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.

Va'etchanan: Love G-d

Dedicated to my father R’Yitzchak Asher ben Yechezkel Shraga zl

The Sheloshim or first thirty days of mourning for my father will be completed on Wednesday.  Since his passing, I’ve had a great deal of time to reflect on his life which spanned nearly a century.

You learn a great deal from your parents and try to emulate their positive attributes in your own life.  My father was a polymath, who was blessed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Torah in addition to politics, the arts and classical music.  He taught me many lessons, one of which I would like to share with you in his honour.

As Jews, we have a rich treasury of texts which start with the Torah and span the four thousand years of our existence.  For many years, when I attended Synagogue on a Shabbat afternoon during the summer months, I was puzzled as to the texts the congregants recited after the end of the Amida.  Of course, I discovered that they were learning Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of the Fathers.  As a child, these random mishnayot didn’t make much sense until a few years ago, when I decided to investigate their meaning.

I felt as though I had stumbled upon an Aladdin’s Cave of verbal treasures.  Each Mishna I read spoke to me, both intellectually and emotionally.  I eagerly anticipated their return to my lexicon on an annual basis brightening up nearly every Shabbat afternoon for the six months that bridge Pesach and Rosh Hashanah.

Additionally, Pirkei Avot has proven to be very useful as a mine from which to draw out precious gems of wisdom for many an occasion, both happy and sad.

I adopted Chapter 1, Mishna 14 as my life’s motto:

He (referring to Hillel) used to say:
“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? 
And if I am only for myself, what am I?  And if not now, when?”

I could spend a great deal of time explaining why this means so much to me, but today, it is another Mishna that recently occupied my mind because it really encapsulated the man that my father was and appropriately enough, it also relates to this week’s Parasha of Va’etchanan.

My father’s name was Yitzchak Asher, which can be roughly translated as ‘he who laughs is wealthy’.  By nature, he was a very modest man, an architect, blessed with G-d given artistic talent, whose teacher was one of the greatest teachers of the last century, Rabbi Dov Ber Soloveitchik, otherwise known as ‘The Rav’.

His motto from Pirkei Avot can be found in Chapter 4, Mishna 1:

Ben Zoma said:
“Who is wise?  One who learns from everyone, as it is said
From all my teachers I gained wisdom.”
“Who is strong?  One who masters his evil impulse, as it is said
He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty”...
Who is rich?  One who rejoices in what he has.”

In the Hebrew, this last saying is אֵיזֶהוּ עָשִׁיר, הַשָּׂמֵחַ בְּחֶלְקוֹ

As you may have gleaned, my father’s name ‘Asher’ is synonymous with ‘Ashir’ and it is so appropriate, because my dearest father was really very happy with the portion allotted to him.  He asked for very little out of life and gained a great deal pleasure from even the smallest gifts.  Whether it was learning a new piece of Torah, having a slice of lemon meringue pie (his favourite) or seeing his family (especially his granddaughters).

Chazal, our Sages, understand this Mishna to mean that a wealthy man or woman is a person who derives happiness from the portion that G-d has allotted to them, regardless of whether it is good or bad, large or small.  My father was such a person.

His appreciation of everything he had, came from Gd and the way he expressed this, was through a single emotion.  Love.

At this juncture, I am reminded of a humorous conversation I had with some friends a few years ago.

We were invited over to their house for a Shabbat lunch and I noticed that he was wearing a set of cufflinks with a legend bearing the words: ‘Love G-d’ which he had recently purchased.  His wife smiled and said he didn’t understand the intended connotation of the phrase.

I was a little taken aback by the usage of these words together and questioned him about them.  He said that they needed to be read as a verb, not a noun!  He explained that they should be read as ‘(to) Love G-d’ as opposed to ‘Love G-d’.

My father was a man who really loved G-d.  In fact, he simply loved.  On our last Shabbat together, two days before he passed away, Stephnie and I spent the morning by his bedside and I prayed with him.  When it came to the Shema, we said it together and with the strength that he had left, he kissed the Tzitzit on my Tallit as we recited the third paragraph together.  Later, with the use of his hands, he indicated not only that he loved us both but that he wanted us to continue loving each other and on the next afternoon, the last words, he whispered to me were ‘I love you’.  They were also the final words he was able to say to me a few weeks’ previously before his illness robbed him of his voice.

In this week’s Parasha, we read the first paragraph of the Shema, where we are commanded to love G-d with ‘all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might.  These words which I command you today shall be on your heart.’

Until I spent those precious hours with my father, I didn’t fully appreciate what this meant. For this is exactly what he did.  He loved G-d with every fibre of his body and by extension, he loved us in the same way.

The Gemara in Yoma 86a tells us something incredible:

Abaye cited a baraita (a mishna which was not incorporated within its six orders): “You shall love the Lord your G-d” (Devarim 6.4) means that because of you the Name of Heaven will become beloved.”
[This means] that when a person studies Scripture and Mishnah and serves scholars of the Torah and speaks softly with other people and his dealings in the market place are proper and business is conducted honestly – what do people say about him?  [They say:] Happy is so-and-so who studied Torah; happy is his father who taught him Torah; happy is his teacher who taught him Torah…

(translation taken from ‘The Shema: Spirituality and Law in Judaism, Rabbi Norman Lamm zl, The Jewish Publication Society, 1998)

Such was my father.  His love of G-d and of people (except the Belgians, but that’s another story) were one.  They, the Torah and by extension, us, his family brought him sheer, unadulterated happiness.  How did he express this?  Through telling us how much he loved us.  Through reciting the Shema together.  This is how he left this world.

Who is wealthy?  A person who is happy with whatever he has.  Whatever G-d has provided him with.  Be it his family, home or job.  It often takes a crisis to make us stop and appreciate how ‘wealthy’ we all happen to be.  Just think back to what became important during those Covid lockdown months a couple of years ago…the simple things that money can’t buy such as a hug from a parent or child.  That was the lesson I learned from my father. 

In his blessed memory, I will treasure this for the rest of my life.

Shavuah Tov.

Parashat Devarim: Where they burn books…

 His identity is shrouded in mystery as no-one is really sure who he was.

We do know that, according to the Talmud, he did something terrible which has left a long-lasting legacy.  His actions cast a shadow that chillingly re-appeared in the news last week.  Let me explain.

The Mishna in Taanit (4.6) states:

Five calamitous matters occurred to our forefathers on the seventeenth of Tammuz, and five other disasters happened on the Ninth of Av.

On the seventeenth of Tammuz:

·         the tablets were broken by Moses when he saw that the Jews had made the golden calf;

·         the daily offering was nullified by the Roman authorities and was never sacrificed again;

·         the city walls of Jerusalem were breached;

·         the general Apostomos publicly burned a Torah scroll;

·         and Manasseh placed an idol in the Sanctuary.

This is the one and only mention of a person called Apostomus (or alternatively Postemus) in the entire Talmud and accordingly, it is assumed that he was either Greek or Roman, with the probability being the former.  According to some sources, He may even have been the infamous Antiochus IV from the Chanukah story.

Whoever he was, his malicious act had reverberations that lasted throughout the centuries with the public burning of Holy texts being repeated again and again throughout Europe.  As we know, from recent history, The Nazis (yimach shemom -may their names be wiped out forever) revelled in such horrific activities.

On Kristallnacht, they removed the Torah Scrolls from the Fasanen Street Shul and carried them to the nearby Wittenberg Square where they were subsequently burned.  In Düsseldorf, German men who had dressed themselves in Rabbinical and Cantorial Robes burned the Sifrei Torah and danced around the bonfire.

The famed German Jewish author, Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) wrote presciently in his 1821 play 'Almansor', "Where books are burned in the end people will burn."

His books were also amongst those burned by the Nazis, less than a century after his death.

All of which brings us to the present day.

A few weeks ago, over the Muslim holiday of Eid-El Adha, two men standing outside a mosque in Stockholm tore out pages from the Koran and set them on fire.  If that wasn’t horrific enough, they had been granted a permit from the police to do so!  As you can appreciate, there was understandable outrage from the global Muslim population and in fact, the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad was stormed by a mob of angry adherents.

Faith leaders across Sweden issued condemnations, including officials of the Jewish Community as well as Israel's President Herzog.

Freedom of expression, in its many forms, for example the freedom to demonstrate, assemble, acquire information etc, is a central tenet of Sweden’s constitution.  Notably, this also includes the freedom to practice one's religion and the country has one of the world's most advanced records of human rights.  It is also noted as being possibly, the world's most ethical country discusses this question.

However, this has proven to be a double-edged sword because this means that is open to abuse.  As per what happened next.

Following the burning, numerous requests were made by individuals to the police to receive permits to burn other holy texts, including another Koran, a New Testament and a Torah Scroll.  The Swedish Authorities granted permission for the three to be set alight last Shabbat, 15th July in front of the Israeli Embassy in Stockholm.  Understandably, the respective communities were shocked and the Jewish Central Council (the umbrella group for Swedish Jewry) issued a statement which said:

“As a people of the book, the Torah is our most sacred treasure of moral codes and ethics that have changed the world we live in.  Our tragic European history links the burning of Jewish books with pogroms, expulsions, inquisitions, and the Holocaust...

Burning holy books, be it the Quran, the Torah, or the New Testament, are hateful acts that we perceive as direct threats to the societies that value them.”

President Herzog added:

“I unequivocally condemn the permission granted in Sweden to burn holy books.

As the President of the State of Israel, I condemned the burning of the Quran, sacred to Muslims the world over, and I am now heartbroken that the same fate awaits a Jewish Bible, the eternal book of the Jewish people.  Permitting the defacement of sacred texts is not an exercise in freedom of expression, it is blatant incitement and an act of pure hate.  The whole world must join together in clearly condemning this repulsive act.”

These words fell on deaf ears and so, last Shabbat morning, the man who had submitted the permit, a young Syrian called Ahmad Alush came to the Embassy holding a single lighter (but no books) threw it onto the ground and told the media assembled there:

“It is against the Koran to burn and I will not burn.  No one should do that,” This is a response to the people who burn the Quran.  I want to show that freedom of expression has limits that must be taken into account.  I want to show that we have to respect each other,” said Alush.  “We live in the same society.  If I burn the Torah, another the Bible, another the Koran, there will be war here.  What I wanted to show is that it’s not right to do it.”

It took a young Muslim to warn the Authorities of what can happen when 'freedoms' get out of hand.  Whether or not he planned the action as a 'publicity stunt' is not yet clear but on Thursday, two men (including the same individual who had originally burned the pages last month) jumped upon and kicked a Quran outside the Iraqi Embassy in Stockholm. The police did nothing to stop them.

Sweden's 'freedoms' are bringing out the worst human character traits in some people, as we have seen, that the disregard for one religion's holy books naturally impacts those of others'.  As Paster Martin Niemöller wrote in his poem "First They Came" (1946):

First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out -

because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -

because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out -

because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -

because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me –

and there was no one left to speak out for me

If we substitute 'Muslims' for 'Jews', it is not difficult to imagine the outcome as per the quote: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

What is it about the Torah (as well as the Koran and Christian Bible) that brings people to commit such destructive acts?

Alon Confino is the Director of the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide and Memory Studies, and Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts.  In a 2014 article on the Commentary website (https://www.commentary.org/articles/onfino-alon/why-the-nazis-burned-the-hebrew-bible/) he writes:

 

"The burning was part of a larger story Germans told themselves during the Third Reich about who they were, where they came from, how they had arrived there, and where they were headed.  The burning of the Bible was about covenants: old, new, and newer still...burning the Bible, and by extension Kristallnacht, was part of the Nazi tale about the Jews as inheritors of a tradition that threatened the Third Reich…burning the Bible was not an assault on Jews as individuals supposedly staining daily life in Nazi Germany, but on Judaism as a whole.  It was not about fixing the present, but about fixing the past.  It was not primarily about pushing the Jews to emigrate from Germany or a reflection of uncontrollable hatred, but about building a racial civilization by extinguishing the authority of the Jews over a moral past embedded in the Bible."

Devarim, the fifth and final book of the Torah is without a doubt one of the finest and most sublime texts ever written down.  It is Moshe's legacy to the Jewish people and the rest of humanity.  In its eleven Parshiot, it records his final three orations and constitutes the very definition of the Covenantal relationship between Gd and the Jewish people.  It is not for naught that it is also called the 'Mishneh Torah' (the repetition of the Torah) as it replicates much of what has appeared previously.

In doing so, it underscores precisely what the Nazis and their predecessors tried to destroy, namely the foundations of what constitutes a moral, ethical and just society where individual human rights are paramount.  Not the 'freedoms' suggested in the Swedish Constitution, which, as I have described, allow people to attack religions and beliefs that they disagree with, but the kind of rights enshrined in the American Constitution (which was strongly based on the Torah) as it states in its preamble:

"'We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Without Devarim, without the emphasis on setting up a just society, where every person is treated in a humane fashion (even slaves and prisoners of war), where commandments such as sending the mother bird away to spare it the pain of seeing her eggs removed from the nest, are proscribed.  Without these laws and many, many more, the societies in which we live would be akin to those proposed by the Nazis.  Where human rights were abolished.  Where the value of life was negligible.  Where a person, who did not 'fit into the Aryan mould' was eliminated.  This is what a Devarim-free world would look like.

Sweden may have the best of intentions in wishing to grant freedoms to all and sundry, but sadly, its naive approach has led to the scenes we are witnessing and where books are burned.  We dread what this could, Gd forbid, lead to, if left unchecked.  For, it is not that great a descent from burning books to, Gd forbid, setting light to Mosques, Churches and/ or Synagogues.

We are rapidly approaching the Fast of Tisha B'Av which recalls what happened when human cruelty was allowed free reign.  Our long history has shown us that what begins with one act of destruction almost inevitably leads to many others, far worse in their destructive force.

Let Sefer Devarim remind us of the paths we should follow to guarantee the continued stability and growth of both the Jewish people and our Gentile neighbours.  We cannot let those who see merit in burning the texts, that we value so much, succeed in their malicious acts.  We must stand up in unison against them.

"These are the words that Moshe addressed to all of Israel on the other side of the Jordan."

It is these words that will fortify us in our endeavours to fight the forces of evil, wherever they may arise.  We owe it to ourselves and future generations to 'fight that fight'.  It is a battle that no-one who values maintaining a just and moral society, can afford to lose.

Shavuah Tov.