This week's portion begins with Moses's instructions to the people to set up a judicial system in the Land of Israel. Moses given the people other instructions, including about monarchy, rules of war, relations among neighbors, and more.
There is the famous line: "Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may live and possess the land the Lord, your God, is giving you." (16:20). That line is often misquoted as a justification for "social justice" -- often by people who are not terribly enthusiastic about modern-day Israel possessing the land of Israel.
We are so preoccupied with the adjective "social" that we forget about the noun "justice." There's no "social justice" in the Torah -- just "justice justice."
Justice is the noun, and justice is the adjective. Justice -- defined by what we deserve. If we do right, we deserve good; if we do wrong, we deserve evil, and only our prayers and repentance and charity can do anything about it.
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 ...
