Ki Teitzei: How Did I Get Here?

In loving memory of my father Yitzchak Asher ben Yechezkel Shraga zl who would have celebrated his 95^th birthday yesterday

The sky could not have been a more perfect shade of blue.  With a few white clouds to add some contrast, it looked like a recreation of the wallpaper from Andy’s room in the first scene of ‘Toy Story’.

With the warm breeze bathing our faces, this was as close to paradise as I can recall.  We walked arm-in-arm, me on her right-hand side and her mother on the left, as we approached the beautiful chuppah in the middle in the field.  My eldest daughter in a stunning wedding dress looked positively radiant with a smile that was so bright we could have measured it in kilowatts!  Her handsome Chatan came forward to lift the veil over her face for the Bedeken and I blessed them both before she joined him under the Chuppah, circling her bridegroom seven times, enacting the Jewish tradition that we are so familiar with.

It's not every day that a father has the honour of officiating at his own daughter’s wedding.  With a little help from another Rabbinic friend, I did just this on Tuesday afternoon.

As I was standing there, taking in the atmosphere and looking at the beautiful and joyous young couple, my mind skipped back to the night before.  I had been watching old videos of Hadassah moving around in her cot, doing the actions whilst I was singing, “When You’re Happy and You Know It…”  She clapped her hands, stamped her feet and said a toddler’s version of, “Hello!”  This same little girl was now standing in front of me, next to the handsome man who would shortly become my son-in-law.  It was an extraordinary moment.  And then a question occurred to me.

“How did I get here?”

I wasn’t referring to the long journey we had just experienced circling the M25 and coming across more temporary traffic lights along one road than I’d seen in the last year!  I was thinking about how I was now standing there in front of my daughter under the chuppah, about to perform a ceremony as a Rabbi in front of a crowd of friends and family.  This was something that I could never have dreamed of two decades ago when I filmed her jumping up and down energetically wide eyed, with a grin populated by a few lower teeth.

It wasn’t a ‘Sunrise Sunset’ moment (to be honest, I didn’t even think of the song throughout the day).  It was so much more than that.

Have you ever taken a moment to wonder how you’ve reached the point in your life where you are right now?  All the challenges you’ve had to face throughout your life to date, just to wake up this morning and realise that you’ve made it thus far?

Parashat Ki Tetzei presents us with the highest number of mitzvot/commandments in one Parasha in the entire Torah.  Seventy-four of them to be precise.  I wonder what was going through the minds of our ancestors as they listened to Moshe listing these commandments along the banks of the Jordan River some 3,300 years ago.

A few of the mitzvot included are:

·         The way to treat a female captive.

·         Inheritance rights of firstborn sons.

·         Building a safety fence around a roof.

·         Sending off a mother bird before taking her eggs from a nest.

·         Paying workers on time.

·         Interest on loans.

·         Forbidden forms of plant and animal hybrids.

·         Dealing with the wayward and rebellious son.

·         The Levirate Marriage (known as ‘Yibbum’ in Hebrew).

·         Blotting out the name of Amalek (which is also the maftir we read on Parashat Zachot, the Shabat before Purim.)

Picture yourself listening to these commandments.  The only environment you’ve ever encountered is that of the wilderness that your parents entered when they left Egypt.  Now Moshe, who you’ve only seen as an elderly man (albeit a remarkable one at that), is talking about things that you are finding difficult to relate to.  Yet, here you are, at this crucial moment in your nation’s history, about to embark on a journey into a land that you’ve never seen, in an environment that you have next-to-no knowledge of.

How can you make sense of it all?

The ‘connect’ between spending time with my daughter as a toddler and looking at her under the chuppah is admittedly less pronounced than the example I have just provided with regard to the Israelites.  However, the idea of how to connect the journey I have taken from watching Hadassah jumping around her cot to standing before her under the Chuppah brings me to the same question that our ancestors might have had back then. 

How did I get here?

When I say ‘here’, I don’t necessarily refer to the literal location that they found themselves to be in.  More a case, ‘what was the path of my life that I followed to bring me to this point?’

On the face of it, the seemingly disparate placing of the commandments together makes very little sense.  Rabbi Sacks however, as usual, provides us with a lifeline.  He explains that the dominant theme linking the various commandments is that of relationships.

These exist between people - men and women, parents and children, employers and employees, lenders and borrowers, humans and animals and I would humbly add (when it comes to Kilayim – hybrids), man and the earth.

Our ancestors may not have understood the context of what the commandments meant but they did know how important it was to appreciate, respect and foster good relationships with each other.  They knew that the reason why they had been born in the desert and not in the Promised Land, lay in the failings of their parents to trust Gd to protect them.  Had they done so, the spies and the people who believed their lies, would not have doubted Gd’s desire to bring them to the land flowing with milk and honey.  It was a breakdown in the relationship between the Israelites, Gd, Moshe and Aharon that led to the episode of the Golden Calf.  Similarly so, with the failed mission that had led to the forty-year wanderings.

Time and again, the people misjudged Gd and Moshe’s intentions.  They had all the manna needed, but it wasn’t enough.  Their complaints regarding the lack of water following Miriam’s death led to Moshe’s hitting the rock.  After all they had been through, did they honestly believe that Gd would not provide them with water?  All they had to do was ask for it instead of pushing their leader, who had risked his life fighting for their survival, to the point that he disobeyed Gd’s command to speak to the rock.

In answering the question of, “How did we get here?”, they could have taken a moment to appreciate the journey that had led them to this point, as surprising as it may have been.

And that is what went through my mind as I stared in awe at my beaming daughter under the chuppah, flapping in the warm summer breeze.  How did my life take me from a bedroom in Edgware to a field in Essex?  I knew that as a parent, there would always be challenges and that I would (and did) follow a path that, at times, wouldn’t make much sense to me.  Along a journey that I could never have envisaged, when I began my Semicha studies nearly ten years ago, did it occur to me that one day in the not-to-distant future, I would find myself in this position?

Our lives take us in so many different directions.  I guess that’s part of what it means to live and develop as humans.  We are all taking our own journeys, following our own paths, trying to make sense of our own lives.

Sometimes, we find ourselves asking the question of, “How did I get here?’

In doing so, we can appreciate that we may not know the answer.  Decisions that we take at one stage in our lives may not make sense until another.  That we made it through to the present day is a testament to who we are, whether or not we believe we did this through a Divine Plan that gently guided us.  I happen to believe that Gd has been instrumental in bringing me to this stage in my life.  Others will have their own rationale.

How did I get here?

I don’t know, but it resulted in standing before my daughter and her Chattan and being part of a process that led them to becoming the next link in the chain of Jewish survival.  It was worth every single hill and trough that I had to negotiate to get here since that first miraculous Shabbat when Hadassah entered our lives.

Wishing the Chattan and Kallah a long, happy and healthy life together.  Who knows, maybe one day I’ll be blessed to officiate at my grandchild’s chuppah too!

Shavuah Tov.

Shoftim: ‘I Have a (Three-and-a Half-Thousand-Year-Old) Dream’

 In just over a week, on 28th August, we will commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of one of the Twentieth Century's most remarkable and important speeches.  Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, before a crowd of 200,000 people, Dr Martin Luther King Jr spoke about the dream he had to see a society where Black and White people could live together peacefully as equals.

He described the persecution that Black people had faced in the century following the end of the American Civil War and how they were segregated in Southern States such as Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina.

Towards the end of his oration, he said the following:

"So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.  It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.  I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.  I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the L-rd shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope… With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.  With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.  With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of G-d's children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.  Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of G-d's children, Black men and White men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last.  Free at last.  Thank G-d almighty, we are free at last."

I was minded quoting this extraordinary speech when I was considering one of the verses in this week's Parasha of Shoftim.

Moshe, who would pass away weeks after delivering his second oration, was instructing our ancestors on the crucial task of setting up a system of justice once they had conquered the Land of Israel.

Our sidra begins with the following verse:

Appoint judges and officials for your tribes, in all the towns that the L-rd your Gd is giving you, to govern the people with equitable justice.  Do not pervert justice or show partiality.  Do not accept bribes for bribes blind the eyes of the blind and subvert the cause of the just.  Pursue justice, only justice. (Deuteronomy 16:18-19)

There is so much that I could say about the first few verses but for the purposes of this Drasha, I will concentrate on the last pasuk in my quote.

For as long as I can recall, I have been endowed with a deep sense of knowing what is right and ultimately, what is wrong.  I have always and will forever continue to fight to the 'nth degree if I believe that an injustice has been enacted upon me or others.  This is not to say that I don't admit defeat, because sometimes, one has no choice but to accept this, but that does not stop me believing (and protesting) about how unfair I see a situation to be.  Call it obstinacy if you will, but my sense of what is and is not just or fair is as deeply ingrained into my very being as the blood that flows through my veins.

I can readily relate to Dr King's words because they scream out as to how unjust the treatment of his fellow Black citizens was at the time and sadly, continues to be to this day in many countries.  That America was able to vote in a Black president was a crowning achievement (whether one agreed with his policies or not).  This still did not stop the brutal murder of George Floyd a few years later and the prejudice that sadly still exists both in America and in the rest of the world.  We only have the case of Steven Lawrence in this country to remind us of how Dr King's speech is just as relevant today as it was three score years ago.  In trying to unpick and understand the words 'Pursue justice, only justice', our commentators were unequivocal in their interpretations of what this really means.

The Ibn Ezra (died c.1167) (as quoted by Rashi et al.) writes:

“Moses speaks to the disputants.  Moses repeats the word justice to indicate that one should pursue justice whether one gains or loses.  Or the word is repeated to indicate that one should pursue justice as long as one exists; or the word is repeated for emphasis.”

The Ramban (d.  1270) writes:

“Go to seek a reliable court...The reason for the repetition [of the word “justice”] is to indicate that the judges should judge the people with righteous judgment, and you must also pursue justice constantly by going from your place to the place of the great Sages: “after Rabban Yochanan ben Zaccai to Yavneh; after Rabbi [Yehudah Hanasi] to Beth Shearim.”

In other words, the Ramban is emphasising the fact that if a court is unable to pass fair judgement, it needs to seek its authority from another court.

We are all too well aware of the significant levels of injustice that have transpired over the years in this country where innocent people were convicted of crimes they did not commit, such as the Birmingham Six, whose sentences which were pronounced by one court were quashed by another in 1991 after sixteen years and The Guildford Four/Maguire Seven in 1988 and 1991 after a similar amount of time in confinement.  Several recent cases also raised my ire in connection with a huge miscarriage of justice such as the scandal regarding the convictions of innocent postmasters by the Post Office between 1999 and 2015. 

As of last month, 86 convictions have been overturned and the cases are ongoing (there were a total of 700 people accused) and nearly £13 million has been paid out.  This of course cannot reverse the trauma of what has happened.  Thirty-three people have died without ‘knowing’ that they had been wrongfully accused.

Just last month, Andrew Malkinson was acquitted after serving twenty years having been wrongfully convicted of having raped a woman in Manchester.  It transpired that there was no DNA evidence linking him to the crime and that following his incarceration, Greater Manchester Police took measures to dismiss his appeal.  Those involved in this deception included a chief of the Police.

The examples that I have cited demonstrate how relevant the words of the Torah are so many years later and this is without even describing the institutionalized racism that exists against Black people and has done so for too many years.  You can read about this in a recent article in The Guardian^*

Dr King's speech has many references to the Torah that we hold so dear.  His call for freedom echoes our Prophets and later Rabbis' views that real freedom exists in the creation of societies built on a strongly defined and maintained rule of law, the equal treatment for all citizens and a solid foundation of justice.  One which grants everyone, irrespective of their gender, creed, ethnic background or physical condition the right to be protected and represented in equal measure.

The only way that this can happen is if we follow the words of the Torah and pursue justice, only justice.  If we have a justice system that is seen to be trustworthy and fair, it sends out the message that, from the very highest echelons of the State, nothing but the rule of law and the equitable treatment of all citizens is acceptable.  Without this, we cannot be surprised that the people who use the system, view it as flawed and unjust.  If we wish to mend society, the first place to begin the process is by ensuring that we pursue 'justice, only justice.'

Sixty years ago, Dr Martin Luther King reinforced the message that we have been reading about in the Torah for three and a half thousand years.  We the 'people of the book' want nothing more than to hold hands with our brothers, Black, White, Gentile, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu and everyone else and sing a song of peace.

As we say in our prayers throughout the day: Ose Shalom Bimromav, Hu Yaaseh Shalom Aleinu Ve'al kol Yisrael -He who makes peace in His High places, make peace for us and all Israel.  Amen. It is a message that rings through the ears and through the years for justice and peace are indivisible – without one, you cannot have the other.  

Shavuah Tov

^*‘Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.’

Re'eh: The Jewish Truth About Pigs

בס"ד

Unusually, I will begin this Drasha with a warning, the kind you hear when you’re about to watch a controversial news story.  I would like to let you know that some people here today might find the following topic disturbing and quite un-Rabbinic in nature.  In fact, this could possibly be the most inappropriate sermon I have delivered, granted that the subject-matter seemingly focuses on the most un-Jewish of topics.

I am of course, talking about...pigs.

When I say ‘pigs’, I am not referring to those cute little four-legged creatures in a derogatory fashion.  No, perish the thought.  In fact, I am quite in awe of them.  After all, did they not inspire some of the most famous stories that we grew up with?

Think about Piglet from ‘Winnie the Poo’.  Let’s not forget the ‘Three Little Pigs’.  How about Wilbur from ‘Charlotte’s Web’?  And who can ignore Old Major, Napoleon and Snowball from ‘Animal Farm’?  More recently, we have ‘Babe: The Gallant Pig’ (or better known as ‘The Talking Pig’ from the charming 1990s film).

How many animals can boast (albeit unwillingly) to have their meat served in no less than four popular configurations– namely pork, bacon, gammon and ham?  And that’s not counting the myriad ways their meat can be prepared.

Go to any farm and you’ll always see a boar or sow walking around, snout at the ready to sniff anything in its path.  According to the ‘Human League’ an American website dedicated to the preservation of the species (https://thehumaneleague.org/article/pig-intelligence), pigs are one of the most intelligent creatures around and a blog called ‘a-z animals’ (https://a-z-animals.com/blog/the-10-smartest-animals-in-the-world/) claims that they have the seventh highest IQ in the animal kingdom after brainboxes such as chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants.  How you measure the IQ of an animal is beyond my comprehension but this seems to be borne out by a relatively recent article in the Independent (6^th June 2022) (https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/pigs-intelligent-sentient-animal-drugs-testing-b2093536.html) which states that:

Pigs are widely recognised to be highly intelligent, demonstrating behaviours long thought to be the preserve of humans and other great apes, including self-awareness and creativity.  So much so that the UK government formally recognises that pigs are sentient beings.

The recently enacted Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act acknowledges that all vertebrate animals experience feelings including joy and pain.  But cutting-edge behavioural science goes further, demonstrating that pigs possess the capacity even to perceive time, have perspective, and engage in social discrimination abilities.

All of which brings me to the point of this Drasha (and I’m sure that you will be relieved to hear that my focus switches away from praising these very unkosher animals) which asks why we hold them in such contempt (they also don’t rate too highly amongst our Muslim cousins either).

This week’s Parasha is a good place to start.  In repeating the list of animals, birds, fish and insects that are permitted and prohibited (in Parashat Shemini, we read a more comprehensive inventory), we are told (14.7-8]:

You may eat any animal that has divided hoofs, fully split in two and chews the cud….these you shall not eat: the camel, the hare and the hyrax because they chew the cud but do not have a divided hoof – they are impure for you; and the pig because it has a divided hoof but does not chew the cud – it is impure for you.

The Torah goes at pains to single out the pig from all the other animals in the list.  Camels, hares and the hyraxes (otherwise known as the shrewmouse) don’t have fully cloven feet but they are ruminants, so it is clear to see that they don’t qualify for their own packaging at Kosher Deli.  Pigs however, are different; they do have cloven feet. So, on the outside they look as though they could be kosher but unless our people have been gifted with x-ray vision (aside from that special Jew known as Superman…what, you didn’t realise he was one of the tribe?), we wouldn’t be aware of this aspect of the pig’s anatomical makeup.  The Torah is therefore providing us with those special glasses.

However, like everything we read in our Holy Book, we need to scratch below the surface to find a deeper meaning (it is tempting to make a pun regarding ‘pork scratchings’ in this context, but I will resist the urge).

In order to understand why the ‘chazir’ is viewed negatively requires us to look at what initially seems like a strange comment in the book of Bereshit.

The Torah tells us (26.34) that:

When Esav was forty years old, he married Yehudit, daughter of Be’eri the Hittite and Basmat the Hittite.

Rashi, commenting on this verse tells us that he is compared to a boar, quoting Psalm 80.14

Esav is compared to a boar, as it is said in (Psalms 80:14) “The boar from the wood does ravage it”.  The boar when it lies down stretches forth its cloven hoof as much as to say, “See, I am a clean animal” (whilst cloven hoofs are a feature of clean (i.e kosher animals only in conjunction with chewing the cud).

Quoting the Midrash Rabbah (Chapter 65), he continues:

In the same way these royal descendants of Esav rob and extort and pretend to be honourable because, for the whole forty years (until he married Yehudit and Basmat), from a young age Esav enticed women from their husbands and ill-treated them; when he reached the age of forty he said, “My father took a wife when he was forty and I shall do the same.”

Chazal, our Sages, attributed the exile we are currently in to that of Edom, or Rome, who were the descendants of Esav.  In the same way that externally, they pretended to like and admire us, their intentions were anything but altruistic.  Over the millennia, as we are painfully aware, we have been persecuted time and again by those whom we thought we could trust.  Religious and secular leaders who might have appeared ‘pure’ in their practices, were anything but.

The language the Torah uses to describe kosher and non-kosher animals is Tahor (spiritually clean) and tamei (spiritually unclean). When it comes to the pig, the Hebrew tells us:

Ve’et Hachazir, ki mafris parsah hu velo gera – Tamei hu lachem

and the pig because it has a divided hoof but does not chew the cud – it is impure for you.

Both the House of Esav and the pig display the same characteristics.  They appear to be pure, but this is not at all the case.

Additionally, the pig had always received ‘a bad press’ in Jewish circles and represented the very essence of evil (not forgetting the story of Antiochus IV, from the Chanukah story, who, though not a Roman, desecrated the Second Temple by sacrificing a pig on the golden incense altar, a few feet from the Holy of Holies).

Modern archaeologists can readily identify a Philistine encampment by the presence of ancient pig bones, as opposed to a Hebrew one which doesn’t contain them.

It is therefore clear to see that both from a metaphorical and physical angle, we have a long history of treating the pig or ‘sus domesticus’ as being ‘non grata’ both in our menus and overall culture.

This is not to say that we don’t respect the pig as one of G-d’s creatures.  Yes, it is intelligent and is to be justifiably admired for all its features.  It is also very cute, as I have explained.

However, beyond its external form, there also lies a deeply troubling connection to our history.

Chazal tell us that when Moshiach arrives, one of the miracles that will take place will centre on the pig being transformed, so that it will start to chew the cud and join the family of animals that we may partake of.

Until then, I’ll abstain from bacon butties, pork chops and ham sandwiches, so as far as pigs are concerned, they have very good friends in both Jewish and Muslim adherents who are happy to maintain their current carnivorous diets!

Shavuah Tov.