Parashat Shelach Lecha: The Kiddush Question

 I love questions!

People ask me questions the whole time and there are fewer thrilling experiences than when a member of my community in Staines poses a conundrum to me that I can't readily answer. These are some of my favourite moments.

Such a situation occurred last week as we were enjoying a delicious kiddush following the Shabbat morning service. The gentleman was holding a fish ball and I was gradually making my way through a (very naughty) rather large piece of chocolate cream cake when he shared this thought:

"Rabbi Claude?"

"Yes?"

"May I ask you a question?"

"Of course. I'll try my best to answer you."

"Regarding the spies, what did they do wrong? Why were they punished? They went to the land of Israel and simply reported back what they had seen. They were being honest. Why should they and the rest of their generation end up wandering the desert until they had died out?"

Another member of the community piped in: 

"Because they didn't have faith in Gd to protect them."

Now, to be honest, that would have probably been my go-to answer. It ticks many boxes.                    We know that these were not just ordinary people but the creme-de-la-creme of their respective tribes. However, something held me back from answering (and with no disrespect to the other respondent), I thanked him and said that I would investigate his question and my answer would constitute this week's Drasha.

At the start of the Parasha, the Torah tells us:

Numbers 13:1-3 

Then The Lord spoke to Moshe: “Send out men to scout (in Hebrew the term used is 'Veyaturu which means literally 'and they should scout') the land of Canaan which I am going to give to the Israelites; one man from each of their ancestral tribes, each a leader among them.” So Moshe sent them at the Lord's command out from the Wilderness of Paran. They were all leading men among the Israelites.

The Torah clearly describes how respected these individuals were. What's more, they were not sent as spies, but as scouts in the guise of tourists. They are only referred to as 'Meraglim' or spies when Moshe recounts this tragic tale in Parashat Devarim.

Moshe gives precise instructions to his VIP 'tourists' of which five are questions.

Numbers 13:17-21

1. Ascend there into the Negev and go up into the hill country.

2. See what the land is like.

3. Are the people who live there strong or weak, few or many?

4. Is the land in which they live a good place or bad?

5. Are the cities in which they live open or fortified?

6. Is the soil rich or poor?

7. Are there trees in it or not?

8. Take courage and bring back some of the fruit of the land.”

When the men return, they respond with the following answers:

'They went straight to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the wilderness of Paran, and they made their report to them and to the whole community, as they showed them the fruit of the land.' (which was Moshe's 8th point).

'This is what they told him: “We came to the land you sent us to; it is indeed flowing with milk and with honey, and this is its fruit. '(Moshe's 1st and 2nd command). Then they proceeded to answer the question about the inhabitants (Numbers 3 and 5) 'But the people who live in the land are fierce and the cities are fortified and very large indeed; We even saw the descendants of Anak there.  In the Negev region, Amalek lives; The Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites live in the hill country and the Canaanites live by the Sea and by the Jordan....the land which we journeyed through and scouted is a land that consumes its inhabitants; the people we saw were tall and broad to a man. There we saw the Nefillim - the descendants of Anak are from the Nefillim. We looked to our own eyes like grasshoppers and so we were in theirs....'

Notice how they didn't answer the question about the soil or the trees (Numbers 4,6 and 7), although one could argue that the size of the cluster of grapes that they brought back would indicate that the soil would have been very fertile.

However, as my congregant stated correctly, their answers, though negative were in fact honest. So why were they punished (setting aside the obvious reasoning that their faith in Gd's protection should have negated their fears?) After all, they had recently faced a much more deadly foe in the guise of the most powerful nation on Earth and look what had happened to them?

Rabbi Sacks in his essays from 'Covenant and Conversation: Numbers - The Wilderness Years' (Maggid 2017) cites two equally valid but different interpretations of the text.

The first, according to the Lubavitcher Rebbe ztl constitutes a 'radically revisionary interpretation of the episode' (Rabbi Sacks' quotation). He stipulates that the men had witnessed Gd's defeat of the Egyptians and that, when forty years later, they did enter the land (as described in this week's Haftorah), the inhabitants of Jericho were not giants. In fact, they were as fearful of the Israelites as the spies' descendants were of the Jericho-ites (if there is such a word). The Rebbe's explanation is not that the scouts were afraid of failure, quite the opposite. They were frightened of success. Life in the desert was perfect. They wanted for nothing (as we discussed last week). There was no need to conquer the Wilderness or struggle to grow food in parched soil. The scouts who were, as we have said great individuals cherished their close relationship with Gd. Entering the land would change the status quo vis a vis their current existence. Hence the desire to deliberately sabotage the mission, which is exactly what they achieved.

Where they went wrong was in misunderstanding what it was Gd wanted to achieve by bringing the people to the Land. Rabbi Sacks writes that:

"Gd wanted the Israelites to create a model society where human beings were not treated as slaves, where rulers were not worshipped as demigods, where human dignity was respected, where law was impartially administered to rich and poor alike, where no-one was destitute, no-one was abandoned to isolation, no one was above the law and no realm of life was a morality-free zone. That requires society and a society needs a land. It requires an economy, an army, fields and flocks, labour and enterprise. "

I would add, all of which cannot take place in the arid wilderness which was their current location. They had to enter the land and according to the Rebbe, what they should have realised was that, in conquering Canaan, they would have succeeded. They should not have been afraid.

The second opinion that he cites is that of the Rambam and one which I personally relate to (with no disrespect whatsoever to the Rebbe). It is closer to the plain meaning of the text.

The Rambam looks at Shemot 13.17 which states (at the start of Parashat Beshalach)

Exodus 13:17

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country, though that was shorter. For Gd said "If they face war, they might change their minds and return to Egypt". So Gd led the people around by the desert road towards the Red Sea"

The Rambam comments on this, stating that 'Here, Gd led the people about, away from the direct route He had originally stated, because he feared that they may encounter hardships too great for their present strengths. So He took them by a different route in order to achieve His original object."

 

Looking at what happened subsequently, Gd's fears were realised as we read in this week's Parasha after the scouts' report regarding the Israelites’ panicked reaction:

They said to each other, “Let us appoint a leader and go back to Egypt.”

The Rambam (in Guide for the Perplexed 3,32) surmises that :” it is a well-known fact that travelling in the wilderness without physical comforts such as bathing produces courage, while the opposite produces faint-heartedness. Besides this, another generation rose during the wanderings that had not been accustomed to degradation and slavery.”

In other words, the current generation who had left Egypt in a physical form had not removed Egypt from its psyche. Just like you can take the Jew out of Golders Green but as I can readily admit, you can never take Golders Green out of the Jew!

The scouts and the people to whom they related their sorry story (honestly or not) were not ready to enter the land of Israel. It would require a new generation that had not known slavery to understand what it meant to be a free individual. You cannot change a society overnight (as Rabbi Sacks' writes). It takes time for this to slowly transpire. It's not so much a case that the scouts gave a terrible report (which they did and they were justifiably punished for), it's the reaction of the people who witnessed the scene and responded in a way that proved how little they were ready to move to the next stage of their emotional and intellectual development.

That could only happen in the generation of the children who were born in the desert where Egyptian slavery and everything that it entailed (including imbibing the immoral culture that was endemic to the Empire) had been expunged from the national consciousness. It would take another 38 years for this to happen. Only Joshua and Caleb, of the original twelve scouts were able to realise the others' mistake. It is for this reason that Joshua's name was changed from Hoshea (salvation) to Yehoshua (Gd delivers). Gd and Moses were aware of what would happen but they had to let the people make their own choices and we know what transpired.

In conclusion, a question over a delicious kiddush inspired the words that you have just heard. I hope that this has not deterred you from asking others! If we can learn Torah from each other, we can truly emulate the words of both the Rambam and the Rebbe. We should never fear success and at the same time, we owe it to ourselves to avoid being caught up in the negative ruminations of others. Even the greatest minds can err as is demonstrated in this week's Parasha. That we were able to survive another existential crisis and recover to be able to reconquer the land in living memory is a testament to Gd's promise that He never abandoned us, irrespective of how many times we didn’t live up to His expectations.

But that, dear friends, is a discussion for another kiddush….

Shavuah Tov.

Parashat Beha'Lotecha: The Nostalgia Trap

"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be" Peter De Vries (1959)                                                                          

Stephnie has a nickname for me. She calls me an 'old soul' (S-O-U-L not S-O-L-E which would mean something very different) because I have long had a love for music and classic Hollywood films that mostly predate me. Give me a choice of watching the latest 'Fast and Furious' sequel ('X' which came out last month) or an old Humphrey Bogart film and I won't think twice before opting for the latter.

Could it be the fact that old movies had something they called 'star quality' in addition to carefully written plots and screenplays that were intricately crafted to tell a story rather than lose their way amongst a myriad of eye-popping special effects?

These productions still come to fore every now and again when you have a filmmaker who cares for the artistic merits of his or her film project. However, trying to sell their idea to the studio executives to raise the necessary capital to finance the film is very difficult.  Especially if it is a quality ‘art-house’ movie.

I therefore manage to be nostalgic for a time that existed before I knew what I was being nostalgic about. It's less a case of rose-coloured glasses than technicolored ones (in Panavasion noch!)

I've been around a while and spoken with enough people to known that the world we inhabit in 2023 is vastly different to the one my parents and grandparents grew up in. Sometimes, I wonder how I would have acted had I been living twenty or thirty years before I was born. How would being part of that generation have shaped my thoughts and opinions? More pointedly, how do I view my own past as an adult, trying to make sense of everything in a society that I find increasingly difficult to comprehend.

In this week's Parasha, we read the following:

Numbers 11:4-6

The rabble in the midst began to have strong cravings and once again, the Israelites began to weep, saying, "Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic. But now our throats are dry. There is nothing at all but this manna to look at."

To put the verses into context, the 'rabble' who started complaining were the opportunistic Egyptians and other non-Israelites who had been recognised by Moshe as an integral part of the Bnei Yisrael. From the outset, they were the instigators of much of the trouble that ensued, including the almost catastrophic episode of the Golden Calf. It is these people who influenced the Israelites and caused them to become nostalgic for the 'fleshpots of Egypt' and that country's produce.

Their argument might seem to be legitimate, except for a number of holes in their collective memory.

The Ramban shines a fascinating light on their gastronomic claims.

He states that when the Israelites talk about the 'fish that they ate for free', they are forgetting  the fact that the Egyptian fishermen, their overseers,  used to put them to work catching fish and they were only allowed to remove some from the net, in order to eat them, as per the local custom for all fishermen. Hardly something that could be considered a 'free meal' granted the effort to obtain it.

He adds that the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic they mention were very abundant as Egypt was known as the 'Garden State'. When they were forced to dig the gardens for their slave masters, they would have naturally come across these fruit and vegetables. He adds that, even if this were not the case and they were working for Pharaoh himself, they would have dug up these foods in the grounds of the royal palaces.

Rashi, taking a different approach, says that since the Israelites were not even given straw to make bricks, in other words 'for free', it is highly unlikely that they would have been offered food without having to pay for it (the true economic meaning of the term 'free'). Additionally, the Erev Rav ('rabble') were never enslaved, so they could not legitimately complain of how their lives had been impacted in their home country.

As for the water, the Israelites lived in Goshen which was situated in the Nile Delta, so it was readily available, along with the fish they cite. Their daily existence was anything but pleasant, living as slaves for over two hundred years.

We know that our memories are clearly selective in nature, especially when it comes to putting forward an argument. Whilst their recollections of the food they ate was no doubt accurate (keeping in mind that this was a relatively short while after they'd left Egypt), they conveniently omitted to include the conditions by which they came across said consumables.

As if to add insult to the injury they have caused, they then proceed to criticize the heaven-sent Manna which the Torah reminds us (in the next verse) was:

Numbers 11:7-8

... like coriander seed, and was like bdellium in colour (white). The people went around gathering it. Then they would grind it in a mill or crush it in a mortar. They cooked it in a pot and made cakes from it. It tasted like cakes made with oil.

It sounds delicious. Did they have to gather it under the threat of being beaten?

The Torah's next verse tells us that:

Numbers 11:9

When the dew fell over the camp at night, the manna would fall upon that.

They simply had to step outside their tents and this Divine food parcel was ready to be picked up. Gd's very own Deliveroo without the service charge added!

Rashi explains that the manna tasted of anything a person wished it to, aside from the list of foodstuffs that the Israelites cited in their complaint. The reason being that these were harmful to nursing mothers (according to the Sifrei, a Midrash) which gives the parable of a king who provides his son with any food he wants except for those that are dangerous. His son then complains that the reason he's not being given these items is because his father doesn't love him. So, with the manna, which, had it tasted of garlic, cucumbers etc, could have injured any of the Israelite women who were nursing their babies. In other words, Gd's gift was being spurned by the people to whom it had been given and the examples they chose to cite were those that were damaging to some of their female kinfolk.

Returning to my original quotation regarding the veracity of nostalgia, this is prima facia evidence of how our views can be distorted by our desires. It is very easy to look at the past wearing those spectacles, but whilst longing for bygone days, we don't realise how fortunate we are to be living in an age when so much is better than it used to be. 

I recently wrote about my great-grandfather passing away at an early age following a gall-bladder operation. Would he have had a better chance of survival these days? Very possibly.  I like watching old movies, but had I been around at the time they were made, I probably wouldn't have had the luxury to view or appreciate them on the kind of media that exists in this present day, such as DVD or Blu Ray. I imagine that the quality of the images viewed in the cinema could never match the digital remastering that invariably enhances their production values.

From all accounts that I've read about, post-war life in the UK in the late 1940s, ‘50s and early '60s was quite grim for many people. When my parents arrived in this country in 1963 from New York, they couldn't believe that their initial abodes didn't have central heating and as a result they experienced the ferocious British winter without adequate protection.

It didn't matter if The Beatles were topping the charts at a time when the living room was the only warm spot in the house due to the location of the fireplace. Who could honestly appreciate great music in a freezing cold bedroom?!

It is easy to become despondent when the news we hear is continuously negative and we naturally hark back to what we consider as having been 'simpler days'. Perhaps we should take a moment to appreciate what we have and look at the kind of lives we lead and the items we can purchase or services we can access that we could never have imagined existing twenty years ago. Who would have believed that we could order anything we desire and have it posted through our letterbox or brought to our doorstep in shopping bags? Perhaps nostalgia isn't worth the time and effort spent dwelling upon.

We will read in subsequent Sidrot of how Gd punished the Israelites when they complained. Had they appreciated the manna and indeed all of Gd's beneficence, our ancestor's entry to the land of Israel would have been a great deal smoother (and sooner). It is a lesson that we can all learn from.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be, because it never was as we wish it were. It is like a trap that tries to convince us that our lives used to be better than they actually were.

Whilst it is comforting to think about earlier periods in our journey, especially when we experience challenging times, we should appreciate how blessed we are to be here and how, despite everything, the present is never as bad as we think it is.

We've made it through the week and that is certainly something to appreciate and yes, celebrate. Raise a glass to usher in the next seven days.

L’Chaim and Shavuah Tov!

Parashat Acharei Mot-Kedoshim: Are You A Superhero?

 How far would you go to save someone’s life?

What if doing so resulted in injuries which Gd forbid included breaking eight bones in fourteen places:

·         Your right knee

·         Your right and left ankles

·         Your left leg tibia

·         Your shoulder bone

·         Your jaw

·         Having your eye popping out of its socket so far forward that it could see the other one

·         Suffering from a collapsed lung which had been pierced by the rib bone, along with a similar injury in the liver?

All this due to being run over by a 14,300 pound snowmobile (to be precise the 1988 Pistenbully Sno-Cat) and crushed into the ice hardened asphalt.

Why?  Because you had risked your life to protect that of your nephew’s.

It is New Year’s Day 2023 and you are situated at an altitude of 10,785 feet in the Sierra Mountains in Nevada.  The snow is very deep and the treacherous conditions make it difficult for any sort of rescue craft to make their way to you.  It eventually takes 21 minutes for a fire engine to arrive, followed by a helicopter which takes you to Reno Hospital.  Your life literally hangs in the balance.

It doesn’t matter how many roles the actor, Jeremy Renner played prior to the start of this year; this was not a film set and his Avengers ‘Hawkeye’ character was nowhere to be seen.  What he had experienced was in every manner the ‘stuff of nightmares.’

As I watched his recent TV interview with Diane Sawyer, I sat with my mouth wide-open.  He explained how he had been trying to pull his Ford Raptor truck from his snowbound driveway to the street.  His nephew Alex had tied a chain from the front of the truck to the back of the Sno-Cat.

They managed to manoeuvre the truck onto the road and Alex started to remove the chain. Ahead, Jeremy turned the Sno-Cat around and it slid on the icy road.  Panicking, he realised that he couldn’t see Alex and that the Sno-cat was heading straight for him.  Without considering his own safety, he leant out of the cabin and placed his foot on the rolling track, to try to spot Alex, forgetting in the process to apply the handbrake.

He lost his footing and fell off the track into the snow.  In a heartbeat, he jumped back onto the track to try to re-enter the cabin to halt the machine.  He had to stop it from moving forward as Alex could have been crushed between the two vehicles.  Climbing onto the extremely slippery track, he lost his footing again and was pulled under, whereupon the Sno-Cat rolled over his entire body, which was now face down on the road.

Alex saw what had happened and ran over to his uncle whilst the machine gently rolled into a seven-foot snow wall and stopped.

Without a phone handy, he tried to summon help but unfortunately most of the neighbouring houses were empty, presumably due to their owners being elsewhere over the new year holiday.  Fortunately, a couple heard the commotion and came out to help.  Between the three of them, they held Jeremy, called the emergency services and hoped for the best.  At one point, the lady said that Jeremy had possibly ‘died’ for a few seconds but was thankfully revived.

In hospital, his distraught family tried to communicate with him, but he was unable to speak.  Using sign language, he said that he was ‘sorry for what he had put them through’.  In the interview he added (crying), “I’m sorry my actions have caused so much pain.”

Astonishingly, when thinking about the accident, he said, "I have no regrets - I'd do it again…I refuse to have that be a trauma and it be a negative experience."

If one were to write down some of the Torah’s most famous verses, I would imagine that the following from Parashat Kedoshim would appear near the top of the list:

Vayikra/Leviticus 19:18

You must love your neighbour as yourself.

Rabbi Akiva (in Bereshit Rabba 24.7) commented that this represented the ‘great principle’ of the Torah.  Hillel famously told the man who wanted to learn the Torah on one foot (Shabbat 31a), “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbour.  That is the entire Torah, the rest is just commentary, now go and study.”

The love that emanated from Jeremy’s titanium reconstructed jaw was very plain to see.  Although he had risked everything to save his nephew, it was very apparent that he would have carried out the Torah’s dictum, irrespective of whomever had been at that location at that time.  Similarly so, the bravery demonstrated by his nephew and neighbours which very possibly resulted in his life being saved.  If we can place this behaviour at the very top of our priorities, is this not the ultimate demonstration of ‘loving your neighbour’ irrespective of whether he or she is a relative?

We know our families are the most important people in our lives.  Extending this to the ‘family of humans’ means that, if we believe that we are descended from Adam and Eve, we must somehow, albeit distantly, be related to each other.  Certainly, we have more in common than that which divides us.  We sometimes forget to look before we metaphorically ‘leap’ by acting in a way that lets us down and upsets others.

It takes someone like Jeremy Renner to remind us of how important people are in our lives, how our time in this world can be so brief and how we can act to help others.

 You don’t need to jump off a moving snow plough to make a difference to another person’s life.         As Hillel said, “What is hateful to you, don’t do to others.”  It’s not a difficult lesson to absorb.

Jeremy summed it up with a moving quote at the end of the interview.

“I wouldn’t let that happen to my nephew…the real superpower (presumably referring to his role as ‘Hawkeye’) is the ability to transform your superpower into your strength”.

We all have a ‘superpower’ – our ability to live up to the verse’s message.

In admiring his determination to heal and make a positive impact on others, we can look to Mr Renner to remind us of what a real superhero looks like.  If we value and respect our neighbours, perhaps, we too can be our own superheroes.

Shavuah Tov.

Parashat Tazria Metzora: My Israel

 It is a memory emblazoned in my brain.

It was the mid-1980s.  I was in my late teens and having a glorious time working on kibbutz Rosh Tzurim.  It is located in the Gush Etzion region between Bethlehem and Hebron.  It lies just over three-and-a-half miles away from Efrat, the home of Rabbi Leo Dee and his family.

Back to my memories.

I had volunteered to work on the kibbutz and spent the morning picking nectarines.  This was the life!  I was due to return to London to complete my ‘A’ Levels but soaking in the atmosphere served to convince me of something that I had wanted to do for a very long time.

I stood at the rusty phone box and called home.

“Mum?  Hi.  How are you?”

“Fine.  You?”

“I’m great and I’ve decided that I’m not coming back.  I’m staying here.  Israel is my home.  That’s it.”

Silence.

At that moment, nothing in the world would convince me to change my mind.  I’d sort myself out.  I had family and friends in Israel and they would help me settle.  This was it.  I was going to make Aliyah.

It didn’t hurt that my first love lived (and still does) in Israel and she really wanted me to stay.

My mother however, knew better and soon she and my girlfriend, with whom she had a very special relationship, decided that it was best that I returned to the UK, finished my studies and then came back.  When you’re in love, everything your lady says makes sense, even if you don’t think it does.  To sum up, she convinced me to listen to my parents.  I came back and that Israel dream still lies unfulfilled, nearly forty years later.

There were other opportunities and I even came close to applying through the Aliyah department of the Jewish Agency but my efforts came to nought.  As an only child, leaving your parents behind is not an easy option and, in hindsight, despite my hopes and aspirations, I now realise that it was the correct course of action to take. 

What is it about Israel that ignited my inner passion, from the moment I entered the country for the first time at the tender age of seven?  What is it about Israel, a country which has witnessed some of the most devastating and cruel terrorist attacks on Jewish men, women and children since the end of the second world war, that fills me with such a longing to be there?

A country which has so much promise but, at the same time, is so fragile and faces existential threats from within and without?  Why does that memory burn so fiercely inside me?

During the night of 15^th January 1948, a convoy of thirty-eight Hagana soldiers was sent to the Gush region to deliver much needed supplies to the residents of the four kibbutzim who were blockaded by Arabs and militiamen in the surrounding villages.  They had no option but to travel by foot, following previous attacks on motorized convoys.  After three of the group were sent back as one of the men had sprained his ankle, the others were unable to reach their destination before the onset of daylight.  Having been spotted, they faced hundreds of armed Arabs who blocked their way and although the ‘35’ fought as valiantly as they could, they did not stand a chance and the last of the group was killed at about 4.30 pm that afternoon.  By the time the British authorities had reached them, a number of reports stated that their corpses had been ‘mutilated beyond recognition’.

This convoy, which had originally been called "Machleket HaHar" (The Mountain Platoon), was renamed as the ‘Lamed Hey’ – the ‘35’ even though only 23 could be identified when they were interred on Har (Mount) Herzl in Jerusalem.

All of this taking place not far from where I made that phone call.

So, what is it about the country that calls me to return again and again and again?

Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of (pre-State) Israel (who died in 1935) wrote that the sacrifice of thousands of Jews (who would tragically include the thirty-five a decade later) was not only physical but spiritual too.  These men knew what they were doing but like countless others before and since, they risked and tragically lost their lives to protect those of their fellow Jews. 

Israel has always been the spiritual centre and beating heart of the Jewish people.  For thousands of years, between the destruction of the Second Temple and the rebirth of the State (Hakamat HaMedina), it could not serve as a physical home but in our hearts and souls it cried out to us ‘from the depths’.  Throughout history, we looked to Zion as a beacon of hope – Tikva.  And seventy-five years ago, this coming Tuesday night and Wednesday, our prayers were finally answered.

This week’s double Parasha of Tazria and Metzora focusses on the inexorable connection between physical and spiritual health.  The plague of Tzara’at (which has been erroneously translated for centuries as ‘leprosy’) came about when a Jew spoke Lashon Hara (gossip) about another Jew.  What was manifested on the body, could spread to the person’s clothes and finally the home.  Why?  Because, when our spiritual health is diseased, it automatically impacts on our physical health.  It destroys everything in its wake.

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the tongue is more destructive than both.

Those thirty-five martyrs sacrificed their physical beings to protect the spiritual health of our nation.  It is the actions of these brave men and subsequent generations of Israelis, that called out to someone like me to make that phone call.  As it transpired, my modest contribution to our spiritual welfare lay beyond the borders of our beloved country.

Yom Ha’atzmaut always follows Yom Hazikaron.  One cannot appreciate the miracle that is Israel without first mourning those of our brethren who paid the ultimate price for its establishment.  Life and death are intertwined.  One cannot exist without the other.  But whereas death is the final step in our physical existence, it does not extinguish our spiritual entity as the soul lives forever.

So, despite all the deadly knocks that our Israel endures on a frequent basis, she refuses to give in.  She epitomises the Jewish soul which never gives up.

Today, it is Rosh Chodesh Iyar.  If you write the name Iyar in Hebrew (אייר), you have the acronym of Aleph Yud Yud Resh which can stand for ‘Ani Hashem (the two yuds) Refo’echa’ or ‘I am the Lord, your healer’.

This month contains three notable days which are (as I mentioned), Yom Hazikaron, Yom Ha’atzmaut and Yom Yerushalayim (which as we know is the anniversary of the recapture of our capital, Jerusalem in 1967).  Despite everything that our people endured, in this month, within the last three-quarters of a century, Gd healed us through the gift of the State of Israel.

And returning to the story of the ‘35’…Could they have envisaged that nearly half-a-century later, one young man, proudly wearing a kippah, standing in a tee-shirt and shorts at the end of a hot, sunny day clinging onto a telephone line (it was a collect call!) would have the opportunity to tell his mother that he wanted to live in the Jewish homeland?

A few hundred feet away from the place the ‘Lamed Hey’ fought for the heart and soul of Am Yisrael – the Jewish people.

That, my friends is but one reason why I made that call and would hazard a guess that it’s why every time we leave Israel, a piece of us stays behind waiting to be reclaimed when we return.

Kol od ba’le’vav p’nima,                                                                                                                    Nefesh yehudi ho’miyah.                                                                                                                               U’lefa-atei mizrach kadimah,                                                                                                                      Ayin le’Tziyyon tzofiyah.                                                                                                                                              

Od lo avda tikva-teinu,                                                                                                                                 Ha’tikvah bat sh’not al-payim                                                                                                                      Lih-yot am chofshi b’ar-tzeinu                                                                                                              Eretz Tziyyon v’Yerushalayim.

As long as within our hearts

The Jewish soul sings,

As long as forward to the East

To Zion, looks the eye.

Our hope is not yet lost,

It is two thousand years old,

To be a free people in our land

The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

 

Shabbat Shalom, Chodesh Tov and Chag Sameach

Parashat Vayikra: Words Count

 A few weeks ago, Stephnie and I went to the theatre.  Ordinarily, this would not constitute a mention in one of my Drashot had it not been for the trip we experienced and what transpired once we had reached our destination.  We had the misfortune of having booked our tickets on a day when yet another Underground strike was taking place.  A journey that could have taken less than an half-an-hour on the Tube lasted nearly two as Stephnie encountered heavy rush-hour traffic driving from Edgware to Covent Garden in pouring rain, which compounded the misery that we both felt.

We arrived at the theatre nearly half-an-hour late.  We thought we might be able to request that, due to extenuating circumstances, our seats could be transferred to another performance.  The staff who were accommodating and welcoming did not accede to our pleas and suggested that we walk up the stairs to the first floor where we would be able to watch the first act which was being live streamed on a television set.  We would then be permitted to enter into the auditorium at the start of the interval.  The thought of having to spend the next couple of hours trying to return home under the same circumstances convinced us that we didn’t really have much choice and so we begrudgingly made our way up the staircase.

The site that greeted us as we reached the first floor was astonishing.  There were dozens of people either standing or seated watching the proceedings on a rather small TV.  We asked one of the usherettes to fill us in on the synopsis.  She reassuringly informed us that we hadn’t missed too much as it was a long play and the first act set the scene (quite literally) but was not in fact a critical component of the main body of the work.  We found some ‘seats’ on the staircase and settled down to watch the play from afar.

Eventually, the audience applauded, the curtain fell and we tried to make our way into the auditorium which was not easy granted that virtually everyone inside felt the need to come out for either a drink or to use the facilities.  I feared that it might take us another two hours to get in!  It reminded me of the joke where Moishe is travelling up the M1 and calls his wife who tells him that she’s just heard on the radio that there’s a meshuggene (mad man) driving the wrong way up the motorway.  He responds, “A meshuggene?  There are hundreds of them!”

The poor layout of the seating meant that it was difficult to reach your place if it was not located at either end of the row.  We were in Row A of the upper circle which meant that leg room was extremely narrow.  We excused ourselves as we passed in front of the lady who would become my neighbour, on the left-hand side.  I sat down and Stephnie, having seen that she was not best pleased to have us ‘bothering her’ tried to break the ice by apologising for being late.  She then asked if we had missed a part of the play that we needed to be aware of, to understand the next act.  We obviously knew the answer but hoped that this would pacify her somewhat.

The lady proceeded to describe how ‘fantastic’ the first act was, deliberately trying to make us feel ashamed for having missed it.  Once the second act was over (I did state it was long play), during the interval, she voluntarily repeated how much better the first act had been.  If she hadn’t made her point vividly enough, at the end of the evening, once we were preparing to leave, she repeated her comments and added, just for good measure, that we really should ‘see the play again to witness the fantastic first act’.

As tickets to the play were not exactly cheap, I chose to experience the ‘fantastic first act’ by purchasing the script on Amazon.  Once I have read it, I’d be happy to let you how ‘fantastic’ it is, compared with the rest of the play.

Words count.

Gary Lineker is not my favourite person at present.  His Twitter quote comparing the language of the Government ‘that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s’ did not rest well with many people.  We are all aware of what transpired as a result because...words count.

We know how important words are, whether they are spoken or written.

Once a thought leaves a person’s head and becomes vocalised, written or recorded, it gains legitimacy.  It becomes ‘real’.  It does this because...words count.

The first instance of this can be found at the very start of Bereishit (Genesis) in Verse 3, when Gd said, “Let there be light.  And there was light.”

Every day, we start the Pesukei DeZimra, the Songs of Praise section of Shacharit with the verse, “Baruch She’amar vehaya ha’olam.” – Blessed is He who spoke and the world came into being, blessed is He. 

 

In explaining this, Chazal, our Sages learned that Gd created the world through the use of words.  One can therefore never underestimate the power of words and the examples I have provided are a testament to this.

Why?  Because...words count.

Daf Hashavua even informs us how many words are written in each Parasha (which I often look at when wondering the number I will have to remember when learning my leining!)  You may also be interested to know that there are 1,560 words in this Drasha.

This week’s Parasha and the book that it gives its name to, is Vayikra, which means ‘and He called’, with the first verse telling us that Gd ‘called out to Moshe’ to speak with him.  You might wonder why the verse shouldn’t have used the more familiar ‘Vayomer – and he said’ or ‘Vayedaber and he spoke’, as per the usual way Gd communicated with Moshe.

‘Vayikra’ seems like an unusual manner for Gd to summon Moses.

Rashi tells us thqt ‘Vayikra’s shoresh or root is ‘kara’.  We know this from the Bible (Isaiah 6.3) and our daily Kedushah prayer when we read ‘vekara, ze el ze ve’amar, Kadosh Kadosh Kadosh Hashem Tzevakot  - ‘And they (the angels) call to one another saying ‘ Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts.  It is a term of endearment between them.

In the same way, Gd employed this word when speaking to Moshe Rabbeinu to demonstrate his love for Moshe – and for him alone.  Although His call was ‘loud and thundering’ (according to the translation in the Artscroll Stone Chumash), only Moshe heard it.  Gd conversed with our greatest prophet in the same way that ‘a man speaks with his friend’ (see Shemot 33.11).

The delicacy by which the Torah differentiates the manner in which Gd chose to speak to Moshe stands in stark contrast to the indelicate fashion that my ‘neighbour’ employed to speak to the two of us.  Similarly, people now feel that they can say or write whatever they wish, irrespective of who will be hurt by their pronouncements.

It is not a coincidence that, on Yom Kippur, the majority of our Al Cheit prayers focus on asking Gd to forgive us for the instances in which we transgressed the laws of shemirat halashon – which means literally, ‘guarding of the tongue’.  When we should have spoken words of praise, we criticised.  When we should have stayed silent regarding the actions of others, we spoke.  When we should have spoken in defence of others, we stayed silent.

We should realise that words do count.  They matter and because they matter, they count.

They make us and they break us.  They build us and they destroy us.

I’d like to think that the lady who gloated at how wonderful the first act happened to be, hadn’t realised how hurtful her comments were.  She probably left, satisfied that she’d ‘shown us’ what happens when we ‘dare to come late to a theatre play’.  If she had taken a moment to ask herself why we were tardy and how this would have led to our feeling embarrassed, she might have acted differently.

Gary Lineker felt justified by what he wrote (which  was in no small measure magnified by the support he received) and seemed completely oblivious to how hurtful his words were to those people who lived under Nazi rule in 1930s Germany.  The very same individuals who either fled the country or whose close family was subsequently murdered by laws enacted through its government over the next decade and beyond.

Perhaps if both had taken a leaf out of the Torah and understood how important it is to consider what they said or wrote, they may have avoided upsetting a great number of people.  They are but two examples of the many people who fall into the same trap.

We are all guilty of this at one time or another, are we not?

There are many lessons that the Torah can teach us but if the first is to be mindful of our language, it is one that will surely bring some more peace to our troubled world because, at the end of the day...words count.

Shavuah Tov.

Parashat Ki Tissa: The Obstinate Ones

Obstinate – adjective.  Stubborn, intractable.  (The Little Oxford Dictionary of Current English.  6^th Edition, 1992).

It’s a simple idea.  Around the country, pianos have been placed on rail concourses and anyone who is able to do so can sit down and play to their heart’s content.  I saw the instrument at King’s Cross a few years ago and couldn’t resist the urge to play it and I can tell you; it was a wonderful experience.

Somebody at Channel 4 had a brainwave.  The idea was that the broadcaster, Claudia Winkleman, would invite members of the public to play a piano without them realising that at the same time, they were being filmed.  Several railway stations were chosen as staging grounds for the talent competition, and these included St Pancras, Leeds and Glasgow.  Watching the proceedings, secreted away in a small room, were one of the world’s greatest classical pianists, Lang Lang, who was joined by Mika, an extremely talented popular musician.  They judged the pianists without their knowledge and at the end of the programme, all the ‘contestants’ were gathered together in a room by Claudia who introduced them to Lang Lang and Mika.  At that point, they described what had been happening and told them that they were all invited to be part of an audience for a concert that would be taking place at the Royal Festival Hall.  They then revealed the person they had chosen to perform at the concert based on the performance they had witnessed.

I was fortunate to start learning to play classical piano when I was six years old and it continues to give me a great deal of pleasure.  When I saw the programme being advertised, I told Stephnie that we ‘had to watch it’ as a result of the affinity I feel for the instrument.

If you have seen the show, you will know how wonderful it is.  People of all ages and backgrounds have entertained us with their talent but one young girl’s story and performance brought both of us to tears.

In Leeds, a city known for its love of the instrument, granted the annual international competition that attracts pianists from around the world, Lucy, aged just 13 took our breath away.  Her mother, Candice, told Claudia how her daughter had been born with cancerous tumours of the eyes which left her blind.  If this weren’t enough of a challenge, she was also diagnosed with a genetic disorder called Chromosome 16 duplication which affects her mental health and is demonstrated through traits of autism.

When she was younger, she was given a tiny keyboard to take to hospital.  She played ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ so proficiently that the nurse listening thought that it had been pre-recorded until Candice told her that ‘Lucy was playing it’.

Daniel Bass works in a charity that assists blind musicians and he helped Lucy to develop her skills by placing her fingers over his as he played the piano.  He said that he had never met ‘anybody who has the same depth of understanding of music’.  In the programme, he brought her to the piano and gently placed her hands on the keys.

Lucy then proceeded to play Chopin’s Nocturn in B Flat Minor (Opus 9 Number 1) not only in a note-perfect manner but with the expression of a world-class pianist.

Watching her were Lang Lang and Mika who were literally dumbstruck by what they were witnessing.  Lang Lang, with tears in his eyes, said:

“Unbelievable that she can play this piece.  How did she study?  It’s incredible.  She plays so beautifully.  I have never seen anything like this.  Oh my Gd, Oh my Gd, this is impossible.  I’m speechless, I don’t know what to say.  I really don’t know what to say.”

Mika added:

“Technically speaking, she sang those melodies…turning a tuned percussion instrument into a breathing, breathing, living vocal instrument and it took a 13 year old girl to show us how to do that.  I feel very, very lucky.  If you had told me that I was going to live one of my strongest musical experiences of the past five to ten years sitting in a train station in Leeds, I would have been like completely out of your mind.”

At the end of the performance, I looked at Stephnie and our respective mouths were ajar in tandem with everyone on the concourse who was watching.  Suffice to say that a great number of tears were shed, both on and off the television.

It would be disingenuous of me to reveal what happened at the end of the programme and which ‘contestant’ ended up being chosen because that’s not the point of what I am describing.

Lucy communicates with the world through music.  Her obstinacy is manifested in the manner by which she refuses to let the challenges that she has faced, throughout her young life, silence her.  She talks to us in a different mode but what she says is just as powerful, if not more so, than the spoken word.

In this week’s Parasha of Ki Tissa, we read about the Chet Ha’Egel, the Sin of the Golden Calf, which happened a mere forty days after the giving of the Torah (and one of the events that took place on the 17^th of Tammuz, later to become known as the Fast of Tammuz).

After hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt, they witnessed the destruction of the greatest Empire of the Age by Hashem who through Moshe Rebbeinu led them into the inhospitable wilderness.  Protected and cossetted against the elements, what they had seen at Sinai should have been at the forefront of their minds, but inexplicably, it seems to have dissipated in a very short amount of time.

‘There are none so blind as those who will not see’ as the old saying goes (which incidentally originates in Sefer Yirmiyahu – the book of Jeremiah.)

Not physically ‘blind’ in the sense that Lucy has been impacted, but morally blind to the extent that they demonstrate such atrocious behaviour.

Our freedom could have been extremely short lived.  In their many conversations recorded in Ki Tissa, Gd tells Moshe:

I have seen these people…and they are a stiff-necked people.  Now leave Me alone so that My anger will burn against them and that I May destroy them.  Then I will make you into a great nation (Exodus 32.19)

And later on, He adds:

Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey.  But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.  (33:3-5)”

Moral blindness on behalf of some of the people had led Gd to come to this decision.

Moshe’s response to Hashem seems counter intuitive.  He says:

“If I have found favour in Your eyes, my Lord, may my Gd go among us, ‘because’ (the Hebrew word for this  is ‘ki’) it is a stiff-necked people and forgive our wickedness and our sin and take us as Your inheritance” (34.8-9)

Moshe wanted Gd to forgive the people for the very same attribute that He wanted to destroy them, namely their ‘stiff-necked’ nature or as I have referred to it above – their obstinate character trait, which is no-doubt a feature that we have been handed down through the ages!

Rabbi Sacks ztl cites a few Rabbinic interpretations of the word ‘Ki – because’.

Rashi understands it to mean ‘if’ so that we could read the verse as:

‘If they are a stiff-necked, then forgive them.’

Ibn Ezra and Chizkuni translate the word as ‘although’ or ‘despite the fact’.

Ibn Ezra suggests that the verse should be interpreted as

‘(I admit that) it is a stiff-necked people, therefore forgive our wickedness and our sin and take us as your inheritance.’

History has indeed demonstrated that whatever challenges are thrown our way, we doggedly refuse to let them defeat us.  The case of Purim is just one example of this.  Fighting against overwhelming odds in the Warsaw Ghetto and battling every enemy, however big or small, in The State of Israel is another.  We just refuse to give in.  Time and time and time again.

I saw a lot of myself as a Jew in Lucy.  In her spirit, her determination, her refusal to accept her situation and her desire to communicate with others in ways that may seem a little odd.  In her pride at what she could achieve, despite her challenges.  Lucy did not need to talk the same language that we do.  We got the message, loud and clear.

Rabbi Sacks concludes his piece with the following paragraph:

‘Forgive them because they are a stiff-necked people’ said Moses, because the time will come when that stubbornness will not be a tragic failing but a noble and defiant loyalty.  And so it came to be.’

(Covenant and Conversation: Exodus, ‘A Stiff-Necked People’ pp 251-258, Rabbi Sacks, OU Press/Maggid 2010)

Lucy’s physical blindness and our ancestors’ moral blindness did not stop them from shining a light onto others at the end of the day and illuminating their lives.  Lucy, through her exceptional musical talent.  She too is stiff-necked in the metaphorical sense (physically, she swung her head side to side in tandem with the music).  She is obstinate because she has had no choice but to be.  She revels in a joy that the rest of us can only marvel at.

As for the Jewish people, we, the stiff-necked descendants of those Israelites, can proudly attest to all the above.  The Torah’s music and spirit lives within us and we continue to shine its light to all who want to listen to its melodies.  In our own way, when you think about it, all of us are different facets of Lucy.

Shavuah Tov.