I'll be heading to South Africa in February for a research trip -- and seeing relatives and friends. It will be my first visit in 9 years... kind of amazing, considering that I lived there for 7 years and became deeply enmeshed in South African life. I am looking forward to it -- but I am also a bit nervous about it.
When I first went there on my own as an adult, I was a Rotary scholar, interested to see the country's political changes, enthusiastic about the country's left-wing policies, eager to test Alexis de Tocqueville's ideas about democracy against a real-world example of democracy in motion.
Now I feel I am going there with a new question: given that people there keep telling me -- only half-jokingly -- about "collapse," is the South African experiment a failure? And if it has faltered, is it salvageable? Some people seem happy there; others seem terrified of what tomorrow might bring. We'll see.
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 ...
