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.

Parashat Terumah: Jo, Walter and the Ark of the Covenant

 Jo and Walter were born nearly fifteen years apart.  Jo, on 5^th September in Chicago and Walter, on 19^th March in Idar-Obestein in what was ‘West Germany’.

Her father, Armando Tejada, was a Bolivian aeronautical engineer, whilst her mother Josephine was of English descent and the daughter of an architect.  Jo was the eldest of three children.  The family moved to San Diego when Jo was two years old and she attended the Pacific Beach Presbyterian Church with her mother every Sunday morning.  At the same time, her mother enrolled her in ballet lessons.  Many years later, she recalled her father as being a ‘dominating and tyrannical figure’ which led to her parents divorcing around the time she was finishing high school.

Blessed with beauty from a very young age, she won a number of contests which led to her being crowned the ‘Maid of California’.

Walter’s father was an American soldier and when he was two, his parents moved to Carney’s Point in New Jersey.  He had a younger sister and two younger brothers.  His mother obtained a job working in a bank whilst his father held down a number of occupations which included being a welder, factory worker and master mechanic.  In school, Walter had a noticeable stutter and he later recalled:

‘I had a terrible stutter.  But then I did some theatre in high school and when I memorized words, I didn't stutter, which was just miraculous.  That was the beginning of the gradual dispelling of my stutter.  I thought I was handicapped.  I couldn't talk at all.  I still stutter around some people now’.

In terms of his background, he described himself as coming from ‘a long line of blue-collar people’.

Who were Jo and Walter?  Both individuals achieved worldwide fame as Raquel Welch and Bruce Willis (dropping their true first names).

 

Sadly, Raquel passed away on 15^th February at the age of 82 and a day later, Bruce’s family announced to the world that he had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and that his condition had progressed to the point that ‘challenges with communication are just one symptom of the disease.’ He is only 67 years old.

In the 1960s and 1980’s, Raquel Welch and Bruce Willis could have been compared to Barbie and Ken as examples of their respective aesthetic forms.

As ‘The Times’ wrote in their obituary of Raquel:

They say a picture is worth a thousand words and with only three lines in the film ‘One Million Years BC’, Raquel Welch said considerably fewer than that.

Yet the image of her in her costume (I have edited the exact description for appropriateness) was far more eloquent.  The New York Times called the shot “a marvellous breathing monument to womankind” and, even before the film reached cinema screens, a publicity still of Welch in her cave woman outfit became a bestselling poster and had turned her into one of the world’s most alluring ____ symbols (fill in the blank)

Bruce, meanwhile, particularly in his John McLane ‘Die Hard’ role, represented many of our visions of what it meant to be a ‘real man’.  He was there, in the thick of the action fighting for justice against some really nasty individuals (who were more often than not, British) and getting really badly hurt in the process.  We felt his pain, yet we came back for more.  You knew that if you saw a ‘Bruce Willis Movie’, you wouldn’t leave the cinema disappointed; and we never did.  When he wasn’t running around barefoot in a tattered shirt and shredded, bloodstained feet, he was impressing us with his performances in critically acclaimed and commercially successful films like ‘Pulp Fiction, ‘The Sixth Sense’, ‘Twelve Monkeys’ and ‘Armageddon’, not forgetting his memorable earlier work on television in the series ‘Moonlighting’.

The same Bruce who stuttered.  The same Raquel who spent her life asking people to look beyond her outer beauty and consider the intelligence below the surface.  On one occasion she told a director that she had been reading the script and had (according to the Obituarist) ‘been thinking’.   He cut her short and told her, “Well, don’t!” How demeaning must that have felt?

I thought about these two actors when I considered this week’s Parasha.

The Torah tells us that Gd spoke to Moses and gave him detailed instructions on how to create many of the Holy objects that would populate the Mishkan (Tabernacle).

Exodus Chapter 25

Make an ark of acacia wood...overlay it with pure gold, inside and out and around it, make a round rim...make a table of acacia wood...overlay it with pure gold and around it make a gold rim...make the staves of acacia wood and overlay them with gold…

Many of the holy objects, such as the Aron Habrit, the Ark of the Covenant, which would house both the broken tablets as well as the second set of the Ten Commandments, were made of acacia wood, overlaid with gold.

Using a material as simple as wood to construct and house such holy objects seems inappropriate.  Rashi tells us that the Ark consisted of three boxes.  The wooden box fit snugly inside a large outer gold box.  Within the wooden box, a smaller gold box was inserted.  The outer exposed wooden rim (of the middle box) was covered with a gold plate.  In other words, the wooden box sat in the middle of the largest and smallest gold boxes.

Why not place three golden boxes, one inside the other?

Rabbi Shamshon Raphael Hirsch (d.1888) gave a beautiful explanation.

He said that, just like the Ark, we are the vessels that hold the Torah.  The Ark was made of two materials, namely gold and wood.  We are human manifestations of the Ark, in that we are living receptacles that hold onto the teachings of the Torah as we try to lead our lives according to its ways.  Like the kind of metal it is, we too have the purity of gold in our thoughts and actions.  However, there are always challenges from within and without that try to water down our faith, our belief in Torah and in this metaphor, pollute our gold.  Though gold as a metal is beautiful, it is indeed that – a metal.  It is static and cannot fight those who wish to sully it.  Wood, however, is different.  It is organic and like a tree, can grow and develop.  Wood is alive.  It gives us the strength to hold onto our faith and fight back against those who try to rob us of our beliefs and deny us our heritage.  The Ark had a gold surface, but at its heart it was made of wood.  As we say about the Torah every time we close the Ark:

“Etz Chayim Hi Lemachazikim Ba – It is a tree of life to those who grasp it”.

On the surface, Raquel and Bruce appeared to be human embodiments of gold.  Coruscating in their beauty but underneath they were, and are, just like the rest of us - organisms that are imperfect and vulnerable.  They remind us that, ‘not all that glitters is gold’. Sometimes we need to scratch the surface if we want to reveal the real people behind the studio-manufactured product.

The Ark of the Covenant and its companions may have been covered with gold, but beneath their exteriors lay the true beating heart of the Jewish people –the Torah that we cherish today.  Its wooden structure held firm and protected it, metaphorically and physically.  Gold might be beautiful but it is soft.  Wood may not be as aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but it is very strong.  It was the perfect combination.

We are the spiritual descendants of the Ark of the Covenant.  May Hashem bless us with the coming of the Moshiach so that we may finally see the Ark returned to the Third Temple – may he come speedily in our days – bimhera beyamenu, Amen!

Shavuah Tov

Sources for this Drasha (for Raquel Welch and Bruce Willis):

·         https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/racquel-welch-actress-dies-illness-lqffj9gwb

·         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raquel_Welch

·         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Willis

·         https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000246/?ref_=nmbio_bio_nm

Parashat Mishpatim: Our Arrow

‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach’
(George Bernard Shaw, ‘Man and Superman’, 1905)

‘Those who can't do, teach.  And those who can't teach, teach gym.’
(Woody Allen, Annie Hall, 1977)

A few years ago, my youngest two daughters went to New York on a sightseeing trip.  Neither had been before and they had a wonderful time together.  They brought me some souvenirs, one of which sits on my work desk and makes me smile every time I glance at it.

It’s a desk plate displaying the following legend:

Any fellow teachers out there (and presumably non-educationalists too) will appreciate the irony of the quotation.  For if that were really the case, many of my colleagues and friends would not be standing on the picket-lines losing a day’s pay to make their point.  If anything, carrying out our jobs leads to infamy!  I didn’t become a teacher to curry favour with students.  I chose this profession because I believed, and still do, in the intrinsic importance of education in a young person’s emotional and intellectual development.  Teaching adolescents is highly rewarding whilst simultaneously managing to be frustrating, exhausting and at times soul-destroying.  Why do I put myself through this on a daily basis?  That is a question I have been asking for over a decade?  Because I wouldn’t dream of doing anything else.

 Parashat Mishpatim contains 53 mitzvot, commandments, 23 positive or imperative and 30 negative (‘you must not do this’).

Topics include the laws regarding the treatment of a Hebrew slave (also known as an ‘indentured servant’); the granting of loans; the rules regarding setting up courts of law; the observance of the festivals; separating meat and milk and the mistreatment of foreigners.

The Hertz Chumash uses the following useful categories to help us make sense of the order:

1.    Civil Legislation.

2.    Personal Injuries.

3.    Offences Against Property.

4.    Moral Offences.

5.    The Sabbatical Year and the Sabbath Day.

6.    The Three Annual Pilgrim Festivals.

7.    Moses’ warning of what would happen if the laws weren’t followed.

The laws that Gd instructed our teacher Moshe, immediately following the giving of the Ten Commandments, make up the bulk of the Parasha.  If we place these in the context of what has happened to date, they are remarkable.  From the beginning of Bereishit until the end of last week’s Parasha of Yitro, the style employed throughout the Torah has been that of a narrative.

As Rabbi Sacks’ and others have pointed out, this is not accidental.  The Torah’s function as a Holy Book is to educate us.  The word ‘Torah’ means ‘direction or instruction’ from the root of yud-resh-hey (ירה) which originally meant ‘to throw or shoot an arrow’ and in modern Hebrew refers to firing or shooting a gun.  In its causative form, it means ‘to cause someone or something to move straight or true’.  Like an arrow, the Torah gives us strong direction.  It tells us how to ‘fly correctly’ following a straight line.  In other words, it guides us.

What’s the best way of educating our children (and others) to set them up on the ‘straight path’?  By telling them stories.  If I were to give you a choice of either reading a list of laws or hearing a story, which would you prefer?  I know that if it were me, I’d definitely go with the latter option.  Stories are fun.  You can engage with them.  You can relate, especially if they inform you of something that you didn’t know; all the more if they move you in the process.

However, if the Torah was simply a storybook, would it have maintained its position as the world’s best-selling tome?  According to the British and Foreign Bible Society, as of 2021, it is estimated that between five and seven billion copies of the Christian Bible have been sold and/or distributed.  When you consider that the earth has recently registered its eighth billionth human birth, this means that the vast majority of us have a copy of the Bible, which of course includes a translation of the Torah.  How accurate this is would be the subject matter of a very different Drasha.

If the Torah were simply a storybook, our arrow may fly in a straight line, but it would not reach its destination.  It must be solidly constructed and able to negotiate all kinds of obstacles in its path.  The commandments are its housing.  Stories are nice but, to be effective, they have to carry a message. 

Mishpatim opens Gd’s gift by sharing its contents following the thunder, lightning, thick cloud and the sound of the Shofar which terrified the people as they witnessed the giving of the Torah. Just as I didn’t become a teacher for the ‘money and the fame’, so the Torah, our textbook and then some, is much more than the spectacle that we witnessed in the desert. 

Moshe, our teacher, gave us Gd’s curriculum which includes every subject under the sun, including our annual timetable.  We need to have a Parasha like Mishpatim to take us beyond the stories, so that we can create societies based on the moral guidance therein.  Without the mitzvot, the stories are empty.  Without the stories, it is difficult to envisage how to keep the mitzvot.  We need to see living, breathing examples of people learning from the Torah and ‘living it’.  That’s how we can benchmark their behaviour against our own.  That’s how we can literally ‘live the Torah’.

Reading the Torah elevates my soul.  My choice to lead a life as an Orthodox Jew leaves little in my bank account, especially when it comes to keeping Kosher.  That said, despite the huge amounts of money I could have saved, I wouldn’t have chosen any other path to follow.  Just like my decision to become a teacher.

If I have managed to pass that message onto anyone else, I can be comforted in the knowledge that my arrow has hit its target.

On a final note, I’d like to refer to Woody Allen’s quote and how misguided I think it is.  Through the years, I can honestly state that ‘those who teach gym’ are some of the best practitioners I’ve come across in our profession.  I would add that those who can teach are some of the most important individuals making up our society.

A thought to leave you with.

Who was your favourite teacher and why is this the case?

Are they rich and famous?

Shavuah Tov