CHOCHMAS NASHIM: MISHPATIM: HARVIETTA AT THE DRIVE-THRU
PRESIDENT HERZOG, LET MY PEOPLE GO!!!!
By: Suri Davis
In this week’s torah portion, I want to hone in on three Hebrew words. Exodus 21:12/3. “A man who strikes another man who dies, must be put to death. But one who strikes another without intent to do so but caused it to happen to him, then I will provide you a place to flee.”
We believe that all is from G-d. G-d wanted a person dead and decided that it should be at the hand of another. Whether the person who acted to kill did so intentionally or accidentally, it was all the will of G-d, so why should the killer have any consequence? Where do we see this concept in ancient Jewish history? Pharaoh and Nevuchadnezar.
Pharaoh may easily state to G-d, “hey G-d, why did you punish me, after all it was determined hundreds of years before, when you spoke with Abraham, that there would be Egyptian slavery, I just carried out your plan.”
So too, with Nevuchadnezar, the Babylonian king, who carried out the first exile of the Jews from Israel. Nevuchadnezar was not punished.
What is the difference between the two? Pharaoh, at one point, after Moses came to him and demanded that the Jews be freed, doubled down on his torture of the Jews by demanding of them that they perform added tasks with the same output. He relished the torture, and for this, Pharaoh was punished. Nevuchadnezar was not.
Yesterday, was international Holocaust Remembrance Day, when millions of people were killed among them six million Jews. One might ask, well this was the clear will of G-d which was carried out by Hitler and the German people and their allies, why should there be reparations. The answer relates to this week’s torah portion, the Germans relished their torture and torment of those they killed, and for that, they needed to be punished. The downfall of a cultured nation, which could turn so barbaric in nature.
There are Jews around the world who enjoy Jewish culture without Jewish ritual. It is the ritual, those acts of commitment towards G-d and others, which secures culture to ethics and morality. Judaism is not merely its art, music and texts, it is commitment to G-d and to others in society. Without binding the two, we see that culture in and of itself, is not sufficient to ensure the entire raison detre of religion, which is morality, ethics, a commitment to kindness to others and to being a light unto the nations.
The Holocaust is a reminder of laws gone awry. I drove through the Starbucks in Lawrence, and Harvietta was working on my coffee when I saw she was unhappy, and asked her why. She said it was difficult working long days in her mask. After two years of the pandemics and masks there is a weariness. She understands the law and the reasons behind it, but there is burnout when you follow the laws, and the virus is still raging out of control and you ask yourself individually and as a nation, why.
The torah portion this week contains the laws that have revealed reasons behind them. They are meant to provide guidance to an ethical society with justice at its core and as its foundation. Yet although we understand these laws, and their importance, after thousands of years of exile, and we ask whether redemption will ever come.
Even within the exile, Israel has caused Jews around the world to suffer a more by shutting down its borders to Jews for the first time since the nation was born in 1948, and that is inexcusable. My son was in the hospital, and they wouldn’t let me in to be with him. They were permitting only those who were there for funerals. It dawned on me then, that I understood what the spies said when they went to spy on Israel and report back what they found. All but two, claimed that Israel was a land which “ate its inhabitants.” A land physically is opened up for burial, but when Israel closes its borders for everyone and everything except burials, then it is a land whose only access is to open up to eat its inhabitants, a land for burial. This policy has to end, and the borders have to open up to all Jews for any reason. G-d has caused the pandemic, the acts of man in response is in their own hands and Israel’s laws of exclusion are cruel.
PRESIDENT HERZOG, LET MY PEOPLE GO!!!
Shabbat shalom.
Gutten Chodesh.
-Suri