This week's portion is one in which God lays out a list of laws, overlapping with but expanding upon the Ten Commandments, necessary for the Israelites to be a "holy" nation. These include moral conventions and sexual prohibitions.
In Leviticus 18:32, we are told: "You shall rise before a venerable person and you shall respect the elderly, and you shall fear your God. I am the Lord." Standing up to respect someone honorable, or giving up a seat to the elderly, seems to be ordinary manners and common sense. But not everyone does that today.
Notably, the passage connects respecting the venerable, and the elderly, to respecting God. By respecting each other, we show our faith in God, and for the spark of godliness that exists in every human being created in God's image.
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 ...
