Yesterday my wife and I took a rare trip to the movie theater -- not just rare because of the COVID lockdowns, but rare because of our schedules -- to see All Quiet on the Western Front, based on the famous Remarque novel.
The filmmaking is intense, and it's an incredible portrayal of life in the trenches in World War I, when millions of lives were lost to move the front a few hundred meters this way or that. Germany, robust at first, must eventually capitulate.
I wanted to see the movie for several reasons. One -- I loved the book when I first read it, even if it was part of an intellectual movement that encouraged pacifism and may have delayed a more robust response to Hitler in the 1930s.
Two -- I wanted to see a war movie in which the Germans were the good guys. There are many World War II films where they are the bad guys and rightfully so, but life is more complex than that, and so are my own artistic interests.
The film is largely true to the book, though a little less whimsical than the book, at times, manages to be. There is no scene of returns home on leave; instead, we se Germany through the eyes of politicians, diplomats, and generals.
That is a bit of artistic license, but it is meant to explain, in part, the various currents of thought within Germany about the nation's defeat -- and the threads that would later be rewoven by the Nazis into a terrible juggernaut.
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
