This is one of my favorite portions, one that I have always liked, partly because it is my father's bar mitzvah portion. His own father was named Jacob, and I often felt, as a younger man, that I could relate to Jacob's mixed feelings of adventure and trepidation as he set out to find his own path, away from home.
Jacob leaves; has his famous dream of the ladder, with a revelation from God in which he is promised that he will return. But we know that even though Jacob does, eventually, return, he will also leave again, heading in the opposite direction -- to Egypt, where he eventually dies. Jacob's life is curious in that his expectations are constantly upended. The lesson, for us, is that while life is full of twists and turns, we have to trust that we will end up as God intends us to be.
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 ...
