Today is the first day of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, one of the happiest holidays on the Jewish calendar. It commemorates the journey of the Israelites through the desert, but also celebrates the harvest, and the culmination of the cycle of repentance and renewal.
Jews build temporary huts and eat all of the day's meals in them. We also collect and wave around four special plant species mentioned in the Bible: an etrog (citron), palm, myrtle, and willow. These have deep symbolic meanings and remind us of God's work in creation.
There are many great insights about Sukkot, but one of my favorite is that the minimum height of a sukkah is 10 handbreadths from the ground, which the Talmud said is the point at which Heaven meets earth. In other words: Heaven is here, within our experience.
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 ...
