This week's portion tells the story of Abraham's journey to the Land of Israel -- the starting point of the Jewish relationship with the Holy Land. This year, the reading coincides with a war to defend that land.
I'm sure that theme will be addressed in many synagogue sermons. I'd like to focus on another aspect, though: the fact that Abraham's father, Tahor, was actually told to go to Israel, before he was.
So why does Abraham get the credit? And why would he have to leave his father's house if his father was already moving in the right direction?
The answer is that Abraham added the spiritual element of the journey. Tahor brought his son and his family to the edge, the boundary, of what Israel was meant to be. But Abraham had to take that extra leap, and add a belief in the One true God to the equation.
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 ...
