This Friday (and, outside of Israel, Saturday) marks the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, or Pentecost, which commemorates the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. The tradition is to stay up all night, studying various aspects of Torah.
I recently began studying the "Mishneh Torah" of Maimonides, his attempt to organize Jewish practice and thought in a categorial, rational way. It is an astonishing intellectual achievement and has already inspired me significantly.
One of the first sections is about prophecy. Maimonides spends a lot of time explaining how to recognize a true prophet -- no doubt because Judaism in the Middle Ages found itself under pressure from both Christianity and Islam.
Without, at least in this section, challenging either of those two religions, Maimonides explains the basis for Jews' continued faith in the original Torah, delivered by Moses at Sinai: we were witnesses to it ourselves, with Moses.
"What is the source of our belief in him? The [revelation] at Mount Sinai. Our eyes saw, and not a stranger's. Our ears heard, and not another's. ... Thus, those to whom [Moses] was sent witnessed [his appointment] as a prophet, and it was not necessary to perform another wonder for them. He and they were witnesses, like two witnesses who observed the same event together."
Hence the emphasis, on Shavuot, of reenacting the receiving of the Torah. Through study, we repeat the action of witnessing the revelation -- not just of the Ten Commandments, and of the written law, but also of the Oral Law, which Moses was taught on Sinai and later transmitted to the people.
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/904992/jewish/Yesodei-haTorah-Chapter-Eight.htm
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 ...
