Chief Rabbi, Rabbanim, Rebbetzins, MP Catherine West, Chair Daniel Shaw, Honorary Officers, US President Michael Goldstein, honoured guests, colleagues, family, and friends—and most importantly, members of this warm and dynamic community. Thank you for sharing this day with us. Some of you were instrumental in our journey to this shul: a special thanks to Sophie Dunoff from University Jewish Chaplaincy, Stephen Frosh, Rafi Zarum at LSJS.
Tracey, my partner in everything. It is a blessing to build this life and this community with you. I couldn’t do any of this without you. To our children—Shalva, forging her path in Israel, and to Oriel and Amalya, who have integrated into London life so beautifully—we are so proud of you, and so grateful that you are part of our shul and our work. And to our parents and family joining from as far as Australia and America, thank you for being with us today. Your support has been instrumental on this journey.
It is an honour to stand here as your rabbi. While this ceremony marks a formal induction, it is truly a moment to reaffirm the partnership we began nearly a year ago—a partnership rooted in a shared love for Jewish life. Today is a renewal of our covenant as a community and a declaration of our shared future on the vibrant path of modern Orthodoxy.
This past year has been one of full circles. Just last week, I stood under the chuppah to officiate at my first Muswell Hill wedding, having come directly from a stone-setting which was the first funeral I conducted in this role. The couple, David and Claudia, had met years ago at a student Friday night dinner we were part of in Oxford. In those two moments—one of profound sorrow, the other of boundless joy—I felt the immense privilege of being a rabbi: the honour of building lifelong relationships and being present with you not just for a moment, but through the journey of your lives.
As we approach this Shabbat, we will read Parshat Balak, and I find myself drawn to the words of Bilam. Hired to curse, he found himself unable to utter anything but blessings. And among them are the words we recite every day upon entering this shul: “Ma Tovu Ohalekha Yaakov, Mishkenotekha Yisrael” – “How goodly are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.”
Bilam, an outsider, saw with startling clarity the intrinsic goodness of our community. He saw the harmony and shared purpose that make our ‘tents’—our homes and families—and our ‘dwelling places’—our synagogues—truly beautiful. He saw what makes us good, even when others seek to find fault.
I’ve often given tours of the synagogue to visiting schoolchildren, and they ask: “What is the most important thing in the shul?” They expect me to point to the Ark or the Torah scrolls, and those are indeed the sacred heart of our sanctuary. But I always tell them the most important thing is the people. It is you—the community that fills these seats—that transforms this building into a holy place.
Rav Kook explained the difference between the two terms in Bilam’s blessing. A ‘tent’ is what we use on a journey; it represents our need to grow and evolve. A ‘dwelling place’ is where we feel at home; it represents our need to be rooted in eternal values. For a modern Orthodox community, this is our sacred task: to be both a tent and a dwelling place. To be a community that is constantly growing, while remaining deeply rooted.
And as I look back on this past year, I see a community that has truly lived out the blessing of Ma Tovu.
I see it in our Year 6 cooking programme, where our children embraced tradition not as a duty, but as a delicious adventure, fostering a joyous Jewish identity and learning vital aspects of kashrut as part of the programme.
I see it in the vibrant unity of our Sukkah Carnival, where generations came together to celebrate, reminding us of the strength we draw from one another.
And I see it in the moments of profound sorrow and solidarity. Our memorial for October 7th was a vital gathering where we leaned on each other, reaffirming our unshakeable bond with Israel and with each other, holding both grief and hope in our hearts.
Even amidst such challenges, our thirst for spiritual growth flourished. Our renewed Shavuot learning programme was a testament to our community’s commitment to Torah, proving that we thrive on the deep and thoughtful exploration of our heritage.
These are our ‘goodly tents’ and ‘dwelling places’. They are not just concepts from the Torah; they are moments we have built together, right here.
So, what is our vision for the future? It is to continue building. Tracey and I are passionate about creating pathways for everyone—young and old—to take the next step on their Jewish journey. Programmes like the Young Wardens will give our B’nei Mitzvah a meaningful role in the service, seeing them through their celebration and beyond.
We are here to build on the incredible foundations laid by previous rabbis and generations. The late Rabbi Sacks taught that, “A leader must have vision, but also realism. He or she must think the impossible but know the possible.” Our ambition is to see this community for all that it is, and to work with you, in partnership, to realise the vision of all it can become.
Thank you for being here. We have so much to celebrate and so much to look forward to.
Comments Off on The Hero’s Journey: Cinderella, Ruth, and the Path of Enduring Commitment
Shavuot calls us into a covenant, to paths consciously chosen. But what if that path begins in desolation, in a landscape of famine, loss, and the unknown? It is here, in such a landscape, that we first encounter Ruth, and as we prepare to read and reflect on Megillat Ruth tomorrow, we find this seemingly simple tale explores profound themes—of heroism and resilience, of famine and family, of faith, kindness, and the rebuilding of society. Many of its messages speak not only to Biblical times of the Judges but also resonate deeply with the complexities of our own world, challenging us to consider where true strength and value lie. Much of what I’ll be sharing draws on the insightful teachings of Rabbi Dr. Joshua Berman of Bar Ilan University, whose work illuminates many of these connections.
To frame our reading, it’s helpful to revisit some of the ideas of Carl Jung, the pioneering psychologist who so compellingly explored the deep, universal patterns of human experience. Jung developed the concept of archetypes—universal symbols or motifs found in storytelling across cultures. One such pattern is the Hero’s Journey, later popularized by Joseph Campbell and echoed in countless narratives, from ancient myth to Star Wars. The hero’s journey is a narrative pattern we might even recognize in our own lives, as we navigate our personal calls to adventure, face our trials, and emerge transformed.
A surprisingly relevant archetypal tale, in this context, is that of Cinderella. Long before Disney, this story was told across cultures. A quick Google search, for instance, traces the earliest written versions to 9th-century China. And yet, I believe we find in the Book of Ruth a profound, and perhaps even foundational, expression of this archetypal story—one that resonates with a unique spiritual depth and may well offer an even more ancient echo of these universal themes.
Today, I want to explore the intriguing similarities and the vital differences between the Cinderella story—especially the French version—and the narrative of Ruth. As we’ll see, both Cinderella and Ruth can be seen as heroines on a hero’s journey. Comparative literature often highlights these fascinating overlaps between stories. But just as importantly, it is often the key differences that illuminate the Torah’s unique moral vision and the values that continue to shape Jewish life and our understanding of a meaningful existence.
Both stories begin with profound, wrenching loss and dislocation, plunging their heroines into vulnerability. Cinderella’s mother dies, followed by her father, leaving her isolated and in the hands of a cruel stepmother and stepsisters. Ruth’s world is similarly shattered: her husband Machlon, her brother-in-law, and her father-in-law all die, leaving her and Naomi in an utterly precarious position, facing famine and bereavement. In both tales, we encounter a woman surrounded by other women, but often starkly alone in her goodness and resilience.
Ruth, like Cinderella, is an outsider—unnoticed, initially unnamed in terms of her future significance, unacknowledged. Remarkably, the first time Ruth is explicitly referred to as “the Moabite” is at the end of Chapter 1, just as she crosses a threshold into a new society, a stranger in a strange land:
וַתָּ֣שׇׁב נׇעֳמִ֗י וְר֨וּת הַמּוֹאֲבִיָּ֤ה כַלָּתָהּ֙ עִמָּ֔הּ הַשָּׁ֖בָה מִשְּׂדֵ֣י מוֹאָ֑ב… “So Naomi returned, and Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, with her, who returned from the fields of Moav…”
This naming highlights a truth: sometimes, we only truly discover or have others define aspects of our identity when we step out of the familiar and into a world that sees us as “other.” This experience of being an outsider, of course, resonates through Jewish history and for many in our modern world seeking belonging and refuge.
And yet, both women persist in doing good amidst adversity. Cinderella endures, taking care of the household despite mistreatment. Ruth, too, takes courageous initiative—going out to glean food not primarily for herself, but with unwavering dedication to support Naomi.
Both stories also include a blend of what we might call Siyata D’shamaya—divine assistance or auspicious circumstances—and hishtadlut—human effort and agency. In Cinderella, the fairy godmother offers supernatural help, but Cinderella must also provide the raw materials: the pumpkin, the mice, and critically, the effort to attend the ball with the driver. In Ruth, we read:
וַיִּ֣קֶר מִקְרֶ֔הָ חֶלְקַ֤ת הַשָּׂדֶה֙ לְבֹ֔עַז… “And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz…”
There’s a deliberate ambiguity here, a “happy chance.” She just happens upon the right field, yet it is her brave initiative, her hishtadlut in going out to glean in an unfamiliar place, that positions her for this “chance” encounter. The chance is understood as God directing the unfolding events. A curious motif in both stories involves food—gathering it, sharing it, and being interrupted while enjoying it. In the French Cinderella tale, she thoughtfully brings oranges for her stepsisters—a small act of continued kindness. In Ruth, she diligently brings gleaned grain home to Naomi. But both scenes of connection or sustenance are cut short: in Cinderella, the clock strikes midnight, breaking the spell; in Ruth, she and Boaz part ways before dawn to preserve modesty and propriety.
And then there’s the shoe—a pivotal symbol in both narratives, yet how differently it functions!
Cinderella’s glass slipper becomes the icon of her hidden identity, fitting only her, and its discovery leads directly to her transformation and marriage. It’s a symbol of passive identification, of being “found.” In Ruth, a shoe also plays a key role—though in a strikingly different manner, illuminating a core Jewish value. The issue at hand is yibum, levirate marriage. Since Ruth’s husband Machlon died without children, the Torah provides a path for a relative to marry the widow to continue the family line and ensure her protection. But the closer relative declines this responsibility. The text describes the ancient Israelite custom:
וְזֹאת֩ לְפָנִ֨ים בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֜ל… שָׁלַ֥ף אִ֛ישׁ נַעֲל֖וֹ… “Now this was the custom in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and exchanging: to confirm a transaction, a man pulled off his shoe and gave it to his neighbour…” And so, the kinsman performs this act: וַיִּשְׁלֹ֖ף נַעֲלֽוֹ׃ “And he drew off his shoe.”
Here, the shoe is not a fragile symbol of romantic destiny or unique identity. It is part of an active legal process, an emblem of legal transfer—of one man relinquishing his responsibility and another, Boaz, stepping up to accept it. It’s about communal obligation and continuity, not just individual desire. This contrast speaks volumes.
In both stories, we witness a transformation in social status. Cinderella not only marries a prince but, in some versions, even helps her stepsisters find matches—becoming a shadchanit of sorts. Ruth, too, is lifted from destitution and sorrow. For the first time, she is publicly praised and blessed:
Here lies a key difference, a divergence in the very definition of a “happy ending.” Cinderella’s story culminates in a wedding, a personal triumph. While Ruth’s story features a marriage towards its end, its final, powerful words in chapter 4 conclude not merely with personal happiness, but with the birth of David—and thus, the promise of Israel’s future leadership and the messianic line. The Book of Ruth meticulously traces the genealogy to the past, to Peretz, son of Yehudah, and projects it forward to the future: the House of David. In this way, it masterfully incorporates the past, present, and future into its vision of redemption.
Another profound contrast lies in the nature of the central relationships and values. In Cinderella, the prince is enamoured by appearance—he doesn’t even know her name, only her beauty at the ball. Cinderella hides her identity, plays a role, relies on enchantment. One heroine, we might say, seeks a prince through disguise and fleeting magic. Ruth, by contrast, is fully present, known, and seen for who she truly is. Her virtues are her unwavering loyalty (chesed), her integrity, and her profound kindness. Boaz doesn’t praise her looks—he praises her character: “All the people of my town know that you are a woman of worth (אֵשֶׁת חַיִל).” She finds her path to redemption through unvarnished authenticity and steadfast character.
Even the settings are deeply symbolic. Cinderella’s pivotal moment is at the royal ball—a place of opulence, competition, and appearances. Ruth’s key moments unfold in the field—a place of labour, of shared vulnerability, of simple sustenance, and ultimately, of divine blessing. In the fields of Bethlehem, people greet one another not with pomp and circumstance, but with a profound spiritual consciousness: “Hashem imachem!” – “God is with you!” And the response: “Yevarech’cha Hashem!” – “May God bless you!” (Incidentally, Ashkenazim might take note: when a Sefardi is called to the Torah, they still say Hashem imachem—to which the congregation should indeed respond Yevarech’cha Hashem.)
In the end, Ruth offers us a deeper, more resonant version of the hero’s journey—not a tale primarily of wealth and glamour, but one of quiet courage, enduring loyalty, and shared human purpose. Her story reminds us that chesed, loving-kindness, and emunah, faithfulness—these are the true markers of greatness, the bedrock for rebuilding lives and society. Ruth’s famous declaration to Naomi, “Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God,” is nothing less than her personal Kabbalat Torah, her own Shavuot moment of radical acceptance and belonging, a commitment that changed her destiny and ours. The Torah itself, received at Sinai, was an ultimate act of Divine chesed; Ruth embodies this chesed on a human scale, showing us how such kindness can transform the world.
As we prepare to stand once more at our modern Sinai this Shavuot, reaffirming our covenant and our shared story, how do we, in our own lives and as a community, draw strength from our past, engage meaningfully with our present, and build a future imbued with this spirit? May Ruth’s journey illuminate our own. May we, like her, choose paths of profound commitment over fleeting comfort, authentic kindness over indifference, and enduring substance over superficial spectacle. May her spirit inspire us to weave threads of chesed and emunah into the fabric of our lives, connecting our past, present, and future with courage, purpose, and in partnership—with one another, and with Hashem.
Comments Off on Kiddush Hashem – Sanctifying God’s Name
Friends, what does it truly mean to sanctify God’s name in the world? When we think of Kiddush Hashem, what comes to mind? Is it primarily through grand sacrifices, moments of profound suffering, our deliberate silences, or specific ritual acts? Today, I want to explore the idea that there are two fundamental and complementary pathways through which we can fulfill this vital mitzvah: one woven into the very fabric of our daily existence, and another manifest in specific, sacred utterances and actions.
We read earlier from Vayikra/Leviticus 22:32 which offers us a foundational directive: וְלֹ֤א תְחַלְּלוּ֙ אֶת־שֵׁ֣ם קׇדְשִׁ֔י וְנִ֨קְדַּשְׁתִּ֔י בְּת֖וֹךְ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אֲנִ֥י ה’ מְקַדִּשְׁכֶֽם׃
“Do not desecrate My holy name. I must be sanctified among the Israelites. I am the Lord, who made you holy and who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord.”
The Torah warns against desecrating God’s name—Chilul Hashem—and commands us to sanctify it—Kiddush Hashem. Traditionally, Chilul Hashem refers to conduct that brings dishonour to God or the Jewish people, while Kiddush Hashem is its antithesis: an act that brings honour and sanctity to God’s name, particularly in the eyes of others.
Let’s first consider the pathway of Kiddush Hashem through mindful living and everyday conduct. This is a way of sanctifying God’s name that is profoundly accessible to every single one of us, every single day. It doesn’t necessarily require taking on new, time-intensive mitzvot, like committing to daily Torah learning or ensuring every bracha is said before eating – though these are, of course, invaluable practices. Rather, it’s about how we conduct ourselves in the lives we already lead, in our work, in our relationships, and in our public and private personas.
Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, a master of Mussar (character development) from the 20th century—a fascinating character who attended the University of Berlin in the 20s and migrated with the Mir Yeshiva to Shanghai during WWII—once taught in a lecture I attended in Jerusalem that the essence of Kiddush Hashem is the way we affect others—how our presence and actions uplift those around us. He stressed that it’s not about dramatic gestures, but about daily dignity and decency.
This idea resonates powerfully with a striking passage from Maimonides in the 12th century. In Hilchot Yesodei ha-Torah (5:11), he states: “If a person has been scrupulous in his conduct, gentle in his conversation, pleasant toward his fellow creatures, affable in manner when receiving, not retorting even when affronted, but showing courtesy to all, even to those who treat him with disdain, conducting his business affairs with integrity … and doing more than his duty in all things, while avoiding extremes and exaggerations – such a person has sanctified God.” This is the Kiddush Hashem of integrity, of kindness, of ethical business practice. It’s about living in a way that inherently sets our shared Jewish values apart as sacred and praiseworthy.
Many of us may have experienced the following, perhaps without naming it. In my research interviews for my Master’s degree, many Jews described feeling like de facto ambassadors for Judaism or Israel—predominantly in non-Jewish work, educational or social environments. This role, whether desired or not, underscores how our everyday actions can indeed be a form of Kiddush Hashem or, Heaven forbid, its opposite. This path asks us to be mindful that our interactions can bring honour to our people and our God.
The second pathway to Kiddush Hashem is through specific mitzvot and sacred declarations. The very word ‘Kiddush’ means to set something apart, to declare it sacred. On Shabbat, for instance, we make Kiddush over wine, consciously sanctifying time. The word appears as well at the wedding ceremony. In Kiddushin, the first stage of marriage, a couple sets their relationship apart from all others. The groom says under the chuppa “harei at mekudeshet li…– You are betrothed to me.” These are explicit acts of sanctification.
Perhaps one of the most poignant examples of this type of Kiddush Hashem is found in a prayer that, on the surface, seems disconnected from its primary purpose: the mourner’s Kaddish. The liturgy of Kaddish makes no direct mention of death or memorial. Yet, as my colleague and distant cousin through marriage, Rabbi Leo Dee, who tragically lost his wife and two daughters in a terror attack, reflected, saying Kaddish even in the depths of grief sends a profound message. He said that when a mourner can still utter those words—words that proclaim faith and sanctify God’s name—it conveys: “If they, in their pain and loss, can express those words of belief, what does that mean for me?” For him, Kaddish became a form of inspiration, a living sanctification of God’s name through a specific, prescribed text. Rabbi Joseph Telushkin adds that reciting Kaddish testifies that the deceased left behind worthy descendants who proclaim their ongoing loyalty to God. This, too, is a powerful act of Kiddush Hashem.
These two pathways – mindful living and specific mitzvot – are not in opposition; they are complementary. The ultimate al Kiddush Hashem is often seen as martyrdom—dying for one’s faith. Thankfully, as the Talmud teaches, not all sanctification demands such a price; far more often, it is found in how one chooses to live.
Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman murdered at Auschwitz, exemplified a profound spiritual resistance that intertwined both these paths. She didn’t define sanctity solely through death, but through a deep awareness and cultivation of God within life—even as her world collapsed. Her diary speaks to this inner work, the foundation for outward action: “There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there, too. But more often, stones and grit block the well, and God is buried beneath. Then He must be dug out again.” This “digging out the well” is the internal work that fuels the Kiddush Hashem of both our ethical actions and our sacred declarations.
So what does Kiddush Hashem look like for us—here and now, in our lives? It can be found in the quiet integrity of our daily dealings, in the patience we show, the ethical choices we make in our businesses, the kindness in our relationships. This is a path readily open to all of us, a way to sanctify God’s name by simply striving to be our best selves. And it can also be found in the specific moments we dedicate to sacred speech and action, like the Kiddush on Friday night or the solemn words of Kaddish.
In a world of noise and cynicism, perhaps our Kiddush Hashem lies in choosing patience, upholding integrity, maintaining faith in moments of doubt, or simply, as Etty Hillesum beautifully put it, digging out that well inside us, where the Divine waits to be found. May we all find our ways, through our actions and our words, to sanctify God’s name. Shabbat Shalom
Comments Off on Do not rejoice when your enemy falls…
“Do not rejoice when your enemy falls…” Pesach Seventh Day 2025 – Muswell Hill Synagogue, Rabbi Michael Rosenfeld
As we gather here on the seventh day of Pesach, we find ourselves in the long shadow of October 7th — 560 days later — still navigating the grief, fear, and uncertainty that ripple through our communities. For many of us, the war in Israel, Gaza, and across the region continues to shape our daily lives — emotionally, spiritually, and communally.
While I don’t want to speak directly about the conflict, I do want to zoom out and reflect on a recurring theme — one that echoes both in our tradition and in our times: How should we respond when our enemies fall?
Our tradition holds multiple, sometimes contradictory truths. Today, I want to explore three responses to the downfall of enemies: Divine restraint, human impulse, and the ethical ideal. I’d like to show you that ultimately it will come down to intention and the motivation behind reaction.
1. Divine Restraint
Today, as we celebrate the seventh day of Pesach and recall the Israelites’ miraculous escape through the sea, we also confront this question. The Egyptians were in hot pursuit, the sea was before them — and the result was both liberation and loss of human life.
A powerful Midrash, found in the Gemara in Sanhedrin and elsewhere, presents a striking image: וּמִי חָדֵי קוּדְשָׁא בְּרִיךְ הוּא בְּמַפַּלְתָּן שֶׁל רְשָׁעִים?… מַעֲשֵׂה יָדַי טוֹבְעִין בַּיָּם וְאַתֶּם אוֹמְרִים שִׁירָה לְפָנַי?
At the moment when the Israelites crossed safely and the Egyptians drowned, the ministering angels wished to sing songs of praise before God.
But God said to them: “My handiwork is drowning in the sea — and you wish to sing before Me?”
This image has far-reaching halachic and philosophical implications. The Shulchan Aruch, among others, invokes this midrash to explain why we recite only half Hallel during the final days of Pesach — even though they recall a miraculous moment of deliverance. There is joy in liberation, but restraint in the face of another’s suffering — even the enemy’s.
But the Midrash doesn’t stop there. A second voice, Rabbi Yosei bar Ḥanina, offers a subtle distinction:
“He [God] does not rejoice, but causes others to rejoice.”
הוּא אֵינוֹ שָׂשׂ, אֲבָל אֲחֵרִים מֵשִׂיש
It’s a powerful tension: on the one hand, a divine standard of compassion and restraint; on the other, an allowance for human beings to feel joy in their moment of salvation. The angels — removed from human vulnerability — are silenced. But human beings, who have just escaped generations of slavery and faced annihilation, are permitted their song.
So we ask: Are we meant to aspire to the divine standard, or is it understood that humans and heaven operate by different rules?
2. Human Impulse
This brings us to the second frame: the human impulse.
In German, there’s a word for it which entered English: schadenfreude — joy at another’s misfortune. It’s an emotion that’s easy to recognize and hard to admit.
But it’s not just literary, but biological too. A 2011 Princeton University psychological study examined the neural responses of sports fans watching their rival teams suffer defeats. The study revealed increased brain activity in reward centers when rivals lost — and decreased activity when their own teams failed.
(Us versus Them: Social Identity Shapes Neural Responses to Intergroup Competition and Harm, Psychological Science, 2011.)
This reminds us: tribal instincts aren’t just ideological — they’re biological. Our brains are hardwired to celebrate “us” and resist “them.” But Torah pushes us to choose restraint over reflex, even when our biology pulls us toward something more reactive.
Interestingly, this human reality parallels that second voice in the Midrash: God may not rejoice, but humans — vulnerable, relieved, emotionally fraught — do. Even Judaism, in its realism, allows space for that.
3. The Ethical Ideal
Our third lens comes from Pirkei Avot, in the voice of Shmuel HaKatan quoting Provers (4:19):
“Do not rejoice when your enemy falls; do not let your heart exult when he stumbles — lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and turn His wrath away from him.”
This isn’t just a quote from Mishlei — Rambam and Bartenura comment that Shmuel HaKatan lived by this verse. He is remembered not just for quoting it, but for embodying it and rebuking others when they fell short of its teaching.
Rav Kook noticed that Shmuel Hakatan was only mentioned in one other place in Rabbinic Literature. The same Shmuel HaKatan is credited with composing the Birkat HaMinim — the 19th blessing of the Amidah, directed against heretics. Originally formulated to exclude early Jewish Christians, Hellenised Jews and others perceived as threats to Jewish communal integrity, the prayer asks for the downfall of those who endanger or divide the people. It is not a prayer of reconciliation, but of exclusion and condemnation.
At first glance, this seems like a contradiction.
But when we pause, we notice something deeper: exclusion is not the same as rejoicing in someone’s fall. These are two different moral categories.
Birkat HaMinim may reflect a sober and difficult act of boundary-setting, rooted in a moment of perceived existential threat. Shmuel HaKatan’s warning in Avot, on the other hand, is about the inner posture we hold even toward those we must resist: one of humility, not triumph; restraint, not revenge.
So perhaps this is not hypocrisy but complexity. Shmuel could uphold the need to protect his community without taking joy in the downfall of others. He may have helped draw the lines — but he never claimed moral glee in doing so.
This tension — between the ethical ideal and the necessity of boundaries — is never resolved. The rabbis leave it to sit, deliberately, within our tradition. And in doing so, they teach us something profound: that a full spiritual life must hold both compassion and courage; both moral ideals and communal realities. That faithfulness sometimes means living with the discomfort of conflicting truths.
A Song Amid Uncertainty
Avivah Zornberg, in her book The Particulars of Rapture, picks up on this tension in her commentary on the Song at the Sea. Based on Rashi and others (Torah Temima), she notes that the Israelites sang not after they had safely crossed, but while still walking on the seabed, surrounded by towering walls of water.
This transforms the Shirat HaYam from a simple moment of victory into a complex expression of faith amid danger. It is praise offered not in safety, but in uncertainty. Their joy is not in the downfall of the Egyptians — it is in the presence of God, the hope of freedom, and the audacity of trust in an unknown future.
So Where Does That Leave Us?
Our tradition honours divine restraint and ethical idealism — yet it also makes room for human emotion. This pushes me in the direction that perhaps the key is intention and motivation propelling the response.
Is our joy rooted in relief, in gratitude, in justice — or in vengeance and gloating?
I believe we can celebrate our liberation without celebrating the destruction of others. We can hold our gratitude without hardening our hearts. This is not about suppressing human feelings, but about being honest about them, and choosing carefully how we express them.
May we, this Pesach, navigate these tensions with honesty and humility. And may our celebrations be rooted not in another’s fall, but in our own liberation and in the hope for a more compassionate world.
In the spirit of an academic writing a thesis I must give credit to Sefaria in helping me research this.
We now have a general election on the 4th July, but of course that date is more famous for being the anniversary of the United States Declaration of Independence in 1776.
However on this day, 11 years later (25th May 1787) 1787 (237 years ago) delegates met in Philadelphia to create the U.S Constitution. Although alluded to in a number of its provision, the word slave was not present in the document
It is generally agreed that one of the main underlying causes of the U.S. Civil War was slavery and about 6 months after it ended, Slavery was abolished in the U.S when the 13th amendment was signed in December 1865.We will come to the text of that amendment later,
It is interest that 2 weeks before those delegates got together William Pitt the Younger challenged William Wilberforce to bring forward a motion before Parliament to abolish slavery. Wilberforce managed to get the Slavery Abolition Act passed in August 1833 a week before he died
A really interesting adjunct to this about the Slave Compensation Act passed in 1837. As its name implies this financially compensated slave owners for relinquishing their slaves. The British Government borrowed £15m (equivalent to c £17bn now) to support this act only finished paying off the debt in 2015. Who loaned that money? Nathan Mayer Rothschild and his brother-in-law Moses Montefiore.
Overview
What has this got to do with this week’s sedrah?
Apart from the last two verses, Behar is about ownership. The first 34 verses are about ownership of land and its produce; verses 35 & 36 are about helping others financially; then 39 to 55 is about ownership of slaves with the last 2 verses remind us not to commit idolatry and keep Shabbat.
So in terms of verses, approximately a third of the sedrah is about slavery.
We know there are no wasted words in the Torah so how often are slaves mentioned? It is difficult to search for words in the Torah and my Hebrew certainly is up to doing that. I did find an online English text version and found that the word slave appeared 45 times. That is an underestimate because words like manservant act as synonyms. But let’s compare it to the number of times other words appear
Slave
45
Manservant
10
Servant
188
Jacob
256
Priest
317
Moses
669
Heaven
68S
God
861
And you can see that 45 is quite a significant number.
Two of those are in the 10 commandments:
4th Commandment (Exodus 20:8-11)
… the seventh day is a Sabbath unto the Lord Your God, in it you shall not do any manner of work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your man-servant, nor your maid-servant,
10th Commandment
You shall not covet your neighbour’s house, nor his wife, his man-servant, his maid-servant…….
Then there is the whole story of Joseph as a slave followed later by Jewish slavery in Egypt.
Laws relating to slaves are also discussed in Mishpatim.
But for me it is this sedra that really brings slavery into perspective. Like the U.S. Constitution, to my mind there is some coyness about the different sorts of slavery in the Torah.
Behar talks about how you should treat a fellow Jew who has become destitute and works for you as a bondsman or slave. It also says that such slaves should be released in a Jubilee year just like property must be returned to its hereditary owner. And it reminds that we were slaves in Egypt. But then it talks about non-Jewish slaves.
Verses 44-46 are about slaves as we know them. 46 clarifies that they are hereditary property “that shall you shall pass down to your children and you shall thus have them serve your family forever.” These are non-Jews as the verse continues:
They (the Egyptians) made their lives [of the Benei Yisrael] bitter through harsh labour with mortar and bricks.
So there seems to be a clear distinction between them and us when dealing with slaves.
What about post Biblical times?
The concept of a Jew being a slave to other Jews was stopped in 2nd Temple times – so about 2,000 years ago. Generally where Jews lived in a society which had slavery, Jews, if permitted and could afford it, had slaves. When Jews lived in a society without slavery, Jews had no slaves.
There are numerous comments about slaves in the Talmud – I have picked out a few:
Mishnah Pesachim (113a)] contains this advice
If your daughter has grown up, it is better to free your Canaanite slave and give him to her than to leave her to find a husband on her own
Mishnah Bava Metzia 86b]:
Despite the intense heat, Abraham wanted to invite guests. He sent Eliezer his slave to go outside to see if there were any passersby. Eliezer went out but did not find anyone. Abraham said to him: I do not believe you.
The Gemara comments: This demonstrates the popular adage that people in Eretz Yisrael, say: Slaves do not have any credibility.
The Bartenura 15th Century Italian Rabbi(Mishnah Kiddushim)
A Canaanite slave should be freed if his Jewish master had severely mutilated him, and given a document of manumission.
Rabbi Akivah who comes to mind because of Lag B’omer tomorrow, had a very strict view about non-Jewish slaves based on Behar – they should either be converted immediately or sold to a non-Jew.
Jews and Slave Trade
In 1991 Louis Farrakhan published The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews in which he says that Jews owned slave ships and played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic slave trade. I haven’t read the book but it doesn’t seem unreasonable that he had read this part of the Bible to create his views. And did he know about the Rothschild and Montefiore involvement? Were Jews involved in the slave trade? Yes, they were definitely not disproportionately.
Deborah Lipstadt called the book the “African American-oriented version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”
I am left perplexed by this difference in attitude between Jew and Non-Jew with respect to slaves. There are three references to God brought us out of Egypt where we were slaves in this sedrah alone.
Mishpatim contains the verse
And you shall not mistreat a stranger nor oppress him, because you were strangers in the land of Egypt
But Bava Metziah (59b) indicates that this actually refers converts.
Clearly like most things when you start to study, you just scratch the surface and realise that we need to study more and consider the Bard’s advice spoken by Hamlet:
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy
But let me end by putting this into context and go back to the U.S Constitution which in terms of the longevity Jewish history was yesterday. And if you didn’t already know – at least 13 US Presidents were slave owners and that includes George Washington & Thomas Jefferson.
Here is the relevant text of the 13th Amendment signed in December 1865
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Slavery was not abolished in the U.S. by the 13th Amendment!
And in 2023 there was A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to prohibit the use of slavery and involuntary servitude as a punishment for a crime.
It has been read twice by Senate and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Amanda Bowman, then Vice President of the Board of Deputies, joined the Muswell Hill community for Shabbat, just one day after International Women’s Day on 9th March 2024. Please note that the content includes topics that some readers may find distressing or triggering. This is an edited version of her address.
“It’s such an honour to be with you today and thank you to Steven Feldman (for full disclosure, my big brother) for the invitation. Given that the proximity to International Women’s Day, I could talk about some of our contemporary Jewish women role models – my current ‘boss’ at the Board of Deputies, Marie van der Zyl who stands up and speaks out for the whole Jewish community, or your wonderful deputies Judith and Anna or your own fabulous women Council members. Or the British Jewish women politicians and ‘celebs’ who regularly deal with the most vile and evil antisemitism both online and in real life; or about some of the most remarkable women in Jewish history.
But before I go back thousands of years, I want to talk about the awful events of 7th October, and particularly the crimes perpetrated against women. In the hours and days following the massacres, we learned of the magnitude of the unspeakable atrocities that emerged when the sexual and other violent crimes against Israeli women and girls began to surface.
Last week I was at the site of the Nova music festival, where more than 350 young people were slaughtered and dozens kidnapped. Witnesses hiding in the bushes saw terrorists gang-rape, then murder and mutilate women. And yet it took UN Women – the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women almost a week after the attacks to come out with a statement that equated the Hamas brutalities with Israel’s self-defence. And even longer for anything from international women’s organisations, leading feminist organisations and female celebrities. Any reference, approach or mention that these crimes occurred was met with denial or disbelief, or even worse, responded to by those who believe that these women – mothers, daughters, sisters and wives – ‘deserved it’.
It took an agonisingly long time before other women’s organisations around the world began to acknowledge and condemn the brutalities perpetrated on that day. Some have yet to do so.
We came to realise that the world – including international women’s organisations, – were conspicuously silent and – did not believe us. And when the condemnation eventually came, it was too little, too late.
Even this week when the special envoy for sexual violence at the United Nations reported that there were ‘reasonable grounds to believe’ that sexual violence occurred at several locations on 7th October, there has still been a deafening silence from some organisations. This, together with their disregard for the atrocities and brutal sexual and gender crimes committed by Hamas – despite the multiple, unequivocal and unbearable evidence – is not only hypocrisy; it can be seen as assent. Enough.
Let me return to our biblical heroines, First among these great women is Miriam, who stood by Moses throughout his life and watched over him as a child. Her steadfast support and unwavering devotion to her brother serve as a model for all Jewish women, reminding us of the importance of family and loyalty.
Or Ruth, who left her home and her people to follow her mother-in-law Naomi back to the land of Israel. Her decision to embrace Judaism and become part of the Jewish people serves as a testament to her bravery and her unwavering commitment to her beliefs. Esther, too, is a shining example of courage and bravery. She risked her life to save her people from the fury of the Persian king and helped to establish the feast of Purim, our holiday that celebrates the triumph of good over evil. Or Hannah, Samuel’s mother. Despite her deep longing for a child, Hannah never lost faith in God, and her unwavering devotion served as an inspiration to the people of her time and continues to inspire us today.
In our sedra today, we’ve been reading about the instructions for building the Mishkan and the role of women played by spinning the hair on the backs of the goats and of donating their jewellery.
March is also Women’s History Month. I set myself a goal this year that each day in March I would research and raise awareness of some women from history that broke barriers and continue to inspire me today. I’ve been posting ‘my’ women on social media and will continue to do so all month.
I’ve also done some research into heroines. Mr Google told me that a heroine was someone with strength of mind in regard to danger; that quality that enables someone to encounter danger with firmness; personal bravery and courage. Words and phrases like strong willed, in-trep-id-ity, and fortitude, the ability to confront fear, pain, risk/danger, uncertainty, or intimidation came up time and again.
In 2009, as part of my daughter’s BatMitzvah preparations, we participated in Kolot, a programme run by the London School of Jewish Studies with mothers and daughters learning together about Jewish Heroines from history. I remain completely inspired by one of the young women that we studied, Hannah Senesh. I hadn’t come across her before and only learned about her through the programme. Not only is she one of Jewish role models I’ve included in my list, but today, on Israel Shabbat, her story is one that highlights how Israel and Zionism is so character forming. And I’d like to share a little about her with you now.
She represents everything a heroine and role model should be:
She was brave and strong
She was caring and thoughtful
She was fearless and selfless, putting the needs of others before herself seeking no reward for her actions
And she stood up for and ultimately died for, her beliefs
Hannah Senesh was Hungarian, born in 1921 in an assimilated Jewish family. Her father, was a journalist and playwright but died when she was six years old. She grew up with her mother and a brother. She went to a Protestant private school for girls which also accepted Catholic and Jewish pupils, but because she was Jewish, she had to pay three times the regular school fees. We know from her diaries that she was a regular teenager: she worried about doing well in school, wanted to be a writer, flirted with boys, adored her grandma, was teased by her brother. She didn’t come from a religious family. She began to embrace Judaism and only learnt Hebrew when she realized that the situation of the Jews in Hungary was becoming precarious, She also joined Maccabea, a Hungarian Zionist students organization.
Her strong belief in Zionism helped her make the decision when she left school to emigrate to Palestine to study in the Girls’ Agricultural School at Nahalal. As with everything else, she threw herself into the work, at college and on Kibbutz where she worked hard but sometimes wondered whether it was the best use of her skills to do the physical labour in the fields, or carpentry, rearing the chickens, laundry, baking etc. And she also joined the Haganah. In 1943, when the chance to return to Hungary emerged, she enlisted in the British army and began her training in Egypt as a paratrooper for the British Special Operations Executive – one of only 37 Jews who were trained for this force. All the while she was making arrangements to bring her mother and brother over to Palestine so that they could all be together
In March 1944, she and two male colleagues were parachuted into Yugoslavia on a mission to help save the Jews of Hungary. She said to her two colleagues before they left
“We are the only ones who can possibly help; we don’t’ have the right to think of our own safety; we don’t have the right to hesitate. Even if the chances of our success are miniscule, we must go. If we don’t, for fear of our lives, a million Jews will surely be massacred. If we succeed, our work can open great and important avenues of activity. It’s better to die and free our conscience than to return with the knowledge that we didn’t even try.”
When they landed, they joined a partisan group and learned that the Germans had already occupied Hungary. The men decided to call off the mission as it had now become too dangerous. But Hannah continued and headed for the Hungarian border. At the border, she was arrested by Hungarian police, who found the British military transmitter she was carrying and which she had used to communicate with her unit and other partisans. She was taken to a prison in Budapest, tied to a chair, stripped, then whipped and clubbed for several hours. At the same time, her mother had been taken into custody – under the guise of being a ‘witness’. Both mother and daughter were continually interrogated. The guards wanted to know the code for Hannah’s transmitter so they could find out who the other parachutists were. She did not tell them, even when they brought her mother into the cell and threatened to torture her too.
They were kept in jail for several months. Even in captivity, Senesh sought ways to keep up the morale of the other Jewish inmates, befriending the captive children, swapping recipes with the women. She developed a communication system, using a mirror to flash signals out of the window to the Jewish prisoners in other cells, and communicated with them using large cut-out letters in Hebrew that she placed in her window one at a time, and by drawing the Magen David in the dust. She tried to keep their spirits up by singing.
But in late October 1944, she was tried for treason. There was an eight-day postponement to give the judges more time to find a verdict, followed by another postponement, this one due to the appointment of a new Judge Advocate. She was executed by a firing squad before the judges had returned a verdict. She kept up her diary entries until her last day, November 7, 1944 writing on the walls of her cell. These words were found in her cell after her execution:
One – two – three… eight feet long
Two strides across, the rest is dark…
Life is a fleeting question mark
One – two – three… maybe another week.
Or the next month may still find me here,
But death, I feel is very near.
I could have been 23 next July
I gambled on what mattered most, the dice were cast. I lost.
Hannah Senesh was an astonishing woman, a poet and playwright, writing both in Hungarian and Hebrew.
The following lines and maybe her most famous are the last song she wrote after she was parachuted into a partisan camp in Yugoslavia:
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
Blessed is the flame that burns in the secret fastness of the heart.
Blessed is the heart with strength to stop its beating for honor’s sake.
Blessed is the match consumed in kindling flame.
Before I finish, I’d just like to share another piece of Hannah’s poetry. For me, these words describe who she was, how she inspires me and provides a guide for who I could be
There are stars whose radiance is visible on earth
though they have long been extinct.
There are people whose brilliance continues to light the world
though they are no longer among the living.
These lights are particularly bright when the night is dark.
They light the way for mankind.
Hannah Senesh along with so many other great women, serve as a source of inspiration and strength for us all, reminding us of the power of faith, the importance of family, and the enduring values of our people. In these most difficult times, may we all strive to live up to their example, and be blessed with their courage, their devotion, and their unwavering faith in the years to come.
I am not an animal lover. When our son Arieh was a child, he was desperate for a pet. He nagged for a dog. What he really wanted was a horse. But even 3 year old Arieh could see that our garden wasn’t big enough for a horse. We bought him a goldfish.
In this week’s sedra, which is actually about the power of words, I find myself surprisingly intrigued by an animal – to be specific – a donkey. And not just any old donkey – this is a talking donkey, one of the only two animals in Torah with a speaking part. (The other is of course the serpent in Bereshit). The donkey belongs to Bilam, son of Beor, a non-Israelite pagan prophet. He is on the way, with his donkey, to carry out Balak’s command to curse the Israelites.
Balak is the king of the Moabites. He feels threatened by the numerically superior Israelites, depicted as “a horde that will lick clean all that is about us, as an ox licks the grass of the field” (Bamidbar 22:3) and as a people who, like a plague of locusts, “hide the earth from view” (Bamidbar 22:5). He also knows that the Israelites have just defeated the Amorites. He is threatened, and he is afraid.
Balak believes that he needs something more than a strong army to defeat the Israelites. He tries to remove the perceived “threat” with something more powerful than force of arms: a sorcerer’s curse. He is a man who understands the power of words. So he goes to Bilam, who has a very high reputation, a man known far and wide throughout the nearby nations as a well known magician and expert curser, to put a curse on the Israelites.
From early rabbinic times onwards, interpreters have discussed Bilam. He doesn’t come out well. Ibn Ezra says he’s a deceptive schemer, because he never tells Balak that G-d won’t let him curse the Israelites. Nachmanides adds that Bilam has no scruples – he doesn’t care about misleading Balak.
Interestingly, Bilam refuses all the riches that Balak promises him. Eventually, G-d tells Bilam to agree to Balak’s terms, but only to do what G-d tells him to do. He must only use the power of the words that G-d tells him to speak.
So off he goes. On the way, Bilam’s donkey is stopped by an angel blocking his way on the road. The donkey can see the angel, but Bilam cannot. The donkey refuses to move and Bilam is furious that she won’t respond to his instructions to move. He beats her 3 times.
Then the donkey speaks: “why are you beating me? Am I not the donkey you’ve been riding for many years?” And Bilam replies in the very next verse: “You have humiliated me; if I had a sword in my hand, I would kill you right now.” (Bamidbar 22: 28-29).
Apart from the fact that the donkey talks, which we will come back to in a second, how astonishing it is that Bilam replies as if it is the most rational thing in the world that his donkey has spoken to him. You would think that we would be told that Bilam gasped loudly, or at least looked around to see who was there.
So why a talking donkey? Is it just to put some humour into the story? Or is it to show, as the rabbis tell us, that Bilam cannot manipulate G-d – rather, G-d, through his angel, is more powerful than Bilam. Maybe the donkey talks to get Bilam’s attention, so he will be receptive to the words of the angel. Maybe it needed something extraordinary to make Bilam do G-d’s will. Again, this incident shows us the power of words.
This episode certainly challenges our expectations of animals and prophets. Bilam goes against our first expectation, that a prophet described in the Torah is necessarily an Israelite. It goes against our second expectation, that a prophet should be holy, a good person. Earlier, I have described how Bilam is thought to be quite evil. Finally, we would expect a prophet to be more perceptive than a donkey, but in this story, Bilam the prophet is not.
The angel then appears to Bilam and tells him to only say what G-d tells him. Rabbi Eliezer states that the angel actually places the words of blessing in Bilam’s mouth. Rabbi Yochanan agrees and says the angel then has to extract the words with a hook, meaning that they are uttered against Bilam’s will. Bilam comes to realise that the G-d of Israel has the power with his words over what happens. Martin Buber explains that in speaking G-d’s words, Bilam exercises no will of his own.
Bilam then blesses the Israelites instead of cursing them with three poems of blessing. These poems are, as Jonathan Sacks wrote, some of the most lyrical passages in Torah.
The first poem (Numbers 23:9) defines the Israelites as unique among the nations, protected when they fulfil their covenant with G-d.
The second poem (Numbers 23:21, 24) promises the Israelites that G-d is with them. They will triumph over those plotting Israel’s destruction. The Israelites will not rest until their enemies are crushed.
The third poem starts with the phrase that has become one of the most familiar phrases in our liturgy: Ma tovu ohalecha Yaakov – how good are your tents O Jacob. We begin every shabbat service singing that heartwarming phrase.
Nechama Leibowitz explains that in this and in the first two poems, Bilam admires the Israelites, who are trying to live harmoniously and peacefully. What we don’t sing in shul is the continuation of that third poem, which describes vividly how the Israelites shall deal with their enemy nations.
Sacks notes that all that G-d really needed Bilam to say – and Bilam did eventually say it – was the promise He gave to Abraham in the book of Bereshit: “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse”. So why three lyrical poems? It all comes back to the power of words.
Through each of the three poems of Bilam’s blessings, there is a balance between peace and prosperity on the one hand and hostility and destruction on the other. Each poem tells a vivid story of good and bad. How true that is today. How contemporary are Bilam’s messages.
The process of writing this dvar torah has not made me like animals any more than I already did, but, I have shown how words are used in several different ways. Their power to surprise and even shock, as in the episode with the donkey, and the power to listen and use words for good instead of bad, as in the blessings that Bilam gives the Israelites.
This is a very strange episode in Torah. One of the things that it shows us is that G -d’s presence often comes from the most unexpected places. Sometimes the vision of our life’s journey can become clouded and make us unsure of what path to take next. It is times like these when we might find our truth emerging from the most unexpected of places or people – or in this case G-d’s angel. Listening to others isn’t always easy, but by being open and willing to hear those whom we might choose to ignore, we could just hear exactly what we need to hear. We may change the impulse to speak badly, into something good.
Perrashat Hukat marks a transition, a transition from the wilderness to the Promised Land. Some 38 years have elapsed since the exit from Egypt, of which the Torah only relates the first year of the exodus and then the last year in Kadesh, in the desert of Tsin. This Perrasha contains a cryptic account in Chap 20 of the transgression of Moshe & Aharon for which both of them are denied entry into the Promised Land.
So, what happens in Chap 20?
The people of Israel had arrived in Kadesh in the desert of Tsin where Miriam dies. The plain account of her death is followed by the people’s complaint: They are in the desert, there is no water and they are thirsty.
Moshe then has a conversation with G, G-d orders Moshe to take his rod, and to speak to the rock for water to gush out for the people and the cattle. But Moshe loses patience with the people, he loses control of himself and before acting on the rock, addresses the people angrily and says:
“Listen to me you rebels. Shall we bring forth water for you from this rock?”
Moshe then strikes the rock instead of speaking to it as G had commanded him.
G-d rebukes Moshe very harshly: “You did not have enough faith in me to sanctify me in the presence of theIsraelites! Therefore, you shall not bring this assembly to the land that I have given you”
This episode is reminiscent of an earlier episode which happened in Shemot, chapter 17 in Perrashat Beshallach: soon after the exit from Egypt, a similar situation occurred: the people complained because the lack of water; G-d then asked Moshe to hit the rock with his staff.
The second episode which happens some 40 years later bears dramatic consequences for Moshe.
The commentators have been exercised by the harshness of the punishment:
For Rashi, Moshe was punished because he struck the rock instead of speaking to it. Had he spoken to the Rock, G would have been sanctified because if a rock which is inanimate and lifeless, obeys G’s command, all the more so, would people have followed G’s commands.
For Rambam (Maimonides) [12thC], Moshe’s sin lay with his anger towards the people. According to Rambam, at the time of the incident, G was not angry with the people complaining. However, by being angry, Moshe was misrepresenting G. He failed to convince the people of G’s love for them. For Rambam, such unjustified anger constitutes “Hillul Hashem” i.e desecration of the name of G.
For Ramban (Nachmanides)[13thC]: Moshe sinned through his omnipotence. He used words like “Shall WE bring forth water”, referring to himself rather than G-d.
I found Abarbanel [15thC] commentary interesting as he has shied away from finding Moshe and Aharon guilty. For him, Moshe’s and Aharon’s punishment was on account of previous transgressions which were inadvertent:
Aharon was punished for his participation in the Golden Calf. Just as those who transgressed in this incident were punished by death for idol worship so too Aaron, as their leader, was punished by being prevented from entering the Promised Land. He was punished according to the principle of “measure for measure”;
Moshe was punished for the sin of the spies: If you remember, Moshe asked detailed questions about the Land; yet, G-d had asked a simple question: “Send men for yourself, to explore the land of Canaan that I am about to give to the Israelites.” The Israelites were punished for doubting G-d’s ability to deliver the land to them. Moshe, as their leader, was punished under the same principle of Measure for Measure: The nation no longer merited the Land of Israel so too M was denied entry;
Abarbanel seems to dampen down the notion of guilt and argues that both Moshe & Aharon had good intentions:
A’s participation in the Golden Calf was a delaying tactic. He had not anticipated that the people would worship the calf;
M’s intention, by asking detailed questions was to impress upon the people G-d’s ability to overcome any adversary.
I am now going to skip some 5 centuries and get to Rabbi Sacks commentary on Chapter 20 of bemidbar. His commentary is compelling:
Rabbi Sacks based his commentary on a tractate from the Talmud:
“This is the book of the generation of Adam” Sages wondered about this assertion and commented that
In essence G-d showed Adam in advance “Each generation and its interpreters, each generation and its sages, each generation and its leaders”
This suggests that each age has produced its own leaders: Patriarchs and Matriarchs, Judges, Kings, Prophets and Priests and each with their own generation.
It follows that each leader is a function of his/her generation. Rabbi Sacks, thinking of Moshe compares the 2 episodes at the rock:
When the people came out of Egypt, Moshe hit the rock to get water: He was then confronting a people who had just come out of Egypt: All they had known was servitude for generations. They had a one-dimensional existence, unable to process and express their reality. Their experience was being hit and struck in order to force their obedience. They needed visual affirmation of G, hence the need for the miracles which Moshe produced with the help of his rod.
40 years later, Moshe hit the rock again, instead of speaking to it. But argues R Sacks, he was faced with a different generation: This was a generation born free in the desert, which evolved from survival to meaning. The rod which was used for the first generation to perform miracles, needed to retrieve its place, that is to say a mere shepherd’s rod, the one that Moshe had in his early days as a shepherd. Which is why G asked him to speak. Perhaps Moshe had not understood that we moved from a generation which needed visual affirmation to a generation intent on hearing. Their needs and aspirations were different from the previous generation. The power must be seen to emanate from words rather than through an external miraculous object.
While it was necessary to display power to impose obedience to the slave generation, the new generation needed the power of words. Rabbi Sachs therefore underscored the difference in the generations between the 2 episodes:
“The symbolism in each case was calibrated to the mentalities of 2 different generations. You strike a slave but you speak to a free person”
So, For Rabbi Sacks, Moshe did not fail nor did he sin. He led the first generation through the desert, but the skill to lead a new nomadic generation, born free, to the conquest of the land, required different capacities. In other words, the leadership relevant to one generation became obsolete for the next. This is, says Rabbi Sacks an inescapable consequence of being mortal. And perhaps Moshe understood this when he had the perspicacity and the humility to ask G to name a successor.
To sum up Rabbi Sacks argument, the fact that M did not lead the people to the promised land was not a punishment but an inevitability, a condition of his and our mortality. The leadership must be of its time,the leadership is a function of time.
As a conclusion, I would like to quote a poignant passage from Rabbi Sacks which is a foresight of his own condition: “For each of us, there is a Jordan we will not cross, however long we live, however far we travel. But this is not inherently tragic. What we begin, others complete—if we have taught them how”
Rabbi Sacks has not crossed the Jordan either. He has left us but has also bequeathed us an invaluable and scintillating legacy through his writings and his teachings, which are spread and taught today throughout the world by an impressive cohort of thinkers.
This week’s parasha of Korach is also known in some places as the parasha of machloket – strife.
It tells the story we know of Korach and 250 respected chieftains questioning Moses’s authority which ends with them all being swallowed by the ground.
A study of the biblical account of Korach’s rebellion against Moses, and of the numerous Midrashim and Commentaries describing Korach’s personality and actions, yields a complex, even contradictory picture. Korach was no ordinary rabble-rouser. He was a leading member of Kehatites, the most prestigious of the Levite families. Joining him in his mutiny against Moses and Aaron were “two hundred and fifty men of Israel, leaders of the community, of those regularly called to assembly, men of renown.” Korach’s difference with Moses was an ideological one, driven by the way in which he understood Israel’s relationship with G‑d and by the manner in which he felt the nation ought to be structured.
Yet Korach is regarded as the father of all quarrelers: his very name is synonymous with disharmony and conflict. The Talmud goes so far as to proclaim: “Anyone who engages in divisiveness transgresses a divine prohibition, as it is written: ‘And he shall not be as Korach and his company.'” But if there is more to Korach — the person and the idea — than a jealousy-drive power struggle, why does every petty squabbler fall under the umbrella of “Don’t be like Korach”?
Obviously, there is something at the heart of Korach’s contentions that is the essence of all disunity.
The particulars of Korach’s campaign also require explanation. What exactly did Korach want? His arguments against Moses and Aaron seem fraught with contradiction. On the one hand, he seems to challenge the very institution of the kehunah (“priesthood”), declaiming to Moses and Aaron: “The entire community is holy, and G‑d is within them; why do you raise yourselves over the congregation of G‑d?”
But from Moses’ response (“Is it not enough for you that the G‑d of Israel has distinguished you from the community of Israel… that you also desire the priesthood?”) we see that Korach actually desired the office of the Kohen Gadol for himself!
This paradox appears time and again in various accounts of Korach’s mutiny in the Midrashim and the commentaries. Korach comes across as a champion of equality, railing against a “class system” that categorizes levels of holiness within the community. Yet, in the same breath, he contends that he is the more worthy candidate for the High Priesthood.
If Korach is seen as such a divisive character and his name is one of the few names given to a parasha of a “wrong un” is it to be used as a warning when most of the other “named” parshiot are after the “good guys” such as Noach, Chayei Sarah, Yitro etc ?
Is there a link between these actions in Torah and the world today? Is it controversial to say that certain people leading the world are Korach in behaviour or is that too simple?
God hates strife, discord, and division between brothers, calling the one who sows them an abomination – so maybe we just need to try to get along and be less Korach and more ????
This is the second time that I have had the honour of addressing the shul on shabbat. The first time was in 2008 when there was another interregnum between rabbis at Muswell Hill. That time I spoke about the first sedra in the book of Leviticus, Vayikra. Vayikra is about the sacrifices to be made at the temple and does not offer a one-off rabbi like me an opportunity to impress his audience to such a degree that it begs him not to stop. This time round, I have been much luckier. I am to speak about Shemot, again the first sedra of one of the five books but this time, the book of Exodus. This sedra contains an embarrassment of riches. It is full of incident and drama with scenes and dialogue central to the Jewish journey. It is no surprise that Shemot inspired Hollywood’s Cecil DeMille to produce “The Ten Commandments”, a film redolent with hammy dialogue and acting but with great special effects. I saw it, perhaps for the fifteenth time, a few days ago on the television. Did anyone else watch it?
Perhaps unusually, I have given it a title to my talk. It is: “What’s in a name?” I have done so because today I want to talk to you about names. Shemot means “names”. It is the second word of the sedra and the sedra begins by setting out the names of the sons of Jacob who came down to Egypt with him. But I think there is a much greater connection between the sedra and names than this. Names or the lack of them and the ambiguity in them play an intriguing part in our sedra.
Let us look at a few examples where a character in the sedra has no name. First, there is pharaoh: “Now there arose a new king in Egypt who knew not Joseph”. We never know this king’s name. We soon meet pharaoh’s daughter. Again, we never know her name. She is one of the great heroines of the sedra, all of them (perhaps incidentally or perhaps not) women and some of them (perhaps incidentally or perhaps not) are not Jewish. There are the two midwives who may be Egyptian but who may be Hebrews. We do know their names: Shiprah and Puah. They defy pharaoh’s decree to drown all male Hebrew children in the Nile and because of their courage and morality and because they feared G-d, G-d made houses for them (that is, they became mothers of great families). There is also Miriam and when we first meet her, we do not know her name. Her intercession with pharaoh’s daughter ensures the baby Moses’s survival and continued contact for the first part of his life with his mother. Again, we do not know the name of Moses’s mother, Yochebed, until later in the sedra.
Coming back to pharaoh’s daughter, she appears in a few verses in Shemot but then never again. We learn that she draws out of the Nile the basket containing the baby Moses. She has compassion for him knowing that he is one of the Hebrew children against whom there is a decree of death. Pharoah’s daughter also shows compassion when she agrees to Miriam’s suggestion for a midwife for the baby whom we can safely assume pharaoh’s daughter knows to be none other than Moses’s mother and she promises to pay his mother for this service. We are impliedly told Moses spends his boyhood with his mother and at some point, she brings him to pharaoh’s daughter and pharaoh’s daughter adopts him as her son. We read at this point that: “ve tikra shemo Moshe ki min-hamayim meshi tihu”, she names the boy Moshe “because I drew him out of the water”. I will come back to this naming in a few moments.
We never hear of pharaoh’s daughter again. How did she bring up Moses? Did she hide Moses’s identity from him or did she encourage him to find out about it? Did she rile against pharaoh’s decree to kill the male Israelite babies or was her adoption of Moses her sole act of rebellion? Did she have other children? Was she a good mother? Did she join the mixed multitude that left Egypt when the subsequent pharaoh let the Israelites go? The sedra does not give us answers to these questions. Perhaps pharaoh’s daughter did one good deed but was otherwise unremarkable. Perhaps her one good deed was neutralised by moral failings elsewhere and for this reason, her name is not revealed to us. Perhaps there is another answer. We have a baby, a sister, a mother and a daughter of the king of Egypt, all without names. How it can be when these characters appear to us in the book of names, they have no names? Is that not ironic? Something must be going on here. Perhaps the answer to the mystery is this. The omission to name names in the book of names may be to draw our attention to the deed, the saving of a baby’s life on which so much depended and to deflect from the doer. Our attention is drawn to one of the noblest acts of all, the act of saving a new life, a child. The act is all the more noble when the baby is not ours, when it comes from the other side, when it is a child of slaves, when we do not know its name.
What’s is a name? At the burning bush, Moses asks G-d to tell him His name as he anticipates the people of Israel will ask him for it. G-d’s cryptic reply is, “E he ye asher e he ye”, “I will be what I will be”. Is this a name or a declaration of the essence of G-d? Is it something else? G-d is known to us as “Hashem”, the Name. The Name which is not a name or is it?
What’s in a name? Let us go back to the naming of Moses by pharaoh’s daughter. The name Moshe consists of three letters: mem, shin and hay. In Hebrew, we say it as “Moshe” but it could also read “Mo-se”, an Egyptian name which means the son of water. Moshe, the Hebrew version, is derived from “masheh” to draw out, the “meshi tihu” or “I drew out” from the verse I read out earlier. We therefore have an obvious ambiguity. Is Mose Moshe or is Moshe Mose? Does our protagonist bear an Egyptian name or a Hebrew one?
What’s in a name? Have you ever thought about the unusual construction that the English language uses for naming? We say “What are you called? I am called…”. We use a passive construction for asking about and informing others about our names. Our names happen to us. They are given to us, we do not choose them. Other European languages do not do this. For example, comment vous appellez-vous? Je m’appelle… Come si chiama? Mi chiamo…”, literally, what do you call yourself? I call myself…. These languages use an active construction where everyone has the name he or she chooses to use for themselves. Active or passive for naming names? I think our sedra has something to say about this as I shall soon explain.
What’s in a name? Moses asks at the burning bush “Who am I?” Moses, by asking this question, is querying his worthiness to undertake the task of delivering the Israelites out of Egypt but could he also be asking what his name is? Is he Mose or Moshe? Is he asking if he is a Hebrew, the people out of whom he was born? Is he an Egyptian, one of the people among whom he grew up? Is he a Midianite now that he has spent the majority of his adult life in Midian and into whose people he has married? Who is Moses? We have one clue related to names. Earlier in our sedra, when Moses is in Midian and married, he names his first son Gershom which means literally “stranger there”. Moses declares through the naming of his son that he has been a stranger in Egypt and a stranger in Midian. They are not his home.
“Who am I?” asks Moses before G-d at the burning bush. By the end of his encounter with G-d, Moses knows and so do we. He is a Hebrew. He has accepted that the fate of his people is also his. He has accepted G-d’s call to liberate the people of whom he is a part. He has accepted the mission G-d has asked him to undertake. Moses chooses to be Moshe. He now knows his name is Moshe, not Mose.
“What’s in a name?” I ask for the final time. Our sedra gives us a beguiling encounter with names. We know the names of some of the people we meet in the sedra but not of others and sometimes we meet a character when the sedra delays telling us the person’s name. This is true of Moses himself. He must have been given a name when he was born but it is not until he is grown up that pharoah’s daughter names him. His is a name deferred and even when we know it, there are two possible ways to say it.
What can we learn from the sedra’s puzzling treatment of names? I think one answer is this. The theme of the book of shemot is redemption, the saving of the Jewish people from slavery and exile. A people are free and can be at home when they know their essence, their national goals and when they have a name to call themselves. As it is with a people, so it is with an individual. We are redeemed, we are free when we know our essence and our purpose in life, when we have a name to call ourselves, a name we freely choose in the active rather than a name given to us in the passive. Moshe, not Mose. And how does redemption begin? Like our sedra, it begins with a name.
Shabbat Shalom, and Mazel Tov to Michael and all his family on his second Bar Mitzvah.
What a parasha you had all those years ago…I wonder what your 13 -year -old self made of it…
When Steven first asked me to say a few words on Shabbat Teruma, the parasha didn’t really speak to me..
Neil thought it fascinating but he’s an engineer and putting things together interests him.
I know that last year Rachel Morris gave a fabulous sermon on it, but, again, she has the skilled knowledge of a structural engineer .
I’m often asked by children I teach which Torah story I like the best. and I don’t think it would be Teruma…… there’s not much narrative , it’s full of detailed lists of instructions , it’s quite scientific ,specific ,there’s not very much in it for an idiosyncratic Jew like me to relate to…..
Perhaps, I thought,,I could talk about how all the elements of the Jewish people come together and how we all have a role to play ,like all the various components listed in the building of the Mishkan.
Or maybe I could explore the Chasidic idea of the materials donated for the Mishkan corresponding to the components of the human being, “gold” being the soul; “silver,” the body; “copper,” the voice; “blue,” the veins;
Perhaps I could think about numbers and gematria and all the specific measurements involved…
Nah, not really grabbing me, but then,thank goodness for the Cherubim…what really grabbed my imagination were the kravim, the Angels
“You shall make a cover of pure gold…. Make two cherubim of gold—make them of hammered work—at the two ends of the cover. Make one cherub at one end and the other cherub at the other end; of one piece with the cover shall you make the cherubim.
The cherubim shall have their wings spread out above, shielding the cover with their wings. They shall confront each other, the faces of the cherubim being turned toward the cover. (21) Place the cover on top of the Ark, after depositing inside the Ark the Pact that I will give you. (22) There I will meet with you, and I will impart to you—from above the cover, from between the two cherubim that are on top of the Ark of the Pact—all that I will command you concerning the Israelite people.”
Golden cherubim ? In the holy of holies? Where 3 of the 10 most famous commandments focus on the Oneness of G-d, , our being forbidden to pray to graven images,…..curious…
As Maimondes declares , in the Guide for the Perplexed,
“It is known that the heathen in those days built temples to stars, and set up in those temples the image which they agreed upon to worship…We were, therefore, commanded to build a temple to the name of G-D, and to place therein the ark with two tables of stone, on which there were written the commandments “I am the Lord,” .
Bnei Yisrael had just left a country where people built temples full of statues.. …yet here are TWO golden statues…However, these cherubs “ are to face one another;” ,proving they were not intended to be deities to be worshipped, or they would have faced their onlookers so they could bow down to them. What’s more, though their wings were pointing upwards, their faces were looking down at the lid,at the space from which G-D’s words would emanate to Moses, and the area in which the Torah was kept.
And, of course, they were in a place that was inaccessible to the people on pain of death. Their function therefore was merely to be servants of G-D rather than His competitors, just as the cherubs (seraphim) in Isaiah 6,2 were perceived as G-D’s servants standing in attendance before G-D’s throne.
And yet, l even though I’m a relatively well- educated Jewish person, I still found I didn’t really know much about angels and Judaism….
Do we believe in them ? Did we believe in them ?
Yes there are the angels that visit Hagar and Avraham, angels in Jacob’s dream, and even Moshe Rabbeinu received his first prophecy through an angel. “And an angel of the Lord appeared to him in the flame of fire”.
Yet not many of the angelic figures in the Bible are identified as such. The three visitors who came to Avraham and Sarah are described in the text as anashim/men. It’s the RABBINIC sources that indicate they were angels…
Likewise, the angel that appeared to Jacob is described merely as ish, or man.
The function of these angels is to deliver specific information or carry out some particular function. Divine intervention, as it were…
In later biblical texts, angels are associated with visions and prophesies, though no proper names are given until the Book of Daniel where we meet the angels : Gabriel and Michael.
Later rabbinic and kabbalistic sources expand on the concept of angels even further, describing a broad universe of named angels with particular roles in the spiritual realm.
So, what is the current Jewish view on angels…..? Aren’t they a little bit Christian…?
While many Jews relegate the supernatural beings to the Christian realm, Prof. Mika Ahuvia reveals a deep cultural and religious connection.
Key parts of Jewish liturgy today have centuries-old links to angels. In fact, we’re about to declare the Kedushah prayer in the Amidah, beginning with “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts” — which comes from Isaiah 6:3, where it is uttered by the Seraphim to G-D in the Temple in Jerusalem.
On Yom Kippur we dress in white, and don’t eat or drink…like angels.
Ahuvia describes the Kedushah as eyewitness testimony for many Jews about “how G-D preferred to be worshipped.”
During the talmudic period, in roughly 300-600 C.E., incantation bowls were in common use in Babylonia by Jews as well as other groups. The magic bowls used by Jews ,written in Aramaic, had incantations against demons and so on, and frequently refer to the angels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. These magic bowls suggests the extent which Jews, like other people of late antiquity, took for granted the existence of special powers in the universe.
And of course so many of us believe in a spiritual dimenion…How many of us have a Hamza sign or evil eye necklace at home….?
Judaism is a philosophy as well as a religion …we have fashions in thoughts and ideas…and of course we’re affected and influenced by the wider societies in which we live…
Don’t tell me the old English tradition- still seen in Princes’ Road Shul, Liverpool- of wardens wearing top hats is commanded in a holy text….
The modern Jewish attitude to angels tends to regard the traditional references descriptions as symbolic, poetic, or representing an earlier world-concept. Reform Judaism has either completely removed from their tefillah all references to angels or where they remain have understood them in poetic or mythological terms.
Yet angels- these divine messengers, these divine forces- play an active role in the Ultra -Orthodox world. My sister, part of the Belz Chasisidic community, prays to angels for protection every night.She declares
“To my right Michael and to to my left Gabriel, infront of me Uriel and behind me Raphael, and over mt head G-D’s Shekinah (the presence of G-D)”.
I too, now say this nightly.
Divine forces- for wonder, for health, for light, for comfort – and surrounding us all, the Shechinah.
And so we return to our cherubs….
Torah teaches that G-D spoke from within the empty space between the two kruvim. And Talmud teaches that the kruvim faced each other when we followed the mitzvot,and turned away from each other when we did not.
We are a broad church, so to speak, and have room for rationalists, kabbalists, angel-believers and purists… Angels, messengers, manifestations of G-D, divine interventions, a spiritual dimension…there’s room for all of this in our religion.
We know what the mitzvot are but must also try to be accepting of how people choose to follow them.
Unlike that so-called comedian at the Soho Theatre last week, we are able to appreciate a multiplicity of views and approaches, whilst also knowing right from wrong.
What we do know is that we are all made in the image of G-D and need to act and treat others accordingly.
I should begin by thanking Steven and Neil for organising this series of speakers from amongst our members as we await with excitement the arrival of Rabbi Michael and Tracey
I would also like to thank Steven personally for allocating this particular weeks slot for me to speak. When I did however, begin looking at this weeks parasha I must admit to 1 or 2 doubts as to how grateful I really should be !
So Lets look at the subject matter – this weeks sedrah has 101 pesukim which go into serious and in some cases excruciating detail describing, the special garments worn by the Cohanim and the Cohen Gadol, priests and the high priest, a full and detailed Simcha plan for the 7-day inauguration of the Mishcan with the portion concludes with a description of one of the vessels of the Incense Altar.
So in short at 1st reading we have a set of tailoring instructions which we no longer use, plans for the opening ceremony of the portable Temple which we no longer have and the design spec’ of an incense burner which we also don’t have. No Plagues, No splitting of Seas, No Dramas, not even a good old Broegus in there
Thanks Steven!
However our beloved Torah always merits and requires a closer look to reveal its meaning.
Firstly we should consider that at this point the Children of Israel are beginning the transition from a group of people who in modern day terms we would describe as refugees or asylum seekers into a Nation. AND that Nation if it is to succeed and prosper needs the structures and institutions of a State.
Prior to being enslaved in Egypt we were in Patriarchal times, we were a single family not a people. And as a single family the story throughout Bereishit is punctuated with often violent sibling rivalry. Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers it goes on and on.
During Bereishit there were no processes, no institutions and not too much in the way of rules – we just had individual people. Avraham Avinu, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob/Esau , the 12 sons of Jacob – these characters dominate the narrative and boy do they struggle with each other for their birth right and for their inheritance.
Now it would be possible at this juncture to simply continue with the same process as we had Bereishit with Moses as the leader. After all we refer to Moses as Moshe Rabennu ‘Moses our teacher’, indeed we frequently learn we that we will have no greater teacher than Moses. Look at all the wonders and miracles that have come from his hand. Who could be better suited not only as leader but as the single source of law, of power and of authority?
However Hashem says no. We’ve already seen in parshat Yitro how judges have been appointed within a hierarchy which devolves power and responsibility away from Moses even though he sits at the top of the same hierarchy.
Now there’s 1 aspect of Tetzvah which is highly unusual – it is the only Parsha from the beginning of Shemot to the end of Devarim that does not contain the name Moses. Although Moses is as key player he’s referred to as you as a pronoun! Aaron, Moshe’s elder brother however is mentioned everywhere and of course its in this Sedrah that Aaron and not Moses is installed as the 1st High priest, the Cohen Gadol with a ruling that his direct descendants will serve as Cohanim throughout the generations, a line that continues to this day.
Notice that this installation of Aaron is a huge transfer of power and authority away from Moses to his elder brother Aaron. But in stark contrast to Bereishit where brother would have fought brother for power, the transfer looks to take place seamlessly. Rashi does comment that Moshe does indeed struggle with Aaron’s installation but when he prays to Hashem he is told that Hashem similarly struggled with giving over the TORAH to the Children of Israel people but he got through it and so should Moshe.
Surely what we are witnessing in Tetzaveh is the separation of powers within the embryonic Nation of Israel. The unique and surprising absence of Moshe’s name in stark contrast to that of Aaron who is centre stage, the extensive details around the uniforms of the priests and the 7 day inauguration ceremony of the Mishcan are all about establishing and embedding the institution of the Priesthood and with it a separation of power between the leader and the Priesthood.
Chief Rabbi Sacks Z”L goes further and comments that Judaism recognises 2 forms of religious leadership the Navi and the Cohen, the Prophet and the Priest. And whilst the Prophets were figures that captured the imagination and lived dramatic lives that are the stuff of Movie Epics, the priests were quieter figures. Whilst the priests were dynastic, wore a uniform and had much of their role prescribed, Prophets ‘emerged’ Joshua succeeded Moshe not his sons, definitely had no uniform and each prophet had their own distinct style and unique story.
If we look at these different types and institutions of leadership it seems to me that Hashem is telling us that for a Nation to prosper its vital have a separation of powers between vibrant if often competing institutions. That lesson was just as true in the dessert as it is today. We can see the damage, the dangers and the problems that occur when leaders in our own times grab too much power for themselves and in the process degrade the institutions of their Nation.
Let’s all recognise the importance and the wisdom of Hashems message in todays Sedrah . Its as powerful in today’s world as it was for the Children of Israel in the dessert.
Tonight is Purim. Of the three festivals with the historical formula ‘they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat’ – Pesach, Chanukah and Purim – Purim has perhaps the clearest heroes and villains. We all know what to do when we hear the name of Haman.
As well as reading the Megillah, on Purim we also add Al Hanisim to our prayers in the Amidah and in bensching after our meals. Nisim are of course miracles, and when we say Al Hanisim on Purim we are thanking God for the miracle of Purim.
But it’s a well-known fact that the Megillah doesn’t mention God once. So what exactly was the miracle of Purim?
Al Hanisim gives us the answer – “You, in Your abundant mercy, annulled Haman’s counsel, frustrated his intention, and brought his evil plan upon his own head.” Many commentators tells us that God is indeed present in the Megillah but is concealed – the concept of “the concealed face of God”, or hester panim, is taken from Devarim 31:18.
You have to read the Megillah really closely to know when this happened. It is perhaps surprising that the annulling of Haman’s counsel, the frustration of his intention and the bringing of his evil plan upon his own head, for which we thank God in Al Hanisim, all happened at the beginning of Pesach.
Esther 3:12 “On the thirteenth day of the first month [Nissan], the king’s scribes were summoned and a decree was issued, as Haman directed … the couriers went out post-haste on the royal mission, and the decree was proclaimed in the fortress Shushan.” As we all know, Mordechai asks Esther to intercede with the king, she agrees, but asks all the Jews to fast for three days. Rashi tells us that as the order went out on 13th Nissan, the fast followed immediately, on 13th 14th and 15th of Nissan, and Mordechai has to cancelled seder that year. So the first wine party would have been on the 15th Nissan, with the second wine party, Haman’s downfall and his hanging taking place on 16th of Nissan.
So, what exactly are we celebrating on 14th Adar if the miracle of Purim happened during Pesach?
The answer is troubling. We read in Esther 8 that in order to mitigate the original decree, Mordechai was given a free hand and that he gave the Jews permission: “to destroy, and to slay, and to cause to perish, all the forces of the people and province that would assault them, their little ones and women”. And we go on to read in Esther 9 how this permission was exercised: “The Jews mustered in their cities to attack those who sought their hurt; and no one could withstand them, for the fear of them had fallen upon all the peoples” … “the Jews struck at their enemies with the sword, slaying and destroying; they wreaked their will upon their enemies” … “they disposed of their enemies, killing seventy-five thousand of their foes; but they did not lay hands on the spoil. That was on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar; and they rested on the fourteenth day and made it a day of feasting and merrymaking.”
So what 14th Adar commemorates isn’t the miracle of Purim at all, but what happened 11 months later and how the Jews celebrated after slaying, destroying, and wreaking their will upon their enemies.
The religious justification for this takes us back to Parshat Zachor, the reading of which we’re told is a Torah mitzvah. It’s unsettling that the only part of the Torah that it’s a mitzvah to hear every year isn’t about loving our neighbours or keeping Shabbat or any of the more comforting parts of our religion. Parshat Zachor contains the commandment to blot out the memory of Amalek. The haftarah we just read, about King Saul’s attempt to do just that, makes clear this means killing all Amalekites, and it is specifically invoked by the Megillah. For example, we are told multiple times that Haman was a descendant of Agag, king of the Amalekites, that like King Saul, Mordechai was of the tribe of Benjamin, and that both Saul and Mordechai were descended from people named Kish. And the mistake Saul made in keeping sheep and oxen as spoils of war is specifically recalled in the Megillah, which tells us that when the Jews killed 75,000 of their enemies, this time they did not lay their hands on any of the spoils.
In his commentary to today’s haftarah, Chief Rabbi Hertz writes that the moral difficulty in connection with all this is very real. I think that the same moral difficulties can equally be raised in connection with Purim.
We always see it as a festival with innocent Jews clearly cast as the potential victims and the ultimate heroes, and with Haman as the ultimate villain. But I think there is much more room for nuance on both sides than we have perhaps allowed for. We’ve seen that the Jews killed 75,000 people, who may well have wished them harm, but who also could not withstand them and were afraid of them. The Megillah also tells us how Esther had the dead bodies of the sons of Haman strung up on gallows. It’s not difficult to modify our Purim rapture when reading all this.
But there’s also nuance to be found in the actions of Amalek and of Haman, who may not have been the completely irrational anti-semites we like to think. The Talmud relates in Sanhedrin 99b that Amalek’s hatred of the Jewish people was because of the unjust rejection of his mother’s wish to convert three times, by Abraham, by Isaac and by Jacob. As for Haman, any descendant of Amalek via Agag would certainly have known of the history of murderous conflict between the Jews and his people. Indeed, Josephus writes that Haman was an enemy to the Jews because the Amalekites, of which he was one, had been destroyed by them. In other words, Haman’s plan to destroy the Jews was a mirror image of the obligation of the Jews to destroy him. And this surely give a different meaning to the injunction about not distinguishing between Mordechai and Haman on Purim.
Recognising nuance instead of absolutes doesn’t imply excusing wickedness and evil. But, as Yuval Noah Harari says, it’s possible for people to be both victims and perpetrators at the same time. This year, it might be well for us to consider when reading the Megillah that the Purim story is perhaps not as black and white as we always like to think.
It begins by telling us the story of the spies sent by Moses to survey the land of Canaan. 10 of the 12 spies return with an ambivalent and fearful report. The land is good, they say, but the people are giants and their cities impregnable. Two men, Joshua and Caleb, argue to the contrary. But their confidence is ignored and the people, fearful and demoralised, say: “Let us appoint a leader and go back to Egypt”.
God is angry and threatens to destroy the people and create a new people -beginning with Moses. Moses intercedes and succeeds in averting this fate – but God still insists that the people will be punished anyway by having to spend 40 years in the wilderness. Their children, not they, will enter the land.
There then follows a series of laws about sacrifices, challah, and forgiveness for sins committed inadvertently.
This section is interrupted by a brief narrative about a man being put to death, by stoning, for gathering wood on Shabbat.
The Parsha ends with the law about tzitzis – a text recited daily in the third paragraph of the Shema.
There are acts of threatened and actual savagery by God interspersed with two seemingly unconnected and mundane passages about sacrifices, challah and tzitzis. Verse 36 ends with the stoning of the Shabbat breaker and the very next verse talks about wearing tzitzis. The juxtaposition is jarring.
Three of those passages are well known.
The spies.
The old man who broke Shabbat.
The commandment about tzitzis.
Although these are interesting subjects, I found myself drawn to focus on God’s acts of savagery. The threatened annihilation of the entire people of Israel, and the stoning to death of the Shabbat breaker.
Now many of you will have heard of the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Nearly 30 years ago, he wrote a book called The God Delusion. It can fairly be described as an evisceration of the principal arguments in favour of religion. It was thrillingly direct and daring for its time. It sold millions of copies all round the world.
When I read Shlach Lechah a few weeks ago, I was drawn back to one of the most dramatic and memorable paragraphs in The God Delusion.
Dawkins describes God as arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction. Amongst other things – petty, unjust, unforgiving, a control freak and a capricious, malevolent bully.
But is there any evidence for this litany of insults? Is it a fair description? Is God really so bad?
Well now. There are many places we can go to in the Bible to find all sorts of ways that one might consider that God has behaved badly. And equally, many places where it is said he behaved well.
But seeing as I am here to base my talk on Shlach Lechah, Let’s confine ourselves to just what it says in this week’s sedra about God’s behaviour.
First, there is the story of the 12 spies going into the land of Canaan. This was a commandment from God. Moses told the spies to see what was in the land and whether the people there were strong or weak. The spies were there for 40 days. On their return, 10 of the 12 spies told Moses that although Canaan was a land flowing with milk and honey, it was populated by fierce huge people who could not be conquered. “We were like grasshoppers”, they said.
The people of Israel were so downhearted and devastated by this turn of events that unbelievably, they actually suggested going back to Egypt. They had just emerged from generations of slavery and oppression and yet they wanted to return to Egypt rather than risk trying to conquer the land of Canaan
I’m going to make a quick diversion here. During my research, I came across the writings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Shneerson. He has an interesting interpretation of the wish of the spies to remain in the desert. In the Song of the Sea which the children of Israel sang on the Exodus from Egypt it says:
“All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.
Terror and Dread fall upon them.
Because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as stone”.
So the children of Israel previously had confidence that with God’s help they would conquer the land of Canaan – so what changed?
In Rabbi Shneerson’s opinion, the spies were not afraid of failure.They were afraid of success. In the desert, they were close to God. There was manna. They were protected by the Clouds of Glory that surrounded the encampment They were better off in the wilderness – unfettered by the bothers of the material world.
Once they entered Eretz Yisrael they would be just one more nation in a world of nations, with the same kind of economic, social and political problems that every other nation has to deal with. They might lose their close connection with God which was so strong in the wilderness. I was struck by the relevance this interpretation has for us today where Israel is indeed just one nation amongst all the nations of the world, with all the problems that they also face.
Back to the sedra and the story of the spies. What was God‘s response to the reaction of the people of Israel to the report of the spies? He was livid. He was furious at what he perceived as his betrayal by the people of Israel. He called the spies “This evil congregation”. He said he would destroy the entire nation – literally the entire nation – leaving just Moses alive.
But he was persuaded by Moses to relent. Instead, God decreed that not a single adult who had come out of Egypt would ever set foot in the land of Israel. He said of them that their “Carcasses would fall in the desert”. What an apocalyptic image that is! Not only that, but the next generation – those who would go into the land of Israel – would be condemned to wander in the wilderness for the next 40 years – a year for each day the spies were in Canaan.
I read this story 3 times. The first time I read it I thought I must have completely misunderstood. I could hardly believe how harsh God was towards his chosen people.
Then later in the sedra there is the story of a man gathering sticks on Shabbat. The people saw him and brought him to Moses. Moses sought advice from God. God told him to put the man to death by stoning. And this was done by the Council of Elders on behalf of the people of Israel. A man whose only sin was to gather sticks on Shabbat was put to death by stoning.
Let’s go back to Dawkins and his litany of insults. This is a very personal view – but I say that God comes out of this week’s sedra as jealous, petty, unjust, unforgiving, vindictive, bloodthirsty, capricious and malevolent.
But I thought to myself … there must be commentaries explaining why God behaved in this way. I wanted to find out why God is capable of such behaviour. What is it, I wondered, that makes God so unforgiving? If there was a reasonable explanation, I would at least have understood.
But what I found, amongst respected rabbinic commentators, was a marked and consistent reluctance to criticise God in any way. Rather, the commentaries focused only on the behaviour of the people and described how their behaviour in turn provoked God‘s reaction. In other words, if the people had not behaved in the way that they did, then God would not have reacted so violently.
Other commentaries I read say God does not punish in order to exact revenge. He punishes in order to enable a person to reach the next level of his spiritual development. But by failing to meet the challenge he is presented with, a person demonstrates that he is unwilling to reach this next level on his own – and therefore he needs to be punished.
To me, that felt just like victim blaming.
It put me in mind of the victim of domestic abuse whose assailant – whilst raining blows down on his victims head – says to her
“This is your fault. I’m only doing this because of what you did to me”.
Can something positive be taken from the events of Shlach Lechah? Despite my distaste about God’s behaviour – I think something positive can be taken away.
My reaction to the events described in Shlach Lechah led me to think about the nature of compassion. The ancient Talmudic concept of “Rachmonos”. The Talmudic rabbis considered compassion to be one of the three pillars of Judaism, the other two being the study of the torah and the act of worship. We refer to God as “Av Harachamim”. Father of mercy. Rachamim comes from the Hebrew word rechem, meaning “womb”. It is the boundaryless love of a mother for her child. God is to us as a mother is to her child.
In my opinion, in each of the stories in this week’s sedra, God could have shown greater compassion.
First, the spies. The fact that God was persuaded not to annihilate the nation of Israel is interpreted by some commentators as a sign of his compassion. But I don’t see it that way. It wasn’t active compassion – that you and I would recognise. God merely imposed a lesser, yet still devastating, punishment.
After Moses told the people their punishment, they realised they had sinned – and they repented. They went up to the mountain top to invade Canaan. Moses told them it was too late because God was not amongst them and they would not succeed. But they went ahead anyway – and suffered a terrible defeat by the Canaanites and the Amalekites.
Could God have relented a second time after the people repented? Could he have come amongst them to support them in their endeavours? Of course he could. He could have chosen to reassure the people of Israel that with him by their side they could conquer the land of Canaan – even though they were terrified of the people there. He could have been supportive, encouraging and kind. He could have been compassionate. Instead he was vindictive.
And what of the fate of the man gathering wood on Shabbat? It need hardly be said that God’s treatment of the poor man whose only sin was to gather sticks on Shabbat need not have been so violent. Did it really warrant his death? Could God have shown more compassion? The answer is obvious.
The Torah has much to say about compassion. We are told again and again that God is compassionate. Some commentators say that the ultimate act of God’s compassion was to rescue the people of Israel from hundreds of years of slavery in Egypt.
But does the Torah teach us how to be compassionate?
There are tractates of the Talmud dealing with almost every conceivable facet of Jewish life. There is the tractate of Shabbat. The tractate of Rosh Hashanah. The tractate of washing your hands. There are literally dozens of tractates. But there is no tractate teaching us how to be compassionate.
There doesn’t seem to be a toolbox in the Bible for this.
So how do we learn compassion?
We must learn from our parents and teachers. They teach us the difference between right and wrong. The difference between kindness and unkindness. Without that guidance, we would be adrift. We would be rudderless in the sea of modern life.
Every day, in so many ways, we are faced with situations where we reach a fork in the road and we have to decide which path to take. When that happens, it is our task as human beings – with free will as God intended – to pause and reflect before taking the next step. It isn’t easy and I’m not advocating a counsel of perfection. We are all imperfect. We often behave badly.
Perhaps a 13th century mystic poet named Jalaluddin Rumi can help us.
He was the author of many aphorisms, one of which might help us in our quest for the art and learning of compassion.
He says this:
“Before you speak, let your words pass through three Gates.
At the first gate, ask yourself – is it true?
At the second gate, ask yourself – is it necessary?
At the third gate, ask yourself – is it kind?”
Rumi exhorts us to pause and reflect.
Truth.
Necessity.
Kindness.
I wonder, did God allow his decisions to pass through these three gates before he imposed his punishments upon the children of Israel and the man who collected sticks on Shabbat? Was it necessary to stone the man to death? Was it kind? It could be said that the man was knowingly and defiantly disobeying a commandment to keep Shabbat. So maybe it was a way of God showing that he is powerful and his commandments should be obeyed. But is an act of disobedience a severe offence to warrant execution? Was it a kind and compassionate thing for God to do?
When the people of Israel could not enter the promised land but would instead wander in the desert for 40 years, God may well have felt that his punishment was necessary in order for them to understand what they had done. But was it really? Even after the children of Israel had repented? Where was redemption? Where was compassion?
So, finally, I came to the conclusion that we must look to ourselves to be compassionate. We know we can do this. The notion that human beings can exercise their own free will when making moral decisions is axiomatic to Judaism. God has given us that free will. We must use it wisely.
