I am going through newly recovered boxes of Rhoda Kadalie's papers, as I continue to tinker with the manuscript of her biography. Among the files, I found a collection of papers belonging to the late Professor Anthony Holiday, a philosopher who was a close friend of Rhoda's and -- in her description, and probably his -- a guttersnipe of the most esteemed sort. He served a prison term during apartheid for his role in the Communist Party, but later renounced communism, saying that he had "left the community of closed ideas."
He also had "friends in low places" -- the drug dens and brothels and the rest of it -- and therefore had lots of political dirt, which he exploited to the full to gain inside accounts of what was going on in the new South African government.
Anyway -- few others reckoned quite so deeply with the paradoxes of South African life, and the clash between left-wing idealism and reality. He wasn't always on target -- he had really hackneyed ideas about Israel, and suggested (perhaps tongue-in-cheek?) that local Zionist groups be banned. I wrote a very strident response to the local newspaper about that, when he made the case in an op-ed. How could a banned former communist want anyone banned? Nobody's perfect.
Anyway, in a paper on "The Idea of an African University," given in Cape Town in November 2001, he concluded:
"To achieve this recovery of what colonialism and slavery have interred, a generation of artists, historians, scientists and philosopher[s] that is growing up among us must brave the twin dangers of scientism disguised as science, on the one hand, and superstition parading as African religion on the other. It will have to endure the cynical mockery of Eurocentric skeptics as well as the accusations of disloyalty which Africanist ideologues are bound to heap on it. Above all, this generation of seekers will have to withstand the dark night of intellectual loneliness which travelers towards goals of this sort must inevitably traverse. It will find no companions among the politically orthodox. But there may be those from other cultures, spaces and times, who will join the pilgrimage and, whatever its perils, not betray it."
"[T]he dark night of intellectual loneliness" -- I can relate to that, lately. So could Rhoda.
This week'd portion begins the book of Numbers. Interestingly, the Hebrew name for the book is "In the Desert," not "Numbers." The portion, which happens to be my bar mitzvah portion, focuses almost as much on the names of the princes of each tribe as the number of soldiers it fielded. It also focuses on the configuration of the tribal camps around the central Tabernacle and the Levites.
So why "Numbers" instead of "Names" or "Places"? The numbers are, to be sure, a unique feature of the opening of this Biblical book -- but they are not the focus of the rest of the narrative. The Hebrew focuses on the place where the events in the book take place, because essentially this is the narrative of the Israelites' wanderings from Egypt to Israel, across 40 years. We move from the giving of the Torah and the construction of the Tabernacle in Exodus and Leviticus, to the final valediction of Moses in Deuteronomy -- Bamidbar is the story of wandering that happened in between.
The question of ...
This week's portion begins with the laws of the Sabbath and the Sabbatical year, and the Jubilee year that restores all land to its original (tribal) owners. It also explores laws of property and labor that will apply in the Land of Israel, and the laws of vows and inheritance.
The Israelites are presented -- not for the last time -- with the essential moral choice that they must face, and the rewards for choosing well, along with the consequences for choosing poorly.
We learn that doing good things will earn God's protection from enemies. That does not mean that victims of terror, God forbid, were sinful. But it does mean that we can respond to evil by committing ourselves to a higher path.
This week's portion describes the major sacrifices that are to be offered by the Jewish people, including those that are offered only by the priestly Kohen class, and physical requirements of the people (men) who serve in that role.
Inter alia, there are interesting commandments -- such as an injection to treat animals with respect and care, first, by letting a mother animal nurse her offspring for a week before being offered in any sacrifice; and second, by refraining from slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day.
The commandments regarding animals remind us of the purpose of those regarding human beings: to uphold a divine connection, through ritual.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111878/jewish/Rabbi-Isaac-Luria-The-Ari-Hakodosh.htm
