Parshat Bechukotai: Iron and Copper
This week's Parsha of Bechukotai has always terrified me. It contains the first Tochecha, or warning, given by Gd to the Bnei Yisrael and is repeated in even greater detail in Parshat Ki Tavo.
Bechukotai
lists forty-nine curses and tragedies which will befall the Jewish people if
they fail to follow the Torah's teachings.
The number is doubled to ninety-eight in the latter Parsha. It is no coincidence that the first warning
is read shortly before Shavuot and the second a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah.
One
of the explanations given by Chazal is that the warnings are strategically
placed at these times of the year to prepare us for the respective festivals. They say that if you are given a gift you
would not wish to place it into a soiled container. As we approach the festival of Shavuot, we
read the Tochacha to cleanse ourselves spiritually, so that we can receive the
Torah again, aware of what could and tragically did happen when our ancestors
didn't take heed of the Torah's commandments.
Similarly, as we near Rosh Hashanah, we want to end off the previous year
in the knowledge that we are ready to enter the new one.
Both
readings are very different and it is beyond the scope of this Drasha to list
the discrepancies. However, one verse
has always particularly bothered me, not because it described a calamity, but
as a result of the language used.
The
Tochacha consists of five incremental stages that the Bnei Yisrael would be
subject to if they didn't follow the Torah's teachings. This verse appears in the second section:
(19)
...I will make your skies like iron and your earth like copper.
One
of our greatest commentators, Rashi, provides the peshat (i.e. simple) explanation of what this means by
comparing it with the similar verse in the second Parsha, which states:
(23)
The skies above your head shall be copper and the earth under you iron.
He
says that in the second tochacha, the juxtaposition of the heaven and earth
being copper and iron is less severe than in the first case since copper is a
metal that allows moisture to seep through.
In climactic terms, this would refer to the heavens exuding some
humidity. The earth being iron, which
does not allow moisture to seep out would therefore allow its produce to
benefit from this, which would not lead to a drought across the land.
In
this week's parsha, if the heavens are iron, which prohibits the release of
moisture the 'copper' ground will be heated up to the point that it 'sweats'
and all its produce will perish resulting in a drought. It doesn't take much imagination to know how
our planet has suffered through lack of rain.
Rashi's
explanation on a metaphoric level makes sense, but in practical terms, I haven’t
been able to understand how this could relate to the natural world that we
inhabit.
When
my mother passed away last year, I found myself with the dilemma of how I would
be able to manage without listening to music.
I have obviously restricted my musical intake many times observing the
laws of the Omer and the three weeks which both end after a relatively short
period of time. A year spent in
abstention is a different matter. To
compensate, I took out a subscription to Amazon's Audible service. This allows me to download any book of my
choice for a modest monthly fee. This
last year has been nothing short of a revelation and has proved to be extremely
rewarding. I am not even sure that I
should have enjoyed my listening experience so much granted my circumstances. From learning about Japanese Wind Phones to
marvelling at the wonderful writing of a bevy of contemporary authors, it has
been a truly enriching experience. My
year ended shortly before Pesach and so, as per the season, I found myself back
in 'mourning mode' with the re-entry of the Omer into our lives. It was time to consult Audible's vast library
and the book that found its way into my digital audiobook collection was the
recently published autobiography of Lily Ebert, the ninety-eight-year-old
survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
I can
honestly state that of all the books I heard over the last fourteen months,
none has affected me in the same way as 'Lily's Promise'. It has also enabled me to finally understand
and appreciate the aforementioned Pasuk (and I was so moved by the book that I
ended up buying a hard copy).
Lily
describes the 'iron sky' of Auschwitz:
"...Then it
was back out into the Lager (camp) and now the sky seemed darker,
greyer. A pall hung over everything,
blocking out the sun. Not far away was a
tall chimney, smoking furiously, with
flames emerging red and bright. "
Was
the sky iron or copper coloured at that moment?
"...For days
already, we'd had no sleep. And now,
there was nowhere to lie down except for the bare stony ground of
the Lager, the big open space between each barracks building. Just stones, and powdery grey soil."
"One boiling
hot day when we had already stood for hours like statues, always in lines of
five, a sudden thunderstorm exploded above us.
It poured with rain. On and on. And still we had to stand there. Immobile.
Utterly drenched, in the only clothes we had. Never complaining. Never saying a word."
Perhaps
on that day, the sky above their heads was copper. On others, iron.
When
Lily returned to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1988 with her daughter Esti, she
described the scene:
"One of the
watchtowers had been turned into an exhibit.
I climbed the steps with one group and looked out through the glass. I was standing on the very spot where German
guards used to stand watching us, night and day, machine guns in their hands. A place I never imagined I would stand. It was so strange to look out over such
emptiness. How powerfully I felt the
emptiness. I vividly remembered
thousands and thousands of people standing there on the Appellplatz. For hours and hours and hours. Morning and night. We couldn't move. We were numb with terror. And now there was nothing. Nobody at all. It was so quiet. Peaceful, even. Still not a single bird singing. But how much fear and how much suffering
were endured here? How many people
were killed for no reason? I thought the ground would be red from blood. It should be red. But it's not.
It's grey. Even the air still
seems grey from the ashes."
© Lily’s Promise:
How I Survived Auschwitz and Found the Strength to Live, Lily Ebert and Dov Forman,
Macmillan, 2021
The
earth under them was definitely iron, was it not?
On
the one hand, Lily's book has helped us appreciate the metaphor in a way that
we could not have envisioned. On the
other, her description of Gd's world manipulated through the evil machinations
of the Nazis into the very embodiment of hell on earth is extremely harrowing
and depressing. How can we come to terms
with linking the two ideas, namely, a Divine warning in the Torah and the very
real events that took place in living memory?
It
would be disingenuous of me to attempt to do this, because no-one can answer
the age-old question about how Gd could allow the Shoah to take place. All we can do is try to make sense of where
it fits within the long continuum that is Jewish History. Perhaps, we can look at one of the final
verses in the warning to gain a semblance of comfort:
(42)
Then will I remember My covenant with Jacob; I will remember also My covenant
with Isaac, and also My covenant with Abraham; and I will remember the land.
After
all of the curses and disasters that will befall our nation, Gd will not reject
us. We will survive. Fewer in number. Bruised and battered. Traumatised but not vanquished. Exactly like Lily and others like her who
survived the camps, rebuilt their lives and in the process, helped to
repopulate our nation.
For
though the skies and the earth might be compared to copper or iron, eventually,
even the strongest of metals succumbs to fatigue and cracks. It is only then that the new shoots can break
through and grow into a new plant or tree.
The
Jewish people, like the moon and the seasons, might look as if they are fading
away, but as long as the Torah winds its spiritual way into our minds and
hearts, we can never be beaten.
Perhaps,
the iron and copper that was previously above and below us has always been embedded
into our DNA and makes us indestructible!
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