This week's Torah portion is one of the most beautiful and haunting. It is a poem, calling on Heaven and Earth to bear witness to the Covenant between God and the Jewish people. The additional reading, from II Samuel, is another poem -- this one, composed by David, after God delivered him from the hand of Saul.
The theme of the Torah portion is one of warning: be careful, lest you stray. The theme of the additional reading is one of deliverance, as if comforting us, as if we have fulfilled the confidence that God placed in us.
Are we worthy? Am I? I struggle with these questions all the time. Even after Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when we are given a clean slate and a fresh start, old issues remain. Life is a constant struggle -- which makes it worth living. Heaven and Earth are witnesses against us -- and yet it is our task to harmonize them, ,to bring Earth up to Heaven and vice versa. Hence the tension, and the challenge.
This week's show will be slightly different from the norm: we'll focus on clips and topics, rather than guests -- and that, hopefully, will mean more input from the callers (unless you are all watching football on opening weekend).
Topics:
- The state of the economy
- The fight against crime
- The midterm election fight
- The struggle for peace between Russia and Ukraine
- The airstrike on the Venezuelan drug cartel
- The attempt to sink Kennedy
- The war in Gaza
- The case against Harvard
- The Trump presidency
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This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...
