This reading reviews some of the laws and rules regarding conduct among human beings. Among the more interesting laws is that of Deuteronomy 24:5: "When a man takes a new wife, he shall not go out in the army, nor shall he be subjected to anything associated with it. He shall remain free for his home for one year and delight his wife, whom he has taken."
When my wife and I were first married, we had to live apart for several months, because I had committed to a congressional campaign in Chicago and she had taken a job in Washington, DC, partly to maintain her legal immigration status. (She became a citizen the following year.) She sometimes admonished me with the lesson of Deuteronomy 24:5, suggesting that perhaps I should have put politics aside for the sake of the newlywed year. Things would have been tough, anyway: it was the midst of the recession, and jobs were in short supply. We could not afford a honeymoon. But we could at least have been together all the time, instead of just on weekends.
I knew she was right. In some ways, I regret that choice. You never really get that first year back. We are very happy, 12 years later, but I learned the wisdom of that Biblical passage. And the importance of setting time aside for one another doesn't end after the first year. You need to make time to reconnect, beyond the pressures of work and the duties of family, which have no end, unless you set a boundary to them.
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 ...
