This week, while at a game reserve, my family and I were treated to some of the classic South African tunes from the 1990s -- a time of hope and miracles, when popular culture reflected the great enthusiasm for the country's changes.
One song, by Vicky Sampson, "My African Dream," remains beautiful and haunting. Curiously, the man who wrote it, Alan Lazar, now lives in L.A., like me. I don't know much about him, but that seemed rather ironic to me.
The present wave of blackouts, DA political legend Helen Zille recently noted, has shown South Africa that the ANC is a failure. She added that South Africa could now, perhaps, move toward true multiparty democracy and rescue itself.
I do wonder if that wonderfully romantic political time, and all of its art, were something of a burden. They enabled the ruling party to behave corruptly and to dismiss criticism. A more "normal" country would not have tolerated it.
I think it is good that South Africa feels more "normal." With the benefit of distance, I am no longer judging it through an apartheid lens, where race and remedies for the past seem to be the most important priorities for the place.
Romance is a luxury you can enjoy when you have the basics covered, and when you are prosperous. South Africans neglected the basis for their prosperity. It has lost a tremendous amount of capital, both financial and human.
But perhaps it still has the social capital to recover. It needs a common identity -- something that can substitute for the volk that united Afrikaners behind a common nation-building purpose. Perhaps the nostalgia can be put to good use.
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
