Abuse of Power

Imagine it is 3,000 years ago and you're a soldier in an army somewhere in the Ancient Near East. You have your sword and shield. You come to a town and besiege it with your band of merry men. 

You are successful and begin to do what soldiers in those days did when they broke into an enemy's town - you killed the men, gathered up the loot, and - if you happened to see a nice redhead with a stylish 1950's haircut - you gathered her up, as well. 

The question is, what do you do with her when you get back to your place? 

In Parashat Ki Tetzei, the Torah tells us (Deut. 21:10-14) that such a woman is required to cut her hair, grow her nails and mourn for her father and mother a full month. Only after that time, the Torah says, "she shall be a wife to you."

Several rabbis comment on this. 

One is Nachmanides, who said that after the 30 day waiting period the captured woman could be forced to marry her captor. However, he also said that during those 30 days, the man would witness her pain and mourning and would, hopefully, treat her gently as she adjusted to her new life.

In contrast, Maimonides said the 30 days of mourning were simply the allotted time that the soldier had to convince the captured woman to marry him.  After the 30 days the woman had the right to leave.  Under no circumstances could she be forced to remain against her will.

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Not long after this section of the Torah, God instructs the Israelites to destroy Amalek (Deut. 25:17). Amalek's great sin was that it attacked the rear of the Israelite column where the children, elderly and sick were walking. Amalek intentionally went after the most vulnerable people. 

In contrast, Maimonides tells us - as we saw above - that Judaism prohibits taking advantage of those who are less powerful than us.  How we treat people that we have some power or leverage over says a great deal about who we are. Because we do have power in some of our relationships, we have a religious obligation to use it with compassion.

So in place of a captured slave girl, think instead of how the Torah would want you to treat your housekeeper, or a server in a restaurant, or a parking attendant, or an employee. 

How we treat others makes all the difference.

Why a Shofar?

Ever wonder why we sound the Shofar on Rosh HaShanah?
First a story and then an explanation…

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev explains why in the following tale:

“A king once became hopelessly lost in the forest.  Eventually, he met a man who – recognizing the king – escorted him out of the forest. The king rewarded him grandly.

Fortunes, however, rise and fall. Sometime later, the same man infuriated the king through one of his actions and was sentenced to death. Before he was to be executed, the king granted him a final wish. 

The man said: “I ask that I be allowed to wear the same clothes I wore when I escorted the king out of the forest, and the king should also wear the clothes he wore that day. The king did so. 

When they were both dressed in the same clothes that they wore that day in the forest, the king’s heart softened as he remembered that day and he forgave the man.”

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Sometimes, after we’ve managed to seriously antagonize someone we love, we try to make amends by means of the delicate art of redirection.  We remind the aggrieved party of the good ol’ days before we did whatever dumb thing we did.

Hence the Shofar!  When God gave the Jewish People the Torah at Mt. Sinai, it was a good day for God and a good day for us!  Tradition states that the giving of the Torah was accompanied by the sound of a Shofar. 

Jump forward to today. As the High holy Days approach, the time has arrived to begin asking God for forgiveness. We’ve all made our share of mistakes. So what do we do?  We pull out the Shofar!  We ask God to remember that momentous morning in the desert long ago and to give us a second chance today.

And until we are all perfect, second chances are good. 

If a tree fall in a forest...

In this week's Torah Portion - Shoftim - an army besieging a town is commanded by the Torah to not cut down the surrounding fruit trees. Two rabbinic commentators, Ibn Ezra and Rashi, offer diametrically opposed reasons why the Torah says what it says.
 
Ibn Ezra says that the commandment exists ultimately for the welfare of human beings, since the fruit trees provides food. Cut them down and there will be less food.

Rashi says that the Mitzvah is there to teach us that certain things have intrinsic value above and beyond the needs of human beings. The trees should not be cut down because - unlike the people of the city that is being besieged - they cannot flee and protect themselves.

So the question we need to ask ourselves today - please excuse the reference to treif - is whether or not the entire world is really our oyster? Does human need grant us the right to help ourselves to the earth's resources as we see fit? 

Conversely, as Rashi suggests, are there certain things we refrain from exploiting simply because they exist and should be held sacred for that reason alone? 

Taiku.

Sharing Your Light

Technology changes. The world moves on. 
And some careers are just not what they used to be.
 
There is not a big market presently for typewriters or carbon paper. Manufacturers of horse drawn buggies have seen better days. And the job of walking the streets lighting the gas lamps that once stood at every corner of some major cities has long since disappeared. 
 
Well, maybe. 

A rabbi was once asked by one of his students: “Rabbi, who is a righteous person?”

The rabbi answered: “A righteous person is a lamplighter. A lamplighter wanders through the streets carrying his flame. He recognizes that the flame doesn't belong to him. He simply keeps the flame alive. And he goes from street-corner to street-corner, from lamp-to-lamp, and shares his light.”

What, me cursed?!

After the snake offered Eve the Forbidden Fruit in Gan Eden (The Garden of Eden), God cursed the snake by telling it that "On your belly you shall crawl, and dust you shall eat, all the days of your life" (Genesis 3:14).
 
Rabbi Simcha Bunem commented that since dust is everywhere - and dust is what the snake eats - it would never go hungry. Not much of a curse, eh?

However, the Rabbi said, human beings periodically do get hungry. We sometimes are in want. We sometimes are in pain. We sometimes are in need of help and comfort. And sometimes we reach out to God for that help. We ask for inspiration. We seek insight. We pray for strength.

The snake does not. It doesn’t need to. It has all the dust it wants, and as such, has little. It has no struggles. It asks for nothing. It doesn’t need to overcome anything.

And THAT is its curse.

Ethical Chutzpah

In this week’s Torah Portion – Ekev – Moses recounts  the story of the Golden Calf.  You know how it goes: Moses heads up Mt. Sinai to get the Torah. He doesn’t come down when the people expect him to. The Israelites flip out.  They create a golden calf. And they start to worship it.

In what might be described as a slight overreaction, God then decides to kill everyone.  Everyone except Moses, that is. God specifically tells Moses to back away so that God can have some room to work, kill the Israelites and start over with Moses.  (Deut. 9:14.)

Moses then does something quite interesting – he totally ignores God’s command and does exactly the opposite of what God commanded him. Rather than backing off, Moses becomes even more passionate about arguing with God about saving the Israelites. (Exodus 32:11.)

That took some Chutzpah, don’t you think?  Moses ignores a direct command from God. Ouch!

But, when you think about it, isn't this exactly what he needed to do? It was an unethical command. God was basically telling Moses to sit back and let God kill hundreds of thousands of people. How could Moses possibly follow such an order?!

Throughout history, countless people have faced similar moments like this. They are commanded to perform an unethical or immoral action and then have to make a decision on whether or not to follow it.

Civilians living in America had a choice to protest the internments of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Most Americans were silent.

Civilians living in Germany prior to WWII had to decide whether or not to follow their government’s lead and acquiesce to the rounding up and killing of millions of Jewish men, women and children.  The majority said nothing.

Yes, we would like to think that we would do what Moses did and confront an injustice head on, but historical precedence seems to indicate just the opposite.

But, then again, awareness is strength.  So, really, what would you do?

Wrong Bus

Many years ago, I was on a bus in Jerusalem, when an elderly woman suddenly realized that she had boarded the wrong bus. This particular bus was taking her seven blocks away from where she intended to go - a difficult walk for anybody in the middle of a hot Israel summer.

She approached the driver and explained her mistake. The driver then yelled out the situation to the rest of the passengers and said - if it was ok with everyone - that he was going to go off-route for a few moments to drop the woman off at her house. 

No one complained so off we went, this big red Egged bus winding its way incongruously through the narrow neighborhood streets of Jerusalem, driver at the wheel and the old woman standing over his shoulder telling him where to turn.

It was surreal - this crowed, unairconditioned bus turned suddenly into a private limo!

We arrived at her apartment after a few minutes. The bus stopped, the door opened, and the woman gingerly descended from the bus, just ten steps away from her front door! The driver then returned to the normal route.

When the bus arrived at my stop, I paused and asked the driver why he agreed to go out of his way to such an extent. 

I will always remember his reply:   "I live to help people."

Celebrating 'Schmutz'...

In Parashat V'etchanan (Deut. 4:44)
we find the Biblical source for the phrase
"V'zot haTorah asher sam Moshe..." 

If you attend Shabbat Morning Services on a regular basis you will undoubtedly recognize this as the very phrase we sing as the Sefer Torah is lifted into the air at the conclusion of the Torah reading.

The entire congregation is standing on its feet, pointing at the Torah, proclaiming in unison that "this is the Torah that Moses put before the Jewish people" having received it from God.

It is a grand moment!  And one would expect that the context in which this verse appears in the Torah would be equally grand. One would expect that it would have been some consummate moment in Jewish history where the Israelites stand together before Moses and God and proclaim the glory of the Torah and their recognition of its sacred source! 
 
So you would expect.  
But you would be wrong. 

Our verse is immediately preceded (Deut. 4:41-43) by a description of the treatment of people who killed someone by accident. The Torah describes the setting up of Cities of Refuge - sanctuaries established throughout the land of Israel where people who committed certain crimes could flee.

 
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Any scholar of texts from the Ancient Near East will tell you that most of the stories of ancient Mesopotamia are inhabited mainly by over-sized heroes. Everyone is darn near perfect.  

In the Torah, no one is. People are constantly messing up. Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit. Abraham tries to sacrifice Isaac. Jacob cheats Esau. Esau tries to kill Jacob. Jacob's sons think about killing Joseph but sell him into slavery instead. 

The fun never stops!

But this is what makes it all so relevant to us. The Torah describes real human beings - or at least the behavior patterns of what real human beings would do. These are not marble men, not caricatures, but people with 'schmutz', people with real flaws and frailties, passions and jealousies. 

These are people we can relate to. These are people we can identify with. And their struggles - and ultimately, their personal growth - become a model and an inspiration for ours. 

So "V'zot haTorah asher sam Moshe."  THIS is the Torah that Moses gave us. This is the Torah we point to. A Torah of imperfect people.  

Thankfully, we are rarely inadvertent killers. However, we are people who sometimes make mistakes and - thankfully - end up learning from them.

Flaws & Blessings...

An elderly woman used to leave her village each morning to collect water from a river. In her hands were two buckets. One leaks badly. By the time she walked back to her village the bucket with the crack was always half empty.

This ritual repeated itself day after day, month after month. This being a fable, the bucket with the crack in it had feelings, and its feelings were hurt. It felt inferior to its non-leaky neighbor and was embarrassed by its flaws. It also felt bad for the woman.

One day, while by the stream, the leaky bucket spoke to her. "I am ashamed because this crack in my side leaks water all the way back to your house. I have let you down."

The old woman replied kindly; "By chance, did you fail to notice the long line of flowers growing so beautifully on your side of the path?  I planted flowers on that side so that every day on our walk back you would water them."

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Okay, the story is a little sappy, I admit. Also, the leaky bucket seems a bit clueless, don't you think? I mean, how could it not notice how it's "flaw" was, in fact, a gift?

None of us would ever do such a thing! (Would we?)