religious belief was the sun god Ra. The Egyptians believed that he ruled all parts of the created world, the sky, the earth and from the point of view of the Book of the Dead, the underworld.

This was made abundantly clear in the exhibition and featured heavily in the reasons why the body of Tutankhamun, the boy king was surrounded by so many coruscating artefacts.

The kings even named themselves after this god, as exemplified by Ramses - which means "born of Ra".

By foisting the plagues on the Egyptians, Gd is sending a clear message to Pharaoh, that there is only one God and it is certainly not the man with the statue!

It also isn't Ra - the sun god.

After everything that Gd has heaped upon the Egyptians, in terms of material and physical pain, we now have a plague that has been used for attacking the very core of their spiritual belief – removing the sun they worshipped from their lives.

He does this by plunging Egypt into darkness.

o   Gd has destroyed Hapi the god of the annual flooding of the Nile.

o   He has mocked the idea that different gods control fire and ice - with the plague of hailstones (fire inside ice).

o   And now, He demonstrates to the Egyptians that Gd has mastery over the belief that rules everything else – He literally removes Ra from the Egyptian vista - it's a masterstroke!

George Harrison didn't realise it, but by calling one of his songs "Beware of Darkness", he was striking a very ancient anvil. Gd's message to the Egyptians and to Pharaoh was to beware of darkness, because the entities that they worshipped were as shallow as the delta inhabited by the Israelites in Goshen.

Yes, by all means, appreciate the gifts that nature provides – the bountiful Nile and its endless possibilities through irrigation. Make Egypt the breadbasket of the known world (the Egyptians are credited as being one of the inventors of the bread making process)  but never forget that a Pharaoh, whatever he might call himself - is a man, not a god.

There is only one Gd and only He will take the Israelites out of Egypt, when He chooses and in the manner in which He decides to make this happen - if it takes nine plagues to get the message across, so be it.

Pharaoh did not choose the heed the warning and for a final time, Gd hardened a heart that Pharaoh did not have the inclination to open. Even the obliteration of Ra could not convince him otherwise.

This meant that only one last plague would change his mind and it would hit him so hard - the death of his own first-born son - that he would finally acknowledge the mastery of Gd as the only ruler of the universe. It was Gd’s final blow before the giant waves of the Sea of Reeds that engulfed the entire Egyptian army.

Many suns have risen and set since the darkness that enveloped Egypt stopped the Magicians in their tracks and the ordinary Egyptians in their frozen stances.

Tutankhamun's secrets, hidden beneath myriad layers of sand for three millennia were finally revealed almost a hundred years ago. They highlight a culture steeped in the artificial sunlight of Ra and the forbidding darkness of the underworld, which demonstrates their fallibility.

The fascinating parallel descriptions in our Torah, at the same time, attests to the Majesty of Gd and His miraculous rescue of our people over 3,300 years ago.

Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu. Hashem Echad.

Shabbat Shalom.