I was discussing the tragedy of the killing of 3 Israeli hostages today with a friend when I suddenly remembered the story of Jephthah, or Yiftach, in the Book of Judges in the Old Testament.
Yiftach is an outcast until the leader of the Jewish people ask him to help them defend themselves against invading enemies. He agrees, but also makes a fateful vow: to sacrifice the first creature that greets him on his return.
He is victorious, and when he returns home, to his shock and dismay his daughter races out of his home to greet him, rather than a farm animal, as he had expected. It is a tragic end to a heroic adventure.
The message of the story is unclear. Obviously one should not make careless vows, but Yiftach could not imagine that a human being would come out from his home, or farm, before an animal did.
The parallel to our present situation is that none of the soldiers in Gaza when the hostages were killed -- not even their commander -- understood that it was possible hostages would emerge in the open.
We are sometimes undone by our own expectations, by the way we choose to interpret reality. We need to be open to other possibilities and perspectives. If we are not, we may end up destroying ourselves.
The story of Noah is familiar; the details, less so.
Noah is often seen as an ambivalent figure. He was righteous -- but only for his generation. What was his deficiency?
One answer suggests itself: knowing that the world was about to be flooded, he built an Ark for the animals and for his own family -- but did not try to save anyone else or to convince them to repent and change their ways (the prophet Jonah, later, would share that reluctance).
Abraham, later, would set himself apart by arguing with God -- with the Lord Himself! -- against the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying that they should be saved if there were enough righteous people to be found (there were not).
Still, Noah was good enough -- and sometimes, that really is sufficient to save the world. We don't need heroes every time -- just ordinary decency.
Hi all -- as I noted last month, I'm going to be closing down my Locals page, at least for tips and subscriptions -- I may keep the page up and the posts as well, but I'm no longer going to be accepting any kind of payment.
Look for cancelation in the very near future. Thank you for your support!
An interesting weekend -- one of the last of Daylight Savings Time -- in which there is much to celebrate, much to contemplate, and a bit to worry about.
The Gaza peace deal is shaky, but holding, after the living hostages returned; the shutdown is still going on, with no end in sight; the China trade war is heating up; and the confrontation with Venezuela continues to escalate.
The "No Kings" protest was a dud, despite the media's attempt to inflate it. What I find fascinating is that the Democrats have basically stolen the rhetoric and the imagery of the Tea Party protests, circa 2009. They claim they are defending the Constitution -- just like the Tea Party did.
On the one hand, this is good. How wonderful to have a political system in which both sides, bitterly opposed though they are, articulate differences through the Constitution -- and not, as in so many other countries, outside it.
On the other, this is sheer hypocrisy for the Democrats. Not only did they malign the Tea Party as ...
